It was the touristy weekend, which I started thursday to saturday in Mar del Plata. Its the place were all porteños get jealous when you mention the trip, wish you lots of fun, long nights, some beautiful pickups... They usually hang around of what is called the beach of Buenos Aires with the other millions of visitors during the summer. But while winter started in Argentina, Sven - the volunteer who works for the reformed church here - the sea lions and me were almost alone at the beach. And since swimming was no option, we were working in the soupkitchen of one of Sven´s projects: 1000 pizzas, for about 500 families. Wow, impressive and very concrete social work!

The other impression shows the Argentine alternative to the Cologne cathedral: LUJAN! With big letters since its so important for the country. Established in 1873 , unbelievably old for local conditions, it saw mass prayings during the dictaturship, the pope in the 80ies and last but not least, a big number of miracles done by the VIRGIN of Lujan. The picture beside shows the real magic: Silvia and Jürgen (left and right) are German dropouts. Aged 50something they decided a few month ago to leave Germany, family, job and village, sell everything and go to Argentina to start one more time. Without a certain destination, without speaking spanish, without a job offer. Today, Jürgen´s working as bricklayer(his trained profession) at the nations sanctum and at least the next decade, they like to stay. In the middle you see Celina, my former Spanish teacher, who, sensitivly noticing some connection, brought us all together.