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Buenos Aires

Tuesday, May 19th, 2009

And so to Buenos Aires. I arrived at about 11 am on the 6th of may, you may remember that I left sydney at 10.45 am on the 6th of may so in effect the journey lasted all of 15 minutes – it could well have happened that I got an upgrade to fly on the starship enterprise. Silly sci-fi aside what it actually mean   t was that the 6th of may 2009 for me was the longest day of my life. I took the 40 minute bus into the city from the airport – its a good way to get a feel for the place. First impressions were pretty good, I must have passed about a dozen pristine soccer pitches, at last I’m in a country famous for a proper sport cause as much as I loved melbourne, AFL is a bit naff. Other than sporting pitches you do see alot of built up and run down areas. There are countless ballymun style highrise apartments dotted everywhere, you begin to comprehend how 16 million people can call Buenos Aires their home.  

 I got off the bus in what I assumed was the city centre or el centro as the locals do call it, I am making assumptions at this point as I have neither a map, a guidebook nor the spanish lingo that would improve my predicament of having 2 hours to make the check in of the hostel which I booked (without taking down the address) quite frantically the night before I left melbourne. To one side of me was the dock so it was logical to cross the road and wade into the masses in the hope of finding an internet cafe so I could check the booking and get the address. I walked up what turned out to be Avenue de Florida which is one of the main shopping thoroughfares in the central district. The place was thronged, funnily enough there were 4 irish bars on the first two blocks alone, I might aswell have been walking down grafton street. 

Eventually I got my bearings and found my way to the clan hostel. Thankfully the staff all had excellent english so it wasn’t long before I had the bags down on the bed.  The hostel itself is a cool building, very close to the centre of the city it is on the corner of two streets and stretches up 3 stories. The middle of the building is open abit like a courtyard giving the place interesting acoustics. In australian time it was well past 3 in the morning so I was pretty knackered, I knew I had to fight off jetlag for as long as possible. I stayed awake, just about, to watch barcelona sicken chelsea in the champions league before finally succombing to sleep.   

Now when I say that this hostel is lively, I mean that it is pure feckin mental. I woke up to some thumping bass at about 11 pm, I broke out the earphones and went back to sleep. In my whole time in asia and australia I never needed them before but they more than paid for their weight in gold while I stayed at the clan. It took a few days to get over the jetlag after the jetlag wore off a toothache kicked in. It got bad enough that I had to enter the words ‘english speaking dentist in buenos aires’ into the google search engine. Before I knew it I was wide jawed in a dentists chair getting a root canal done on my birthday of all days, sounds mareish and to be honest it was. Bloody well hate dentists.    

I am trying to learn as much spanish as I can while I am here, I do like the idea of spending a year in barcelona watching games at camp nou every week so where better than buenos aires to pick it up. There have already been some rather unfortunate lost in translation moments though, the first of which occured on my second day when I left the hostel to go search for a pad lock for my bedside locker. I used it as an opportunity to look around the city and get a feel for the place, so off I went going from shop to shop looking at all their wares in the hope of finding a simple padlock. I eventually found one close to independence square, it was a rotten old shop full of dust, looked like something that dropped right out of the 19th century. I pointed to the locks he had behind the counter (which were tiny) and gestured if he had any bigger ones, my gestured involved me starting out with my hands together and then moving them apart – now he he just looked at me as if I was a proper idiot and to be fair its hard to blame him as it looked as if I was holding an invisible grand piano… I departed the shop with the smallest lock that he had.  

So with this and a few other mis steps behind me I took to getting myself educated in espanyol. I started the lessons the day after I was finished with the dentist so I got to learn how to say I was at the dentist, I was in unbelievable pain etc etc at which point I slipped in that I had turned 28 the day before. Now spanish like france use the verb ‘to have’ when they say what age they are, its simple, really really easy, but of course I had to find someway to mess it up. I managed to convey the message that I had 28 arses!!! anos being the spanish for anus while años is the spanish for years. 

Buenos Aires is famous the world over for alot of things – Steaks, Tango, Cafes, Ridiculous Night Life and probably most of all Diego Maradona. It was my goal to imbibe in all off the above over the course of my 10 days here. The steaks are ridiculous, they are huge and almost always pure quality. You leave places declaring that you have just had the best of your life only to better that record the next day. One place in particular even though the made us wait 40 minutes outside on a chilly autumns night (they did serve us lots of champagne to soften the pain) served up a steak that was no messing 2 inches thick and about half a foot long, you really retreat back to you primal self at the sight of such a mouth watering prospect. 

My favourite part of Buenos Aires (so far) has to be the ramshackle neighbourhood of San Telmo. Some of its streets are under repair and others are swades of neck breaking cobblestone, each corner seems to have a cafe plucked right out of a movie that only gets shown on the digital channel they give you for free that only shows you old time movies from the 40s and 50s. All in all the place oozes class, I must have spent every spare afternoon in the city sitting in one of those cafes flying through books at a furious rate, speaking of which I have already finished all the books I brought with me which has left me picking up every english book I see… 100 years of solitude anyone??  On some afternoons, more likely weekends, especially in San Telmo you will see Tango. Tango for the uninitiated is the national dance of the argentines and to my mind it is a bloody marvel, it is such a wonderful sensual expression – without a shadow of a doubt the sexiest dance I have ever seen. To see it done properly is just wonderful, there are street performances all the time, you can buy tickets to see shows on stages – these guys are probably the best at it but the best one I saw was just an ordinary couple dancing in the street to a nearby street performer. Walking back to the hostel I couldn’t help but think that we irish need to ditch the whole jigs and reels and get something sexier in its place!    

Argentines and I am guessing south americans in general are not daylight people, over the course of the first few days when jetlag had me up and wandering the streets at obscenely early hours like 9 or 10 am twas only tourists like myself with their digital cameras stalking the streets with the odd exception of a suit rushing off somewhere for a business meeting. It takes a while to adjust for the fact that most restaurants don’t get busy until after 12 am and that bars and niteclubs are not worth going to before 3 am in the morning, some will even stay closed and locked up such a time. The locals must spend their times at house parties or at the aformentioned meals before heading into the night to get their boogie on. It does take adjusting to and god knows I tried, many times i just had to quit at 5 in the morning while the party was still going strong.  

The 5th reason for me to visit this wonderful city is summed up in one word – Football. I am a soccer nut, I love soccer. More specifically I love soccer when it is played with intelligence and appreciation that a 5 yard pass can mean as much if not more than a 60 yard thump. Juan Roman Riquelme is the player that when I play, in my tiny mind, I imagine to be. He has alot of similar characteristics to me, he’s a little chubby, he’s lazy, likes to moan alot and has a mean eye for a pass – each characteristics which I see in myself with the exception of the last one. Well put it this way he is my footballing hero, I love the way he makes things work for him despite all his shortcomings…

Anyways he plays for Boca Juniors, who play in the Bombonero – that world famous stadium which has terraces a little less steep than your average wall, the bombonero is of course in the neighbourhood of la boca in the grand city of Buenos Aires. Having been injured for the last month (The injury in case you are interested was caused by a burning hot lump of charcoal that landed on his foot while attending to his home parilla (Argentinian Barbeque)) he was due to make his comeback in a local derby against Arsenal the sunday after I was meant to leave the city.  Phil postponed his bus trip across the country for this once in a lifetime opportunity, such was his determination to make this game that he despite having only gotten to bed at 7 in the am of the very same day he rose at 11 to pack his meagre collection of belongings into his ruck sack to leave in storage before heading down to the roughhouse neighbourhood of La Boca to watch the game.

Now La Boca is rough, it is rough out. It makes ballymun look like Malibu but like the rest of the city it oozes character. The stadium itself is a run down mess, with 3 tiers on three very steep sides its makes an amazing sound even though it was a good bit less than full for the game I was at. Behind the opposite goals is where the Ultras (hardcore of hardcore fans) congregate. From the first minute till 20 minutes after the game the danced, sang, shouted, waved flags and generally made the most impressively enduring racous that this human being has ever seen. The game ended 2-1 to Boca with Riquelme providing enough moments of genius to leave this blogger off home happy.  

So off back to the hostel for the last time on this visit, I took the 7 o’clock bus to mendoza – a city in the west of the country at the foothill of the andes and centre to the countries growing wine production. Until then, adios!!! 

 

Leaving Oz and the 10 minute flight to Buenos Aires

Thursday, May 7th, 2009

I really love Melbourne – Its a great city which I am very sad to have left, I would love to think that I would return one day and stay for just as long if not longer, the place has such a wonderful spirit and drive to be cool that you can´t help but fall for its clumsy charm. I spent 10 months there and have met some quality people, drank some quality coffee and devoured some quality nosh. The city has changed me for the better, but now I am gone, I am in the capital of Argentina.

I left my friends apartment in melbourne at 5 in the morning, ronaldo had just clipped in the second goal in 10 minutes against arsenal in the second league of the champions league – game over. I bid farewell to ian and cate and walked down fitzroy road down past st vincents hospital and on down thru the city centre. Public transport was going at this stage but I decide to walk it, backpack or no. Its not terribly far but far enough to know that you have walked some distance. A couple of weeks previously while showing my friend Debbie around melbourne we called into relations of hers who had been living in melbourne since the 60s, the woman of the house in her 70s sounded exactly like my own mammy, she cooked us a savage easter roast dinner before supplying us with a seemingly endless parade of beer. She asked me if I noticed how different the light is in Melbourne compare to at home, how twilight barely exists… I kinda understood what she meant, the evenings don´t seem to linger while dawn occurs quite abruptly, anyways this sprung to mind as I walked down collins street. At the top end of the street the place was dark, by the time I had made it to spencer street station it was almost fully bright. I guess its a weird quirk of australia that maybe doesn´t get reported so much and so I have probably deprived you of 5 minutes of your life just reading this – good luck trying to get that back!!

Anyways I took the bus to the airport and checked the bags in. If the plane left on time I had just over an hour and a half to negotiate customs, immigration etc etc in sydney, plenty of time. IF… The plane left melbourne 40 minutes late, panic set in. When we arrived I made a burst to get off the plane, ran down the ramps, across to the terminal transfer and onto the bus to the international terminal. I had 30 mins left till departure. Immigration was next, just infront of me a 40 strong troop of chinese tourists were in queue. I shuffled, skipped a couple of them and eventually made it to the desk. I handed in my brand new spanking passport, no stamps, brand spanking new. The girl stamped it out then asked – sorry mr gill, where is your entry stamp?

Thats on my other passport, here´, I handed over my old crappy photocopy jobbie which had big red ink cancelled scrawled all over the shop, I must have looked so dodgy, I get called into a room.. Feck Feck Feck, I tell them my plane is leaving in 20 mins, they didn´t seem to notice. Typing away on a computer, avoiding all eye contact she could well have been playing tetris. Palms were sweating something serious!! Eventually with a smile she hands me back my passports and asked if I  enjoyed my trip to OZ, she got a smile and then a vision of my ass disappearing into the distance. In true hollywood style i made it completely out of breath to the disapproving flight attendent and got my ass on the 13 hour flight to Buenos Aires.

Due to the quirks of planetary shape and rotation I arrived into Buenos Aires 10 minutes after I left sydney, May 6th 2009 was officially the longest day of Phil Gills life. Flights are boring and don´t require much explainin though on this one the pilot seem determined to land the plane on its roof! I got through immigration quite quickly. I did have to bluff the name of the hostel as I had nothing at all booked, came up with a name that sounded vaguely spanish and it did the trick. Once you are past that part the rest is easy, usually. They had managed to lose my bag in melbourne… Idiots, they said it would take two days for it to arrive to me.

Oh well, no need to pick a fight, not when there is much more pressing issue of accomodation. I jumped on a bus into the city without a guidebook or a map I should probably have gotten one or both. I spent 1 hour walking around the bustling city, up florida street in search for an internet cafe that would tell me where somewhere okay was to stay, it was warm and very very bright. Telling ya I was glad I didn´t have a backpack on me! QUantas should include such an arrangement as an option, twould be handy to bring enough clothes for 2 nights if you knew you would get all of your stuff within 48 hours of arriving.

I have only been here little over a day, first impressions are ´How very european everything is´which is probably the most obvious thing you can say about the place, it reminds me of bilbao in so much that everything is spanish and it is highly industrialised, but that is but an initial judgement, more judgment to come 😉