Argentina

Sandra and I took a weekend trip to Berlin via a 3 hour train. Flying was actually cheaper than train, but trains are more comfortable and the train stations are more centrally located in Nuremberg and Berlin than the airports are. Trains in Germany are freaking fast. It shows the instantaneous speed and we got up to 250 km/h, which is 150 mph and it feels super smooth. The Amtrak train between New York and DC probably does 80 mph and feels way bumpier. Even though the tickets were 160 euros each, our tickets were never checked on the train. I guess people just trust you'll buy our ticket, or the fines are expensive enough that no one risks it. Berlin has had a tough history, although not nearly as bad as Poland. After being mostly destroyed in WWII thanks to Allied bombings, Berlin became divided between the Soviet Union in the East and Americans, British, and French in the West. The weird thing was that Berlin was a divided city, but it was entirely surrounded by East Germany ...

I've been in Nürnberg for three days and I'm very happy so far. I am living in SudStadt (South City), which is much more residential than downtime. Nürnberg feels very similar to Salamanca for a couple reasons: 1) It looks like a stereotype of what you would imagine a German city to be (just like Salamanca does a Spanish city) 2) There is a central pedestrian street that is very touristy with tons of shops lining it 3) It's just a beautiful city I was able to find a short-term apartment on AirBnB for USD1000 per month and the apartment and location are both good. It feels very neighborhoody and non-touristy. I've already found my go-to corner pub with 3 euro 0.5L beers and great food. I was ordering blind and ended up getting cold sausage with raw onions, tomato, and pickle vinaigrette with rye bread. It was actually very good! Germans seem to have a thing for pickled things. The grocery store had a huge assortment of pickled items. I'm going to see if I ca...

Oktoberfest is one of those internationally known events like Carnaval in Rio, Mardis Gras in New Orleans, or the World Cup. My sister and I went to Oktoberfest with almost zero planning and pulled it off successfully. Here's what we did: 1) Stay in an adjacent city connected with a train: Munich will likely have outrageous hotel and AirBnb prices as everyone floods in for Oktoberfest. Another more affordable option is to stay in a place like Nuremberg and take the train to Munich (about 1.5 hours). This adds a great time to pregame Oktoberfest as you'll see many Germans doing a similar strategy fulled dressed in laderhosen and dirndls on the train drinking beer. To make sure you get a seat in a tent, you'll want to arrive before 10 am, which means taking an 8 am train. The bigger the size of your group, the earlier you'll need to arrive. Nothing like an IPA at 8 am to start things off right. 2) Buy some Oktoberfest clothes: You'll have a lot more fun if you ...

Brazil's 7-1 semifinal loss to Germany on Tuesday will go down as the worst loss in Brazil's soccer history. Just take a look at the front pages of the national newspapers: "Massacre" "National Team suffers the worst loss in history" "The loss of losses'" "Humiliation at Home" But why is this the worst loss in history and what does it mean for Brazil? Prior to last Tuesday's game, the worst loss in Brazilian soccer history was the "Maracanazo" in 1950 (the game took place at Maracanã stadium in Rio). It was the World Cup Final and Brazil only needed a tie to win it all as it used to be a Round Robin format. Brazil went up early in the second half 1-0, but Uruguay came back to win 2-1 in front of  speechless 215,000 fans (still the World Record). The loss was compounded by the fact that Maracanã had been built by Brazil for the 1950 World Cup and was a symbol of Brazil's modernity and emergenc...