Hey there, how are you in good old but cold and snowy Europe? If you are freezing, maybe I have some warming thoughts about my short trip from this “fin de semana”, when I visited Nico’s family …. I hope that it will help you facing out this difficult period!

We started our extended weekend last Thursday and went to Necochea, a nice seaside town where his aunt and her husband live. We had a great evening with them, talking about nearly everything you can imagine, and then spent most of Friday at and around the beach (unfortunately VERY VERY windy). In the evening we took the “colectivo” to Nico’s home town San Cayetano (a village in the pampas, much more “gauchesco” than everything I had seen until now), where we visited his grandmother and great-grandmother and where we met some of his old friends and his brother Santi (studying Electrical Engineering in Mar del Plata). We stayed there until this Monday relaxing, watching the Campeonato Argentino Abierto de Polo with Adolfo Cambiaso’s team “La Dolfina” (despite the elitist character, polo is really popular and some kind of national sport here in Argentina), eating “asado” and above all enjoyed the sun and the sea (which was not as cold as expected – you could swim without any problems) a whole day long with an amazing and hot weather.

Regarding my Spanish skills, I have learned that there are some important expressions you should really know if you ever plan to travel to Argentina, but luckily you can more or less summarize them like follows: We are all “boludos” or “pelotudos”, sometimes also “muchachos” or “chabones” but definitely always “buena onda” making lots of “quilombo” and “joda”, maybe except when playing football just like the opposite of the (deservedly so) nation’s pride and hero Lionel Messi, in which case we would be called “pechos frios” …. “¿viste che? qué sé yo …. ¡ya está!”

Okay, since a picture is mostly worth a thousand words, I’ll finish this entry and let some impressions of this weekend trip speak for itself …. after quoting a funny taxi-driver from Buenos Aires: “God must be Argentine – there is no other explanation that this country is still working!”