Buenos Aires

A romantic city of tango, soccer, architecture, it is loud, busy, and full of people (13,000,000 to be exact). We arrived in Buenos Aires again after our great excursion to Uruguay, ready to see what everyone was talking about. We took the subway from the port to the apartment that we had decided to rent. Unfortunately, John had forgotten to ask what floor the apartment, so we had to go and hunt down a computer to find out what floor it was on. After we figured it out, we went up and met who we think was the owner´s girlfriend, who showed us around the apartment. There was 7 bedrooms, a large living room and an eat-in kitchen. The building seemed old, we thought from the 1920´s but the Dutch couple we met there seemed to think that it was a remake from the 60´s that just looked old.

We had a nice little balcony overlooking the street below us. Later that night, we found out why having a balcony on the street maybe wasn´t such a good idea. Buenos Aires is one of the loudest cities in the world and not just by my opinion, it´s been scientifically proven. Anyway, after a few days, I discovered that the pigeons had decided to use the planter on our balcony as a nest and we had two ugly little pigeon babies, "squabs," if you will, filling our balcony with poop. We decided to leave them as they were just babies, even if they were adding to the already high pigeon population.

Outside of the apartment, we lived off of one of the busiest roads in the city center, this made it easy to get just about anywhere in the city that we would want to go, especially with a "subte" or subway stop about a block from the apartment. Our first day we explored around and had our valentine´s dinner at a vegetarian restaurant, since we were a little carne-d out. It was ok. Apparently vegearian means devoid of spices and flavor as well, which is too bad, since our food had good potential. In terms of architecture in the area we had a mini Washington monument in the center of the square at the end of our street. It was strange since Argentines supposedly have something against the USA for whatever reason, yet they copied the Post Office in NYC and the Capitol to a T... oh well. One thing that they do really well down here is ice cream. We tried the oldest creamery in the city which was good, but the gruff old waiters are a little off-putting. So the next night we decided to try another recommened ice cream place, Cadore which had the best ice cream I have ever had. During our month long stay we tried nearly every flavor they had, which is pretty difficult since they change them often.

In terms of sight-seeing, we went to La Boca, the working class area of the city where we saw all of the colorful houses and got scammed for a tango show lunch. It wasn´t too bad though.

We also went to two different soccer games, first River Plate, the team in the rich suburbs of Buenos Aires where we sat in assigned seats, and then a Boca Juniors game, where we sat in the popular section with all the locals. Both were interesting experiences, but I still prefer a good American football game over them.

We also saw the cemetary in Recoleta, modeled after the giant cemetary in Paris, it had enormous, elaborate mausoleums for the most elite Argentines. Supposedly it is the ultimate show of money and prestige as with enough money you can buy an expensive house in a posh area of Buenos Aires, but you can´t get in the the Recoleta cemetary unless you have some sort of great family connections. Most of the mausoleums are impressive, but there are quite a few that have fallen into disrepair since the families can no longer afford the upkeep due to the tightened financial situations since 2001. There were also a few that had been pilaged and defiled; there´s something creepy about seeing human bones outside of the coffin they´re supposed to be in, I´m sure someone is walking around with a curse on their heads right now.

In terms of museums, we went to the Malba, the modern art museum of Buenos Aires and the Holocaust museum. The Malba was one of those modern art museum, the kind you walk through and think, I could´ve created that if I had had access to as much drugs as they did. One of the exhibits consisted of a juice box that had been painted with puff-paint and mini-bows. That was it. I´m not really sure what kind of message or social injustice the artist could argue it stood for. My other favorite consisted of a video of a group of naked young men running around on a beach, tripping each other, rolling around and then running again. Every so often, they would sit down for a rest then start all over again. For 30 minutes. I think I watched for 5. Maybe I´m not cut out for that art, but I also get the feeling you may need to be in a psychologically altered state to understand any of it.

The Holocaust museum was moving, but small, it basically consisted of a wall of pictures of Argentine Holocaust survivors and their stories. While all of them were sad there were a few that were really bad as they had come ot Argentina to escape the war or after the war only to have more of their family members killed or "disappeared" during the military regime.

The parks in Buenos Aires are many and usually beautiful, with lots of trees. My personal favorite was the Rosedahl (rosedal?), the rose gardens of the city. There are hundreds of different roses, all gorgeous, my only complaint is that you can´t get close enough to the flowers or the "Rose nazis" will blow their whistles at you and make you get off the grass, stop touching the flowers, get off the tree, etc (I only got yelled at for putting my hand on the grass to balance while smelling a flower). There´s also a Japanese garden which is pretty, with native Japanese plants and flowers, HUGE coy, and a few funny looking ducks.

Buenos Aires is an interesting place with a huge mix of people. There are some of the richest people on the continent living along side some of the poorest. Since the collapse of the Argentine economy in 2001, unemployment is still very high, though less than the 25% it was in 2002. At sundown, once everyone has put out their trash for the evening, the "trash-pickers" come out. They go through the trash looking for empty bottles and other recycleables. The number of them is astonishing, apparently even to Argentines. There´s also the issue of begging. At our subway stop there was a woman that would wait at the bottom of the stairs on the way to the platform and beg for money while she had her children stand by the ticket counter and ask people for the change from their tickets. There are also lots of children, usually between the ages of 6 & 10 that travel from subway line to subway line juggling or selling little cards that look like the kind you buy for valentine´s day when you´re a little kid. Everyone I have talked to or everything I have read says don´t give money to them since it just perpetuates the begging and the parents using their kids for sympathy and money. It is sad though. You don´t really realize that their normal children ´til someone gives them a caramel and they sit down eat it exactly the same as any other kid would.
While I´m on the subject of children... the children of Argentina are very ill-behaved. It´s as though the parents just let them get away with anything because they´re children and they´ll magically grow out of being brats. Wrong. It just allows them to grow up with the notion that one day they will become some super diva or athlete or something. So for the time being they get away with completely ignoring their parents, hitting their parents, and screaming with crocodile tears whenever they don´t get whatever it is that they want. I suppose you can´t really blame them, it´s honestly poor parenting.

All in all Buenos Aires is a beautiful, amazing city that everyone should visit for at least a week at least once in their lives.

Hope everyone is doing well and sorry for the delay on the blog, I got a little lazy again.
Love and miss you all!
<3
Lauren