Casamento em Passos
BRAZIL | Monday, 26 January 2009 | Views [1116] | Comments [1]
Guillherme, his mother, Nico & I together with Guillherme's friends from college
Last summer I received an Email from a former work colleague in Baden inviting me to his wedding in Brazil. I just knew Guillherme from some joint lunches and as such I was not sure of how serious this invitation was. I wrote back to him that I would actually be in Brazil during this time and therefore more than happy to attend his wedding. So it happened, that on the first weekend in January Nico and I drove around 400 Kilometer into the countryside of Minas Gerais, a neighboring state of Sao Paulo, in order to attend this Brazilian wedding. After driving a few hours on straight highways into total countryside I began to doubt that the place we were looking for was bigger than a Swiss village. In fact, it is much bigger, around 100'000 inhabitants, but as it is so far away of any other big city it seems to be a very small place. The ceremony in the church just lasted about half an hour on Friday evening and immediately after the party began. They chose a very nice room to give the party and the buffet was excellent. Despite that, after half an hour of eating, all of the 250 invitees who were able to dance started to do so. One of the best things was a barkeeper, who did nothing else than preparing Caipirinhas with various fruits - so of course I had to try all kind of fruits they had ;). Then the freshly married couple arrived and demonstratively startet to cut the huge wedding cake. I was already looking forward to get a piece of it but unfortunately it was fake!! Later they told us that they already used it for lots of weddings just to get some nice pics. Pics and video are important. Constantly 3 video man were recording every single detail of the wedding and additionally, two photographers flashed constantly around everyone. But me personally I would have preferred to get a piece of cake instead of an additional photo.
The next day we realized how small Passos really is. Once walking through the main street and you have seen everything. There aren't even any nice shops or so, there is really not much. But people are very very kind. In the evening we were invited to a Churrassco at Guilherme's house, which means non-stop drinking and eating. Imagine, Nico and I are the first foreigners the mother of Guilherme has ever seen in here life. So we were a little attraction and everyone wanted to talk to us. They had so much patience while I was trying to speak some sentences in portuguese it was amazing. Overall the rhythm of life is much slower out there and people have much more spare time. Hospitality is highly valued, so I enjoyed the weekend a lot.
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