[Note the chronology: I wrote this post yesterday.]
This was going to be a very celebratory first blog post.
Instead it’s an elegy coated in anxiety. I’ll just cut to the chase: I love
what I’ve seen of Argentina so far (that is, only Buenos Aires, from now on always
to be abbreviated BsAs—you have been warned!), but I’m also currently freaking
out because both my credit and my debit card do not work here. ¡Sorpresa! That’s
right—after trying out no fewer than eight ATMs (sweating furiously and praying
under my breath every time, for it to work and, more than anything, for the
machine not to eat my card), I admitted defeat. Luckily, a bit by the grace of
God and, much more so, by the insistence of my dear mother, I have $700 USD
cash with me to tide me over a little while I frantically figure out what to
do. That is the current mar on my experiential pleasure.*
( *EDIT: Thanks to the incredible sleuthing skills of my
parents, we discovered that there isn’t actually anything wrong with the cards,
just that only a few ATMs will accept the debit card (I didn’t know you couldn’t
use a credit card at an ATM to withdraw cash…in retrospect, that seems pretty
obvious). I miraculously found one that did work, just an hour ago…it charged
me about $6 USD to get out less than $50 USD’s equivalent (what appeared to be
the maximum amount allowed) in Argentine pesos. Crisis—somewhat—averted… now to
figure out how I’m going to get out money in the long term.)
But as to that experiential pleasure, there is quite a lot
to be had! Just first, let me do a quick, perfunctory run-down of the logistics
that have led me to the hotel bed I currently sit typing this on.
After leaving the house just before 3 am yesterday, I flew to New York, had a six-hour layover, and then flew on an overnight flight to arrive in BsAs around 10 am this morning. I’m finally feeling the exhaustion, at nearly 11 pm local time, but that’s a pretty amazing statement—shouldn’t I have been a pool of non-functioning jelly at least twelve hours ago? The thing is, I think I’ve finally learned the secret of air travel, which was never a secret to anyone with an ounce of common sense: if you actually make an effort to sleep on flights (that is, actively lean against the window with your eye-mask on for as many hours as you can stand it, eventually drifting in and out of consciousness), rather than binging on the enticing new-release movies available on your personal screen, you’re actually well-rested when you arrive at your destination. I know, crazy, right? Right.
So, I got in to BsAs feeling, in all honesty, refreshed. And
I’m going to skip ahead and not go into all the details of getting through
customs or taking the shuttle from the airport, because that would be way too
boring for me to type out (and you to read). But here I am now, at the Liberty
Hotel, with about twenty-five other Fulbrighters, most of whom are ETAs
(English-teaching) like me, and a few of whom are doing research (including two
doctoral candidates). It’s a really quality group of people.
The main thing we did today was have a three-hour bus tour
of BsAs. Before I talk about what I saw and give some of my general impressions
of BsAs so far, I need to include a caveat: as you see from the little
disclaimer on the side of this blog, as a Fulbright program grantee I have
certain restrictions that I didn’t have when, for example, I was studying
abroad in college. Not that these have been explicitly spelled out to me
(yet?), but I have a good sense of what they might be, having read about a
billion Peace Corps blogs. Basically, I’m taking it as best practice to be
sensitive in how I talk about political and other controversial topics here.
Which translates as I’m just going to censure anything that could possibly be
construed as questionable. Just keep that in mind. I bring this up here,
because one thing we passed today in the bus, for instance, was a collection of
Malvinas signs in the Plaza de Mayo (“Las Malvinas eran, son y siempre serán
Argentinas”). I’m not going to comment on that. Nor on some other things. I’d
like to, but you’ve read the disclaimer; now we’re on the same page about this.
Back to the tour, our guide was wonderful! Muchas gracias,
Germán. It was a great idea to have a bus tour, given BsAs is so enormous and
sprawling, and having just gotten in from long traveling, a walking tour
probably would have been pretty taxing. Over three hours we saw so much that I’m
sure I can’t remember it all here, but here’s a partial list, at least:
--Avenida 9 de julio:
It’s the widest street in the world, something like more than twenty lanes
across, with a large island for buses and several greenbelts in the middle. The
imposing obelisk at its heart should make for a good landmark, but it doesn’t,
really, given the skyscrapers that flank it and effectively shade it out.
--la Plaza de Mayo, la catedral, la Casa Rosada: We got off
at the Plaza de Mayo for a short walking portion of the tour. The Plaza de Mayo
itself doesn’t have much in the way of design, just a statue in the middle, but
it’s famous for being the plaza where
people congregate when protesting political issues. (And yes, Argentines
protest a lot. We’ve been repeatedly
told that having the buses delayed because of protests is a basic fact of BsAs
life.) Most interestingly for me, there’s also a black metal fence running the
length of the plaza, dividing it off from the Casa Rosada that faces it. I
wondered what the point of it was, considering there were wide gaps for walking
through. It turns out the fence was only installed in the pretty recent past
(now I’m blanking on the decade, was it the 2000’s or ‘10’s?), when an economic
crash drove a huge protest to the plaza, closing in on the Casa Rosada, and the
president was only able to escape via the roof’s helicopter pad. From then on, the
fence went up (and one was built around the Casa Rosada as well), and police
stand by at the ready to close the fence’s gaps and seal it off as a barricade
at any time. The Casa Rosada is the office of the president—note, not his
residence. Two Argentine flags, one bigger and one smaller below, were flying
from its flagpole while we were there—apparently the smaller is only raised
when the president himself is physically in the building! Across the plaza is
the cathedral, made more interesting to me by the fact that it was this that then-Bishop Bergoglio presided over before he became Pope.
--el barrio de La Boca: famous for tango, its
colorfully-painted buildings, and as the site of the stadium of the Boca
Juniors (“Boca”), one of BsAs’s two main soccer teams (the other being River
Plate, or “River”). Boca insignia, colors (blue and yellow, after the Swedish
flag—there’s a story there that I don’t remember), and celebratory murals are
everywhere. The tango-dedicated sections of the barrio feel far less genuine;
they’re purely for the tourists. La Boca is actually one of the poorest
barrios; just a street over from the tourist crawl of tango street performers
(since all they seemed to do was stand still to try to get people to take their
picture, they were more like “posers”—haha, good pun, Rhiannon) was shantytown—impassable roads of gaping
ditches and potholes, everything muddy, sheets of tin patching up sides of
houses. La Boca was once wealthy, back
in the late 1800’s, as the site of the city’s port. We stood and looked out
from the dock. A strong smell of sulfur was rising off the water. The water
immediately below us, extending about twenty feet out, was clogged with a thick
bloom of some kind of water plant, lots of trash caught between the
lily-pad-like leaves. There was also a large turtle in there! He stayed so
still, I would have thought someone threw out a piece of tortoise-shell-shaped
plastic, had it not been for his head and very living nostrils poking up too. Our
guide explained the water plant and the smell were new phenomena of only the
last few years, due to polluted water coming in from Paraguay, Uruguay and
Brazil. Well anyway, La Boca thrived for something like seventy years as the
keeper of the port, and then, around the turn of the century, the port was
moved to…. (next bullet point, please)
--Puerto Madero: Although el Río de la Plata is the widest
river in the world, it’s extremely shallow, never deeper than five meters
(about 16 feet). Puerto Madero, which was built as a canal, wound up being a
total failure as a result, as its design made it even shallower than the water
around it, and ships rapidly starting being built larger and larger around the
same time. Puerto Madero only lasted twenty years as a port, but it’s certainly
doing well for itself now. It’s one of the richest barrios in the city, very
upscale and posh. Our guide told us that the cost per square meter of housing
in La Boca is about 1000 pesos (~$68), and in Puerto Madero it’s $5,000-10,000
USD.
--La Recoleta: Recoleta (along with Palermo and Puerto
Madero) is one of the city’s nicest barrios. Recoleta in particular is known
for its large, open parks and green spaces. We passed one such place, where at
the center there’s a giant sculpture of a flower (“Flor genérica,” although
everyone just calls it “la flor,” means “Generic Flower,” which I enjoy) plated
in a very shiny metal. The flower is lovely in and of itself, but the really
cool thing about it is its petals actually open and close over the course of
the day, charting sunlight just like real flowers do. The petals never get more
than half-open, however, except on holidays, when they open entirely. At night
the flower’s center glows with a colored light, and there are also colored
lights in the grass, and there’s a reflecting pool at the base, all combining
to make for a very beautiful effect. Can’t wait to see it for myself!
The real highlight of Recoleta, though, is its Cementerio.
Definitely far and away the most beautiful cemetery I’ve ever seen. It’s set up
as a “city,” with broad boulevards and smaller side streets and alleys which
cross in diagonals and meet in miniature plazas. The main avenue is lined with
the largest cypresses I’ve ever seen. There was a perfect, old little kitty in
the shade of one of these. A cat in a cemetery is a beautiful thing. The
mausoleums themselves are just incredible, each unique and special and carved
from gorgeous stone (generally either white or black marble). Most of the tombs
were well-kempt, and ninety of them are maintained by the city as historical
sites. Some of those that aren’t, however, have fallen into varying states of
disrepair: delicate cobwebs in the windows of some (you’d think they had been
painted on, they’re just so perfect); smashed glass and plaster coating the
insides of others (in one of these the only visible thing out of the thick
white dust was a Jesus on the Cross, broken in half at the legs—adding insult
to already-significant injury). Eva Perón is the luminary who draws the most
tourists to her tomb, but the actual stone is not much to see, just a black
slab with “Familia Duarte” stenciled in and a small collection of flowers lain
in the niche below. All in all, the cementerio was definitely my highlight for
our whirlwind city tour.
There are I think forty-eight barrios in BsAs, aka a ton,
and obviously I don’t know anything about their delineations. But common to all
of the ones I’ve seen thus far, by which I mean central characteristics of BsAs as a whole, are all the
trees and gorgeously-lush parks. The trees are huge, vibrant, and many are even
flowering right now. They really give the city a feeling of life. As my parents
pointed out, since they’re all the same size, they must have all been planted
around the same time, which means someday they’re all going to die at the same
time…and then what? Well, at least we can enjoy them right now!
One thing I’ve loved seeing in the course of walking around
is just how many bookstores there are. It feels like every other shop is one. I
haven’t been to the most famous of these, Librería el Ateneo, which is a
converted historical theater, yet, but I’ll get there.
Nuestro propio presidente, Señor Obama, is actually coming
to BsAs in a week and a half! Talk about timing: he was slated to be in the
city on the 25th….which will actually be the fortieth anniversary of
the start of the “última dictadura,” Argentina’s last dictatorship which was most
notably marked by brutal state terrorism. Considering the U.S.'s damning complicity in this era, Obama's timing is, well, atrocious. After a hurried schedule
rearrangement, Obama will now be down in Patagonia on the 25th…golfing.
Yep.
On the subject of the memorial day, it’s going to be a big event in the city. I’m curious to see the commemorations,
but there's no way I could get back to La Plata afterwards if I came to the city; none of the buses would be running.
There’s more to say—there always is, when it’s me who’s
typing—but geez, that is more than suficiente. I’m having a great time here,
and I hope you all are, too, wherever you are.
Love to all.
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