From here we arrived in Cordoba, which is a big student town with lots of universities. It is a really nice city with really great people. The first day we of course went to the city centre to have a look around. Chrissy had never been here so it was new for her too, but she knew that her mum and her aunty went to Cordoba to study. Cordoba was discovered, or should I say colonialised in the early 1600s so the architecture is just amazing. There is a lot of French and German influence in the architecture, and Cordoba seems to be slightly more Italian than the other cities we have been to. Not in the appearance of the city but the culture. It is very family orientated and also I was told by a local that a lot of people speak Italian and Spanish. I found Cordoba to be a cocktail of Mediterranean culture, western European influence, Argentinean flair and this all created this amazingly inviting city. I really loved it. I would love to go to study here if given the opportunity, but in the very least go back and live there for a while. There is a lot of tourism in Cordoba because it is quite a big place, and there is so much to do in and out of the city.
The people at the hostel Patagonia where we stayed really made our stay amazing. There was Peter the Japanese- American who was an engineer who hated engineering and started his own internet company, Catherine from Leeds in London who was really nice, the two Danish boys Chris and Chris (Christian and Christopher) who were both hilarious and very good looking, the two Germans Steph who was so shy, people would think she was mute and Martin who Crissy and Gemma adored because he was so good looking. Then there were the three Mexicans who lived in the hotel Oscar, Alan and Nicholas. Oscar didn’t work and didn’t study and spent most of his days just watching tv and sleeping, Alan studied marketing and spoke really good English so gemma liked him the best for that reason, and Nicco was weird. The only English word he knew was ‘woops’ so he said woops to everything. Actually he said woops to everything in Spanish too. This is the place where my Spanish really improved. Everyone here was just so chilled and mellow, which is really the whole personality of Cordoba to be honest, that we just watched English tv with Spanish subtitles and hung out with the owner of the hostel – who didn’t speak English and his brothers who did but ran Spanish schools for people who wanted tuition.
One day the girls were going shopping, for a change, and I decided to stay at home with the other guys in the hostel, for lack of money. Later on the owners of the hostel decided to go to his other house in Carlos paz, which is outside Cordoba city and a really beautiful place to go. He invited all his friends and the people of the hostel to come so I decided to go along and do something. This was my first conversation with Spanish speakers that Crissy wasn’t present for, so at first I was feeling a bit hesitant to talk to anyone in Spanish, but as no other option presented itself I was forced to. For this reason I am really glad that I went to the BBQ despite the girls not being there because it launched me into an area where I really started to make, and more importantly, hold conversations. We talked about interesting things too, but during this week my Spanish improved so much. Before now I wouldn’t have said I made any astounding improvements but this was the best because people could understand me and thought that I spoke well… or so they said.
So we went swimming and had a parrilla. Pablo, the owner of the hotel was going back to the hostel and offered to give me a lift back, because it was a 45 minute bus ride back otherwise. Later on he rang us and invited the three of us to have dinner with him and his friends and go out to a night club after. This nightclub was so fun. There were so many people but in some weird way that made it better. We danced all night until 6.30 when it closed, then everyone goes to ‘after hours clubs’ from 6.30 til about 10 or 11 in the morning. Its absolute craziness.
The three of us went back to Carlos Pas the next day with Pablo and just spent a few hours by the pool ‘taking sun’ as is the literal translation of sunbaking. Then we went to lunch and out again that night. It was a really fun, chilled place where you felt that you could just … be. I don’t know it’s hard to explain. But I really loved it and everyone there.
