Welcome to my blog. I document my adventures in travel, style, and food. Hope you have a nice stay!
Just inside the door, Köbes, Kölsch bartenders in Köln, accumulated in the stone lined sallyport leading to the beer garden. They turned in unison beginning an exaggerated process of grouchy inspection, head-to-toe. Suffering mild humiliation in a similar Kölsch beer hall (Malzmühle) a few hours before, we walked confidently past the aproned guardians of Päffgen towards the beer garden, masking our anxiety with scowls and grunts of salutation.
Our more knowledgeable beer friends mention Cantillon in the hushed tones of children peering over the banister on Christmas morning: a place and product sprinkled in magical dust. Cantillon produces the best Lambic beers in the world. Walking down an unkempt street in southwestern Brussels, a sharp morning gust whipped magazine clippings and dirty napkins up on cresting waves. We turned right, leaving the haggard block behind; one hundred feet beyond the turn, bottles awaited on pallets behind the open cargo hull of a delivery truck. The recumbent, guzzling jester of Cantillon branded each bottle and hung from a sheet metal punch-out above the door. The place appeared closed but the door opened.
I watched the lightning strike outside and a streetlight turn on through a candle in the foreground. The thunder rumbled, the sky lit up, and the clouds opened, releasing the rain in sheets. Remaining dry in our new AirBNB in Buenos Aires, the window played all this like a television. Buenos Aires is the most cosmopolitan city in South America. What I found amazing was the juxtaposition of European ambiance with a bold Argentinian twist. Timeless Renaissance and Classical European buildings house large Argentinian grills cooking Choripan in a cloud of smoke; taxi drivers maintain conversation with each other through the open windows of their cabs while roaring down wide French boulevards at dangerous speeds; unmeasured South American chaos wears away at the sharp European edge. It’s a coin at the heart with lots of European polish on one side; but the other, more interesting, ragged, and unique, still falls face up half the time.
When you look back to yesterday you start to deduce how little you know right now. I’m looking into the coals of a fire and at the fluttering light and I’m looking at my own time. I can feel the heat reflecting off the fire bricks and onto my cheek as I watch the coals rapidly change in color during my mental trip back in time. At this moment they seem to hold all the answers - or at the very least, enough to satisfy my oxygen deprived brain (I’ve been sitting here for a hot minute). Fire is the theme in Argentina, and I will continue it now: from the fire of Asado to the brew kettles of two breweries in San Luis, Argentina, boiling the ancient wort discovered by ancestors forgotten.
The circumstances that landed us in San Luis, Argentina seem completely impossible in a more organized version of the Universe. To think that a chance click from my computer in Georgia and the consequent encounter with a couple running an AirBNB would find us a bed and friends in San Luis, Argentina and two fantastic craft brewery contacts months later seems a bit preordained - or otherwise, too good to be true. But that's the way it happened; and if you asked me how it would turn out while I was sitting in my pajamas on my parents' couch last October, what I'd be doing in December, or if this trip would work out at all I'd stare right back with shrugged shoulders, hands turned up, pinched lips, and wide eyes. I never could have predicted the path and could never have planned it so well. Often you need the very basis of a plan to give you (and those around you) the confidence to step off and set foot on the journey, mission, etc; but most of the plan develops along with the information coming in, and as a result, you find a plan that better suits your current situation. Eventually, after you've seen enough plans fail you come to this realization and still fight it every time. I've gotten to a point where I think that Sara and I are completely out of our minds most of the time; and then there's an experience like San Luis, and we can smile at each other and reassure ourselves that we are not wrong about this.
Memories of Argentina will forever drown me in the Impressional blur visioned through the bottom of a tumbler looking up at the dim bar light; then, with that image in mind, out the door into a warm evening or an incredibly frigid night, wearing a thick wool jacket, the rush of comfort and deep meaning overwhelm in inexplicable ebullience. Argentina is a feeling for me. A good one. And I carry it as the Ford Ranger that carried us into the country: along winding roads; up steep switchbacks appearing to end catastrophically; climbing through quiet no man’s land under moonlight reflecting on ancient glaciers. I looked back at Chile to say farewell. The landscape slowly turned from mountains to hills to rolling plains and finally to the piedmont, at the foot of the giants, where one looks west and sees the sun setting behind the elevated horizon hours before it would on the other side. The arid landscape was noticeable even in the middle of the night, and I alternated between staring out the window and reading a book until finally I fell asleep. I woke up to a change in the consistent flow of driving. A stuttering pattern indicated we were entering a town and approaching our destination: Nikko's house and our bed for the next three nights.
