Headed to Brazil!!!

I booked my flights to Brazil today for my trip in early November.  You may be thinking...why are you going to Brazil?  Well at the end of 2010, the company I work for announced that they were starting a new volunteer opportunity.  They started a program working with Cross Cultural Solutions (http://www.crossculturalsolutions.org/) to send 200 people on 2 week volunteer trips all over the world.

Out of the 1800 people that applied for the opportunity, I was one of the fortunate ones to be selected as an ambassador for 2011.  The company is sending groups of ~8-10 people to a specific location at a time.  I am in the group of 8 that will be headed to Salvador, Brazil in November.  There will be a total of 4 groups going to Salvador, with other groups heading to India, Tanzania, Ghana, Peru, China, Russia, Thailand, etc.

Salvador is the third largest city in Brazil.  It is located along the Atlantic coast in the Bahia region north of Rio de Janeiro by about 1000 miles.  The city was founded in 1549 and was the first capital of Brazil, until the capital was moved to Rio in 1763.  Salvador has a rich African culture, which according to the guide books is evident by the music, dance and capoeira.

I will definitely be sharing more about Salvador in upcoming blogs before I go, potentially while I am there, and after I return to the US.  

Until then.....boa noite (boh-uh noyt)!  ((Goodnight in Portuguese))

 

Warnemunde, Germany

Our first stop on the cruise was to Warnemunde Germany.  Warnemunde is not very far from Copenhagen (Kobenhavn) however the boat was too deep to be able to travel direct.  It had to go north around the Denmark island by Nyborg and then to Warnemunde.  A lot of people took shore excursions to Berlin which involved a 3+ hour train ride.  We decided to take a shore excursion to the town of Wismar which was a 45 to 60 min bus ride from Warnemunde.  

The town of Wismar dates back to the medieval times.  Sadly it was cold and rainy that day in northern Germany and as we were on a walking tour it was not the greatest.  However our tour guide was fabulous and we made the most of the day.  There were several beautiful old churches in the town, however there was a high amount of destruction during WWII.  Wismar was part of East Germany after the war,during Communist era the buildings feel more further disrepair.  One of the churches was actually leveled by the communist party except for the tower.  I did not realize, but you were not allowed to attend church during communist times.  The country is trying to rebuilt,  however it is slow going.  

Due to the rain, our tour guide had us watch a 3D movie on how the churches were built (rather than the free time to walk around the town).  It was a pretty cheesy movie with an animated brick as the main character, but it was neat to see how the churches were built and stay out of the cold rain for a little while.

The city had a water pumping station during medieval times.  The pumping station was in the center of the square.

We then visited a brewery, had a hot pretzel and got to taste two different beers; a pilsner and a mumme.  Both were very tasty and it was no surprise that the brewery knew what they were doing as they had celebrated 555 years of operation in 2007!!  The head brewer told us that there used to be quite a number of breweries back in the day, and beer was actually a major export for the city a long ago.  

 

We rode on the Audubon back to Warnemunde and our tour guide talked to us about life during communist times and since reunification.  It was very interesting to hear how times after 1991 have been quite tough as unemployment is very high in this region of Germany at ~14%.  She explained that many people now want to purchase all the items they were not allowed, but do not have the money to do so, so there are quite a few people that would rather be living like they were before 1991.

For a place I had no knowledge of before we boarded the ship, it was a wonderful location to visit!

Kobenhavn, Danmark

We flew out of Indy through Chicago to Copenhagen Denmark on June 29th arriving in the early afternoon on the 30th.  Our cruise wasn't leaving until July 1st, so we had booked a hotel room in Orestad outside of the city close to the airport.  The hotel, Crowne Plaza, was a very modern hotel with large concrete beams throughout the lobby.  

We arrived around 3pm and decided to head downtown to see the sites before crashing for the night.  We successfully took the metro which was cheap, super convenient, and arrived at the stations ~ every 3 minutes.  Rob and I hope Indianapolis can put something like this here sometime in the future because it was a great way to get around. 

The weather was on the cool side.  We walked to the Nyhavn area first, ate a late lunch/early dinner.  It was hard to determine the price of food since the currency was in kroner, but we were lucky the lunch menu went until 5pm because that allowed for a cheaper meal.  According to the guide book Nyhavn was established in the 1670s, used to be a sailors' quarters full of tattoo shops, but now contains mainly restaurants and shops.  

We walked past Amalienborg palace where the queen and her husband live, and then walked out to the Little Mermaid statue.  We then walked back past Nyhavn to Stroget (the pedestrian street that contains many shops) and walked the full length to the outside of Tivoli Gardens.  We were extremely tired and found a slightly closer metro station to head back to the hotel for a long nights rest.

 

Back Home Again......In Indiana

So we returned from our Honeymoon adventure about 30 minutes ago.  This will be short post since Rob and I have been up since 6:15am Copenhagen time which is 6 hours ahead of EST, so we have been awake for approximately 20 hours now. 

The trip was amazing!  I took some notes on the different sites we saw on each day and of course took lots of pictures (961 to be exact) although that doesn't include the ones on Rob's camera so we took over 1000 photos.  So the next several blogs will be dedicated to different portions of the trip.

Now time to get ready to sleep.  Tomorrow I head to the new job...wish me luck in my quest to stay awake during the day long meeting!