Oktoberfest

Trip Start Unknown

Trip End Ongoing

Loading Map

Map your own trip!

Map Options

Show trip route

Hide lines

Flag of Argentina Villa General Belgrano, Central Argentina, Argentina
Friday, October 15, 2010

I recently started an intercambio (teach english to a fellow student while they teach you spanish). I am doing it with a girl from Tierra de Fuego which is in very southern Argentina. She is really nice and studying to become a translator. It is super helpful to talk in spanish with someone for a few hours each week. My conversational spanish has improved greatly since my last entry. I also just took my final for the first section of my class and it went extremely well. i will be moving up to the next intermediate level on Monday. Monday also denotes half of my time down here has passed........ time flies when you are having fun.

The past weekend/week went by so fast where to begin......... On Friday night I left for Cordoba with 6 friends. We took a train to the Reterio bus station which is probably one of the most inefficient facilities in South America. Our bus ended up being 40 minutes late but there were no signs indicating that and no one to really ask

Entrance to Oktoberfest

. Everyone at the station was frantically trying to get on the right bus to their desired destination. We finally made it on our bus and off we went. After about 11hrs on a bud we arrived to the city of Cordoba. Cordoba is a beautiful city with a university that is nearly 400 years old. From there we went to Villa General Belgrano which was another 2hr bus ride away. The pueblo of Villa General Belgrano could easily be a little mountain town out of Germany. From there we bought tickets and steins and began to enjoy Oktoberfest to the fullest. There were a ton of different artisan beer venders there selling green beer, strawberry beer and even a beer that was almost like a smoothie. I tried a few of them but overall they were pretty expensive and the lines to get beer were huge. By night there were 1,000s of people. I was disappointed later to find out that it was not as big as some people had claimed but I guess that means that I will just have to go to Germany to compare it. We stayed with some friends in a cabin on a river about 30 minutes outside the city where Oktoberfest was held. The following day after Oktoberfest we went swimming in the river for a few hours before returning back to Cordoba. We checked into our hostel and quickly made friends with the owner of the hostel and the employees. We ended up having a huge asado (BBQ) later that night. We had a blast with them just eating, drinking and telling stories all night. The next day we walked around Cordoba and went to the Natural Science Museum there and then to an old cathedral

Oktoberfest Parade through the city

. From there we saw them setting up a stage in the middle of the street so we decided to stay and see what it turned out to be. The stage ended up being for a Cultural event put on the government of Cordoba which included traditional dancing and Argentinian folk music. It was a really cool experience. After the about two hours we had to go back to our hostel, grab our stuff and catch our bus back to Buenos Aires. We ended up apparently buying wrong tickets to Buenos Aires and ending up at the other bus station on the other side of the city. It wasn't that big of an inconvenience though. We ended up catching a cab and I got to class with 10 minutes to spare (our bus got in tuesday morning at 7:30 and I had class at 9:30).

This weekend is one weekend which is not filled with traveling although the next is. Next weekend my program (CEA) is taking all of the students to Mendoza which is the wine country of Argentina at the base of the Andes. Check back two weeks for that adventure.....

There is a special prize from argentina for the person who can tell me the book and author of the following quote (don't cheat and google it if you don't know it):

"Eternity was in our lips and eyes"........????????

Slideshow