Bierfest and the Superbowl

Sunday, February 1

It’s hard not to get excited when going to a beer festival. We gathered our group of 6 (4 Americans, 2 Argentines) en el centro to catch a micro to Llanquihue one town over. Micros are small blue buses that run between all of the cities and towns throughout southern Chile. They are great because they run all of the time at great frequency and they are relatively inexpensive. 400 pesos for a ride to Llanquihue is pretty good.

We made it to the Bierfest around 2pm and got started by grabbing the table front and center in front of the live performance stage. A band of 4 was playing traditional German music in front of a backdrop of 2 giant German and Chilean flags. We ordered 6 beers, which we thought were Kunstmann but turned out to be Cristal, and 6 antecuchos which were German shish-kabobs. We ate and drank for a bit before Lily came back with a huge plate of German deserts including kuchen, strudel, and a meringue cake with raspberries.

Soon the fun began as members of the crowd approached the dance floor for a round of musical chairs. It was so bizarre to see a group of old men prance around a circle of chairs with the most competitive and intense looks on their faces. They were serious about their musical chairs. In fact, two men broke a chair because they were tussling over the spot when the chair exploded into splinters of plastic.


We took the party outside to enjoy the beautiful sunny day and to experiment with some new beers. Both Lily and I had envisioned stands of various beer companies with samplings of each offering, but instead there was one beer tent with 2 kinds of Cristal. It was a little disappointing especially because Cristal is the crap beer down here, but we had fun nonetheless.

Lily and I left the group around 6:30 so that we could make it back in time for the Superbowl at Russ’s house. We bought some drinks and snacks for the game and made it just in time for kick off. There was a group of about 12 people seated around a 35” flat screen in Russ’s house. There were Americans and Chileans alike all cheering and jawing at the TV. Two things about the game really stuck out to me, besides it being a fantastic game (barring the Steelers win. I hate them). The first, was not seeing any Superbowl commercials. We were watching the broadcast on ESPN deportes so everything was in Spanish including the commercials. They were all normal commercials for central and south American companies. It was kind of a huge let down especially because I wasn’t a huge fan of either team that was playing. Second, the commentary was so different in Spanish than English. There was less story telling to fill time, which is the standard during US football broadcasts. It was much like listening to a foreign soccer commentary, where they let the game do the talking and added light commentary every now and again. It was different, but refreshing. The game ended and we made our way home for the start of a new week.