A trip into the Sierras today - first past a very, very large reservoir, and then to a mountain village, La Cumbrecita, which is pedestrian (and evidently equine) only, and was founded as a commune in 1934, and then grew at the hands of German and Austrian immigrants in the late 1930s: wonderfully peaceful; keen on ecotourism and eco-everything; and the kind of place where one could easily imagine holing up and writing - until one starts to think: why not, actually, go to Switzerland or Bavaria or Austria? - the only plausible reason being that my Spanish is a good deal better than my German; although part of today was also, confusingly, spent talking French to a couple on the same tiny tour. So why did you choose to come to Córdoba, I asked (for it's not an entirely obvious destination). Well, I had a solar return chart done to see where I should spend my birthday, said the woman, and ...
It even had its own little Alpine chapel up in the pine trees.
One could easily be anywhere in early winter in sub-Alpine Europe ...
Pan-global kitsch;
and very specifically Argentine kitsch;
and a cafe-restaurant where I had some cheese for lunch that happily was, in fact, more New Mexican than Alpine.
But by contrast, Villa General Belgrano. This was a Germanic Aryan nightmare. It was founded by 130 survivors from the German battleship Admiral Graf Spee that was sunk - I think by the sailors themselves? - in the Battle of the Rio Plato in 1940, and they must have hoofed it until they arrived here - and settled where some German speculators had already been building a base since 1930. To say that it has a different feel from La Cumbrecita is an understatement. It's built around breweries and beergartens and an annual Oktoberfest - not that there's anything wrong with that - but it's also constructed around a certain version of German-ness - and apparently Nazi visitors and sentiments still are found here, even if this counts as hate speech under Argentinian law.
There are certainly some picturesque corners,
but basically I couldn't wait to get out of the place.
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