Bogotá birthday

So I am 35 now. As my friend Michael (who also just turned 35) pointed out, I am now halfway to 70. Thanks, Michael.

My shock at my old age notwithstanding, I was excited to mark my birthday, to mark a year of big changes and fresh starts, in the city I now call home. I figured that I would just do something small with a few Bogotá friends, new and old. What I couldn't have expected, what was the best surprise, was that I would be visited by the ghost of birthday past.


Many, many years ago, my family moved from Rome ("The Eternal City") to Findlay, Ohio ("Flag City, U.S.A."). I think most of you reading this have heard the story, so I'm not going to go into all the heinous details. What you may not have heard in the telling, however, is that there were people I met in Findlay who were a breath of fresh air during that dark period of my late adolesence. One of them was a guy named Andrew Evans. I met Andrew at the beginning of my senior year because he had spent our junior year as an exchange student in France. It's fair to say that we were kindred get-me-the-hell-out-of-this-town spirits from the start. That being the case, it is perfect that we would see each other for the first time in 17 years here, in Bogotá, on my 35th birthday.

[Insert plug for how cool Andrew is here: Andrew was in Bogotá because he is working on a project for National Geographic, namely traveling the length of the Americas by bus (and boat where necessary) in order to catch a boat to Antarctica in February and blogging/tweeting as he goes. His blog is insightful and funny, and I highly recommend it anyone who can only afford a vicarious trip to the South Pole. http://blogs.nationalgeographic.com/blogs/intelligenttravel/bus2antarctica/]

Intrepid traveler that he is, Andrew found his way to Andrés Carne de Res, Bogotá's world-famous, one and only freak show/steak house. This place really does defy description. The décor can best be described as Latin American religious kitsch-meets-Frida Kahlo's nightmare. There is weird stuff on the walls. The art work and logos are trippy, and sometimes the waiters and waitresses dress up in costumes. And afterwards there's a dance party. It should be pretty clear why I wanted to celebrate here.

Though things did get a little silly when one of the waiters in some kind of get-up brought me a plastic cake and made me dance (see attached video), the night was actually pretty tame. Andrew dispensed travel advice to my friend who's planning a trip to southern Africa; my friends dispensed travel advice to Andrew who is traveling by bus through a country that is at war. I drank too many too strong mojitos, reveled in the good company, and just felt lucky to have great friends, no matter how old I am.