A mate in Munich

Hello! My name is Ignacio, but everyone calls me Nacho. I am 25 years old and I was born and raised in the City of Buenos Aires, Argentina. It is impossible for me to stay impartial when talking about my city, I honestly believe it is one of the best cities in the world to live in or at least to visit at least once in a lifetime. It is chaotic and charming, full of culture, art, and history. It is known, just like other big cities, as “the city that never sleeps” and it has well earned that nickname. In Buenos Aires you have things to do no matter what part of the city you are in or what time it is. You can go to a park to drink mate all afternoon or stay a whole night at a bar talking with your friends. There are local fairs that take place in the streets of every neighborhood every weekend and there are old traditional cantinas where the tradition is still kept alive of two complete strangers starting to dance a tango as if they had known each other forever. We have art and history museums for the more studious, and cultural centers where you can still breathe the essence of the Argentine underground movement, with a lot of young talent eager to show itself to the world. 

I believe that growing up with everything mentioned above was what ended up leaning me towards art as a career. In Buenos Aires I study Image and Sound Design at UBA, a degree intimately related to cinema and any kind of audiovisual expression. I work mainly as a director and director of photography, having participated in multiple university projects nominated for independent film festivals such as BAFICI.

My decision to spend an exchange semester in Munich is a bit random. My first choices of destination to do this experience were Madrid and Rome, looking to be in places that felt a bit more familiar to me, since the Spanish and Italian influence resulting from immigration has left a very strong mark on Argentine culture. But due to quota issues, and it could also be said fate, I ended up coming to what was initially my third option: Munich. It was the most unfamiliar city to me and at the same time the most challenging. Since I was very little, I always had the desire to live, even if just for a while, in a city that wasn’t my own, not out of wanting to escape my beloved Buenos Aires, but out of extreme curiosity to know how people live in other places of the world.

From this semester I hope to learn more than anything else, I come with an open mind to let myself be carried away by everything I don’t know about this city and with that return to Buenos Aires with new experiences, new anecdotes, new friends, and new knowledge.

My plans for the coming months are to try to get to know this city as deeply as possible and also to see as much as I can of this country. I want to go to as many football stadiums as I can, try a lot of beers, and above all, enjoy this experience to the fullest. So far I have been welcomed in the best way, and I am very eager to know what awaits me for the rest of my time in Munich… always with a mate in hand, of course.