Villa General Belgrano

Dan: This is actually Part 2 of the Cordoba entry, though I guess you can read this one first and it won’t ruin any surprises or anything. Since typing that last entry, I’m pleased to announce, we have resolved our heat situation. The landlord’s brother came over and confirmed that our tank was empty. He gave us some numbers to call for gas delivery. So the next day we called the company and two days later, we had heat! Two cold days later. In the meantime, the caretakers of the building and the door security guy were concerned about our freezing. The caretaker came up to try to figure out a way to hook up the gas and also gave us a coil of metal that I think we were supposed to heat up on the stove and use as a source of heat. Louann and our houseguests Ben and Petra were skeptical of the potential of a small piece of metal to heat an apartment. Their suspicions were confirmed. Luckily those two had just spent the past two months in Patagonia and had warm enough gear to tough it out on our couch.

So to continue the story of our weekend in the Cordoba area, we decided that we wanted to spend the night elsewhere. Our destination would be Villa General Belgrano, reportedly the home of the world’s third most important Oktoberfest (the second being somewhere in Brazil, the fourth, I assume, in my parents’ backyard in Robbinsdale). Oktoberfest of course is still a long way off, but rumors of microbreweries were enough to bring us to Cordoba in the first place. This isn’t the first time a Bruski has made a pilgrimage simply for beer (Chippewa Falls, Denmark, Hudson, WI on a Sunday, you know who you are).

When we got off the bus we went through the woods to a hostel. Woods! Real trees and birds and nature. There were flocks of green parrots raising a ruckus in the trees. Unfortunately the beautiful, sprawling chateau hostel had no vacancies for people without tents. So we ended up wandering through town until we found a room at a place called Eurostop. The name of the B&B was just the beginning of the semi-European character of the town. Much of the architecture of hotels and stuff had a German look to it. This comes from the Germans who settled down in with the local population in Villa General Belgrano after their naval vessel was sunk by the British in 1940 somewhere on the Altlantic coast. And boy am I ever glad they got sunk. We got to have lager, black beer, weissbier, rauchbier, and a honey beer. I also got to eat goulash! Lou was content with spaetzle and cream sauce. We tried beer from two microbreweries. I admit they weren’t anything like a good Summit, but I was quite happy. I guess the area is also known for its salami, smoked cheeses and chocolate. We tried to get some before getting out of town, but it was Sunday, so it was hard to find a place that was open and still catch our bus on time. Maybe next time.

So we took a 2-hour ride back to Cordoba, then caught another bus for the 10 hours back to Mendoza. We got the front seats on the top level of the double decker bus. From now on I think that will be my preferred seat, at least when there are things to see. We were also treated to the films Bowfinger, Ladder 49 (without sound) and a weird film from the 70s called Bless the Beasts and Children.

Right now it feels like that was the last weekend of Fall. That may be because I’ve been sick all week. But it has been pretty cold. We even saw some snowflakes on Monday. Soon I’ll be able to start thinking about the slopes (and maybe some health insurance).