Here We Go Again - Food in Buenos Aires

Somebody once told me that this blog tends to read like a food blog at times rather than a travel blog.  What can I say?  I love food.  My increasing waistline is a living testament to this.  Since I don’t really have anything else to talk about at the moment with respect to my stay in Argentina, I decided to take some photos of food and do an entry on that topic.

In order to prolong my trip here, and because I know what I like and how I like it, I tend to eat the vast majority of my meals at home.  Without significant cooking skills, this leads me to eat rather simple items.  This was especially true in the beginning while I was getting used to my kitchen and the items that I could find in the grocery stores.

If you know anything about me and you know anything about Argentina, you know how this starts.  Steak.  I think I had steak every day during my first three weeks here.  That’s slowed down a little bit to about four or five times a week, but I’m still eating lots of steak.  My favorite cut is the Ojo de Bife (Rib Eye) because it’s tender, tasty and you can eat the whole thing.  I’ve never had anything left on my plate after a meal.  My back-up cut is the Bife de Chorizo (New York Strip), which also is fantastic.  I have tried the Bife de Angosto, which is another strip steak, though one that has an attached bone.  It’s cheaper than the others but not as good and probably not even cheaper once you factor in the weight of the bone.

 Another staple in my diet has been dulce de leche.  Dulce de leche is a spreadable caramel food that is often used here for baking or a topping for other sweet items.  Personally, I like to put it on toast with a little butter.

I have also had my fair share of empanadas.  Empanadas here remind me of mini-calzones.  They are stuffed pastries that can be filled with nearly anything.  Empanadas de carne probably are the most popular but the best empanadas that I’ve had have been cebolla y queso (onion and cheese).  At one restaurant that I had empanadas, the cebolla y queson empanada had various types of cheese, including blue cheese.  I’m getting hungry just writing about it.

Empanadas at home got a whole lot better after I discovered an American-type hot sauce that is sold here at the feria de San Telmo on Sundays.  The sauce is called La Boca Roja and is made by two American ex-pats.  They are musicians and make a jalapeño-based hot sauce on the side for funds.  Finding them has made a lot of the foods that I’ve had here better.

Another Argentine specialty that I’ve fallen in love with here are alfajors.  Alfajors are made all over the world but they’re a little different from place-to-place.  In Argentina, they tend to be two square cookies with dulce de leche in the middle and dipped in chocolate.  Here, they have alfajores negros and alfajores blancos.  The chocolate ones are the best.

From time-to-time, however, I’ve tried to get some traditional U.S. food into my system as well.  I’ve made some American friends here who have taught me where to find the best taco ingredients, including American cheddar cheese, so I’ve recently gone into the taco-making business.  There are also some restaurants that cater to the American taste bud.  I’ve had good, not great but good, hot wings at a local bar called the Casa Bar.  (Note:  Having returned to CasaBar and having the wings several more times, I'd like to revise my initial review of "good" to "Best hot wings in Latin America.")  Also, a few miles away in Palermo Soho, there is an American breakfast restaurant that has all kinds of American favorites.  It’s called Randall’s and I’ve only been there once.  On that occasion, I had french toast and real, American bacon.  Bacon, sweet bacon.  They also have biscuits and sausage gravy on the menu as well as hot wings, cobb salads and waffles so I expect to be back several more times during the course of my visit.

Okay, now I’m hungry so I’m going to go eat something.  I’ll try to come up with something different to write about next week.

Buenos Aires - Initial Thoughts - Recoleta, Weather

Okay, maybe I should talk a little bit about how and where I’m living in Buenos Aires.  I have a one-bedroom apartment on Calle Azacuenaga in the Recoleta neighborhood of the city.  If you haven’t done it yet, say “Azacuenaga” a few times.  It’s really fun to say.

View from my bedroom window.

For the uninitiated, Recoleta is a pretty nice part of Buenos Aires, located in the northeast part of the city.  It’s relatively nice and rather clean.  Clean in the sense that there is much less dog poop on the sidewalks and those said sidewalks are much less cracked and dilapidated.  There are lots of cafés in the neighborhood and the architecture of this area in particular is one of the reasons that Buenos Aires has a reputation as being the most European city in South America.

In order to save money, and because I know what I like, I cook at home for the majority of my meals.  The location of my apartment is ideal for this because there is a tiny grocery store a few doors down from my apartment, a mid-size grocer across the street, and two large grocery stores within two blocks of my apartment.  They are all great for certain things, though my favorite place to go for steaks still is the Carrefour on Avenida de Santa Fe, which is about a half-mile from home.

My kitchen.  Small but
functional.

Grocery prices here, at least in relation to grocery prices in the United States, depend completely on what you are seeking.  Of course, Argentina is famous for its delicious and cheap beef.  The steaks here are just as good as I recall from my trip here in 2009, but they are also more expensive.  After using NASA scientists to do the peso/kilo to dollar/pound conversions, I’ve been able to determine that my favorite steaks (Ojo de Bife) come in at around $4.95/lb.  That’s about 30% higher than two years ago but still gives me a big hunk of some of the best steak that I’ve ever had for under $3. 

If you’re seeking other items, however, it’s best to keep an open eye at the prices.  First of all, and clearly, items that I was used to in the United States, especially name brands, are much more expensive in Buenos Aires.  For example, a 1.5-liter bottle of Coke Zero costs around $2.10.  (For comparison, a 2-liter bottle in the U.S. costs around $1.29.)  A large bottle of Tabasco sauce here runs about $17.  This is all fine, though, because generally, there are Argentine substitutes for these products that are much cheaper and sometimes even better.  I’ve become a big fan of Ser and H20, diet fruit-flavored sodas that cost about $1.30 for a 1.5-liter bottle.

My tiny living room.

The weather here has taken some getting used to because I’m not accustomed to winter in July.  Still, winter in Buenos Aires isn’t as bad as winter back home.  This week has been very mild, with highs around 18 C (64 F) and lows around 10 C (50 F).  Next week, however, is supposed to go back to more normal winter temperatures for the area with highs around 12 C (54 F) and lows around 4 C (39 F).

The cold limits the time that I want to spend outside walking around, but it doesn’t stop me.  I’ve been around to several neighborhoods in the city, in part because I was trying to find a location for my next apartment beginning at the end of August.  After looking around at prices and neighborhoods, I’ve decided to stay in Recoleta, at least for the time being.  I still find it to have the best bang for the buck in Buenos Aires.

That’s enough thoughts for now.  I’ll choose some other topics for next week’s entry.

Twenty-Four Hour, Four Country World Tour

It seems kind of weird adding to this blog from Buenos Aires.  Generally, this has been a “travel blog” and when I am in one place for a long time, it doesn’t really feel like traveling anymore.  Especially when I’m not doing much along the lines of touristy stuff or taking many photos.  For example, when I spent two months in Madrid last summer, I don’t think I had a single post for this blog.  Nevertheless, I am going to try to update this blog weekly or so, just so it doesn’t get too stale.

The first entry from this adventure should be about the 24-hour world tour that was my flight here.  In addition to all of the time required, it covered four flights, five airports and four countries.  It started on USAir from Raleigh to Philadelphia and then Air Canada from Philadelphia to Toronto to Santiago (Chile) to Buenos Aires.  The whole trip seemed doomed to fail from even before the beginning.  Four of the five days before my trip began, Ezeiza Airport in Buenos Aires had been closed due to an ash cloud from a Chilean volcano that had been affecting air traffic both in South America and Australia.  It was scheduled to reopen the afternoon that I left the States and I could only hope that it would remain open the next day when I arrived.

On top of the troubling air above my destination, not literally on top, I received an e-mail while I was on my way to the airport that all customer service personnel for Air Canada within Canada were going on strike on the day of my flight.  The e-mail strongly recommended printing tickets and checking in at home prior to getting to the airport.  It would have been very helpful advice had I received before I was in the car to the airport.  Thanks for your help, Air Canada!!!

In Raleigh, I was able to get tickets printed to Philadelphia and to Toronto.  I was going to be on my own after that.  Since it was in Toronto where I would not be able to find any help, I was a little concerned.  In Philadelphia, however, I was able to get the rest of my tickets printed from Air Canada customer service since the strike only affected those workers actually (not) working in Canada.

Now, my luck on international flights has been pretty hit-and-miss.  Sometimes, I have entertainment options, sometimes I have a big screen in the middle of the cabin with a movie playing in a foreign language, sometimes I get the dulcet tones of the person snoring next to me and nothing else.  On my flight from Toronto to Santiago, I hit the proverbial jackpot.  I had lots of movies and television shows from which to choose.  My seat was in the very back row, so I couldn’t recline, but a few Tylenol PM and a well-timed valium made sure that I got plenty of sleep on the flight.  The only downside of the entire flight was at around 1:00 am, when I noticed on the flight map that we were flying over North Carolina and I considered the fact that twelve hours after my voyage began, I was flying over where it started.  It was a little disheartening.  The things we do for cheap flights . . .

Getting off of the plane in Santiago, I saw a Burger King and a Dunkin’ Donuts and immediately became famished.  The airplane food was okay . . . but it was airplane food.  Unfortunately, I didn’t have any Chilean currency and there didn’t seem to be any reason to track any down in the mere 45-minutes that I would be in the airport.  I checked the flight board and saw that flights were, in fact, going to Buenos Aires.  The ash cloud had lifted!!!  I re-boarded the plane and made my way to Argentina.

Immigration and customs in Ezeiza Airport is pretty easy.  After paying the entrance fee of $140 to get past immigration, I found customs to be pretty much non-existent.  I had hired a car to pick me up at the airport and take me to my apartment in Recoleta.  It gave me about 45-minutes to practice my Spanish just before moving into my new home.

That’s enough for now.  I’ll talk about other things in the next post.

Buenos Aires - Passing Thoughts

As I write this, I’m sitting on the balcony of my room at the Grand Pyramids Hotel in Cairo, Egypt. It’s about 65 degrees outside and it’s pretty pleasant. Before I start writing about Egypt, however, I wanted to do one last post about Buenos Aires. If I decide to do a post about the TEFL class that I took, it’ll be two last posts because that experience deserves a post all to itself. That can wait, though. My main concern with my dearth of entries on Argentina is that I am not going to have as much to look back on as I do in other countries because I was so busy and having too much fun to post regularly. So, for this final post, I think that I’m just going to set out observations in bullet point fashion in order to remind of these things later on. Then, I’ll move on to Egypt. Then, maybe, TEFL, but that can still wait.

- * People in Buenos Aires: For the most part the people were very friendly. The ones that I met in the TEFL class (this isn’t the TEFL post) were absolutely wonderful. The vast majority of the people I met spoke no or very little English, but most were very patient and helpful as long as I attempted my broken Spanish with them. I noticed some occasional anti-American sentiments directed toward me (since I didn’t really hide the fact that I am one) but probably not as much as I did in Europe, overall.

- * Grocery Stores: One of the things that I love to do when I go someplace new is to check out the grocery stores. After I moved into my second apartment, I went grocery shopping almost every day in BsAs. One thing I noticed was the entire aisle dedicated to various fruit cakes. I had heard that they love them some fruit cakes in Argentina, but I still have to attribute the volume on it being the Christmas season. Another thing I noticed was that milk, yogurt and other similarly liquefied items were sold in bags. This left me with two assumptions: 1) that it must be much cheaper to pack items in plastic bags than in plastic jugs (why else do it?), and 2) people must be cutting the corners of these items and refilling some container with milk (how else could you store it?). The big thing you notice, of course, is the prices. As long as you buy Argentine items, the prices are phenomenally low. Once you start buying imported (American) items, the prices become much closer to American prices, though still a little lower. One exception to the price rule is ramen, which I noticed was about 150% more expensive (50 cents a pack) than in the United States. I can’t explain.

- * Spanish-Speaking Bias: I actually thought this was funny. I went to a website to price a ferry trip from Argentina to Uruguay. The site was in Spanish, but I could make out most of it – or at least the price. I clicked on the “English” button, and the site was translated into English – and the price was translated into 20% more than it had been in Spanish. I place this piece of information in the “Good to Know” file.

- * Oh, there’s so much more . . . the people walking down the street walking twenty dogs at a time . . . the way every doorway in Buenos Aires seemed to have some guy standing in it; not always the same guy, but some guy . . . the way the chain of convenient stores boasting “open 25 hours” were often closed (as Steven Wright would say, “we are open 25 hours, but not in a row”) . . . the steak was so good . . . the bread was so bad . . . I heard that this spring was milder than normal, but the temperatures were so perfect in November and December, but it rained too much, which I also heard was not normal.

That’s it for now. I fear I may have waited too long to write this entry because I feel like there’s so much I’m forgetting, though I hope that much of it was covered in earlier posts. Of course, TEFL wasn’t , but that can still wait.

Buenos Aires - It Ain't Perfect, But It Ain't Bad

While I’m stuck here in my epic seven-hour layover in Miami, it seems like a good idea to crank out a few more entries about Buenos Aires. Let’s see . . . where was I when we last left off. This time I think I’ll talk about a couple topics briefly.

Topic Six – Driving

Okay, I haven’t driven a car since 1997 and that didn’t change in Buenos Aires, but I can mention a few things here. The streets here are busy twenty hours a day. I guess this is sort of highlighted by the only nineteen-lane road I’ve ever seen – Avenida 9 de Julio. And the lights that are used to direct traffic are little more than suggestions and respected little more than as such. That goes for both drivers and pedestrians. Both go whenever they feel there’s at least a 50-50 chance that they can make it through unscathed. In the defense of the people on the street here, with all of the insane activity on the streets, I only saw one bad accident, which occurred when a cab driver hit a motorcyclist right outside of my bedroom window one afternoon. Other than that everybody made it through with little worse than a few frayed nerves.

Topic Seven – Argentine Women

¡Dios mío!

Topic Eight – Cleanliness

How do I put this. Cleanliness isn’t exactly the top priority in Buenos Aires. First off, there is dog crap everywhere. Before you come to Buenos Aires, you will be warned about it, but the warnings will not properly prepare you for the amount that you’ll find. I saw a few people picking up after their pets but I saw many more that weren’t. It makes any walk of a block or more like an obstacle course through a stinky mine field.

Also, the level of cleanliness in the streets isn’t as high as it is in, say, Detroit. (Note: Sarcasm) It’s pretty damn bad. I’ve seen people toss empty cigarette packs into the street while standing within touching distance of a trash can. The city seems to do a good job of cleaning up and not letting it get too far out of hand, but it is much different from what I saw in Europe.

Topic Nine – The Night

Okay, before it sounds like I’m bashing Buenos Aires, let me change the subject because I really do love the city. One of my favorite things in Buenos Aires is the night life. Since a four-meal- a-day diet is fairly typical here, the last one takes place pretty late. It was not uncommon for me to go out for dinner around 10:00 or 10:30 and be turned away because the place was filled to capacity. And these aren’t mega-hot spots that I’m talking about. They’re just run-of-the-mill restaurants. I’ve gone to dinner as late as 1 a.m. and never had a problem finding restaurants still serving a full menu.

Another beautiful feature of the long nights here is the late happy hours. I don’t recall ever seeing a place in Washington that had a happy hour lasting until 11 p.m., but that’s fairly typical here. It makes sense since people don’t go out until much later here, but it still took me by surprise.

There are tons of places in Buenos Aires open all night. It’s not quite New York, but it’s really not far from it in that particular respect. There were quite a few nights when I go home after 7 a.m. The morning just sneaks up on you here because places are full so late into the night/early into the morning that you just don’t realize that you’ve reached the wee hours.

Okay, that’s all I’ve got for now. I’m going to move around the airport and might write something else for another posting in a little bit. I figure another few entries about Argentina and then we’ll be ready for Egypt in January.

Buenos Aires - Mis Clases de Castellano

Topic #5 - Mis Clases de Castellano

Este artículo va a ser breve porque no saben lo suficiente castellano para escribir mucho. Tomé clases de español durante cuatro semanas y creo que lo mejor era de cuatro semanas desde que comencé mis vacaciones. Conocí a gente maravillosa y he aprendido mucho.

En cuatro semanas, me tomó 104 horas de clases, 80 con otras personas y 24 de uno-a-uno. En la foto a la izquierda son tres de mis cuatro profesoras. La primera es Rosario, que me enseñó durante dieciséis horas. En el medio está Martina, que me enseñó durante veinte horas. A la derecha está Belén que fue mi profesora por sesenta horas, incluyendo todos los de mi uno-a-uno clases. Todos ellas fueron fantásticas y me gustaba mucho aprender a Hispan Aires (mi escuela).

Además, he hecho buenos amigos en Hispan Aires con los otros estudiantes. En la foto de la izquierda son Lukas y Ingol (creo). Lukas es austríaco y fue en la mayoría de mis clases grandes. Yo no tenía ninguna clase con Ingol, pero lo hizo meterme en una pelea en el bar de Buenos Aires, que tiene que ser bueno para algo. Conocí a muchas otras personas y me gustaría poder hacerlo de nuevo.

De hecho, yo lo haré otra vez, porque tengo la intención de tomar más clases de castellano en Barcelona en junio y julio. Dado que este es probablemente mi artículo sólo en castellano, hasta entonces, espero que te gustaba.

(Nota: He tenido que buscar unos ocho o nueve palabras de este en Google, así que todavía tenemos mucho también aprender.)

Buenos Aires - Mis Amigos

My trip to Argentina has been very different from my trip to Europe in many respects, obviously. The best thing about staying in one place in long is the ability to develop relationships.

Topic #4 – Mis Amigos.

My hit-and-run trip to Europe had its up sides and its down sides. Among the up sides was that I was able to visit a lot of different places and see and experience a lot of different things. For what I wanted from northern/central Europe, it was an ideal way to travel. The down side, however, was that I was in no location for more than five days at a time. This limited the depth in which I could explore or understand any particular place or culture. It also limited the friendships I could make. While I did meet some cool people and had some good times with folks in Europe, there wasn’t time to do much more than meet for a time or two and move on.

In Argentina, being here for quite a while, I’ve had a much better opportunity to meet people from all over the world and to make friends. I’ll talk about my Spanish class in another post (maybe in Spanish if I’m feeling up to it), but let me introduce you to some of my new friends.

The big, bald guy in the picture to the left is Lukas. He’s an electrical something-or-other from Austria. As you might imagine from a big Austrian, he liked to drink. He was in my group classes the entire four weeks I was in Spanish classes, often it was just the two of us, so we got to know each other pretty well and hung out in various bars as I tried to teach him about various American sports, including the World Series. He is currently in Cordoba and is planning to head up through South America, Central America and to finish his trip in the United States. Hopefully, we’ll meet again because he is a great guy.

The guy in the glasses in Ingol, or something like that. He’s German and doesn’t speak English. That was fine because it gave us both the opportunity to practice our Spanish since it was the only way we could communicate. The last time I saw him was in the Casa Bar in Buenos Aires as I was pulling some Argentine dudes off of him as they were stomping him into the floor. I have no idea how the fight started. I just heard a commotion and turned around and saw Ingol fall to the floor then a couple of guys start kicking him. We were able to calm the Argentine dudes down long enough for Ingol to be dragged out of the bar. I heard through Lukas that Ingol is fine and was too drunk to remember how the fight started. It’s probably a good thing he doesn’t remember how the fight ended.

The young guy is Eduardo who is an English and Spanish teacher in Brazil. He was only down in Buenos Aires for a week to brush up on his Spanish. It was his first ever trip out of Brazil and we sort of adopted him so he would have some people to hang out with while he was here. He was a good kid, but I’m sure I bored him some since I am too old to be interested in the night club scene in Buenos Aires any more. Just be assured, though, that there is somebody in Belo Horizonte telling stories of this mysterious American with long, grey hair who talked more about soccer than a typical Brazilian.

My second class still is in its relative infancy, though I have met some really good people in that class, as well. Last week, we had a nice Thanksgiving dinner of steak and creamed broccoli (only two of the five are Americans) and shared some mate, which was a first for me. Clockwise from bottom are Ben (England), Nigel (England), Katie (Austria), Carmen (United States) and me. Hopefully, more friendships will develop and will help to make my trip to Argentina one of the most memorable of my life.

Buenos Aires - Alimento

If you’re going to stay anywhere for any extended length of time, what you are going to eat and where you are going to eat it becomes an important consideration. The one thing I heard most about with respect to Argentine food before I got here was that the beef was some of the best in the world. With that introduction, we move on to the next topic.

Topic # 3 – Food in Argentina

Steak: Yes, the beef is good. In fact, it’s far superior to anything that I had during my trip to northern and central Europe. It’s not quite up there with Kobe beef, but it’s good. In fact, I can’t say that it’s significantly better than the steak you get in good restaurants in the United States. The big difference, however, is that it is always good here. Always. I’ve had steaks in nice restaurants in Buenos Aires that I had to pay a pretty penny for ($15) and bife de chorizo (New York Strip) in smaller, more native restaurants that were cheaper ($4 - $6) and no matter where I’ve had it, it’s been outstanding. Even when I’ve bought it in the grocery store and brought it home and cooked it myself, I couldn’t ruin it. It’s that consistently good.

Empanadas: Like much of Latin America, you can find these everywhere in Argentina. They come filled with beef or chicken or ham and cheese, or vegetables, or other things. You can get them fried or not fried. Of course, I’ve had mine fried. They were greasy but good. All things considered, though, I’ve had empanadas that were just as good in Washington, D.C.

Sandwiches de Miga: For the uninitiated, Argentines typically eat four meals a day. Breakfast and Lunch are not significantly different here than in the United States and Europe, but there typically is a merienda around 4:00 or 5:00 and cena, which is a bigger meal, around 10:00. The merienda is usually a small meal with coffee and sandwiches de miga, which are thin sandwiches, sometimes toasted, sometimes not, with the crust cut off and various sandwich items between the bread. The few times I’ve had them, I’ve had jamon y queso. Nothing special, but I’ve heard it’s very Argentine, so I thought I’d mention it.

Fast Food: There are very few Argentine fast food chains from what I can tell. I’ve seen Havanna cafes all over the place, but I haven’t visited. From what I’ve seen, thought, they appear to specialize in coffee and small snacks, not unlike Starbucks though with a different atmosphere. There are McDonald’s and Burger Kings everywhere in this city. Also, though it doesn’t quite qualify as fast food, there are Pizzerias on virtually every corner up-and-down the major Avenidas.

Bread: The bread is horrible. I’m not a big fan of bread in the United States, but it’s worse here. If I want more bread, I’ll go back to Europe.

Mate: Pronounced mah-tay. Mate is the national drink of Argentina, as well as Uruguay. It is a caffeinated drink made from mixing dried yerba mate leaves with hot water. Typically, people drink it from a hollowed out gourd through a metal straw called a bombilla. Its taste is similar to Lipton tea, though it is significantly more bitter. Another thing that is typical with mate is that people typically drink it in a small group of friends, passing around the gourd not unlike people pass around a joint. (Or so I’ve been told.) I have, however, seen people drink it on their own as their morning caffeine vehicle of choice.

Beer: Everywhere that I’ve traveled, I’ve found some local beer that reminded me of Miller Light. Since I love me some Miller Light, that’s a good thing. Here, my beer of choice is Quilmes Cristal, which is a light Argentine beer that costs about 90 cents a liter in the grocery store. I’ve tried other Argentine beers, like Palermo, other versions of Quilmes and a few that I can’t recall off the top of my head, but Quilmes Cristal is my favorite. There are also a few European beers that seem particularly popular here like Stella Artois and Heineken. But those cost around $1.30 a liter, so . . .

That’s what I have for food here off the top of my head. I’ll probably write about others in future posts, but that’s it for now.

Buenos Aires - The Observations Finally Begin

Okay, I said that I’d do this over a month ago, so it’s time I go ahead and give some of my Buenos Aires observations. Since I’ve been here for five weeks, there are lots of observations, so I’ll try to write on discrete topics over several posts.

Topic One: Speaking English in Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires is not a very English-friendly city. I haven’t been out of the city yet, but logic suggests that the further out you go into Argentina, the less English-friendly it would get. The good thing about this is that it gives me a lot of opportunities to practice all of the Spanish from my four weeks of classes. Some of my proudest moments have been on the phone with my landlord trying to negotiate through thirty-minute conversations with somebody who doesn’t speak English. Obviously, hand and body gestures don’t work over the telephone so Spanish is essential.

It would have been easy enough to visit here for a few days without speaking Spanish, but I can’t imagine living here for two months without at least a little Spanish. When I was in Europe, everybody spoke English. Even the people who didn’t speak English spoke English. If I couldn’t communicate with somebody, I’d just continue to look sad and try to get away with English until the other person would break down and admit that he spoke at least United-States-Movie-Television-Music-English and helped me out. Here, that technique doesn’t work. At least no more than 25% of the time. The good part of that, though, is that it also works out in my favor sometimes. Whenever somebody speaks to me in Spanish and it doesn’t sound like a conversation I want to get involved in, I can break out my “no hablo” and “no entiendo” and exit immediately.

Topic Two: Living Conditions

The first four weeks I was here, I lived in an apartment on Santa Fe Avenida, close to the Recoleta neighborhood of Buenos Aires, which is one of the better neighborhoods of the city. Though the neighborhood is fantastic, it comes with its own problems. My apartment was shared with between one and four women (it changed from week-to-week) and only had one-and-a-half bathrooms. Needless to say, that caused issues, but those issues were easily resolved and not too painful.

The most annoying part of the apartment was the noise. Buenos Aires is the noisiest city I’ve ever been in. I couldn’t count the times that I was in my first apartment and I looked out the window to see where the plane was landing. I don’t know what type of laws they have here with respect to noise regulation for cars and motorcycles, but they’re inconsistent with those of the rest of the civilized world.

Another problem/benefit is light. It’s light outside by 5:30 in the morning. At the moment, it’s light outside until close to 8:00, and we still have about a month more of the days getting longer here. Obviously, the light in the evening isn’t a problem, but I find myself waking up early here because the apartment is full of light so early in the morning.

Last weekend, I moved into another apartment. It’s a studio apartment, but it’s all mine. It has a small kitchen and I am finally able to cook at home. Eating out isn’t a problem here because everything is so cheap, but when you can buy some of the best New York Strips on the planet at the grocery store for about $4 a pound, you realize the happiness of eating at home. Also, the apartment is on a side street, so it’s a little quieter, though it’s still far from silent.

Perhaps the best thing, however, about the new apartment is that it has a television with about 80 channels. Argentine television is awesome!!! Lots of soccer, with some American sports, lots of movie channels and lots of American television. All of the sports are in Spanish, but that’s fine. The movies and television shows are a mix of Spanish shows, English shows dubbed in Spanish and English shows with Spanish subtitles. The Spanish-dubbed shows are still a little fast for my limited comprehension capabilities but I enjoy watching shows that I’ve seen before that have been dubbed. Last week, I saw A Few Good Men for the tenth time, but the first time in Spanish. Since I already knew most of the dialogue, watching the film in Spanish was very helpful. Also, I find myself learning quite a bit from watching the English shows with Spanish subtitles.

Okay, that’s enough for this entry. I’ll write on other topics in other entries soon. Really.

Adios.

Estoy Triste

I’m sitting in my apartment on a Saturday morning in Buenos Aires. My Spanish class finished up on Friday. My next class starts on Monday, so I have no homework. My internet connection is down, so I can’t play on the web. It’s raining outside and I’m moving to another apartment in two hours, so while I’m sitting here, I thought I’d bring back the blog.

This morning, I’m sad. Four the last four weeks, I’ve been taking Spanish lessons for twenty-six hours a week and I really enjoyed them. I learned a lot, liked the teachers and made friends with some of the students. Now it’s over and everybody is going in separate directions. I’ve got some e-mail addresses and made some Facebook friends, but it’s a four-week period I enjoyed that is now over. On to the next four weeks, I guess.

It also made me think about how weird it must be for the teachers. I spent over sixty hours with one teacher, mostly one-on-one. When you talk with somebody for that long, even if you’re talking slow in broken Spanish, it’s almost impossible not to create a bond. For the teachers, a few of these bonds are created every month and then severed every two, three, four weeks or however long, mostly with people who are leaving the city and never returning.

In a few hours, like I said, I’m moving to a new apartment. I’ll do some grocery shopping, maybe cook at home for the first time in quite a while, and finally (I think) have a television, so maybe I’ll be fortunate and catch some soccer and/or work on my Spanish comprehension. Tomorrow, I will meet some of the people in my second class. That class begins on Monday and the empty place I’m experiencing right now will be filled up with new people, new experiences and new knowledge. I know that I’ll enjoy it (because I tend to enjoy almost everything that isn’t connected with the law) or at least make the best of it if I don’t, but for the next day or so I have a feeling that a mild depression is on the schedule.

Sorry for bringing back the blog on a downer, but I’ve had a great time here in Buenos Aires and my next posts will focus on Happy Sheldon. Hasta luego!!!

Don't Cry For Me: Argentina

Well, I’m back. Sort of. I’m back on the road, but I’m somewhere else – this time, Buenos Aires, Argentina. Since I’m taking classes here, there is a lot less time for touristy stuff, though I’m planning on getting a lot of that in as well. Therefore, there likely will be fewer entries and fewer photos.

Now that I’ve set you up so as to not expect any photos, I’ll go ahead and give you some. Just as long as you’re not expecting any. On my first day in Argentina, the biggest soccer match of the year in South America was taking place in Buenos Aires – Boca Juniors at River Plate. I got here too late, so I missed it, though I’m pretty sure there will be plenty of soccer in my future.

If you think that missing the superclasico would depress me, it did a little bit and I went to a cemetery, but it wasn’t the depression that sent me to the depressing plot of land. It was Evita. Eva Peron is buried in el Cementerio de la Recoleta in Buenos Aires, one of the world’s great necropolises. It is a mostly above-ground cemetery with hundreds of mausoleums dating from the mid-19^th century to the present. I don’t know much about Argentine history, but many of the elite are buried in the Recoleta Cemetery, or so I am told. The only name I recognized was Eva Peron, and her family mausoleum had a crowd around it throughout the entirety of my visit.

After class on Monday, I started roaming around town and found myself in la Plaza de Mayo. The Plaza is the heart, though not the center, of the city. Its most well-known landmark is La Casa Rosada, which translates into the Pink House. La Casa Rosada is the executive office of the government and la Presidente (yes, LA Presidente – Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner), roughly equivalent to a slightly-less colorful building in Washington, D.C. Just in case you were wondering, the house was pink long before Argentina elected a female president.

The other famous landmark in a city that’s not really known all that much for landmarks is the obelisk that sits in the middle of Avenida 9 de Julio. The obelisk, coincidentally known as "the Obelisk," appears to be similar in size to the Washington Monument and is impressive in its own right. What I find more impressive is what is reputedly (I’ve seen conflicting data) the widest street in the world, Avenida 9 de Julio, which is (again conflicting data) 127 m (416 ft) and 18 lanes wide. Just crossing the street is a little bit of a hike. Despite all of the traffic, however, drivers appear to obey traffic laws and the trip across, though it takes a few traffic light cycles, doesn’t appear to be unsafe at all.

That’s it for now. I’ll be back with probably less touristy stuff from time-to-time.

Ciao.