Das Wochenende bei meiner Schwester (The weekend with my sister)

This last weekend I spent some days with my father in Curitiba (my hometown) and then we went together by plane to Foz do Iguaçu (where the biggest waterfalls in the world are located) in order to visit my sister, that works in a nearby city called Santa Helena. This is a very interesting region because it is also where three countries meet: Brazil, Argentina und Paraguay. Therefore, you can easily move between these territories and the diversity is interesting to see.

My sister was a great hostess and took us to shop, eat and visit some great places. Also, I finally got to know where she is living and working and it was a very interesting experience. Her husband lives in a nearby city and they can see each other at least every weekend. The only problem is that they are very far away from our home town (Curitiba). That's why me and my father took an airplane to Foz do Iguaçu. The flight to there was fine, took less than one hour.

However, you must have heard about the air crisis here in Brazil, especially after the last accident that killed 200 people. Hundreds of flights are being cancelled or terribly delayed. It's all a big mess. Therefore, when we were coming back, the flight was one hour late. We got up in the plane and it wouldn't fly. We waited for another hour inside the airplane and they informed us that the flight was cancelled due to mechanical problems. We stepped out to discover that there were no more flights for that day. Since my father needed to work on monday already, we had no choice but to take a bus from the station to Curitiba. The flight was supposed to get off at 16:00, therefore we were at the airport at 15:00. We left the airport at 18:00 to go to the bus station and then wait until 21:10 for the next bus. The trip took 10 hours. We then arrived in Curitiba and had to go to the airport there to get my father's car, arriving home only at 9:00 am on Monday. The whole thing took ~21 hours.

I could realize that this air crisis is making people's lives here miserable. Because of it, so many people are prefering to drive and therefore the highways are crowded and the accidents are multiplying. It's sad to see how disorganized the whole system here got and I can only keep hoping that a solution comes soon. The situation right now is unbearable and unjustifiable. I wonder if I won't have problems with my flight to Germany... hopefully not.

I miss how things work well in Germany and I hope I can help my country to avoid situations like this in the future. It's a good thing to spend some time away to be able to realize the gravity of the situation in your home. Let this be a very harsh lesson for us brazilians and an incentive to change our way to deal with some things.