Villa General Belgrano looks like a village lifted out of the Black Forest and set down in the hills of Córdoba — steep-roofed chalets, beer halls, cuckoo clocks in shop windows. That is because it was largely settled by German and Central European immigrants in the twentieth century, among them sailors of the German cruiser Admiral Graf Spee, interned in Argentina after the ship was scuttled off Montevideo in 1939.
The town has built its identity on the heritage, and its Fiesta Nacional de la Cerveza — Argentina's Oktoberfest — in early October draws enormous crowds. Outside festival time it is a pleasant, slightly theatrical small town with good bakeries, smoked meats, and alfajores, in the Calamuchita valley among pine-covered hills.
It works best as a base for the valley rather than a destination in itself. La Cumbrecita, the car-free mountain village, is forty kilometres up a winding road, and the reservoirs and rivers of Calamuchita are good for swimming in summer.
Expect crowds and high prices in January, at Easter and during the October festival, when the town is full of visitors from Córdoba and Buenos Aires.