Trip to Rio de la Plata on Torben's birthday (8.10.)

Hello everyone back home,

On Torben's birthday (8.10.), we ventured out of our neighborhood and went to Rio de la Plata... I have uploaded some impressions of the journey there and back, as well as our destination. Originally, Malloys is the large black building, but it is currently closed due to Corona, like many other places. However, the small sports bar next to it, which also belongs to it, was open and it was great to be there with a view of the water. On some days, they also set up a drive-in cinema there, at least since Corona, and it is very popular. Of course, we used Google Maps for the drive there and back, as we are not familiar with the area, and that's probably why we got a bit off track on the way back. Unfortunately, Google does not differentiate between poor and wealthier residential areas, so the return journey was not quite as pleasant as the journey there. I didn't take any photos, but we were definitely relieved when we got back to better areas, because you never know. And here, you can only drive very slowly because of the huge speed bumps on the road, which are also designed to make people drive slowly. However, they are not the same as what we are used to in Germany, but twice as big, often followed by proper ditches where a lowered car would definitely get stuck. Karen said that the Argentinians wouldn't drive slowly if the roads weren't high and quite deep to slow them down... but this also means that someone who wants to slow you down and rob you has it much easier... Next time, we need to check out the route in advance and stay on the other side of the railway line... One side is wealthy and the other side is poor. There were still houses, and it wasn't a slum, but it was definitely run-down...

There are some things that we just have to get used to, including the condition of the roads and the need to be careful where we drive, etc.

There were sweet variations of birthday gifts for Torben. Karen brought a torta chocolata, a typical Argentine cake, and you can see a picture of it below. The neighbors gave alfajores, another typical sweet specialty from here... you can see a few more pictures of the two sisters with their children and Mia with the neighbor's dog Menta, whom she likes to play with... Since the dog is still quite unruly, the neighbor wanted to buy a book on dog training and fired her dog trainer, who said she should just be nice to the dog, but he still destroys everything. We realized that it's very difficult to find a good book on this subject here. A lot of people have dogs and there are a lot of stray dogs, but they don't know much about training. We did find something in Spanish, so we'll see if it helps... there are just many things here that either don't exist or are different... for example, there are no egg cups because Argentinians find it really strange to eat soft-boiled eggs for breakfast with a spoon... We obviously didn't bring any egg cups... or most flour already contains baking powder, which I didn't know for my first cake, and then Torben said, why does it taste so strange :)