Armenians in London eating pastes

Not long ago, I visited London on a weekend with my girlfriend Paula, her father and an old friend of both of them. Like Paula’s family this man is Argentinean from Armenian origins. We planned this trip from the moment we knew Paula´s father-Meguid, 81- whom we all know as Miguel since  that is the closest Spanish name to his Armenian-unpronounceable name- would travel for the first time to Armenia, land his parents left  nearly a Century ago because of the genocide commited by Turkey against Armenians in 1915.

The first thing we did arriving in London after leaving the bags in our hotel room in the neighborhood of Earls Court, was to find a place to eat. Earlier, on our way to the hotel Paula´s father and his friend as good Argentinians,  were craving to eat at some empanadas place. So we went to the Cornish Bakehouse. I was very surprised to see that the empanadas in question were nothing but the typical Mexican paste I´ve eaten since I was a child in Pachuca, my hometown, where this delicacy is typical, legacy of the British presence in that land during the eighteenth century. Pachuca is the city where I grew up, suddenly thousand  memories rushed to my mind. Of course I remembered our Pachuqueño Pastes from British origin ideentical these Cornish Pasties. I automatically transported myself to Pachuca, to the memories I keep of my place in Mexico.

Life is very strange and yet very wise, so it leads us to live, a unique world for each one of us, to travel through specific memories. So we find –even unwittingly- particular parts of our world, of our previous universe, and to reconstruct personal memories that always accompany us, that are always there.

On the Armenian genocide: http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocidio_armenio
About the Pachuqueño Paste Pachuqueño: http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paste
About the Cornish Pasty: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pasty