Learn Spanish By Drinking (part I)

When you go abroad there are always chances to try new food and drink, aren’t there? Here in South America there are lots of different local drinks to have a go at. While I am not a big drinker I had a go at a few purely for research purposes. Here are some of my results of my “learn Spanish by drinking” experiment.

Wine. I arrived to the city of Tarija in Bolivia still needing to learn Spanish words and phrases in order to make myself understood. My vocabulary was so limited that I think I doubled it the day some locals took me out to the vineyard and taught me some valuable words. “Salud”, “apurate” and “seco” have all come in useful to varying degrees since then but I have never forgotten them.

Beer. I hate beer and lager and anything else of the sort. Here there are local lager products which go by the name of the city in which it is made. So in La Paz you get Paceña and in Potosi you get Potosina. I avoid them all and was very proud that one of the first longish phrases I learned was “no me gusta la cerveza”.