Camilo Erlichman’s mate intake

Camilo Erlichman, Assistant Professor in History, has his roots in Argentina. When he was three years old, he moved to Germany with his parents, who had done their post-graduate studies there.

What does he miss most about Argentina besides his family?

“I come from a musical family. My dad is a conductor and my grandfather used to sing in a large classical choir that toured Argentina with European orchestras. I started playing the piano at a young age and started playing the electric guitar as a teenager, because, you know, at that age you think that’s so much cooler,” Camilo laughs. “But nowadays my instruments stare at me from the corner of the room, making me feel guilty because I don’t play them anymore. Life is very busy now, with work and my daughter, and I feel sleepy a lot.”

Whereas most people living in the Netherlands would go for coffee to keep them awake, Camilo goes for a more exotic drink. “What keeps me going is not coffee, but Argentina’s national beverage mate. It’s a really delicious caffeine-rich drink and there’s an entire ritual to drinking it. You drink mate from a cup made out of calabash gourd. You put the mate leaves in the cup, add hot water and put a metal straw in it. You simply keep adding the hot water as you drink the mate. The tradition is to share the cup with family and friends while enjoying a good conversation. One person prepares the cup and this person is in charge of pouring the water and the stirring. The cup gets passed along the room and it is considered offensive if you, as non-cup maker, would stir or add water.”

How did Camilo get his mate intake here in Europe? “Nowadays, mate is very popular in Europe and it is easy to get it. Some popular drinks, such as club-mate, which is sold at Bandito Espresso, are based on mate. But when I was younger, we could only get mate in Argentina. So whenever we visited my family, we always brought one suitcase filled with 25 kilograms of mate back with us. The funny thing is that dried mate tea kind of looks like marijuana. So whenever we arrived at customs at a European airport, we had a lot of explaining to do and an expert would have to be brought in who could verify the story. Eventually, we were always allowed to keep it – the same could not be said of many of our compatriots trying to smuggle plenty of raw meat through customs! And so it has never stopped me from drinking mate; it keeps me awake and it reminds me of my origins,” Camilo says.

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