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.