All we really did was go to pick up our bus tickets at the bus station, and drink a glass of cheap wine in one of the cheap Retiro eateries, but every outing is an adventure in this city. Retiro is the suburb of central Buenos Aires where the train and bus stations are - this place has to be seen to be believed... I really don't know how to even begin to explain it. Picture in the background the most exquisite train station building you could ever imagine. High vaulted ceilings, gas lights, bas reliefs and leadlight windows. Now picture it really dirty, and with lots of little shops tacked on like cardboard cutouts to the interior and the exterior, selling everything from food, to little handbag-dog jackets, to camera bags. And out on the street are even more stalls, and shops and street vendors and open-air grill retaurants and a guy making a barbeque in half a 44 gallon drum selling chorizos in bread for five pesos and African guys selling jewellery out of brief cases (always African guys, it's some sort of a cartel I swear) and stray dogs who look very friendly (and well-fed) and beggars with no legs and this really really unsual smell... I love the place, it is absolutely fascinating.
So we drank an enormous tumbler full of three peso wine (about $1.40, and actually really nice) each and watched Argentina beat Columbia at football on TV. People roaring at goals, hissing and shouting 'bolludo' at bad passes (kind of a mixture between idiot and asshole)... We had the opportunity to actually be at the game, for very little money. It was played in a suburb of BA, and would have been an experience for sure. But this is where I curse my drifting attention when the conversation between the boys gets all full of rowdy boy slang and I cease to pay heed. If I had listened instead of, I don't even know what I was doing, I could have given input of the 'yeah, I'd really like to do that' kind, and we might have got our keesters off the couch and gone. Anyhoo.
So, a few outstanding memories of Buenos Aires... Well, Retiro - but we have already covered that. The biggest and most lasting impression is of the contrasts. Grand and craven, rich and poor, large and small, expensive and cheap. The hustle, the bustle, the life, the music in the street, the people, the atmosphere. I love the place, and it freaks me out. The subway. It is not quite as inefficient as I first thought (and Joel got quite upset with me for saying that, so I am admitting wrong and taking it kind of half back), and all of the stations have the most amazing murals by Argentinean artists and mosaics and tilework on the walls dating from the 30s, by the looks. I will post photos of these on the blog, easier than trying to paint another visual picture... Retiro really took it out of me. Today on the way to the station there was a guy playing electric violin in the subway carriage. Balancing adeptly with the sway of the carriage, playing the most amazing solo. On the way home, we saw a guy in between two platforms playing electric guitar, harmonica, maracas, bass drum, and something that sounded like a hi-hat but was actually like a tap-shoe on a piece of board and attached to said board was a tambourine. He was a true one-man-band! Fantastic.
The architecture. No matter how dirty, patchy, pot-holey and loco this city is, I can't get over the houses. People live in the most amazing buildings, like it was nothing! Everytime I see one for sale, I want to buy it. 'Oooh look!' I say to Joel, 'we could buy that three-storey one over there, and have a shop on the bottom, lease the second floor out as offices and live on the top! And we can have a roof-top garden! Look at the windows! And the shutters! And the french balconies!' He is not quite as enthusiastic as I am, but I am sure to win him over. There is a boutique hotel for sale on a corner a couple of blocks from here, and I swear it is the most beautiful building in the world, and so wonderfully maintained. It is almost enough to make me forsake my dream of a piece of rainforest in Misiones... Almost. And having said it was dirty I feel I need to clarify that it is not littered with rubbish, so much as covered in a patina of grime. There are people who clean the streets, 24-7, picking up rubbish and sweeping the pavements, and you would be hard pressed to find even a cigarette butt. But somehow, it is like you are viewing the city through grubby glasses...
People in the street who give you bits of paper advertising something, anything. At first I didn't take any bit of paper thrust at me, because whatever they're selling I can't afford it and I don't want to contribute to more rubbish in the city. But Joel told me that these people get paid only if they get rid of everything they were given at the beginning of the day, and I don't want to be responsible for anyone not being able to feed their kids, so now I take everything. Apparently there are shady people who keep an eye on the paper-giver-outers, and if they throw anything in the bin they get beaten up and not paid... Even if they already gave me one I'll take another. The funniest ones though are the ones advertising prostitutes. They go to give one to Joel, and suddenly see that we are walking arm in arm and snatch it back. Prostitution is illegal in Argentina, and not only do I mean that Joel is less likely to be a customer, but I also apparently look like a snitch.
People look twice at me and Joel here anyway - we look like we come from two very different parts of town. He is short, a bit native and a bit scruffy, and I am tall, what he terms 'posh' (I am so not posh! Has he met my parents? Sorry mis queridos padres, but you are not posh) and most definitly a gringa. He reckons guys are applauding him as we walk past... I just feel self-conscious because I feel the eyes boring into the back of my head. I stopped on one of the main streets to get my boots cleaned by a shoe-cleaner guy (do they have a title?), as they were in a sorry state of never having been polished (don't tell Don and Russel! My old bosses would be shocked...) and EVERYONE was looking at me. 'Don't women do this?' I asked the guy. He assured me that yes, many women do, but only early in the morning on the way to the office, when no one is around to see. I felt like such a tourist.
The poverty. It is not ubiquitous, but it is insidious. There was a wee boy on the subway the other day who couldn't have been more than six years old. He walked the length of the carriage, throwing himself into peoples' laps and hugging them, and while they found themselves at a loss as to what to do with the urchin in their arms he thrust a collectable card of the Weet-bix box kind into their hands and moved on. He would then return the same way and hope to get a few pesos for his card. Most people gave it back. One young guy gave him an unecessarily rough shove and told him to get lost. I didn't know what to think or feel... Is he already inured to the rejection? Is he hurt every time? Is he already hard and money-minded and using his wee-boy-charm as bait? Do his parents send him out with no regard for how he feels? Does he feel like the man about the house at six years old, and having to provide for his family? I will always remember him. I will also always remember the homeless man who was washing his sack of clothes in the broken water pipe around the corner of the house, and hanging them to dry on a scaffold nearby. I wanted to go home and fetch him some soap, but I felt like one of those people who have everything, who try to make themselves feel better by helping those who have nothing. So I did nothing. Sigh. It is very hard to know what to do...
There is undoubtedly a lot more I could write about, but this mail is already quite lengthy. There is always a flip-side to every coin, though, and this city proves it beyond a doubt. For every homeless person, or war veteran with no legs, or wee boy on the subway, there are eight middle class people with comfortable lives and one uber-rich guy with more than the GDP in his bank account. The most expensive restaurant in the area has the worst and most cracked pavement outside. Pay three pesos for a glass of wine, or 50 pesos to get into a night club. Life here is certainly not simple, and though I love Buenos Aires, I don't know if I could live here. I don't want to get used to the legless guy outside the subway station in Retiro, or ever push the wee boy on the subway away with an angry word. Maybe next time I will give the guy some soap though.
Ok, time for a late dinner (although quite timely by Argentinean standards), then maybe we will go out for a drink at one of the bars in the area. Tomorrow we are aiming to go to a reserve nearby to spend the morning, before coming home to pack our bags again and head inland. Let's see if we manage to move our butts in the morning... I am so in holiday mode!
Next stop Neuquen!
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