Buenos Aires, Argentina

Welcome to Buenos Aires!

Let me introduce you to the magnificient city of Buenos Aires: Imagine some mediterranen city, such as Florence or Sevilla, and bring it to South America, together with its fine architecture and charming atmosphere.

Let us break and demolish everything a little and repair it again. Now do exactly this multiple times and paint everything colorfully in the end.


Now add some flowers and some North American flavour in the form of skyscrapers

and chaotic traffic on vast avenues.

Of course, it's not all colonial buildings mixed with modern architecture, but also everything in between that makes Latin America so charming.


Now you know what the city looks like. let us fill it with life and atmosphere. As further ingredients, we add some beautiful women (and men) dancing tango argentino in the streets,

colorful and little chaotic street markets,

the crazy Boca Juniors footbal fans,

deeply faithful people (and the corresponding cathedrals and cemeteries),

and even more tango in the street cafes.

Now you have the picture set. That´s Buenos Aires, that´s where I currently am! What I am doing here? Well, just add some Mate tea to the picure you have in mind, additionally a lot of meat, and some cervezas :) No seriously, since I only spend four days here, I cannot only enjoy the night life and the food. My time in this great city is entirely filled out with sightseeing


and walking around all day to explore Buenos Aires from all different perspectives, for instance, from the pampas,


from the Rio de la Plata (apparently the largest river in the world, but they say the same about the fleuve St. Laurent...),

from some random street corners,


and from the wooden subways:

Buenos Aires is great starting place for my travel. My Castellano is better than I expected, although the pronounciation in the Rio de la Plata region is very strange, for example, "ll" and "y" are both pronounced as "sch" (German pronounciation). But I slowly adapt to it and learn a lot of vocabulary everyday. Let me show you some random street scenes that I discovered here:


Tango in the main shopping mile, the Calle Florida which is more or less the Rambla of Buenos Aires

Street children swimming in a fountain at the Plaza del Congresso

Another way too fancy cemetery for the rich and wealthy

The famous Caminito in La Boca, where Diego Maradonna and some other great soccer players are from... and the current team:


I am having a great time here so far. Tomorrow I will leave for Ushuaia. Thus my focus switches from metropolitian Buenos Aires to my actual goals in South America, the lonely and bizarre mountains of Tierra del Fuego and Patagonia. I am looking forward to that experience and the amazing scenery, but before let me enjoy Buenos Aires for one more day :)


Luego compadres,

Florian

A Tentative Travel Plan

As most of you know, I am going on a longer road trip to South America. I leave here on Sunday flying directly to Buenos Aires. After a couple of days getting used to Castellano, I directly continue to Ushuaia in tierra del fuego a.k.a. el fin del mundo. My flight back leaves a little further up from Lima, Peru. So there's a lot in between. Here's a tentative travel plan for my road trip, we'll see if I can stick to it.

I plan to share some pictures and stories of traveling experiences here. So if you are interested, visit this page from time to time, I try to keep it updated.

¡Hasta luego!

Florian

Winter Alpinism

On a sunny and not too cold morning I was waiting to be picked up at the autobahn to Garmisch. With me was a backpack loaded with all kind of stuff promising a fun day - crampons, ice axes, climbing harness, and a rope.

Achim had the idea to do a winter ascent of the Jubiläums ridge that day. The Jubiläums ridge is an 8km long traverse between the Zugspitze and the Alpsitpze, Germany's highest mountains. On the pic below you can see the long ridge and the various small towers waiting for me, Achim , and another Flo.

"Here you leave safety area - alpine dangers" the sign below says. Ahead of us were 6 hours of easy climbing on glazed and icy rock, where the tough sections were luckily protected with a ferrata.

Some impression from the climbing:

At the beginning it was still an easy and exposed hike, but after some time we had to use our ice axes

and climb in icy rock sections, which was especially tough for me since I wasn't used to mixed terrain. However, the other two guys were experienced and felt comfortable climbing with crampons.

But luckily they were also patient and in the end I learned it, too.

On this pic you can see Achim and behind him looming the next tower to be climbed, one of many still to come.

After lots kilometers of climbing more'n'more distance came between us and the Zugspitze...

... and finally we made the entire traverse.

Now we just had to get all the way down from the Alpspitze, as quick as possible because the daylight was fading away.

We just got down the Alpspitze North face via another ferrata as it turned dark. Unfortunately, it took another two or three hours walking all the way down on the ski slopes. Finally, after a long day we got back to civilization and enjoyed pizza and wheat beer ;)

Diploma Party

So I was talked into this entire diploma party thing, you know, and I had no choice... No honestly, the idea of a welcome, goodbye, and diploma party was proposed to me and I liked it. So I made up the following official party invitation and invited all my close friends and relatives, in a total around 33 people.

Indeed, most of them came, and also some others that I didn't remember inviting... Anyways, we had a great time and, as usual in Bavaria, some beer and wine ;)


But before that some official preparation had to be done, such as organizing a small pub in our town. Luckily, I know Markus quite well who runs one of my favourite bars in Bad Tölz, the Bodega.


I covered the drinking costs and asked everybody to bring some exquisite finger foods. Especially all my aunts were kind of excited of this idea. The drawback was that I and Katrin had to prepare some stuff, too. But with some help of our MacBooks and the internet the fog quickly cleared...


... and we decided to prepare Samosas, which took us four hours or so. So let's get the party started and let me introduce you to some people attending:

My Dad and my friends Franz, Lara, and Adrian


Gertrud, Petra, Tom, Rosi, and Sylvia


uncle Markus and aunt Karin enjoying wheat beer


Petra, me, and Sylvia in a conversation


My cousin Berti, his girlfriend Petra, and my Dad in a discussion


My three litlle bros Domi, Chrissi, and Tom drinking beer


Somehow people liked the idea of fingerfood, at least the buffet was always busy :)


The stuggi connection a.k.a. Katrin and Adrian


The "younger" party guests including me


My parents decided both to give some moving speeches


and I was pleased and clapping.


So we had a good family evening, me, Mom, and Dad, ...


and aunt Annelies and my grandmother.


All my guests enjoyed themselves,


there were some nice conversations going on,


and a lot of drunk people in the end, right?

It's a pity that there's only one diploma in a lifetime, but you always find good reasons for family gatherings :) Oh yes, if somebody is interested in my final bill, here it is: