Buenos Aires

Later today we’ll pull our packs out of the closet, dust them off, feed them clothes and toiletries, and hoist them on our backs zipped, clipped and fastened securely. We will be saying goodbye to Buenos Aires after calling it home for three and a half weeks. Although it wasn’t love at first sight, we enjoyed a very good time here.

We arrived in Buenos Aires by bus from Mendoza and took a cab to our apartment. We had reserved an apartment a week in advance online. The description online stated that the apartment was located in San Telmo. San Telmo is a barrio (district, borough or neighborhood) known for its colonial buildings, cafes, tango parlors, antique shops and cobblestone streets filled with painted, singing and/or dancing artists and art things. When we received the exact address, just two days before our arrival, we discovered that our apartment was in fact in the adjacent neighborhood called San Cristobal. San Cristobal is a barrio known for its noise, traffic, trash, narrow sidewalks and vagrancy. You won’t find any postcards of San Cristobal, and travel guide books give no mention to this grayed out area on their maps. Our second floor apartment is located on one of the busiest streets in the barrio, Avenida Independencia (6 lanes), and just one block away from the widest street in the world, Avenida 9 de Julio (up to 14 lanes flanked by 4 lane streets on each side). Needless to say… we can’t hear the birds chirping around our part of town.

Our apartment (2nd story).

Looking out from the balcony of our apartment.

Looking down from our balcony: San Cristobal locals.

We got settled in, appreciated the amenities (hot shower, AC, refrigerator, stove, etc) and learned very quickly that we were going to have to take a long walk, bus, cab or train to get to the beautiful, pleasant, awesome and/or exciting places that great cities nurture.

We started Spanish classes just a few days after arriving. The classes had a 5:1 student to teacher ratio and the quality of the teachers was noticeably inferior to what we experienced at our school in Guatemala. Most of the teachers at our school in BA are currently studying Philosophy or Sociology and teach Spanish for part time work. The teachers in Guatemala are full-time dedicated Spanish instructors (many with over 10 years of experience). One of our teachers, I don’t want to mention names but, Lucas, is quite a character. He’s one of those guys who wakes up extra early to give himself time to deliberately style his hair so that it looks like he just got out of bed. You know the subculture, anti-establishment, self-righteous, self-victimized guy that leaves the same size footprint of vanity, negligence and selfishness as the average Joe (or Jose)? Yeah, him. Well some people can meet a guy like this, not agree with what he emphatically promotes, smile, nod their heads and think inside, “geez, what a clown.” Then you have people like Sheer…. In class we would read politically, socially and morally provocative articles for language practice but it would invariably end up in debate over the subject. Sheer would challenge Lucas’s vague and derogatory comments on certain policies and keep him on his toes. In Spanish too. Then… he started making mistakes with Spanish grammar, uh-oh! Sheer would say sternly and straight to his face, “No sabes…tu no sabes.” One time he had to leave the class to get help on a grammar issue.

For our second and final week of classes in BA, Sheer and I requested to have private lessons for the same price but fewer hours (just me, Sheer and a teacher). One of the teachers that we had during our second week was very cool but that’s enough about our classes.

Outside of class, under the moon and under the sun, we explored the streets, cafes, bars, restaurants, museums and parks of the barrios of Buenos Aires:

SAN TELMO

This is the barrio that we thought we were going to live in (described above). Even though it’s a bit touristy there's plenty to do and see.

Tango bar.

Non tango dancing.Tango dancing.A cat.Street artists.Statue.Street artist.

Man and two dogs napping at Lezama Park.Lovers.Checkmate. Freshly baked bread at one of our favorite BA cafes.Bread, chairs, plates and a guy in the background.Sirloin.

A very good tango show with excellent music too:

PUERTO MADERO

This barrio is the rich, business-convenient, trendy part of town. If in town for big business or working abroad as an expat, you're likely to consider staying in this barrio. It's along a water way once used for unloading cargo ships just east of Centro and just west of an ecological reserve. From here, you can walk to Centro for work, and to the ecological reserve where you can completely escape the city, relax and exercise.

Puente de la mujer.Steak sandwich in the park.Ecological reserve looking out to the Rio de la Plata.In the ecological reserve, with a view of Puerto Madero:

CENTRO

This barrio is the downtown business district. It is very, very busy. It has all the amenities you need but feels like a ghost town after working hours. This is where we took our Spanish classes. So, every day for two weeks we fought our way through the crowds.

Calle Florida.

CONGRESO/TRIBUNALES

This area is kind of like an extension of Centro but it has a bit more residential life: it doesn't die after working hours and the bars and restaurants here seem to be much more local. This is where you'll find fine art theaters and cinemas. It was just north of our neighborhood, and had much more to offer. We visited Congresso frequently for pizza, movies, and just walking.

Avenida 9 de Julio.Old timers rocking out at dive.

RETIRO

This barrio is kind of ritzy and more pleasant than Centro and Congreso/Tribunales.

These trees were in bloom all over the city, beautiful.
Here's one in Plaza San Martin

We spent Thanksgiving at an American sports pub so we could watch some football.

RECOLETA

This barrio is rich, fashionable and elegant, although the pictures below don't really show this.

Just reading some of my new rap lyrics.
Important, cool looking and abandoned building.

BOCA

This barrio is famous for its painted buildings. There's a soccer stadium here too. If you walk outside the few blocks of tourist land, you'll find that it's very local, rough and blue collar (or I should say, no collar). It's one of those places that makes me think, "The only thing that's keeping these people from mugging us is that bright, shining sun."

Tango in the streets.

PALERMO

This barrio has a bit of everything: green parks, international restaurants, boutique stores, jazz bars and the zoo. Sheer took her guitar lessons here. We did a lot of wandering around and reading in parks here. If we were to move to BA, this barrio would be on the top of our list. You can hear the birds chirping, and it has all the great things that cities offer.

Parque 3 de Febrero (very big park).Sheer insisted that I pose in front of these elephants at the zoo.

Super cool jazz bar.

Sheer's hanging in there.

And now, a couple of stories (one short and one long).

SHORT STORY

My friend Pat, who lived in Buenos Aires for 8 months and then took 11 months to ride his bicycle from Ushuaia, Argentina to Houston, Texas, lived at a hostel just a block away from our apartment. The owner became a friend of Pat’s. He invited me over and we had wine and parilla (bbq) at a table full of Europeans, Americans and Portenos (residents of Buenos Aires). I had a little too much wine and started talking about nuclear energy with this French guy… I think he sells vegetables back home...

LONG STORY

One day I had a close call when returning from one of our BA expeditions on the subway.

Buenos Aires subway train.

We just got on the train and, since it was a bit crowded, Sheer and I were standing separately. It wasn’t as crowded as it gets during rush hour but there were as many people standing as there were sitting. So this guy boarded the train behind me, stopped to stand beside me and then, before I could widen my stance for extra stability, he planted one of his feet pretty close to one of mine. I then felt that our legs were partially in contact and took notice of him. I looked at him thinking, “Why is this idiot so close to me?” He was facing normal to my look (at 90 degrees), which happened to be toward the seats and windows. The train started to move. I thought, “Oh, maybe he’s with this girl who is sitting down and he wants to stand close to her.” I tried to ignore the idiot but a few seconds later I thought again, “Ok, really what the hell is this idiot doing so close to me?” I looked at the girl sitting in front of him again and it didn’t appear to me that they had any sort of relationship. All of a sudden I felt what I will describe as a subconscious signal and my reflex was to check my pocket to make sure that my wallet was still in place. As my hand dropped to reach my pocket, I came in contact with a sweater that the idiot was holding very close to me. I shoved my hand down faster upon feeling this obstruction and, when I reached my pocket, I found it unzipped and empty. In a matter of a second, I traced steps back and knew for sure that I'd placed my wallet back in my pocket AND zipped it up shortly after entering the subway station. During the next second, while I was raising my head and eyes to look up from my pocket to the idiot, I was in the process of thinking, “This punk just snatched my…” when I saw the flash of my wallet and heard it hit the floor of the train. I lunged down to retrieve it, gripped it tightly, straightened my back, broadened my shoulders and turned toward the idiot-turned-thief. I towered over my young thief, glaring straight into his eyes. He was a young teenage boy, white with black hair, jeans, and a t-shirt. He looked right back at me. Images raced through my head: images of physical retribution for an immoral and criminal act. These images seemed like propositions, but propositions for which I could not find warrant in my judgment. I thought, “I mean… I have my wallet. It was just an attempt. He’s just a kid. But he’ll do it again to someone else. I should not let him get away with this. Maybe I’ll lecture him… yeah, right: eres un ladron y mal educado! Piensa de tu futuro. Quieres vivir en una prision?!.… I’m sure that will straighten him up….” There he was, all the while, staring right back at me with the most impressively neutral expression.

The steely screeching and bucking of the moving train, the other passengers oblivious to the matter and behaving normally, his cooling look, the harm not done and my thoughts unable to foresee real resolve by retaliation kept my body still, inflamed and teeming with blood flow and adrenaline, but still. After a score of seconds, I turned and walked away. I came to Sheer and told her what had happened. Very soon after, the train stopped and he walked right by us to get off. We stood glaring all the while.

I then had time to process and reflect upon what happened. I thought the things most boys think, “I should have kicked his arse!” but it was more like, “Should I have kicked his arse?” I thought of my stepbrother who would have immediately popped him in the jaw. I thought of my girlfriend’s mother who probably would have taken the boy straight to the Buenos Aires Chief of Police. And…I even asked myself, “Was I a coward?” Of course now, a week later, I agree with how I avoided trouble; but maybe I should have spent the rest of the day dealing with the police in hopes that it might have prevented a future crime. Though, it’s not like we’re in Germany. I’m sure in order to involve the police, I would have had to drag him out of the subway, interrupt some police officers whistling at girls on the street and report the attempted crime. All this only to have one of the officers turn to me and say through his cool sunglasses and untucked, loosely buttoned shirt, “but he didn’t….” I’d say, “Yeah, he didn’t because I caught him.” The officer would repeat himself with some philosophical pretense, “but…he didn’t.” Then, soon after, we’d all end up drinking wine, eating parilla, whistling at girls and I’d turn to the kid and say, “ya, know…you’re not so bad after all....Here, take my wallet, please. In America wallets grow on trees!”

Now on to some general impressions.

The most noticeable, initially impressive characteristic of Buenos Aires is the racial demographic (especially coming from cities in Chile, Peru, Ecuador and Guatemala). According to Wikipedia, Buenos Aires is 89% white (Houston is 54% white for comparison). We understood then why so many people mistook us for Argentinians in other South American countries. We soon found many people asking us for directions and the time (they thought we were locals!).

Then we took note of the public services. It seems like the city’s public services have a bare minimum operating and funding policy. For example, the trash. The trash on the street amasses each day until the very day when a normal person first seriously considers, “Ok, that’s it. I’m moving back to the country.” That night, gangs of trucks, men and boys come out and rummage through the trash till morning. The trucks are of various makes and years (1970’s Mercedes for example) and the men and boys look like they’re dressed for a street soccer game. The result of the operation is that most of the trash is removed from the streets. There are other examples that involve transportation, police and signage but I think the trash alone will suffice.

My best guess is that this perceived bare minimum policy for public services is due to the Argentinian economic collapse in 2001.

The people….The people here seem to treat each other very equally (except for objects like women and gays of course). There seems to be much less class tension and feelings of superiority/inferiority than in other Latin American countries. Maybe the lack of racial diversity contributes to this, I don’t know, but the result is that people treat each other fairly. I really appreciated this. They love meat and salt as most everyone knows. They don’t care much for picante (no black pepper at the table, and no other peppers back in the kitchen at many places). At times while walking the crowded streets, at like 10 AM on a Tuesday, one might wonder, “Why aren’t these people at work?” Then one might take a closer look and think, “It doesn’t look like these people have had a full time job for quite some time.” They seem very happy though. In other words, minimal or null work (income) does not seem to be reducing their quality of life. I guess that’s where the point of diminishing returns is for many Argentinians. I’m speaking of perceptions, generalizations and averages of course.

So there you have it. Obviously not love at first sight, but you might ask…was there love at all? There was love. We found the places that we sought to find, and were able to piece together a hypothetical good and happy life here. As with many new and/or foreign places, though, there comes a person or a group of people that can shock a city or town into life for a newcomer. This person or group can turn idle or dismal regard into a profound and lifelong affection for a place, its time and its people. We never expected to find something so special in under four weeks but we did guess and hope that we would find an affinity to seek it here. And find it, in our time here, we did not. Instead we’re hearing songs and reading old love letters from our sweethearts (NYC, Chicago, San Francisco, Tel Aviv), our flings (Zurich, Berlin, Paris, Austin) and, of course, our mistress (Houston).

Nevertheless Sheer and I had a lot of fun running around this very crazy, very special and very big city.

Sheer dancing in the middle of Avenida 9 de Julio.

For now, we have cold caipirinhas and beautiful Brazilian beaches on the horizon.