Buenos Aires!

Apparently no Argentina trip is complete without seeing the capital city, so I made the pilgrimage recently and ended up staying there more than two weeks. Buenos Aires is the epitome of everything Argentina and vastly distinct from the rest of the country as well. It took a few days to adjust after being in Patagonia, but the positive vibe quickly grew on me. Once you get in the groove, Buenos Aires is a blast! It's fun, overwhelming, exhilirating, frustrating, engaging, amazing, exhausting, inspiring, and more. Every day. I spent many afternoons wandering around the unique neighborhoods, reading the paper at the infinite sidewalk cafés, browsing the craft fairs, going to museums, ogling all the beautiful people, looking at famous buildings, and just enjoying being in the city. I went to bed between 5-9am every morning and therefore had to take up a 2-week coffee addiction. I can't say I'm sorry that sleeping pattern has ended!

Porteños (people from BA) have a bad rep for being snobby. As Lonely Planet says, "Argentines endure a reputation for being snobbish European wanna-bes who regard themselves as superior to the rest of Latin Americans. They think that they're economically superior (they once were), that they play the best soccer (they often do), that they have the most beautiful women (depends on your taste), and that they dance the most sophisticated dance in the world (no contest)." While it's easy to spot the fashionably dressed, poodle-toting, overly tanned, high heeled, uppity porteños, I found Buenos Aires to be a microcosm (macrocosm?!) of genuine Argentinian friendliness and sincere interactions. In fact, on my first day there, I met a mother and daugther from the city who ended up inviting me over for dinner. It was a nice welcome to BA, although the mother turned out to be slightly eccentric and spent three hours detailing all the screenplays she had written. But it's the hospitality that counts.

Buenos Aires has a large class division and an intensity of poverty that I will never get used to. It's especially difficult to see little kids begging for money with no adults. It caught me off guard seeing a 2-yr-old kid sitting on a bucket playing the accordion to get a moneda. It wasn't for awhile that his mom came over to prop him up and adjust the accordion. Each night, about 100,000 people called cartoneros (cardboard collectors) descend on the city from the poorer outskirts and spend the night sorting through everyone's trash, collecting what recyclables they can to earn money. It has become an institution in Buenos Aires, and every night you will see the cartoneros hard at work. If you look, that is. As with any big city, Buenos Aires has its aspects of sadness and aspects of joy, its disgraces and its beauty. I did my best to take it all in order to appreciate the city.

This was the first place I had traveled to where I actually knew someone! My friend Becca from camp is studying abroad there, so it was fun to have an inside guide to the city. One Friday we went to one of many synagogues in Buenos Aires. It was much better than the one in Mendoza because people were actually welcoming. What a concept! Afterward, we found ourselves eating Shabbat dinner with the rabbi at a gathering for Bar/Bat Mitvah kids and their families! For Passover we ended up going to two community seders, which were average. The only difference I noted was that they used a potato instead of parsley, but everyone was talking over the rabbi, so I never figured out why. It was neat to celebrate the holiday in another country.

After a few days I mastered the subte, BA's subway system. It's a useful form of public transportation, but at some point you will be inevitably be pressed body to body with many strangers in a hot subway car. Doesn't that sound like fun?! One advantage of riding the subte is that it only costs 90 centavos, and when you pay one peso and they don't have your 10 centavos change, they will let you in for free. Or, as I saw the other day, if the line to buy a ticket is quite long and people start getting anxious, the impatient people might all decide to open the exit door and walk in for free. Totally acceptable. On a related money note, whenever the fruit vendor at the corner of my street didn't have change, he told me to take the produce anyway and bring him the money another time. It's happened to me before in Argentina (like the time I bought hiking boots in Mendoza and was going to wear them out when I realized I didn't have enough money, so the owner told me to walk out with them anyway and pay him later in the day!), but it's even more pleasantly surprising in the capital city.

During my last week in BA, the city was filled with smoke. It started from farmers burning land north of the city to clear for soybean planting, although given all the recent tensions between them and the government, some claimed the fires were purposely uncontroled. Either way, it caused much havoc, and the wind pattern at the time trapped the smoke inside the city...ironic considering that Buenos Aires means fair winds/good airs. Many mornings I would wake up and could barely see the end of my block. News reports assured people that it wasn't toxic but advised them to stay indoors anyway. Buses and flights in and out of the city were canceled because of lack of visibility. At one point some of the subte lines stopped because the smoke had infiltrated the tunnels. It kind of felt like a sci-fi movie. Luckily the air cleared after more than a week and people could breathe the "clean" BA air once again.

On a totally unrelated note, I got to see the Olympic torch! It was way more exciting than expected, especially since instead of just watching the torch as it passed, thousands of people trailed it throughout the city. I got swept up with the crowd and ended up following the parade/torch all through Buenos Aires for two hours. I think there was only one protest beforehand that the police quickly squashed. They're good at that kind of thing.

One Thursday, I went to see the weekly protest of the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo. The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo are a group of women whose children "disappeared" during Argentina's Guerra Sucia (Dirty War). Between 1976 and 1983, under a military dictatorship, approximately 30,000 left-wing citizens were tortured, killed, and taken from their homes. Some kidnapped children were even sold to military families. The whereabouts of the majority of the desaparecidos is still not known. The Madres are a dedicated group of human rights activists who march to keep their children's memories alive and who demand reunification and truth. They have been marching for over 30 years and are now elderly women. Watching them circle the plaza holding pictures of their disappeared children was quite emotional, to say the least.

During the rest of my time, I visited the Recoleta cemetery (where Evita Perón is entombed), saw the Casa Rosada (Presidential Palace, theirs is pink), visited the AMIA building, went to the International Film Festival, walked along El Caminito in La Boca (can you say touristy?!), saw the Immigration Museum, went to the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, and so forth. The best was the San Telmo feria. Imagine blocks and blocks of hippie artisans and happy people. And they had klezmer music! One of my favorite parts was the two people holding signs that said "Abrazos Gratis" (Free Hugs).

Needless to say, it was quite difficult to leave Buenos Aires after such a rewarding time there. Most of the other people in my hostel were also semi long-term residents, so it was sad to bid them farewell. But good times were had by all.