¿Cachai? con Kristin: Buenos Aires

Hola a todos! Thanks for sticking with me as I blog my way through South America. I realize my last post was a bit rushed, so I am going to embrace Chilean culture with this one and take my sweet time. First, to catch you up, I am now in my second week of classes at FEN and I’m settling in here in Chile. But now, let’s rewind back to where we left off.

A couple weeks ago, I was enjoying Buenos Aires and all it has to offer. To be completely honest, I was afraid that I liked Buenos Aires too much! As we roamed around the city, taking in the sights and sounds and flavors, part of me was enjoying everything immensely and another part of me was increasingly nervous that I would not like Santiago as much and would always compare it to Buenos Aires. Fortunately, I’ve now had equal time in Santiago and I can happily report that this is not the case. Santiago has plenty of sights and sounds of its own. I may need some help with the flavors, but more on that later.

I want to give a quick run-through of my time in Buenos Aires and everything I loved so much about it, partially for my own memory’s sake. As I mentioned last time, we arrived on a Friday and spent some time waiting outside our plane, just casually on the runway. I immediately noted how lax Argentina is about immigration and customs, at least compared to Chile. Case in point, we all paid a hefty reciprocity fee online to enter, and had our printed confirmations ready and waiting to be checked at immigration. But did anyone check the fees? Of course not! This is Argentina! But do not fear, the fees finally came in handy to reenter Argentina after our day trip to Uruguay. And are there dogs sniffing luggage in Argentina like in Chile? In my experience, no, there were not. It does make sense that Chile is stricter with its customs seeing as It is more geographically isolated (by deserts in the north, the Andes in the east, glacial regions in the south, and the Pacific on the west) and has more species that are unique to Chile and as yet unharmed by invasive species. Anyway, we finally made it out of the airport with enough money exchanged to pay for the taxi that Mabel, our Airbnb host, helped set up for us. We ended Friday by getting extremely lost and calling it a night early to plan for our week, and I’m glad we did because our planning really came in handy.

On Saturday, we had an amazing day full of good food and adventure. We walked to Plaza Serrano in Palermo and admired the handicrafts and clothing for sale before settling into the outdoor seating of a very cute restaurant called Querida Gonzalez for lunch, where I tried my first mate and our saint of a waitress taught me how to prepare it. Yierba mate is a strong, bitter green tea packed into a gourd or mate and sipped through a bombilla, a silver straw that filters the leaves. This first time, I tried it dulce, or with sugar, but by the end of the trip, I was drinking my mate amargo as it should be! I love the mate culture of Argentina and Uruguay. A person will carry around a thermos of hot water and a packed mate of yierba all day or all morning and will keep refilling it and sharing it with family and friends, all drinking from the same bombilla. There are many traditions that go into mate, from passing it in a certain direction to heating the water to a certain temperature. It is very cool to watch the locals drink their mate in parks and on the streets. Later in the day, we joined a free (with propina) walking tour of the city. We opted for the aristocratic tour (which we lovingly dubbed the bougie, or bourgeoisie tour), where we made friends with other foreigners, saw many palaces, parks, and monuments, learned about the history of the city and the country, and finally received a recommendation for the best ice cream in the world (I mean…. In Buenos Aires…)! Seriously, if you are ever in Buenos Aires, try the dulce de leche sabor de helado at Freddo. Fun fact: Freddo also delivers. If there is one thing I am sad that we did not do in Argentina, it is order delivery Freddo. Saturday ended in the true porteño (Bs As local) way, by having a dinner reservation at 9:30, staying at the restaurant until midnight, and going out at 2AM. Dinner was right across the street from our Airbnb at a Resto Bar (restaurant that turns into a bar after midnight) called Peron Peron, and the entire restaurant is basically a giant shrine to Evita, which just so happens to also serve good food.

On Sunday, we went to the Feria San Telmo, where I couldn’t help but purchase two handmade mates and a bombilla! We had brunch of croissants, or medialunas, near there, and then had lunch on Florida Street. Unfortunately, this was the first time that I did not give my whole vegetarian spiel to a server (Soy vegetariana, no puedo comer ni carne ni pollo, etc, etc). There didn’t seem to be any need for this spiel, since all I ordered was spinach pizza with white sauce. But no! Of course spinach pizza isn’t vegetarian, of course it comes with ham! Am I the only one perplexed by this? Anyway, I ended up with a vegetable sandwich and the important lesson to always ask if something is vegetarian, no matter how obviously vegetarian it seems. Also, while I am on the topic of ordering in restaurants, I’ll discuss my other restaurant-related culture shocks. In South America, you seat yourself. If you stand around and wait for a host to seat you, you the run the risk of making everyone present look very uncomfortable. Also, don’t expect drinks to come before the meal unless you specify. Even water! And speaking of water, unless you are a fan of carbonated water, you should specify that you want agua sin gas. And finally, separate checks are not at all a thing in this hemisphere from what I can tell. Maybe for these reasons, we decided to cook for ourselves Sunday night. Well, until we realized that the lighter to light the gas stove no longer worked, at which point I suggested Chinese delivery. But the Chinese delivery took over an hour longer than our confirmation stated, and by the time it came, a new lighter was purchased and the pasta was made. But it’s fine, it was quite the adventure and we had plenty of Chinese in the fridge that came in handy in the next few days.

Monday was probably my favorite day in the country. We took a taxi to El Caminito in La Boca to take photos and be touristy. Our taxi driver was hilarious and told us all the phrases he knows in English, most of which sounded like they probably came from The Sopranos, and he sang along to all of the music on his playlist. Most humorously, he sang Walk Like an Egyptian, and pronounced it like “Eshypshin.” Interestingly, this was the same day that we had two other sheismo incidents, which my Phonetics & Pronunciation class at USC luckily helped prepare me for. Basically, the main difference in the accent in Argentina is the use of the “sh” sound in words that incorporate “j” or “ll.” So when one of us ordered cebolla on a sandwich, the reaction was confusion and then “oh! Cebosha!” and when one us ordered vainilla ice cream, the Freddo workers actually did not understand until one of us said “vainisha.” Though I knew about this phenomenon, I had no idea that it would actually inhibit Argentine people’s understanding of those who do not have this accent. Nor did I realize how weird it would be to say “asha” in Chile after I got used to saying it in place of “alla.” Fortunately, other than the sheismo, it was very easy to communicate with people in Argentina, so we got some good practice there and grew more comfortable speaking Spanish before delving into the Chilean accent, which isn’t just one thing, but everything. I digress. El Caminito was gorgeous and then we went to Recoleta Cemetery. Believe me, a cemetery is not my idea of a good time, but this one was worth visiting. On Monday night, we went to a steel drum band concert, Bomba del Tiempo, and were surrounded by many other foreigners and lots of very hip porteños, which I have to admit made me feel pretty cool by association, and the music and dancing were incredible. Another anecdote of the lax “rules” in Argentina—posted all over this venue were signs saying No Fumar, but the majority of the crowd was smoking. We decided to use a flier we were given at the entrance of Bomba del Tiempo to get in free to an after party and Bahrein, a really cool place that played a good mix of old American pop music and new reggaeton. By the way, Buenos Aires never sleeps. I’m convinced. Our fliers allowed free entrance before 1AM and we were actually some of the first people there. And when we left, people were still waiting to enter.

On Tuesday, the highlights were a personal tour of Museo Bellas Artes and seeing Puerto Madero at night. Of course, we did not realize we would get a personal museum tour, and actually the main reason we wanted to tour the museum was to practice Spanish comprehension, but our tour guide loved showing off and speaking to us in English, so we made the most of the experience anyway. This is a common theme. Whenever we most want to practice Spanish, we end up speaking English. So many people in Buenos Aires seem to know English, and out of pride or curiosity, they want to speak it with tourists. Our most authentic language experiences usually happened to be with taxi drivers.

On Wednesday we had our day trip to Colonia del Sacramento, Uruguay. Colonia is a gorgeous, historic little town, and most of it is an untouched UNESCO World Heritage site. In Colonia, we climbed a lighthouse, had many lovely photo opportunities, and alternated between walking and sitting, whether in parks, on docks, or at restaurants. I highly recommend going to Colonia, but I do not recommend spending the whole day there unless you really enjoy leisurely vacationing. If I go back to Uruguay, I will make a point to go to Montevideo, and I really want to because the Uruguayan people are so nice and welcoming. We never once had to wait to cross a street in Uruguay because drivers would stop and wave us on, no matter what. Compared to Buenos Aires, we were sometimes afraid to cross streets even at red lights, and where we had fun counting the red lights that our taxi drivers ran, this was a nice change of pace. My other recommendation is to wait until you are in Buenos Aires to purchase your ferry boat tickets to Uruguay. That way, you can opt out if rain is in the forecast. It rained on our way back to Buenos Aires, and let’s just say I could have lived without the experience of spending an hour on a boat that I was convinced would tip over.

On Thursday, we spent time at the gorgeous Rosedal of Bosques de Palermo, a huge flower garden complete with an island. Then, we went to MALBA and took in the exquisite Latin American art exhibits there. On Thursday night, we managed to get our names on a list to get into what is supposedly a very cool place to spend Thursday nights. But once we got in and got over the initial enthusiasm of being on a list, we soon realized that everyone there was extremely rude to us. This is interesting because we were warned before coming to Buenos Aires that people there might be rude and unhelpful to tourists (of course, the people of Chile and Argentina don’t like each other, so we took this with a grain of salt). This warning was not the case for us at all, until our very last night there. As a whole, the people of Buenos Aires were extremely friendly and helpful. But I think it’s actually a good thing that our last night there wasn’t as great as the others, because it helped make it feel like it was time to move on to our next adventure (in Chile, po)! And on Friday morning, we flew “home.”

Since this post has already grown longer than I had anticipated, and because I need to go to class soon, I promise to post again soon about my new home in Chile and the experiences I have had here so far! Nos vemos.