Germ Theory

My physicist and I have an agreement when we travel: he won't tell me how old our plane is (did you know you can read it on a label as you enter the plane?) and I won't talk about food-borne illnesses. I am very aware that there are no fender-benders at 30,000 feet, and my physicist is squeamish about most things illness-related.  We try to honor each other's need to blink away from scary details.

And when one is traveling, a certain soft-focus can be useful to help you eat and drink what is available.

This trip we've eaten excellent food with no untoward side effects. We've found really nice vegetarian selections at small places near our hotel, which, in a culture known for its beef, wine and barbeque, is maldita suerte (damned lucky!). 

But it all crashed and burned  with yesterday's lunch at Puerto Modero.   Eschewing the "too touristy" places along the wharf walkways, we opted off the main path to the Magnolia Cafe.  (Note to self: do not trust the restaurant recommendations of a girl on roller blades handing out 3 x 5 leaflets.)

We are still wondering why we didn't Walk-Away-Renee when we walked in and couldn't tell if we were in a bicycle repair shop or a restaurant...Or when--despite the peak hour of almuerza, we counted only one one other couple, very young and clearly more interested in each other than food...Or when the 3 x 5 flier turned out to be the menu...Or when the special of the day turned out to be chop suey.

In deference to my physicist, I will skip over the meal itself (except for this hint: imagine out-dated ChunKing Chop Suey mixed with sour Chef-Boy-Ar-Dee spaghetti sauce and sprinkled with cheese-gone-wrong and served on dirty plates).  We didn't talk about the crusty tables, the scabby concrete floor, or the well-used bread basket with our rolls sitting against vintage crumbs and leavings of previous meals.  And I didn't tell my physicist about the boy I'd seen after the meal,  washing up with a gray rag dipped in scummy water.   

To dispel the meal's dispiriting effects, we next headed for Freddo's Ice Cream for the Sabayon (pronounce sonn- boh-yon), which had been recommended from website to guidebook to local host.  Too bad we didn't go to Wikipedia before we sampled it; we'd have found that Sabayon is made with Marsala, a strong port wine.  As it was, my physicist--fending off drunken bees--gamely ate a few bites, then pushed it away;  I sniffed it, pronounced it fermented, and we tossed it into the trash.

Dinner at Miramar was a horse of an entirely different color.  No tourist place this, but an old corner bar whose focus on wines (over 300) was more decorative than gustatory for two old teetotalers.  And, while the menu boasted--among other delicacies--oxtail, oysters, octopus, rabbit, and wild boar, there was only one vegetarian selection.  We did love the company and the atmosphere, though.  

We sat with our backs to big open screen-less windows that allowed us to touch the motorcycle and dogs on the sidewalk had we wanted to.  Every inch of wall space under the 12 foot ceiling shelved bottles of wine, so the loops of sausages and side meat hung over the bar itself rather than behind it.  An ancient meat slicer and a vintage glass case left only about 12 inches remaining for the bar itself.  These were no artsy period decorations; we watched sausage, hams, cheeses and various mystery meats pulled down, sliced, re-wrapped and returned to their spots, with the slicer lovingly wire-brushed after each use.  As diners finished their meals, we noticed the waiters carrying an asymmetric bottle of bright yellow liquid, which turned out to be home-made limoncello, a lemon liquor similar to Cointreau, whose potency will knock the drinker's socks off.

Twelve folks attached in one way or another to the University of Buenos Aires raised the conversation at our crowded table above the mundane without intimidating the non-scientists present (me and the 4-month old who blew bubbles happily through the entire night).  The lack of condescension and puffery among these esteemed scientists was remarkable, as conversations affably ran through politics, religion, social ills and world peace.

Here are some thumbnail sketches of a few players and what they shared:

•  A neuro-biologist, who--as did my physicist, received an honorary doctorate from UBA this week--uses functional MRIs to study cognitive plasticity and how we learn, and is improving our understanding of feedback loops through various areas of the brain. 
• A physician who created and evangelically promotes the One Laptop per Child Program, which has already provided a laptop for every schoolchild in Argentina.  (Check it out at www.laptop.org.) 
• A neurologist who studies 2-day-old infants and has discovered that their brains respond differently to being shown 2 dots on a card, rather than three. 
• A physicist who studies the calcium transmitters (both inside and outside of the cell) which moderate cell function and promote communication between cells.

...And that was just at my end of the table!

When the meat-heavy appetizer plate circled the table a second time, three geniuses at my end--to a man, used the same fork that had already been in their mouths to poke the remaining samples on the plate until they found the pieces they wanted. 

I could have told them about germ theory.  But my physicist and I have an agreement, so I just smiled and was happy, once again, to be a vegetarian.

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