Spring Break Round 2, part 1: Oktoberfest

HELLO. After my long leave of absence for my Spring Break 2010 Round 2: South America edition vacation, I have returned. And I have a lot to tell. I have broken up my two trips, Cordoba and Rio, into 2 separate posts for your convenience/sanity.

Since I am, after all, trying to be thorough, I will briefly cover the few days in between Bariloche and spring break. These would be the days of September 25^th-29^th. We only had 9 days at home after Bariloche before we were to venture out again. To be honest, they were not very interesting. I spent the following weekend resting from the previous trip and also starting (or pretending) to study for my upcoming midterms.

The highlight of my weekend was Jesus, obviously. Jesus was, naturally, getting ready to go out with her girlfriends on Friday night, when she walks into the dining room to see me on my computer, attempting to write up notes for my midterms. She asks me, “Diana, you’re going dancing tonight, yes?” I respond, “No, no…not tonight.” The facial expression that followed in response to my answer was a mix of both confusion and pity, and as she made her way to her silver tray of liquors, she insisted I take a shot with her before she left for the evening. It’s done, she officially thinks I’m antisocial. I’m pretty sure whenever I go into my room and shut the door she thinks I’m furiously studying, as opposed to dabbling on Facebook for hours, having numerous Skype dates, and catching up on Glee, Gossip Girl, Jersey Shore, and Modern Family. Oh well. The name on the bottle was Llave, and it seemed like gin to me, but she said it was different, but I think that was a lie. Well, anyway, as I sniffed the top of the bottle and nearly passed out, Jesus threw back her shot like a champ, grabbed her cell phone and fur coat, and left me with a “Chau, linda!” as she walked out the door. What a diva.

My midterms went quite well, I think, or at least I hope. Wednesday was terrible, I had 3 midterms in a row, though after that I was done- huge relief. Thursday morning was a personal day. I got a mani/pedi before leaving for my spring break extravaganza later that night. While at lunch at Tea Connection, I decided to challenge myself, and I was actually fully able to read the Argentine edition of Glamour magazine. Small victories.

After a restful day, I packed up my things and headed out to the bus station to catch the 11:45 pm bus to Córdoba for Oktoberfest. The festival runs for about two weeks straight, starting October 1^st, the day we arrived. Córdoba is about a 10-hour bus ride northwest of Buenos Aires. Unfortunately, we woke up to a very rainy and miserable Friday morning. Our day plans of exploring the city were pretty much obsolete, so instead we hung around the bus station for another round of café and medialunas.

We were told that the Oktoberfest was actually held in the small town of Villa General Belgrano, however we were not aware that this town is a full 2 hours away from Córdoba…where we had booked our hostel. After calling multiple places in Villa G. Belgrano, and by some stroke of God, we found a little place called El Rincon just outside the town that had room for all of us 7 girls. A miracle, considering almost everywhere else had been fully booked for the festival even several weeks earlier. We caught the next bus out to Villa, figuring we might as well start Oktoberfest early and not waste time. This Oktoberfest, according to the internet, is the 3^rd largest Oktoberfest after Germany and Brazil. The area of Córdoba apparently has a large community of German immigrants that settled there a while back.

Oddly enough there were signs at the Villa bus station directing us to El Rincon. After trekking through the mud for a few minutes, following other janky, painted-on, wooden signs, we got to the entrance of the hostel’s property, and I thought I was about to enter a horror film. The dirt road led us to a trail (definitely not qualified to be a road) that wound far into the forest, with no building in sight. Having survived a similar situation like this with my family on vacation in Homer, Alaska, which had included a terrifyingly large, bald man and a pitbull in the front seat of his pickup truck, I figured this could only have a happy ending as our other trip had; a beautiful log cabin with an incredible view of the mountains. Luckily, I was right. Though we didn’t discover anything like mountain peaks, it was the most quaint and cozy Argentine hostel ever. A small wooden building with a large fireplace in the living room and homemade food, it was better than we could have ever imagined. Our room was huge, with 5 bunk beds and plenty of extra space. For dinner that night we had pizza, milanesa (a traditional Argentine food- fried, breaded chicken), and a zucchini pie, all made of organic ingredients and all homemade. The family that owned the hostel was very warm and helpful as well. Everything was SO wonderful.

Our weekend was especially fun because we made a lot of new friends! Two of them were lovely ladies from Buenos Aires, whom I will hopefully be seeing this weekend, two boys from Germany, and two other travelers, one from the States and the other from Australia. We had quite a global team. We went out together Friday night to ring in Oktoberfest with the grand opening parade- lots of German music and people dressed in costume. I purchased my personal “stein”/mug and over-the-shoulder lanyard to clip it on for convenient travel. I was ready to go.

The actual festival was essentially a large field that had a stage in the center. Surrounding the outer edges of the area were beer stands where you could fill up your mug, and tons of venders were selling food- shiskabobs, grilled vegetables, meats, sausage, sauerkraut, ice cream sundaes, EVERYTHING. I somehow felt at home eating sauerkraut, though it had nothing on grandpa’s sauerkraut. Dieduko definitely wins.

While we drank and made merry, we watched the many folkdance groups performing on stage, some from Córdoba, others German and even Italian. If I were to say that I had to use all my mental stamina to stop myself from jumping up there and start polka-ing with everybody else, I would be blatantly lying. I felt a bit nostalgic at the sight of their folkdance costumes and accordion music filling my ears. To ease my aching heart, my friends and I started our own polka dancing off-stage. All was well.

The next morning, Saturday, we had a delicious breakfast with homemade yogurt, granola, and marmalade alongside fresh baked breads. The weather was gorgeous and we spent the morning and part of the afternoon soaking up the sun before returning to Oktoberfest. We spent the afternoon simply watching more of the shows on stage, enjoying each other’s company and the great weather. We couldn’t have asked for a prettier afternoon. That night was a little rough, because we had to catch a 6am bus back to Córdoba in order to catch our 9am back to Buenos Aires on Sunday; we had plans to fly out to Brazil on Monday morning. So we stayed up till 5, packed, and headed out. Lucky for us we’ve become quite accustomed to the Argentine nightlife, so staying up that late wasn’t much of an issue.


After a pretty cold and miserable bus ride back to Córdoba, we grabbed breakfast and jumped on the bus back to Buenos Aires, repacked, and passed out before my alarm went off at 5am the next morning for Brazil.

To be continued.