Saturday, October 24, 2009

Freiburg, Munich, Baden Baden

Freiburg, Munich

Freiburg is a nice small university town in Southern Germany. Its not a normal tourist stop but if you do end up there here are some things to do:
  • The Munster platz (church square) has great sausages and there is a pretty farmers market there some days of the week that has lots of good edibles and produce. You can also climb to the top of the church spire
  • There is a REALLY nice beer garden above the town with great beer, great food and a great view of the church
Munich, Germany
  • Obviously much more on the tourist path, Munich is probably my favorite city in Germany. I went to Oktoberfest when I was studying abroad in Prague and then went back a few more times afterwards.
  • The main attractions in my opinion are: beautiful churches, tasty beer and beautiful gardens.
  • You can climb the spire in some of the churches which is worth the money and the stair climb at least once to get an ariel view of the city.
  • Don't just go to the Hofbrau house in downtown munich, make sure you go to some of the beer gardens farther outside the center (we found an amazing one on a river bank), or the ones in English Gardens is very nice too, right on the central lake.
  • Munich is a very "arty" city, so if you have time check out some of the museums or galleries.
  • Two day trips that you can take, one to the black forest to go to Castle Norswanstien, and the other to the nazi prison camp Dachau are both very good. I'm more of a castle person and had already suffered through Aushwitz so I did not go to Dachau but my other friends that did said it was depressing but worth it.
  • Another interesting historical place to visit in Munich is the building that Hitler gave his first official speech from
Baden Baden, Germany

I only went to Baden Baden for the day, but its a cute spa town. Probably more for the luxury vacation set, but there were some really nice parks and old roman baths

Praha, Dobry Den

Prague, Czech Republic

Best things to see: old town, petrin hill, the church in the castle is pretty, mucha museaum is cool if you like Art Nuveu, the jewish quarter is very interesting.

Clubs:
Disclaimer: all my information is at least a year and a half out of date, but most of these clubs are institutions so they are not likely to go anywhere.

Château: probably our favorite spot; not the best but really good location right behind the big church in old town, and lots of really fucked up people are always there and it has really cool walls in the basement and apparently a whole different floor we never discovered under the basement.
Old Town Square

Radost: considered the best club (oldest), much bigger, good restaurant upstairs (vegetarian, but still considered exceptionally good food in Prague by carnivores). They charge cover, but girls get in free on Thursday night till 11, it’s only 5-ish dollars for guys.
Tram stop: I.P Pavlova

Mecca: we went every Wednesday, top floor is house music, bottom floor is hip hop & there are lots of nice couches. It’s out of town but there is a free bus that leaves from the first McDonalds in Wenceslas square which runs till 1 every 10 minutes, then a cab back is only about 5 a person. You can get a table for dirt cheap.. like 50 I think, and then you get to have a table all evening and a handle of absolute and red bulls.

Duplex: we only went once, really big flashy club, there is a 10 dollar cover and drinks are more expensive. They have good go go dancers and lots of cool lights though, but when we went there were lots of middle aged British men… so maybe go when girls get in free.
On Wenceslas square.

Lucerne: We went on Fridays – 80s night. really big club, with a stage that most people dance on that plays music videos on a big screen behind, lots of concerts are here.
Just off of Wenceslas.

Nebe: Might be closed now... Underground cellar / bar/ lounge. There might be cover on the weekends.
Near Tesco, Tram stop: Narodni Trida

Karlovne Lazne: the five story club.. Really trashy but you have to go just to see it… cover and line to get in… then really dirty inside but there are five levels and bars on each one.
Riverfront

La Klan: After hours. Apparently really good when the downstairs is open, but I’ve never seen it open.

Studio 54: Another after hours

Bars:

Dogs Bullocks: British pub, good beers & the waiters speak English
Near Tesco, Tram stop: Narodni Trida

Ultramarin: Restaurant / Bar. Really good gin & tonics that they put cucumbers in .. live music too
Near Tesco. Tram stop: Narodni Trida

Usudu: could be spelled wrong… really good wine bar near Tesco square… huge jugs of wine for really cheap and literally miles of underground rooms and passages.. usually filled with Czech people.
Near Tesco, Tram stop: Narodni Trida

Pivovarsky Dum: on the 22, 23 or 6 tram line from tesco, the stop before I.P pavlova, really good , 64 kinds of beer, and the beer on tap they bring to you in an elephant which is a giant cylinder with its own tap on it.

Kamotra Pizza: just a resturaunt… but is the best pizza.
Near Tesco/ Ultamarin / Nebe

Riverfront

Old town square at christmas



Casa Buenaventura

Salta Area, Argentina

When most people retire and feel the need to re-invent themselves they buy a Porsche, get a bad haircut or have an affair. My dad decided to be a farmer, in South America. In high school I hated this because all of my friends joked that he was a drug lord so I eventually just avoided mentioning it at all costs.

My dad spend a large chunk of his early life between Uruguay and Argentina, (mostly Uruguay) and later when he worked in the fishing industry he helmed the South America operations so the whole family moved down to BA for a short period of time. We returned to Argentina for two-ish months when I was 9 and we were traveling.

It was during this last trip that my dad met a young argentine guy who was looking for partners to buy a farm with. After a few years of looking, they had two other partners, one argentine and one american who were interested as well. In 1998 they bought the farm and embarked on organic production. The focus crop is soy, but they also produce corn, safflower, wheat and some other crops in rotation to keep the quality of the soil. Irrigating in very uncommon given the sizes of argentine fields and lack of water, and so all moisture comes from capturing rainfall in terraces and dikes to spread it around the fields evenly.

There have been rocky points in this enterprise such as the crisis and Christina's wonderful retentions last year, but I think on the whole it has been a sound investment. Three years ago we began to build a house, because there was nowhere to stay at the farm and you had to drive 40 minutes to the nearest town. This house has caused my parents a million headaches since every aspect of it is a pain in the butt. Its built up on a ridge, so it was necessary to drag all the building materials up a steep twisty road, there is not cell service or internet, water has to be piped in, there is no electricity in the area, etc, etc.

After three years of hell for them, the house is finally done. The garden still needs to go in and the problems of power and internet need to be figured out, but other than that, its good to go.




Interior courtyard from the library patio


















Front of the house (main entrance side)















Secondary Zaguan (entrance)















Interior courtyard at night














Living room













Dining room


















View from the main galleria














Main galleria

















Pool

Wine Tasting, Cafayate, another pathetic attempt

Cafayate, Argentina

Cafayate is in the north west of Argentina, about a three hour drive from Salta. This area does produce Malbec and Cabernet like Mendoza does, the wine that Cafayate is known for is Torrontes, a very fruity white wine. Tourism has EXPLODED in the past six or seven years and now the place is kind of a tourist trap, but a very beautiful tourist trap. The drive up from Salta is almost half of the reason for the trip, you go through amazing red rock formations that are incredible and that my camera wasn't quite able to translate into photos of the same quality.



Crazy Aussies!

There are really amazing kind of "caves" in the rocks that you can get out and walk around. The whole area was shaped by water erosion thousands of years ago and when you are standing inside of one of these things you can almost feel the water rushing down on you.

Cafayate
My parents had stayed in Cafayate for a weekend before the whole wine craze really got off of the ground. They stayed at the Patios de Cafayate for 75 dollars, now it is 500 to give you some perspective (although that was also at the hight of the crisis so everything was much cheaper). They said it was Amazing, so we tried to go this time, and they wouldn't even let us through the gate since we weren't staying there.. kind of ridiculous. It looked beautiful from afar though.

Like the time before in Mendoza, we were pretty much thwarted from tasting much wine. Since we were planning on driving up and back in one day (really stupid) we didn't get to Cafayate until one-ish, at which point all of the wineries close apparently. The best way to do it is to drive up in the afternoon, spend the night, and then go wine tasting in the morning / late afternoon.

Photo from Bodega Vejesa Secreta or something like that


Above: pictures from Finca de Los Nubes (only open in the morning)

Beautiful church in the main square, Cafayate

Lowdown: 3 hours from Salta
Patios De Cafayate: ridic expensive but also ridic beautiful hotel, there is a vineyard you can visit but it is only open on certain days / in the morning
Vines de Cafayate: My padres stayed here a different time and said it was also very nice
Bodegas: Bodega Colome, Etchart, Las Nubes, El Esteco, Nanni, Domingo Hermanos

Friday, October 23, 2009

Wine Tasting, a pathetic attempt

Mendoza, Argentina

Mendoza (bottom left) circled in a Malbec color :)
I also circled Baires and Cafayate (top left, another wine area) to give perspective.

The main bulk of Wine Country in Argentina surrounds Mendoza and extends farther south towards patagonia. The region is known for its Malbec and Cabernet Sauvignon, but produces wines of all varieties and price ranges. Situated on a dry plane directly below the andes the area receives very little natural rainfall; most of the water is released when the clouds hit the other side of the andes from the Pacific. All of the water for irrigation comes from the runoff of snow and glaciers, making it very easy to control the amount of water in the soil and therefore, perfect for grapes. (if you plant grapes in soils with high water content the roots will begin to rot very quickly)

After looking at pictures online of the Mendoza route we were quite underwhelmed when we actually started driving around. (Below are some pictures of what it is supposed to look like)

Sooooo beautiful

Enchaaaaannting......

Instead of seeing this, we accidentally ended up driving by the YPF refinery and getting totally lost, so we saw this:

We were even on the road to chile for a little while...

It was also a huge dust storm the day we went to you couldn't even see the mountains. To make matters worse, after we finally did get on the wine route we discovered that all of the big name wineries (Terazas de Los Andes, Norton, Luigi Bosca, etc) only take people on paid tour groups, so you can't just drive up to a winery and taste wine.

After a few hours of exasperation, we finally found a different area that catered more to the individual tourist driving around sort of thing and found a few wineries that would let us taste. I thought the area was actually prettier and the smaller wineries there were more "charming" anyway.
Road in the Maypu area (east of Mendoza by 20 minutes).

Carts outside San Filipe, La Rural

More San Filipe

Young vines at Miguel Minni, an organic winery in the Maypu area.

Final Decision: Mendoza is beautiful, but you have to do a little research before you go, first and foremost decide whether you want to do a guided winery tour of the big wineries, or go to the Maypu area and do your own thing with the smaller ones. The best time to visit would be when there are leaves on the vines, which is from now, (Nov.) until Feb or March, because things look a bit barren otherwise.

One of the other really interesting things to throw in with your wine tasting is visiting olive oil farms / factories. We went to one, Laur, which is again near Maypu, and it was VERY interesting and incredibly cool. They have guided tours and many have the old machinery still in place so you can see both the old way of making oil and the new way.

Good wineries:
La Rural / San Filippe: Free tours and tasting, Maypu area, very cool wine museum
Miguel Minni: Maypu area, free tours and tasting, interesting organic winery
Terazas de Los Andes: looked beautify, can only go with reservation or tour
Laur Olivicol: Very old cool buildings, great tour of the old and new machinery

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Part 2: Shearing and dancing the Quenka

The technique that was devised for trapping the Guanacos comes from the Inca form of hunting called Jaku. Incidentally, this is also the name of the hunting lodge that is our next door neighbor at the Buenaventura, but apparently Texans can't spell and so the lodge is called Jacu.

The Manga (trap) consists of two "arms" of trap that extend out 2.8 k and then funnel together at one end, effectively trapping the Guanacos in a small enough space to be manageable. The open end of the trap is approx 3 k across, wide enough that the guanacos do not notice they are being led to their demise. Roughly six gauchos herd the guanacos into the trap from the surrounding area, and then once in the Manga they close doors as they go to prevent the Guanacos from turning around and running back out.


Video of the lower end of the Manga with the different holding pens for the Guanacos

The Gauchos preparing to ride out to the roundup


Photo op with one of the kids

The Guanacos are then herded from the big holding chamber into a tiny partitioned off area that can hold only three of the animals to make it more manageable for the gauchos to bring the individual animals out to the shearing tables. The three guys doing this job were some of the biggest men I have ever seen in my life.. probably like 6'7 or 6'8 and just huge. One of them grabs the head and one the hind legs and then they carry it out to where another guy is waiting to put a mask on it. At the very end they decided it would be funny if they dragged me in there with them..which was kind of scary - being in a 4 foot enclose with something that could kill you if it kicked you the wrong way did make me a bit nervous.


Me helping carry the hind legs out while two men tie the legs and one other puts a mask over its head.

Me and one of the gauchos right before going into the enclosure, I was scared shitless so my hand was shaking so bad that he was able to feel it and he laughed at me.


Shearing...


Veterinarians taking measurements, blood samples etc. They put a tracking collar on each guanaco as well so they could monitor the population in the area. Below is a picture of four of the veterinarians.




Pabulo directing the shearing


All of the Cooperativa with my dad and Pabulo


playing some guitar by the fire at night

One of the nights at the encampment we celebrated three birthdays with cakes, wine, dancing and home brewed liqueur. Some of the gauchos brought out their guitars (all argentines seem to be able to play guitar), and we all danced traditional argentine dances till 2 or 3 am. I went to bed at this point but apparently the party kept going, and at 4 they started cooking chorizos and had an asado, not retiring to bed until 6 am.

The Quenka is one of the most famous dances originating in argentina and requires handkerchiefs and a lot of fancy footwork on the part of the guys. I love how as a girl al you have to do is know nothing and follow. Below is a video of the tail end of the quenka with only two couples.



On the Subject of Mate --


One of great cliches of Argentina, Mate, which has become trendy in the US in the past few years, is not just an old shrugged off tradition brought out and paraded before tourists - EVERYONE in Argentina actually drinks mate, all of the time. Each person has their individual cup and bag of mate and they rarely drink from their own gourd. Each person fills theirs and then passes it to someone else in the circle, so the gourd you drink out of is always someone different. Once you are done with the mate, you pass it back to the owner who refills it with water and then passes it on to another person.


Sitting around the fire at 7 am sharing mate




More pictures: