This is my overview video of my “Filmmaker of the Year” grand prize trip from Tripfilms. It’s pretty hard to capture my entire trip in just one video, and yet I still tried. In case this gets you itchin’ for more of my South America travels, you can check out my other posts about the trip here.
As you might imagine, Rio has a lot of thongs. I wanted to blend in with the locals, so I did a little shopping.
I don’t get out into nature much. That changed when I visited the small town of Iguazu in Argentina and experienced the nearby Iguazu Falls. I not only traveled over rough, tropical terrain, but I also got on a boat! Big time stuff for a city boy like me.
Lots to see in Buenos Aires. It’s a big city, and like all big cities, impossible to experience fully. I only had a few days to spend there, but I did at least manage to make a dent in seeing the sights of Argentina’s capital. I also ate three empanadas a day, but the way I see it, with the conversion rate, I was really only eating .71474 a day.
As you will quickly find out while watching this video (SPOILER ALERT), I don’t speak Spanish. I spent my formative years learning German, a useful language if I ever move to Central Europe. Seriously, you’d think with that Third Reich business there’d at least be a few places in the world that were forced to speak German and continue to do so now. My friends who learned French can at least go up to Canada and speak with the locals. I gotta fly to Europe.
Why, then, did I choose to study German? Well, my ancestors were German, and at the time, I guess it felt like my chance to learn about my ancient Germanic culture. My lazy high school German teacher had other plans, though. He “taught” us German by playing American movies dubbed into German, where we’d hopefully pick up vocab words. Nothing says Germanic culture like Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
I’ve never really used what little my four years of studying German taught me, but I will say the classes were an easy A, and at the time, that’s what I needed most. Since English is a Germanic language, if you said an English word in a German accent, there’d be, like, a 1 in 3 chance of you saying an actual German word. Next time you’re in Germany, give it a shot. I’m sure they’re really cool about you gambling with their language.
