Visiting Don Bosco schools in Rio

Hugs with the sweetest kids on earth :-)

Group pic with the whole class

Rio is not only Corcovado, Pao de Azucar and Copacabana. Rio is also „famous“ for his many favelas, where hundreds of thousands of people live. During on the my last day in Rio, I had the opportunity to visit two Don Bosco Centers and have a closer look at one of the biggest favelas, the Jacarezinho. I spent the morning in the Youth Center of Riachuelo. I met manye children and youngsters there, playing football, table tannis, capoeira, etc. They all live in the favela, which I visited in the afternoon. Walking there with a Salesian priest (it is too dangerous to go there alone, he said), we reached the other Don Bosco center, a school right in the middle of Favela. There I spent 2 hours visiting all the classes and I was welcomed by the children like a rock-star: everybody hugged me, wanted to make pictures with me, asked me many questions and even autographs. And manye said with my new haircut I look like Neymar, a famous brazilian young football player, star of the moment.
What a fun and at the same time touching experience! I promised them to visit them again and I want to keep my promise in June 2012, when I plan to be back in Rio for at least one month.

More pics of my visit

Hiking to the Corcovado

Christ the Redeemer...and me :-)

On Friday 4th November I had one of the most spectacular days of my whole life!
What did I do? I hiked on the top of Corcovado, until the statue of the Christ the Redemeer.

Not alone, but with five other people: my dear friends Mathieu and Anne-Therese from France and three argentinian couchsurfers I have met in Rio: Laura, Meli and Emanuel.



To go up, it was a 3-hour hike in a street first, in a narrow path in the forest then, and along the train track in the end. With around 30 degrees temperature not the easiest walk, but definitely a beautiful one. Turning the corner you never know what to expect, it could be another part of the forest or a breath-taking view of the coast!

Once reached the top, we spent around 2 hours at the base of the Christ statue. The landscape is so incredible that I could not stop looking at the most incredible combination of nature and human buildings I have ever seen!

We walked back using another path which brought us to the park Loge, near the Lagoa, where we also met a few monkeys.

Overall, a glorious day and some more unforgettable memories to add to my unforgettable trip!

 More pics from the hike to Corcovado

the wonderful six :-)

An amazing view from the top

My first week in Rio

Rio is a big city, no doubt about it. More than 8 millions people, so basically all of Austria in one city!

I arrived last Tuesday and after 1 week here I have the impression I only saw a small part of the city. At the same time, I already feel completely at home.
I was hosted for 6 days by Mathieu and Anne-Therese, old friends from the Vienna time and it was wonderful to spend time. We saw each other for the last time in February in Vienna with the idea of meeting somewhere in South America and I am really happy we realised our wish :-)

The weather was sunny at the beginning and rainy in the last days, so until now no classical tourist places visited like the Christ and the Pao de Acucar, but we I went to Copacabana, Ipanema, Forte do Leme (with wonderful views!), I had a crazy party night in Lapa and I was at theater in the Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil on Sunday night. Moreover, I read two books, spent a lot of time with old and new friends, had great food.

Life is so great here that I decided to stop for a longer period, until 20th November. Last night I moved to another part of the city and I was welcomed by my new cs host, Thalia. She is a wonderful person, complete trust at first sight and immediately went along very well. This morning when I woke up after a confortable sleep on a real bed, she left me a note with perfect description of basically any information I might need about the city and...a lot of delicious fruit in the fridge (ananas, mango, kivi, papaya) which she extra bought for me knowing I am vegetarian. As if this was not enough, I could use her washing machine to wash all my dirty stinky clothes ;-) I guess they were really happy to be washed well after the last 3 hand-wash I made in the last weeks!

I feel so thankful for all the wonderful experiences and people I am meeting on my trip, they are giving me a lot of energy and trust in a better world!

Well, I think I have writenn enough for now. it is raining outside  so I will go to visit some museums today. I am looking forward to another day in Rio!

Here are some pics from my first week in Rio

Por-de-sol in Copacabana

Mathieu, me and Anne-Therese in Forte do Leme

Amazing view of Rio!

My last days in Bahia...see you again 2012!

21st September - 24th October: Massi in Bahia
Incredible but true, more than a month has already gone and my time in Bahia is over, at least for this year.
The last places I visited were Eunapolis, Porto Seguro, Arraial  D´Ajuda and Santa Cruz Cabralia.
Very beautiful places, probably the first ones to be ever seen by Portuguese eyes in the year 1500, as Cabral arrived on these coasts.
It rained a lot,basically around 10 times every day! So I was going out with rain jacket and putting it on and off all the time. I made a wonderful 11km beach walk from Arraial to Trancoso and there were nearly no people in the beach. The only bad thing: the ocean looked dangerous with high waves and dark water, so no swimming this time. 
Thanks Bahia for the wonderful experiences and now it is to go to Rio de Janeiro!

See more pics here: Brazil Pt. 4 - Eunapolis, Porto Seguro, Arraial D`Ajuda and Santa Cruz Cabralia

Colonial building in the upper city of Porto Seguro

Wonderful empty beaches in Arraial D´Ajuda

Street art in Santa Cruz Cabralia

Sustainable Couch in Eunápolis

On Friday 21st October I had the opportunity to present Sustainable Couch for a second time in Brazil!
This happened in Eunápolis, a small city in Bahia where I surfed for 2 days the couch of the only couchsurfer there, Rodrigo. Being a sustainability professor at a federal college, he invited me to present my project in front of his class.
So during the day I tried to train my Portuguese for the event! On a late Friday evening - from 9 to 10 pm - I started giving an introduction of what CouchSurfing is (no one of them knew about it), followed by the presentation of the Vienna Sustainability Groupd and Sustainable Couch. In the end, I also presented some pictures about my sustainable surfing & volunteering experience in the Chapada Diamantina.
The audience seeemed very interested and I feld very confortable while talking. A few questions were posed, but many people were already thinking about the weekend and ran away right at the end ;-)
Overall, a very positive experience for me: I am learning more and more with every presentation!
Thanks Rodrigo for the invitation and for hosting me!

 An audience of nearly 40 people listening to my presentation on a late Friday evening!

Speaking Portuguese with the helo of Spanish, Italian, English words...and of my hands!

It is hard to leave Salvador!

It has been already 2 weeks since I have arrived in Salvador...and it is getting hard to leave this wonderful place!

I feel so at home here, with the wonderful Salvador CS community inviting me from event to event: bike rides in the park, culinary meeting, weekly meeting, theater group, etc. etc.
The people are friendly, the language sounds amazing and it feels just good to spend time with these wonderful people :-)
I spent the last 3 days in the island Morro de Sao Paulo, a real paradise on earth (fotos will follow) and I came back last night with a sunburn - I forgot to put sun prtection three times a day and only put twice, so I had to pay the consequences ;-)

Still, I know it is soon time to go on. Tomorrow I will leave Salvador and work for 10-14 days as a volunteer in an eco-project in the Chapada Diamantina, a wonderful natural park. I will leave in a mountain refuge at 1200 meters, with no electricity: Eco Project Chapada Diamantina
(in the gallery nr. 2 you can see how it looks like)

But now I am still in Salvador, and I am going to enjoy my last day here!


Brazil Pt. 2 - Salvador 26.9-2.10.2011

Presentation of Sustainable Couch in Salvador

On Thursday night I presented Sustainable Couch during a CS language exchange meeting called Tower of Babel. It was a great opportunity for me to show my project. Thanks to my host, Amaury, who brought a projector, I could hold my presentation with slide and pcitures.
It was my first time ever talking in front of an audience in Portuguese, so it was quite challenging but I think it worked out well.

At the end of my presentation - based on Sustainable Couch in general and on the experience of the Vienna Sustainability Group in particular - there was an interesting discussion.

Good news: the group is interested in creating a Free Box and a few people would like to create and design their own reusable shopping bags in order to avoid getting plastic bags all the time (a huge problem here).

Altogether, a wonderful evening with nice people and I am looking forward to organising more meetings like this!