Chaotic, crazy, extreme, unreal – but nevertheless also somehow wonderful and anyway very impressive

I think this describes best my first impressions, but let’s start chronologically:

My long journey started on last Friday, the 27th July, by taking the train from Frankfurt to Paris. Since it was an ICE, after 30 minutes of driving 300 km/h through France (something that is never possible in Germany), something broke in the motor and afterwards the train could only drive 150 km/h until we finally reached Paris – with almost 90 minutes delay. But perhaps I’ll get a small compensation for that. I then took the overcrowded metro towards “Charles de Gaulle”-airport, where I was asked whether I’d like to be a volunteer for not flying today due to the flight being overbooked. As I didn’t have to reach Argentina on a specific day, I accepted – and got 200€ cash plus a night and a day with dinner, breakfast, lunch and dinner in a 4 star hotel

After this relaxing stay watching the Olympics, I finally had my flight on Saturday 28th at 23:20. When checking in, I always was like seeing some of France’s best rugby players from Paris’ team “Stade Francais“, among others Turinui, Lyons, Sackey, Parisse, Contepomi or Pascal Papé. They also were heading to Argentina for playing two preparation matches against the Argentine national team “The Pumas” and I had the great honor to have my seat next to the former captain Pierre Rabadan, a really amazing and open-minded guy. So being a volunteer on the previous day was really worth it!

We arrived at Buenos Aires the Sunday morning (local time), after a long flight, but where I was able to sleep enough. Instead of taking an expensive taxi or a way cheaper bus from a private company (which most of the tourists do), I opted for the most “adventurous” part and took the public bus (“colectivo”). Continue reading →