A dinner to remember.
Marie and I were invited to Armando's house for dinner on Saturday night and Leando our other new friend and landlord was also invited and decided to joined us. Armando is our friendly doorman at the new high end Villa Carrera Apartments. Argentines eat late compared to US standards and for that, the rest of the world. But on Saturday Nights they tend to eat even later. Leandro volunteer to drive us in his new red VW Golf. We were invited to arrive around 9:30 so we rang the door bell at Armando's home in Mendoza around 10:00 as expected. Armando's introduced us to his wife Rachel which she quickly told us that she spoke no english, nada. We had been informed of this earlier by Armando who himself spoke only broke english or what he calls, “Sanglish”. Leando's english is pretty good, our Spanish is not so great, but getting better so we were adventuring on a very interesting and somewhat apprehensive evening of conversation. Armando started the parrilla (grill) shortly after we arrived. This consists of starting a fire with small pieces of wood that are purchased at the local store for 4 peso (1.25 USD) a bundle, about 1.5 sq ft and burning it till it has the heat and cooking properties of charcoal that is well lit. They do not use charcoal because they say, which I believe, does not have the flavor of wood. They then push the hot coals under the grill that holds the meat. Who knows how long the meat has been out but it was about 38 deg F outside so you don't have to worry about the meat going bad. Their meats is also very fresh, the markets have real butcher and the meat is fresh everyday.
We talked or communicated for quite a while when Armando knowing that I was of German decent told me that he worked for a German mining company for 14 years before Argentina put the kibosh on open pit mines. He proudly handed me a pre WW2 German book of small hand painted pictures that were on some type of small cards pasted to the pages of the book with a thin onion shin like paper separating the pages. The book also contain an authentic German Nazi solder cap with adorning swastikas which was laying between the pages. I must say that I was a bit surprised when I saw the swastikas without any preamble or warning. He then proceeded to show me two German Metal on which I knew was a Iron-cross and other which I was unable to identify even with the German description. Armando was very proud of his possessions that he received while working for the German company. We told me that they were not for sale at any price.
The time is now around 11:30 and the dinner is still on the grill. Asado cooking is very purposely slow. Armando informed us that he had an old friend from the mining company coming later to join us with his girl friend. Kristina and Randy join us a around 11:50 and the conversation moved a bit faster because Randy and Kristina spoke english. For “economy of effort”, Tamara our pretty Spanish teacher called being lazy, I will move the story forward a bit faster. Randy is a geologist for the mining company that Armando worked for but was working in Chile where they still allow open pit mining for Copper and Gold. At 12:10 they announced that dinner was to be served. I know the time because I had been looking at my watch quite a bit. The dinner consisted of the normal Asado, chicken, sausage, short ribs... It was very good.
Leandro told be that he was ready to leave anytime that we were, I gazed at the clock on the wall and to my amazement it was 3:10 AM. We said our good byes to our new Argentine friends and headed home to our apartment. It was a great experience that I will not forget. You can communicate with anyone if you want to. This is the best part of traveling that you can experience, dive in and enjoy.
Jeff
