Cute Blumenau

Blumenau is a city in Santa Catarina state in southern Brazil. It was founded by Dr. Otto Hermann Blumenau along with 17 German immigrants.

The city itself retains many historical and cultural reminders of its past, such as houses and constructions built in a German style, statues and memorials.

The city is located in a valley, surrounded by hills with forests and cut by a river named Itajaí-Açu. There are towers and tall buildings at the central area. The residential areas are spread in the nearby hills and plains and the lower areas like downtown constantly suffer with flood threats. The worst floods took place in 1983 and 1984, when the city was completely isolated for weeks. Nowadays Blumenau is well-prepared against these threats, but citizens prefer to live in higher areas to prevent major losses.

Its economy is based on tourism, commerce and industry, particularly textiles, being a major textile center of Brazil.

The most significant period for tourism is during the Oktoberfest, a folklorical beer festival, which sold 365,288 tickets to its pavillions in 2005, where 266,811 liters of beer were drunk. The record of public was set in 1992, where over 1 million tickets were sold. Oktoberfest was created in 1984 after the second major flood, as an attempt of celebrate the resistance to its people, victims of many other floods during century.