The best country to celebrate carnival

There is no better country for celebrating carnival than Brazil.  The Brazilians love their carnival and it is celebrated everywhere in the country. They even take vacation for it and the preparties even start months before the actual event. For the carnival I also adjusted my entire travel plan so that I arrived in Brazil in time for carnival. I didn't want to celebrate it in Rio, that's for the tourists. And also the famous carnival in Salvador was not for me, there they increased the accommodation prices three times.

My buddy Luiz from São Paulo had already organized everything before. We drove to Santa Rita do Sapucaí, a city in the state of Minas Gerais, a few hours drive from São Paulo. Santa Rita is a small town with just over 40,000 inhabitants and surrounded by many green hills. There, the festival "Bloco de Urso" took place, for which my buddy had already got the tickets. A kind of music festival over several days, where several artists perform. It was going to be be a very local experience.

A very sparse accomodation

It cost me about 250 € for 4 nights which included accomodation and drinks. We had again a 1st class ticket, that means we could drink as much as we wanted there and could go to areas where others could not go. They gave us a purple plastic cup with a ribbon so you could wear it around your shoulder. You had to present it when you wanted to get a drink.

When we arrived at the accommodation, I was a little shocked to be honest. It was just an empty room in a local's house. There was no bed or anything else. And now six men should sleep here for four nights. It also turned out that we only had 5 instead of 6 air mattresses, so I had to share the air mattress with someone else. We put 2 mattresses horizontally, so that we only put our head and hips on it - not comfortable at all.

Brazilians love ice cold beer - many of them

But we didn't come here to sleep anyway, because we came here to celebrate carnival! To get a drink, we walked a few houses further, where in a courtyard a few plastic chairs and tables were set up. This was to be our place to drink from now on. We could always take new beer or vodka out of the freezer - that was also included in the ticket.

The Brazilians don't love their beer cold. They love it ice cold. That's why they often put it in the freezer instead of the refrigerator. We were also provided with culinary delights. A few nice Brazilians cooked for us. Of course a lot of grilled meat, because the Brazilians like it too. As a vegetarian I was eating  rice and black beans almost the whole time.

As it should be for the carnival, we also had prepared a costume for each of us. I slipped into a huge diaper and grabbed a rattle and I was a giant baby. Among many other giant babies there were many "tigers" or "cows".

Arriving to the festival

A shuttle finally brought us to the festival ground in the evening which is a few kilometers away from our accommodation. The atmosphere in the bus was already pretty exuberant. The Brazilians sang some song in Portuguese that I didn't understand, let alone could sing along.

The drinking session that already started in the inner courtyard continued here. I expected extravagant samba dance interludes by the Brazilians, but far from it. These Brazilians don't get awards for dancing but for their drinking endurance. Also the weather was not very Brazilian: it was only mild and it was greyish-cloudy.

On the stage of the festival there were mostly Brazilian funk musicians, a kind of hip-hop with electro beats, but very melodic due to the Portuguese language and therefore easy to dance to.

Brazilians love to kiss - a lot

We had also arranged a hilarious game. We prepared a big cube with a portrait of a group member on each side. Then we went to a group of women and prompted them to throw the dice. Then the woman had to kiss the one whose portrait the dice showed. However, the cube was not exactly cubic, so that the same male friend almost all the time turned up. So he could kiss one woman after the other.

Brazilians kiss each other like other nations shake hands. So in Brazil, kissing doesn't mean much. Whereas kissing in other cultures often leads to "more".  Especially in times of carnival, people in Brazil kiss more frequently. Sometimes you are even asked how many people you have kissed during this carnival. My buddy Luiz was the clear winner in our group. He took a persistent approach and I had to laugh when he literally ran after a woman at this festival.

Aimlessly looking for our accomodation for 3 hours in the middle of the night

As midnight approached, I became noticeably tired and I was glad that the festival was over for today. The 2 days before I had slept relatively little due to my flight to Brazil and the trip to the carnival. We had to walk back to our quarters. I had no idea where it was and relied completely on my Brazilian buddies.

But unfortunately they were already pretty drunk and we wandered aimlessly through the place. Although the place is quite small, the streets are quite similar, especially in the dark. Of course our accommodation had no signs, because it was a normal house. About 3 hours we were going astray before we found our accommodation by chance. Tthe lack of sleep made me really pissed off! The next morning I couldn't sleep long and somehow I had imagined it to be different than sleeping on the floor next to 5 other guys with my head on an air mattress. My buddies already had started drinking relatively early in the morning again.

Getting in the crazy carnival rhythm

The festival was supposed to go on for another 3 days - and I was seriously considering to leave it earlier although that would have cost me a lot of money. I let my mates continue drinking and retired for a nap. I really needed that, afterwards I felt much better and eventually had a blast and in the end I was the one with the most energy.

I got into the carnival rhythm better and better. Drinking beer and chilling in the day and in the night going out on the festival grounds. I enjoyed it even in pouring rain.

The only German amongst thousands of Brazilians

Especially the last night was the best and craziest night. Before it started we enhanced our energy a little. Some of the pics and the videos I have from it are not intended for uploading. I was accompanied by a Brazilian guy dressed as a cow. The few English words he could speak were "Beer" and "Kiss", which briefly summarizes each of our 2 carnival activities haha. How many women we kissed in the end, we couldn't even count anymore.

In the village I was already known at the end, because at this festival with several thousands of visitors I was the only German. I didnt meet a single tourist there. Everybody just called me "alemao" (the German). Unfortunately many Brazilians don't speak English very well and even with my Spanish I didn't get far.

A crazy experience

I was a bit sad when the carnival was over despite the first struggle. The Brazilian carnival is definitely different than I had imagined, absolutely crazy in any case. You should be able to hold your drink very well and kiss as much as possible. How well you dance doesn't really matter. Never before in my life have I drunk so much beer in such a short time. I hope to participate in a Brazilian carnival again one day.

When we drove back with the car, my buddy and I slept on the same pillow with our heads - that's how tired we were and in our minds we were still dancing in the carnival...

... eu não vou embora, eu não vou embora ♫♫
... (I won't go home, I won't go home) ♫♫