Come Visit Stefan in Santiago, Chile Because the New York Times Says So

So I guess all the liberal hippies at the New York Times think this is the place to be.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/travel/09where-to-go.html?_r=1

1. Santiago, Chile
Undaunted by an earthquake, a city embraces modern culture.

Less than a year after an 8.8-magnitude earthquake wreaked havoc in Chile, its capital, Santiago, has largely recovered, the economy continues to grow, and tourism is in an upswing.

Though the quake, which caused hundreds of casualties, was centered more than 200 miles away, many of Santiago’s older buildings were damaged, including the Museum of Fine Arts.

But the earthquake last year — and another in Chile last week that caused more panic than damage — seems to have only briefly paused a cultural shift that had begun to take hold in the city. Known as a buttoned-up place, Santiago has in recent years added modern museums, smartly designed hotels and sophisticated restaurants. The city has become decidedly more vibrant.

This year, it has even been chosen as the first foreign city to host a rather unbuttoned event: Lollapalooza. The 20-year-old American music festival picked Santiago for its first overseas outing because of its open space and the variety of cultural offerings, and because locals have a passion for contemporary music, said Lollapalooza’s founder, the musician Perry Farrell. The festival takes place in April in O’Higgins Park.

This musical awakening owes much to the government’s investment in the arts. The new Centro Gabriela Mistral, for example, a 200,000-square-foot center made of glass and weathering steel, has a varied calendar of concerts, dance performances, plays and art exhibits.

Perhaps the most remarkable cultural space to open in the last few years is the Museo de la Moda, a privately financed fashion museum inside a revamped 1960s Modernist mansion. It has a permanent collection of nearly 10,000 pieces of couture and memorabilia (of which 800 are typically on display), including a light-blue jacket worn in 1966 by John Lennon and a black strapless gown worn in 1981 by Diana, Princess of Wales.

Luxury hotels are not new to Santiago, but when the W opened in 2009, it was the first to feature truly modern design. The recently opened Aubrey is equally chic and much more intimate. With an attractive mix of vintage and new furniture (Tom Dixon lamps, 19th-century Parisian rugs, tufted leather sofas), the 15-room property raised the bar for boutique lodgings in the city. It occupies two renovated residences in the Bellavistaneighborhood, a creative district where Lollapalooza’s fans would feel right at home.
— PAOLA SINGER

Chilean food or what I guess could loosely be termed food: Pic of the Day

When I see a sandwich like this all I can think about is how they seem to have completely missed the boat on the concept of a sandwich. A sandwich was designed as a way to make it easier and less of a mess to eat something. It´s like I appreciate the effort and genoristy to put as much as you can of everything in the world into one sandwich but you can´t just throw practicality out the window.



And down the stretch for this segment we are going to be exploring the world of Chilean pizza. Buckle the hell up.

Calle Bandera Ridic American T-Shirt Pic of the Day

I don´t know about you guys but when I picture the people who are in this group I literally picture a group of escaped mental patients who should be in straight jackets but are not and sit around and have AA type meeting except they talk about being mental. Oh and in my mind in this circle of fold out chairs a large percentage of the members are fidgeting. a lot.

Special Sunday Edition of Puppy Pic of the Day

Me and you, you know, we ain´t so different.

Thank you Greg for this brilliant idea.

Chilean food or what I guess could loosely be termed food: Pic of the Day

The thing about palta is it looks just like fresh boogies, not the most appetizing thing in the world.

PS. There´s a hot dog somewhere under that.

PPS. Could they spare the fries?

Calle Bandera Ridic American T-Shirt Pic of the Day

Aren´t we all.

Puppy Pic of the Day

This puppy is from Uspallata, Argentina, a small mountain town in the Andes.

Look at his little wenus.

Things that come up in conversation when you are hanging out with two australians, a gay guy who is still pretending to be straight, and a japanese who speaks no english or spanish

Is that how you would refer to a Japanese person? I know another way that grammatically seems to make better sense but I´m not about to fall into that trap. ;)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ages_of_consent_in_South_America

The highlights

Bolivia:
The age of consent in Bolivia is set at puberty regardless of gender and/or sexual orientation, according to Article 308 of the Bolivian Penal Code.


Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador:
In Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, the age of consent is 14, regardless of gender and/or sexual orientation.


Paraguay:
The general age of consent in Paraguay is 14 for heterosexual relations and 16 for homosexual relations. The age of consent forextramarital intercourse with female adolescents is 16.


Peru:
The age of consent in Peru was 14, but in 2006, was raised to 18 by the Congress. In 2007, Peru's Congress voted overwhelmingly to return the age to its prior age of 14, regardless of gender and/or sexual orientation.


Venezuela:
The age of consent in Venezuela stands at 16 regardless of gender and/or sexual orientation. Sexual acts with children aged between 12 and 16 are punished under Article 379; furthermore, consensual sex with a woman 16-21 can be punished if the woman was "seduced" under the promise of marriage and she was "known to be honest".




Note:
This post was created in the span of listening to Elton John´s tiny dancer one time. Kapow.

Chilean food or what I guess could loosely be termed food: Pic of the Day

You kids are getting off easy with this installment. This is just the tip of the iceberg for pizza. This isn´t that gross it just doesn´t look very good. It gets worse, much worse. I didn´t think it very gentlemany of me to go right to the worst of it. I´ll probably alternate between nasty hot dogs and pizzas for a little while.

There´s one street in a different part of town where they actually put ketchup on as the tomato sauce.

Calle Bandera Ridic American T-Shirt Pic of the Day

Puppy Pic of the Day

The I´ve already departed from the original concept Puppy Pic of the Day. Just wait and see how this evolves. The rabbit hole only get deeper . . . .

Guess who´s back, back again, Lion Dog´s back, tell a friend.

He was cooling off in a fountain on Cerro Santa Lucia this morning. It looked pretty funny because he actually kind of looked like a lion at the zoo trouncing around in his pen:

After careful research I believe I may be wrong about this being THE Lion Dog. I will not rule out that this is a relative.

Lion Dog from two years ago:


We found him the next day after we did a lot of living the night before, he looked really h-overed.


Still so majestic though.

Chilean food or what I guess could loosely be termed food Pic of the Day

I think it would be a poor idea to put these next to my Come Visit Stefan Pic of the Day.

Im going right to my roots with this one. Hot dog and mayoneise. I have no idea how to spell mayonessie. This is taking from the Mecca of absurd Chilean food, Plaza de Armas and is what I was dealing with for 6 months.

Calle Bandera Ridic American T-Shirt Pic of the Day

It´s a working title. This was American American, as in Fourth of July level. The majority are just random . . . You´ll see.

 What you are looking at friends is a t-shirt with the complete Declaration of Independence. I dont remember if it has signatures or not. However, still pretty epic. When I see shirts like this I always want to buy them for Joe. Not because he is so American, but because I know he will wear them around in public on a regular basis.

Puppy Pic of the Day

Welcome to our first installment of Puppy Pic of the Day. It will probably be one of like two pics of actual puppies because I doubt you want to see the same puppy over and over again from different angles. Or maybe you do. But as of two seconds ago Greg by way of the gchat just gave me THE BEST IDEA EVER for a segment sooooo I really don´t give a poop if Puppy Pic of the Day dies a quick silent painless death.

This is Jaime. The day Jaime arrived I started busting the balls of the hostel owner about there being no hostel dog. Then Jaime arrived. Jaime was awesome until she developed a strong fascination with my shoes.

 Being a puppy in a hostel is probably a top ten thing that you can be in the world. Right up there with being the bullpen cop at Fenway Park just fist bumpin´ the shit out of Papelbon on a nightly basis.

Back in the Dirty

And by that I mean Santiago, Chile and by no means is it dirty, it´s actually probably one of the cleanest cities I´ve ever been to.

So clean you can sleep like this with your mouth on the sidewalk and not even care.

Right to the point: not too sure how or where to start with trying to describe my travels but I was hit by a stroke of genious:

I think to start with, to get back in the swing of things writin´ wise I am going to break it down into three pillars of the trip:

1) Puppy Pic of the Day. I don´t know why but everywhere we have gone there seems to be a new puppy, so I have a lot of puppy pics.

2) Chilean food. Dear lord, Chilean food is miserable. I´m thinking about opening a cooking school down here called ¨There´s more to life than pan and palta¨

3) Hilarious American t-shirt from the 90´s that somehow made it´s way down here.

The only problem with this foolproof plan is I think I already ruined it because I already used up all my puppy pics in the Argentina fb album I just put up. However I just made an executive decision to expand Puppy Pic of the Day to include stray dogs except it will keep the same name due to the nice alliteration I´ve got going on. Done and Done.

I will also try and find someway to try and rehash some of my Argentine travels, but we will cross that bridge when I am ready. Kapeish?

ps. I´ve got one similar to my BC/ND post, except without the graphic photos.

Música

It´s been awhile but this is the easiest way to get back into writing. Two classic American songs that have been made in Spanish:





I think back in the day my theory was that if I ever went to a club I would first have the DJ play ¨All the Single Ladies¨ so I could figure out who they were and then ¨If I Were a Boy¨ so I would know which ones weren´t trannies.

Alright kids, I think I am hitting the road for a spell and then may be be home in a few

Do you like how vague I made that? A "spell," "in a few" neither of those terms can be tied to anything close to a definite time period. What if I said a coon's age? Also without meaning and potentially racist? I don't know.

(click to zoom)

I ain't a planner, I'm just a nomadic traveler. Did the indians who crossed the land bridge from Asia to North America have a plan? Nope, let's just chase these buffalos and see where we end up. That being said, I think the plan is to head west up through Rosario and Cordoba and then over to Mendoza. It's 600 miles to Mendoza. In my mind that is really far but after consulting my map and drawing the route (pictured above) it really doesn't look like much. I'm traveling with my friend Maggie and her two friends who I tried to break the ice with via my Red Sox silly band collection that my mom sent me. I was hoping to have a travel jorts making session as a means of a team building exercise before we left, however, I knew that wasn't likely to happen when Maggie asked me, "what are jorts?" (I actually kind of really just wanted to make jorts so I could explain that I have a friend Joe, who flew to close to the sun and instead of cutting his jeans into shorts actually cut them into a jean skirt . . . and then wore it around for the day anyway.)

The plan is when I get to Mendoza to talk to the American vineyard people who I kind of phone interviewed with to see if they can offer me some kind of employment. My phone interview kind of didn't go so well because when they asked me what I knew about wine and could offer them all I could do was launch into the finer points of Slap the Bag.

(If they had boxed wine questions I could tell them when in doubt when selecting what type of boxed wine you want to pay the extra 15 cents and spring for the pour spout, especially if you plan on preparing some can wine. And yes, I chose that Termidor Vino Blanco due to the shiny nature of the box. Well played Termidor, well played indeed.)

One of the problems I am anticipating is that I don't plan on bringing any nice clothes, ie. slacks, dress shoes, a tie because it would be pretty silly to lug it all around to use it once. I guess all just kill them with my devastating good looks and charm. Or just solve a rubix cube on their desk if one is available (I could strangely sees things going in a direction like that). I also know that one of them is a Patriots fan from Melrose so I am bringing my Patriots boxers. That will surely be a strange moment when I try to nonchalently flash my boxers. Bend and snap maybe??


So with that being said I am saying good-bye to Buenos Aires indefinitely . . . maybe for good. I've got to pack up my stuff and put it in a safe place that is still TBD and could be difficult to find considering a few days ago someone robbed 97 safe deposit boxes at a bank. I had some decent times in the apt and a lot of down time. A lot of good skype convos came from that very throne that is pictured below, those of you on the receiving end know who you are and shall remain nameless. (Also, note the plethora of French magazines jammed behind the radiator, she must drop some monsters if she needs that much reading material.***)

*** There should be a symbol for "crossed the line" that way I could just insert it at the end of a sentence like the one above. I'm thinking something in the vain of "nullset," the circle with the slash through it. Annddd I think I know how to make a ghetto version of it: O. It's moments like these that must make my parents so proud.

To sum up my time in Buenos Aires and put it bluntly, it hasn't been the easiest. There's been a lot of frustration and a lot of alone time. Unfortunately Democracia Global wasn't really all it was cracked up to be and to top it off yesterday I emailed the Diputado Nacional that I see and work with on a regular basis asking for a recommendation to share with the vineyard in Mendoza and in response he said if I write it, he'll send it from his email account to them. Gee thanks. After giving you four months of my time to help with your projects it would be nice to not have to write my own recommendation.

The other side of things is that it has been undoubtedly lonely down here. I'm not the most outgoing person in the world and I definitely could have done more to make friends but it is pretty difficult for me without any structured environment. One thing is for certain, I need to get TV the fuck out of my life. I've spent too long rotting due to its presence. It's my kyrptonite.

With that being said I don't know if I am ready to come home yet. I really miss winter and home and you guys but I feel like there is so much still to do and see and really work on Spanish. I think I am just going to know when I am ready and when that feeling comes I will surely be home.

So I guess that is that, I could be gone as long as a couple weeks and then back to Boston or for a month or more travelling. I really don't know. I'm going to try and write from the road when I can and upload some pictures but I have no idea how difficult that will be. To be perfectly honest, I have really really enjoyed writing the blog. Never before in my life have I actually enjoyed writing or wrote for pleasure but this has been really fun. I've been thinking a lot lately about what my interests are and what I am passionate about and I still have no idea which sucksssss. I wish I had something that I could clearly say I loved to do and would like to work on for the rest of my life but I don't. I'm afraid that nothing interests me. However, I at least found writing this to be fun and maybe I can channel it in someway.

Anyway, just wanted to say thanks for reading this thus far and I hope people enjoy it, special shout out to Australian "Canberra capital of Australia" Steph for always being so complimentary. Those of you who kept telling me to keep writing, and Sabby, wherever he may be going to school these days, because he was an unexpected big fan of the blog and spread my good word.

PS.

I have a decent amount of posts that I started to write and never finished or just never published because I thought they were too too random. When this is all said and done maybe I'll come out with a DVD-like special edition. Except instead of including never before seen footage and deleted scenes it will have the rando posts that never made it to print that I might have started writing while drunk.

One of the topics that I said I would write about but never got to was the Zombie Apocalypse. I started writing an epic post on it but I realized that my knowledge in the area was just too severely lacking and gave up every time I tried to write about it. Anyway the best I was able to do was come up with an epic title and an awesome leading photo to go with it:

You don't bring a knife to a gun fight and you don't take the fucking bus during the Zombie Apocalypse

Feeling inspired to do some writing Joe?

Come Visit Stefan Picture of the Day

There has gotten to be at least one of my readers out there that is wetting themselves over this picture. Is this not the nicest Ralph Lauren store you have ever seen? This isn't the Ralph Lauren section in Macy's or the factory outlet in Wrentham. This is the real deal. This is what all other Ralph Lauren stores are judged against. Just pure class emanating from this store.

Come Visit Stefan Picture of the Day

This building is like legit 2 blocks from my house. It only took about 5 months before I took a picture of it. NBD. I think it might be the waterworks building. You may wonder where I am going with this. Welllll, for one this free-standing structure is quite impressive and pleasing to the eye in and of itself and two, can you even begin to imagine the quality of the water I have living 2 blocks from here? Let's just say it's like the nectar of the Gods. Think of all the money you would save not buying bottled water when visiting me because the agua de canilla is so damn good.

Not so fast: Cerveza Patagonia trying to pull a fast one on us

I've been meaning to blow the lid off this whole thing for months now, just waiting for the right time, this is big, real big. I've been sitting on the evidence too long now and I now have to say something. They clearly didn't know the American Inquisition was currently living in Argentina ready to split some wigs and get answers.

I bought an Argentine beer about 4 months ago (and drank it) called Cerveza Patagonia Amber Lager. Displayed below in Exhibit A:

Exhibit A (note: this is a dramatic reenactment, I do not have glasses that nice, nor did I have two other people to share the beer with but if I did I probably would not have shared it anyway.)

Each bottle of beer comes with that little booklet that you see dangling at the top center of the picture from the side of the bottle. That is where the plot thickens. If you peruse it (as I did) you will discover a small map with a red dot cleary displaying a city on the Argentinean side of Patagonia. Displayed below in Exhibit B:

It says on the left "Chacras de Fernandez Oro," which means in English "we are dishonest, lying sons of bitches."

Now if you flip the page (as I did) you will discover a picture of a lagoon with magical blue waters in the foreground and a very distinct series of mountain tops in the background. That my friends, is Torres del Paine in Punta Arenas, Chile. Please refer to Exhibit C1 and C2 below:

Exhibit C1: The picture of Torres del Paine in the beer notebook.

Exhibit C2

The picture of Torres del Paine that I took two years ago when I went there with Joe. Can you say class action law suit? The people of Chile vs. Cerveza Patagonia? Bring in Jack McCoy and Abbie Carmichael (if she is not filming another shampoo commercial) to prosecute. Best part will be when Jack files a motion to have the trial moved to New York and have it in English on the grounds that what inconveniences him is an inconvenience to justice.

I don't know who to take this to. No way to know who I can trust around here. Wait, actually more like I don't no anyone who would actually give two craps about this. Oh well. At least the truth has set me free.


To completely change gears, as I am apt to do (consider this a "Come Visit Stefan Picture of the Day" within a post):
Looking up that old picture of Torres del Paine from last year allowed me to rediscover this awesome picture that I took at the airport in Patagonia. Cierre las puertas means close the doors. Great misuse of quotations. If you come down here you can expect to find neat-o things like this in your every day life!

I also had the perfect youtube video picked out on this topic but it doesn't let you embed it so I am going to have to just leave you with the link. More a video for the girls out there, so enjoy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bW8OkSJvhvE

The Sights and Sounds of Christmas in Junin

And resetting back to 2010 . . .

I went to the city of Junin for Christmas with my friend Emanuel to spend it with him and his family. Junin is a small city of about 100,000 about 3 hours outside of Buenos Aires surrounded by farm country. Semi-interesting fact: Soy is the new big time crop in Argentina, as in everyone is growing it. Apparently most of it goes to China.

Not soy, horses. My question I pose to you is why do people still have horses on farms? If you think about it they are a completely obsolete piece of equipment. Don't get me wrong I love horses as much as the next caballero but do they serve a purpose anymore? It seems like you give up valuable farm land to maintain horses.

Anywho, I'm gonna try and whizz through a few different aspects of my Christmas via a pictorial history.

First Christmas Eve/Christmas:

Emanuel showed me Laguna Gomez which is a really cool, really really big lagoon right outside of the city. It's kind of set-up like a national park where you pay about a dollar to get in and they have grills, a couple restaurants, fishing, and water sports.

Una cervecita en un restaurante, very very pleasant:

Note the beer coozy, first time I've seen it outside of Parque Tierra Santa. Also note the Cuban feel, you can thank the Buena Vista Social Club for that.

Christmas at the Benetiz house:

Christmas tree . . Check.

To sum up Christmas I would say, Cronica TV Bloopers, Just for Laughs, and Fireworks. Highlight = fireworks. At midnight all the kids go outside and light off fireworks in the streets so it feels like you are in downtown Baghdad except in a good way. That is also when I reviewed most of the Argentinean slang I've picked up. Interesting cultural difference is that after midnight around 2 or 3 in the morning all the younger people leave their families and start their night, ie. get drunk and go to the clubs. Although I personally cannot attest to the level of fun, I can attest to it looking like a ton of fun. The Boliches (clubs) in Junin are all outside in fields on the side of a road about 2 miles outside of the city, very cool beans.

The next day (Christmas) we did a recorrido of the surrounding areas:

Too cool to take off my hat. Again, note that I wear collared shirts like it's my job down here.

I would make a terrible journalist because I get really shy about taking pictures of random people, especially kids. Hence, I did a really terrible job of capturing the aspect of "life" outside they city. It's really cool how people all sit outside their houses, interact, play, but I find it so awkward to take those pictures. This was the closest I got to one.

Back to the Laguna:

Asado in Emanuel's backyard on the 27th:

I'm not a big sausage guy (that sounds so wrong) but that sausage was delicious, best of the three things we cooked. Interesting note: wood fire, I think my first ever wood fire asado.

Now for the strangest and in my opinion coolest aspect of Junin, but if I lived here I could see this sucking. There is no public transportation in the city, therefore everyone has to ride scooters everywhere. You'd see families of 4 on a scooter designed for one, maybe 2.

There is one main street in the city where on the weekend and at night all the kids go to hang out. It reminds of a movie out of the 60's where everyone goes to main street to drive their cars. Except in this case everyone rides scooters. It was really cool but I could see it being so annoying for the neighbors because all the bikes are so loud and everyone literraly just does loops around the street.

Come Visit Stefan Picture of the Day

If you come visit I will push you around in one of these for a day. Even through the puddles.

Sunday morning tv movie: new most underrated movie on the market

Grand Champion, is a character driven piece about a boy, his steer, his single-mom and little sister and their journey to raise a cow and bring it to the grand championship in Texas. It stars Adam Sandler's girlfriend in Big Daddy (playing the mother), Julia Roberts (a hotel receptionist) and Bruce Willis (a richer who wants to buy the cow). Julia Roberts and Bruce Willis are in it for all of like 2 minutes. So random.

Expect classic laugh out loud lines like this:
(context, Buddy's black friend Edgar stows away in their car in order to come with them to the grand championship and is discovered by Buddy's mom)
"Edgar, your mom is going to tan your be-hind when you get back home for this."
"How's she gonna do that Ms. Momma? I'm already tan."

Criticisms:
The one thing I would say is that in a character-driven piece like this I would have liked to see more personality from Hokey the Steer, he was lacking.

(90% of the reason I wrote this post was because I had an itchin' to use the term 'character driven piece' in a sentence and to share that quote by Edgar, sorry to subject you to my simple mind.)