Blumenau

Hermann Blumenau, a pharmacist and chemist from the Duchy of Brunswick, obtained a grant of land on the Itajaí-Açu river from the provincial government and arrived in September 1850 with seventeen German colonists to found a private colony. The site was deep forest and the river the only road; the early years brought floods, disease and conflict with the Indigenous Xokleng people who lived in the valley. The colony passed to the imperial government in 1860 and grew as families from Germany, and later Italy and Poland, took up lots along the valleys.

The settlers brought trades as well as farms. The Hering brothers set up a knitting business in 1880 that grew into one of the oldest Brazilian companies still in business, and other mills made textiles the city's main industry. German remained the everyday language until the nationalisation campaign of the Vargas government closed the German schools.

That changed with disaster. The floods of 1983 and 1984, two of the worst in the city's history, put much of the city under water and left the economy reeling. To revive the town, the city held its first Oktoberfest in October 1984, and the festival's immediate success turned Blumenau's German identity into its public face: half-timbered facades spread along Rua XV de Novembro and the Vila Germânica was built as a permanent fairground. The river flooded again in 2008, when floods and landslides killed more than a hundred people across the state, and in 2011. The city still makes textiles and, increasingly, software.

Blumenau's identity rests on its German origins, and the city displays them deliberately: enxaimel half-timbering on public buildings, a half-timbered town hall, German names on breweries and bakeries, and Oktoberfest, which has grown into the largest German festival in Brazil, with parades of folk-dance groups, shooting clubs and bands down Rua XV de Novembro and pavilions at Vila Germânica packed each night for two and a half weeks. German survives as a first language in the rural districts, and Lutheran congregations remain alongside the Catholic churches.

Beneath the festival image the city is more mixed. Italian and Polish settlement shaped parts of the valley, Festitália celebrates the Italian side, and migrants from across Brazil have come for factory, university and technology jobs for decades. The two cultures have blended into the valley's own habits: the chimarrão of the south drunk alongside German coffee and cake, and churrasco at weekends in the yards of houses with steep German roofs.

Choral singing, shooting clubs, the Stammtisch gatherings and folk dance groups are an old associational life that still exists, and the Teatro Carlos Gomes keeps a programme of concerts. The city also has a strong craft beer culture, with Eisenbahn, founded in 2002, the best known, and many smaller breweries along the valley. Residents are known in Brazil for orderliness, hard work and a certain reserve, and for a civic pride that returns each time the river rises.

About 360,000 people live in the municipality, the third-largest in Santa Catarina, and the Itajaí valley towns around it — Gaspar, Indaial, Pomerode, Timbó — form a wider urban area. The city grew along the river and its tributary valleys, so districts such as Velha, Garcia, Itoupava and Fortaleza are strung out along the roads and separated by forested ridges. Houses with pitched roofs and gardens are the norm outside the centre, where apartment blocks have grown up along the river in recent decades.

Textiles remain the main industry, from the Hering mills to smaller clothing workshops, and the city has become a software and technology centre, with a cluster of companies and the regional university, FURB, supplying graduates. Breweries, tourism and the events trade at Vila Germânica round out the economy.

Daily rhythms are those of an industrial city: early starts, a full lunch, shops closing by evening, and quiet weeknights outside the festival season. Weekends mean churrasco, football, the river parks and drives into the valley for café colonial. The river remains the shared anxiety: every heavy summer rain brings watchful glances at the gauge on the Itajaí-Açu, and the defences, drainage and hillside housing that decide how badly the next flood will hit are permanent subjects of local politics.

The valley's German inheritance is on every menu. Eisbein, the salted pork knuckle, kassler, smoked pork chop, and bratwurst and other sausages come with sauerkraut, red cabbage, potato salad or the Brazilian accompaniments of rice and farofa. Marreco com repolho roxo, duck with red cabbage, often stuffed, is a traditional dish of the region and the centrepiece of the Fenarreco festival in nearby Brusque, and the cuca, a crumble-topped yeast cake with fruit, is the universal afternoon pastry. The café colonial, a table loaded with breads, cakes, cold meats, cheeses, jams and honey, is served in the rural districts.

Beer is the other inheritance. The city has brewed since the 19th century, and Eisenbahn, founded in 2002, and Bierland are now joined by many smaller craft breweries along the valley, several with their own bars. Oktoberfest pours its own chope, draught beer, in large quantities each October.

The rest of the table is southern Brazilian. Churrasco on Sunday, the plate-by-weight buffet at lunch, pinhão from the araucaria pines in winter, and the Italian pasta and polenta of the valley's other settlers all appear, and the Rua XV cafés serve apfelstrudel beside Brazilian pão de queijo and strong coffee.