In and After Europe; Money Matters in the Deep South (Argentina & Chile)

This has been a busy spring, what with my return from six weeks in Chile and then, following a brief interregnum in California, nearly three weeks in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Sweden. Europe’s not an area I normally write about, except when it bears some relation to my interest in South America. I’d intended to write on this blog while in Europe, but the ten-hour time difference and short-stay cities worked against me.

Willem descends the from the 4,900-meter (15,901-foot) mountain pass of Abra Choquetacarpo (scanned from a Kodachrome slide)

I did, however, did meet up with my longtime Dutch friend Willem Oosterberg, with whom I explored Peru’s Cordillera Vilcabamba in 1979—a time when that area, near Machu Picchu, was off-limits to visitors without special permission, which I managed to obtain from government officials in Cuzco. We managed to see many unique archaeological sites, such as Yurac Rumi, on a week-long trek that we somehow managed without detailed maps.

Open only since November, Amsterdam's Not Only Tinto is an Argentine wine shop that will also offer tastings and empanadas.

The previous time my wife and I visited Amsterdam, in 1985, I recall seeing Argentine and Uruguayan parrillas—grill restaurants—across the street from each other, just as Argentine and Uruguay face each other across the Río de la Plata. This time, I estimate we saw at least ten Argentine parrillas in town (though none that claimed to be Uruguayan) and even an Argentine wine shop. On the other hand, in Rotterdam, we spotted a Brazilian rodízio just about ready to compete with a nearby Argentine grill. That said, we didn’t try any of them on this trip.

We saw no Uruguayan restaurants in the Netherlands, but this Brazilian grill is about to open in  Rotterdam.

In Bruges we did spot one Argentine grill and, in Brussels, a Peruvian food truck outside the Central Station—unfortunately, it wasn’t open when we went looking for lunch. We did enjoy a Peruvian meal in Stockholm’s trendy Södermalm district, but the most notable South American item we saw came from the city’s Nobel Museum, which displayed the “Report on Argentina” that helped earn Amnesty International a Peace Prize in 1977.

Amnesty International's 1977 report on human rights abuses in Argentina.

Money Matters in Chile (and Argentina)

Last month, before I left Chile, the US dollar had been weakening and, by extension, my travel costs had been rising. At the beginning of last year, when I was updating Moon Handbooks Patagonia, the rate was pushing 700 pesos to the dollar, which made the country a relative bargain. That didn’t hold and, when I returned in early March for a brief research trip, it had fallen to 600 pesos, making prices higher in dollar terms.

Toward the end of my stay in Chile, the dollar slipped below 600 pesos.

Over the course my six-week stay in the country the rate remained relatively stable until, just before my departure, it dipped below the 600-peso level and seemed headed farther south (so to speak). It continued to drop and then, almost as suddenly rose as high as 634. Since then it’s slipped back into the mid-620s, but that’s still a significant recovery for the dollar.

Today's official exchange rates

Historically, the International Monetary Fund has drawn lots of fire in Argentina.

I won’t go into the macroeconomics of the issue but it’s worth noting that, across the Andes, the Argentine peso is reaching new lows against the dollar. When I arrived in Argentina in mid-November, the rate was about 17.5 per dollar but now it’s at nearly 25, and then reached the point where President Mauricio Macri has asked the International Monetary Fund—long considered an ideological pariah in Argentina—for assistance in propping up the currency. On the informal “blue dollar” market, which persists despite the liberation of the formerly fixed exchange rate, it has reached nearly 26.

The informal "blue dollar" persists in Argentina, but the differential is far smaller than it used to be.

That doesn’t necessarily mean Argentina’s getting any cheaper—unlike Chile, the country still has serious inflation issues. At present, it’s about 25 percent per annum, down from 2017’s 40 percent, but this is still a fragile economy. At best, prices may remain relatively stable in dollar terms, but keep an eye on things.

Vikings, from Buenos Aires to Berkeley

In late 2014, I traveled crosstown from our Palermo apartment to San Telmo’s Svenska Kyrkan (pictured above), where the Scandinavian communities of Buenos Aires—Swedes, Norwegians and Finns—were holding their annual Xmas festival. I’m not religious—to say the least—but I was still curious about this gathering of the Vikings in what, on the face of it, is an improbable urban environment.

San Telmo's Dansk Kirke is Buenos Aires's Danish church.

To the best of my memory, the Danes were absent from the event, though there’s a separate Danish church just a few blocks away and lunches at Retiro’s Club Danés are a delight. In the Buenos Aires province beach resort of Necochea, it’s common to see cars with Argentine plates and “DK” decals, but here I recall nothing.

Flags of Finland, Norway and Sweden hung from the ceiling at the Svenska Kyrkan.

All throughout the building and the grounds there were Scandinavian delicacies, along with souvenir items—some of them brought by the countries’ respective embassies because, at that time, arcane import restrictions effectively kept private parties from acquiring them. Most of the baked goods were local, but almost everything produced overseas had to enter by extra-official channels.

Many of the manufactured foodstuffs arrived through embassy intercession.

That’s not the case in Berkeley, adjacent to my hometown of Oakland, where the Nordic House specialty shop imports all sorts of Scandinavian food items and even carries a selection of Nordic noir novels (mainly in English) and travel guidebooks. On Saturday, though, Nordic House hosted my first-ever kräftskiva, at which Swedes and other Scandinavians devour plates of boiled crayfish and slug down shots of akvavit, with a shout of “Skål!” at the end of boisterous drinking songs.

Berkeley's Nordic House carries a diversity of Scandinavian supplies.

A plate of crayfish and potatoes at Nordic House's kräftskiva

In honesty, I didn’t find the crayfish especially appetizing (it doesn’t help that they make a messy meal), though almost everyone else devoured as much as they could grab. Nor did the various herrings and other specialties thrill me—I much preferred the roast moose, scalloped potatoes (identical to what my Swedish-American mother used to make) and other side dishes that my Swedish cousins served us in rural Värmland. Still, my only real complaint about Nordic House is that they’ve run out of Hungry Troll lefse (my Norwegian grandmother used to make this), but I’m told it’ll be back next month.

Lunch in Värmland. Note the scalloped potatoes (upper left) and the roast moose  (upper center-right)

The Vikings of Patagonia

When overseas visitors make their way south to Patagonia, they assume spectacular landscapes and unfamiliar wildlife, but they’re only rarely thinking of people and culture. From their arrival in the capital cities of Buenos Aires and Santiago to the tip of Tierra del Fuego, they may anticipate encounters with Spanish speakers, but that’s an oversimplification – like North America, southernmost South America became a land of immigrants. In Patagonia, Britons and Croatians stand out, but Scandinavians were also in the mix.

To Argentines, for instance, all Scandinavians are vikingos (Vikings), but the term is not always simply descriptive - it's sometimes a synonym for "slob," presumably for the historic Vikings' dubious table manners (full disclosure: I myself have three Swedish grandparents and one Norwegian). Two of Buenos Aires’s most distinctive churches show the Scandinavian influence - San Telmo's Dansk Kirke (Danish Church) and the Svenska Kyrkan (Swedish Church, pictured above) - and both the Danish and Swedish clubs have their own restaurants in the city. Legend says the Buenos Aires soccer team Boca Juniors chose their blue-and-gold colors from a Swedish vessel anchored in the nearby harbor.

In 1902, the Argentine navy's corvette Uruguay (pictured above, now docked at Buenos Aires's Puerto Madero and converted into a museum) rescued stranded Swedish Antarctic explorer Otto Nordenskjöld and his crew, who spent two years stranded on the frozen continent. Nordenskjöld also explored Patagonia, including the area around Chile's Torres del Paine, where one of the park's largest lakes (pictured below) bears his name.

Coincidentally, while hiking near El Chaltén (Argentina) in 2009, I met Nordenskjöld's great grandson Joel, who was paying a second visit to the region (the first was in 2002, when he and 16 other Nordenskjölds visited Antarctica on the centennial of Otto's rescue by the Argentines). In the following days, as his group hiked the "W" route in Paine, Joel pledged to take a swim in the frigid waters of the lake named for his grandfather.

The Scandinavians had more than Nordenskjöld’s fleeting Patagonian presence, though. Outside El Chaltén, Danish pioneer Andreas Madsen’s homestead (pictured above) is now a museum open to the public for guided tours. And in a remote sector of Argentina’s Parque Nacional Los Glaciares, between El Calafate and El Chaltén, Hostería Helsingfors (pictured below) is a remnant of Finnish pioneer Alfred Ranström’s century-old sheep ranch, but the surrounding area is open parkland where hikers can reach scenic Laguna Azul (pictured at bottom), which has its own small glacier.

Though no longer owned by the Ramströms, Helsingfors (the Swedish name for Finland’s capital of Helsinki) offers luxury lodgings and other services, with the chance to escape the crowds at the Moreno Glacier or on the Andean trails near El Chaltén. Because there’s no public transportation, though, renting a car is the only practical option for a visit unless you stay here – in which case, the transfer from El Calafate is free.

Seeking Ceviche in Stockholm?

As a rule, I don’t take vacations. After spending roughly five months every year in southernmost South America, updating my Moon Handbooks to Argentina, Buenos Aires, Chile and Patagonia, simply staying at home and sleeping in my own bed constitutes something of a vacation. I rarely travel for pleasure alone, though my South American travels for work are still pleasurable.

Still, while my recent Scandinavian travels were something of a holiday, I couldn’t overlook the Latin American presence, starting with the Oslo pizzeria about which I wrote recently. I especially looked forward to Stockholm, where we spent last weekend, because the Swedish capital was a refuge for many who fled the Southern Cone dictatorships of the 1970s – ironically, in the Stockholm police drama Arne Dahl, one of the detectives is a Swedish-born Chilean named Jorge Chávez (though Matías Varela, the actor who portrays Chávez, is the son of Spanish immigrants).

Unfortunately, we arrived late Friday night – so late that restaurants were closing up their kitchens and we missed the opportunity to dine at La Patagonia or Paladar de Cuba, both easy walking distance from our rented apartment in the Norrmalm district. We had to settle, instead, for plain takeout sandwiches.

On Saturday, though, we walked through Gamla Stan, Stockholm’s medieval nucleus, but we had already lunched when we heard South American voices – Argentine and Chilean - and stumbled upon the restaurant Samborombón. That’s a story in itself – for some incomprehensible reason, Swedish composer Evert Taube chose a nondescript bay in Buenos Aires province as the site for the kitschy Fritiof och Carmencita that’s remained a popular sing-along for Swedes ever since 1937. In fact, there’s no specific locality named Samborombón, though it’s perhaps the sort of place former South Carolina governor Mark Sanford might have fabricated a few years ago.

That evening, we considered walking back to Gamla Stan but, en route, we stumbled upon Smaka på Stockholm, a five-day food fair in Norrmalm’s Kungsträdgården park, where a Peruvian stand tempted me with ceviche but, unfortunately, it included mussels – to which I am allergic. Still, we found enough appealing food that we postponed another possible excursion to Samborombón.

Sunday, though, we took to the train to Uppsala for a long leisurely lunch with Mats Högberg, one of my newly discovered cousins, and his family. While we didn’t anticipate anything Latin American on the multi-course menu he and his wife Sofia had prepared, we did enjoy the gravlax salmon that’s often a presence in Buenos Aires restaurants such as celebrity chef Germán Martitegui’s Argentine-Patagonian Ølsen. This, though, was the closest to a full vacation day that I’ve experienced in decades.

Returning late to Stockholm, we didn’t bother with dinner, which would have been superfluous, but on our last full day in Sweden, we returned to Gamla Stan only to find that Samborombón was closed Mondays and we settled for an ordinary lunch. That evening, we set out to try La Patagonia but, after finding it closed as well, we settled for Paladar de Cuba – where a Chilean waiter served us mojitos opposite a wall that included photographs of Argentine revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara. It wasn’t quite what we had hoped for, but my wife’s beef dish and my fish stew left us satisfied and prepared for Tuesday’s flight home.

Going to Extremes? Boreal v. Austral in Scandinavia and (Beyond) Patagonia

Whenever I speak to audiences about the Southern Cone countries, which I do with some regularity, I always point out that the continent’s geography can be misleading – at nearly 56° S latitude, its southernmost point of Cape Horn (pictured above) is comparable to Edinburgh in the Northern Hemisphere. Once, while researching the Falkland Islands (51° 42’ S) in London’s Public Records Office, I came up a 1952 article from the Daily Telegraph that referred to the Islands as a “British colony near the South Pole.” Fair enough, if you’re willing to describe London (51° 30’ N) as “an English city near the North Pole.”

Thus, on my first major trip to Scandinavia, I've gotten to thinking about the extremes of my South American and European travels, on my first visit to Europe since 1987. Last Sunday, as we rented a car in Oslo and drove north, we headed to Lillehammer (pictured above), site of the 1994 Winter Olympics and, more recently, the comical Netflix gangster series set in that tranquil ski resort about three hours from the Norwegian capital.

At 61° 8' 0" N, Lillehammer became the most northerly point I have ever visited, and we greatly enjoyed Maihaugen (pictured above), which must be one of the world’s finest open-air museums. Its assortment of classic Norwegian folk constructions, many of them dismantled elsewhere and re-erected here to form a mock village, provides a vivid glimpse into early sub-Arctic architecture and the people who created it; role-playing actors occupy some of them, and a former Oslo postmaster is a true scholar who explains the post office’s role in uniting the country through the railroad system. I might add that all of them speak fluent English.

Lillehammer’s reign was brief, though – the following day we drove east and then north to Trysil (pictured above, at 61°19' N), my father’s mother’s birthplace. Like Lillehammer, Trysil is now a ski resort, but in my grandmother’s day – she left for the United States in 1904 at the age of 21 – it was a verdant valley of mid-sized farms along its namesake river, which flooded from snowmelt just a week or so before our arrival. With help from local historian Olav Tangen and others, we located Akre Gård, the farm on which she was a pige (household servant) before moving to Minnesota and marrying into my grandfather’s family. She was the only one of my grandparents whom I knew well, since she moved with my aunt and uncle to a location near my own family in Washington State in the mid-1960s.

But how to compare my northern wanderings with my travels in the south? Obviously, Lillehammer and Trysil are significantly closer to the North Pole than Cape Horn is to the South, but I have traveled beyond the continent. In 2004, I flew from the Chilean city of Punta Arenas to King George Island (pictured above, 62° 2′ 0″ S), where several countries maintain Antarctic bases, for a week-long cruise with Antarctica XXI, still the only company that offers a fly-cruise combination to the white continent.

On the same trip, I reached Deception Island (62° 38’ 37” S, pictured above) and Brabant Island (64° 15’ S, pictured below)), which will set the standard for any further boreal adventures. I’m not likely to return to Antarctica but, with numerous Swedish relatives on my mother’s side, it’s probable I’ll return to Scandinavia (though I apparently have no living kin in Norway) and visit more northerly areas.

Meanwhile, we have had spectacular weather, with sunny skies and temperatures reaching up to 25° C (77° F), though snow covers the ground for several months every year. I never experienced those temperatures in Antarctica but, then, there are no penguins in Scandinavia.