When I left my apartment, the ascensor was conveniently closed for the holiday weekend, so I lugged my suitcase down the hill and found a nearly-empty micro. I met my friend Rachel from Wisconsin at the corner of 3 Norte and Libertad in Viña to await the bus that would take us to Santiago for our flight to Buenos Aires, and we checked in with the driver. Halfway through the trip, the real adventure began--our driver informed us that we would be stopping at an exit to switch buses, due to a mechanical problem that was impeding our progress and making a really annoying humming sound. Luckily, the change didn't compromise our arrival time too much. We had checked in online, so we dropped our baggage off and had a quick lunch, then breezed through the lax Chilean airport security (from the perspective of one conditioned by the Department of Homeland Security...). We were thrilled to discover that we would be traveling in an airplane normally used for transatlantic flights--huge and super comfy. Soon we were settled in enjoying our two-hour flight of luxury: Rach took a nap, while I watched Fight Club.
In no time, we had landed in Buenos Aires, cleared customs (even laxer than Chile), and were wandering the airport around trying to figure out where to board the bus for which we had purchased tickets. The airport is about 30 km outside the city itself, so we still had almost an hour's ride ahead of us. Finally, we arrived at our hostel in downtown BA...only to find out that in fact they didn't have space for us that night. Sooo, they directed us to another place around the corner, where we finally collapsed in exhaustion brought on by a day of traveling and the Argentine heat. I called Sarah and arranged a time and place to meet the following day, then Rachel and I headed out to find dinner and indulge in our favorite Argentine treat--high quality espresso, available on practically every street corner for dirt cheap, courtesy of the prevalent Italian influence in BA. We sketched out a rough plan for the weekend.
First things first--the next morning we partook in that most Argentine of rituals, a visit to the beauty salon next door to our hostel. Argentine women (and men) tend to be basically obsessed with their physical appearances (more on that later) and both of us had been wanting haircuts, so it seemed we were in the right place. An hour later we emerged, sporting trendy bangs. Ready to face the city at last, we explored the Plaza Congreso before successfully taking on the BA metro, called the subte (for subterranean). Sarah was waiting for us at Plaza San Martin, surrounded by an installation of ceramic bears painted by artists from around the world. We admired the bears for a while, then spent the rest of the day walking around the neighborhoods of Recoleta and Palermo Viejo in search of interesting sites, cool stores, and more espresso. We visited an artesan market, saw tango on the street, and ate fresh fruit while baking in the Argentine sun, while Rachel listened patiently to our family-centered banter.
When evening arrived, it was time to experience the notorious BA nightlife. Rachel had made plans with a friend, Belen, who was living in BA going to culinary school (Rachel studied in Punta Arenas, Chile during high school and got to know Belen there). I decided to join Sarah and her friends for an event organized for exchange students. Normally, porteños (people from Buenos Aires) don't even go out until 2:00 am at the earliest.
I returned to the hostel to discover that my friend Rachel hadn't been able to go out--unfortunately, she had gotten sick from something she ate and had had a pretty miserable evening. Luckily, by this point we had befriended all of the artsy college guys from Argentina, Colombia, and Peru who worked/lived at the hostel (yes, yes, it was so difficult). They had kept an eye on Rach while I was gone. The following day we took it easy, mostly hanging around the hostel, relaxing, working on a little homework, and just hanging out. Plans to have dinner with Sarah fell through due to the difficulties in communicating--our Chilean cell phones didn't work in Argentina, Skype refused to recognize her cell number, and the hostel phone service was not reliable. When we finally got in touch it was late, we just decided to get together the following day. Later, Rachel's friend Belen came over and we all watched Machuca, a remarkable movie about an unlikely friendship in the politically polarized atmosphere of 1970s Chile. I gave up before the movie was over (we watched it this week in my culture class, anyway) and headed to bed.
On Monday morning I got up a little early and ate breakfast ("desa-shuuuno," in the lilting, Italian-laced Argentine accent; add energetic large hand gestures for full effect) with the hostel owner and another guest, a woman from Brazil. Afterwards, we popped next door to the salon and got manicures, still taking it easy for Rachel's sake. On to the Argentine obsession with beauty: while getting the manicure, the woman working on my hands suddenly made a motion indicating that she could wax my arms. She looked at me, perfectly-plucked eyebrow cocked under her perfectly-peroxide-bleached-and-flat-ironed hair as if to say, "How about it?" She spoke. "It will look so pretty." Because of course my arms couldn't be pretty with--gasp--a little hair on them. Taken a bit by surprise, I declined politely and we returned to our idle beauty salon small talk, which aside from that incident was very pleasant. This preoccupation with appearances was all too apparent, though, wherever you turned. Sarah's host mom talked disparagingly, if somewhat jokingly, about "gordas" (fat girls), marveling at the ways of one former exchange student who ate peanut butter every day for breakfast. She herself drinks only coffee for breakfast. A lot of women, says Sarah, probably don't have anything. Argentina has extraordinarily high rates of anorexia, as well as plastic surgery. Chilean women are looked down upon because "they don't dress well." Funny, because a couple of things that I love about Chile are the styles of clothing and the fact that they seem to have a more natural form of beauty. They don't mind looking a little imperfect, even a little grungy sometimes. Your hair can be a little messy, and your clothes don't always have to match, you don't have to wear much makeup. It's all part of the charm, and I think it's perfect! The porteños can say whatever they want about my chilenas, because according to my host mom, they themselves are "horrible." Hahaha. No escaping that rivalry.
The day was hot, and Rachel still wasn't feeling great, so we decided to part ways and do our own thing for a while. She headed over to Recoleta to check out a bookstore housed in an old theatre, while I went downtown to experience the famous Plaza de Mayo, surrounded by several important buildings: the Cabildo Historico (former seat of the colonial government), la Casa Rosada (the Pink House, their presidential residence), la Catedral Metropolitana (Metropolitan Cathedral), the City Government of Buenos Aires building, and the Central Branch of the National Bank. The Plaza takes its name from 25 May 1810, the date on which the Revolución de Mayo began, marking Argentina's unofficial declaration of independence from Spain and the birth of the Argentine state in the form of the first Junta de Gobierno.
Today, the Plaza is an important space for civil discourse and protest in Buenos Aires. The Madres de Plaza de Mayo (Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo) are perhaps the most recognized group that gathers there, an association of women formed during the last military government in Argentina in response to the torture, execution, kidnapping, and disappearance of their loved ones at the hands of the dictatorship. Founded in 1977, they still march every Thursday afternoon in protest of these abuses and in support of prosecuting those responsible. Unfortunately, I wasn't there on the right day to have the full experience, but I did spot a few people waving the banner of the Madres. Artwork painted around the Plaza decries state terrorism and commemorates specific people lost to the military regime. It is a sobering place, but it's also quite amazing to see the dedication of this group in their pursuit of justice and human dignity.
After spending some time at the Plaza, I walked through downtown BA, just soaking up the atmosphere and missing the refreshing coastal chilliness of Viña. I was floored all weekend at the sheer space all around me--everything was so BIG! Especially compared to Chile, where we've had to do more with less space, for obvious reasons. Buenos Aires feels busy, brash, and important--as historically it has been, the overbearing center of all things Argentine. I met Sarah at the city's most famous necropolis, the Cementery of Recoleta, where we wandered around, admiring the elaborate sepulchres and seeking out the final resting places of such famed Argentines as Eva Peron and Jorge Luis Borges.
Confession time: I ate some steak in Buenos Aires, though I'm normally a vegetarian. I know that Caitlin (my extremely committed vegetarian sister) will fuss, but I have a few good explanations for my behavior: 1) I was in Argentina, 2) the way they raise cattle is very different from our brutal factory farming methods in the States, 3) it was delicious, and 4) Sarah's host mom, Francis, made me do it. And you just can't say no to Francis. She is unmarried, well-traveled, multilingual, and lives in a fabulous apartment (according to my standards, though Sarah says her place isn't as fancy as where some of her friends are living) in Palermo filled with interesting books and artwork. In other words, I could totally see myself living like her! She is also insane, and very excitable, with a generous helping of Argentine attitude thrown into the mix. When she arrived at the restaurant, she immediately covered my face in kisses and called for champagne to make a toast to my visit. "She always does that," giggled Sarah, as we sat down to my hilarious and perfect last night in Buenos Aires.
They must not have taken her seriously, because the bubbly never arrived, but Francis had plenty of other strategies for making the evening entertaining. Early on, she commented on the good looks of our waiter, and I jokingly said we should try to get his number. "Wait," she commanded with a serious expression on her face, "I'll make a quilombo." A mess, that is, though the word can have slightly more profane connotations. The rest of the evening was spent harassing poor Juan, but predictably, he didn't seem to mind too much. By the time we left, I had Juan's number in hand and one of the other waiters was telling Sarah that the two of them should go out the next evening. We were cracking up, while Francis sat cool and disinterested as a cucumber, sipping her water and taking tiny bites of flan. I can't really capture the essence of Francis in words--you just have to experience her for yourself--but she's kind of like a crazy aunt that does everything with you that your own parents never would. Fun and a little exhausting! It would be great if she came with Sarah to visit in May. We'll definitely make a quilombo.
Don't tell my host parents, but I loved Argentina...including the ridiculous accent, traces of which have found their way into my own accent in spoken Spanish, already a very confused mix. A weekend, of course, was hardly sufficient to make the first scratch in the surface of such a city. But at first impression, I would say of Buenos Aires the same thing I heard from countless random Argentine men on the street all weekend: "Vos sos hermosa."
You are beautiful. Someday I'll go back.
Isn't it funny how an exchange program can turn a boring student who stays in every night and studies into a regular partier? I never go out in the US, but I was out until 2-4 in the morning the past three nights--either at a bar or a disko. Germany is having a bad influence on me, and I'm glad to see that someone else is also broadening her horizons :-D
ReplyDeleteI went there to Argentina too, and had also a same experience with their schedule!!
ReplyDeleteI went out to dinner at 9 pm, and after that go to a pub..at 3 am we went to a disco too, and returned to my apartment in Buenos Aires AT 7 AM!!!!
what a crazy night!!