More Obsessions
OK maybe these are more like passions. The Argentinians are passionate to the point of obsessive… there that says it all. My last night in El Calafate I ate at a real asado restaurant. Where’s the beef? Ha… where’s the green vegetables is more like it. How can a country be healthy with so little vegetables a vegetarian might ask. Well my guess is that beef is not so bad for you IF you get plenty of exercise (not the stairmaster and treadmill kind), drink plenty of coffee and mate, and you get plenty of ice cream. So I have the choice of flank steak and strip rib. I was perplexed a little by the strip rib since I did not want ribs so I ordered the flank. Now I understand the two. First, the flank steak is a nice fatty piece of meat. Second, the strip rib is a really thick cut of BEEF. While I was waiting for mine, other tables received these heaping hot plates (coals are under the metal plate so I mean really HOT) of meats. They had obviously ordered the multi-person, multi-meat offering which included lamb and sausages as well as the beef. My salad arrived and it was enough for 2-3 people. I stopped eating it to stay fit enough for the cow. I was happy that the restaurant offered vegetables – a real treat here – and I ordered both kinds – mashed potatoes and pumpkin. Yes, you can find asparagus and other green vegetables, but an asado does not bother with such side plates when the stomach needs room for beef. And then my hot plate arrived with a tiny steak of about 24-32 ounces (I decided to go imperial with this measurement instead of going with metric lest you misunderstand the enormity of the slab placed in front of me). I don’t eat a lot of red meat and an eight ounce steak is usually good for me. I cut into part of the steak while the rest continued to cook on the plate and put a piece of the rich, fatty substance in my mouth. This stuff could fix any vegetarian for good. I drank my wine and ate beef. And then drank more wine and ate more beef. I tried to stop, but the obsession got hold of me. I ate almost all of it. And I am still alive to tell.
Someone that seemed to know what they are talking about told that most of the Argentinian beef used to be sold to the highest bidders as you would expect in a free market. For the most part that meant America and Europe. But it was a national embarassment that they could not get their own beef, quite possibly the best (“quite possibly” is my way out of the EST issue) in the world. And the government banned or highly curtailed the export. Well, Argentinians do not pay the world’s fair market price for their beef. So much for all that fair trade crap! So the market collapsed as you might expect. I paid $8.50 (US dollars) for that flank steak. The big ass thick strip steak (nothing to do with what we think of as far as ribs) went for $9.50. No wonder no one eats vegetables here. Who can afford them? I’ll have at least one more killer asado before I leave this country and I doubt steak will ever be the same for me again.
Aregentinians love their wine. They have no use for anyone else’s and I like that. Drink the local stuff. They rave about their Malbecs. They make a very nice Malbec. Must be the right place for it. But let’s be serious for a minute (wine serious, that is, not too serious). Malbec is a fine wine, but it is pretty one-dimensional on its own. Someone told me they like it because it is smooth without the tannins. Absolutely true, but it is also missing a lot of other things along with those tannins. I need to drink more Argentinian wine, but I really don’t drink much when I am traveling by myself or sitting at home by myself for that matter. Plus I am skipping wine country (Mendoza) this trip. Maybe I will find a drinking partner for the Final Leg in 2009 and we will get to the bottom of the Chile and Argentina wine situation as well as Australia and New Zealand and Antarctica. OK, maybe Antarctic wine is a fairy tale. I’m taking applications for that drinking partner position in case you are interested. As I tell people about my “world traveler” position that is on my “business cards”, the pay is lousy, but the times are really good. So, I see that there is an upside to the Argetinian wines – they certainly are better than many countries’, but I have not had anything truly killer yet. I want something where I can’t help order a whole bottle and consume most of it.
The biggest obsession here at least for the men is futbol. That’s soccer for you Americans. I was walking in Buenos Aires at night when a group scream flew out from a bar. I jumped, but before I looked I knew such passion could only be generated by viewers of a football match. And it must have been a local or national team that was playing. I’m in a hotel room now with television which is the first I have seen since arriving in Argentina. I’ll have my monthly fill of CNN in a few more minutes. I was going through the channels and there were seven different matches being broadcast. If you think America is obsessed with football on Sundays, try Argentina with their roundball version. The men play football regularly. In Buenos Aires I saw a version which uses a very small field. They do this because there isn’t enough room for pickup or league games on regular fields. It is a fraction the size of a real field with small goals as well and the small fields are surrounded by nets. There are only about six players per team and they play very hard.
I never found the right time to go see tango at an appropriate place in Buenos Aires. When I get back there I will make it a priority because I really should have done that. Rhett told me about Bar Sur and I failed to get there. I was also right down the street from a show called Tangueria or something similar and it looked really racy and sexy. Maybe that was the problem. Maybe I wanted to go, but it looks like something to go see with a woman on your arm and not alone. Regardless, Argentina is obsessed with Tango. New tango music is produced regularly. Tango is performed by street acts and it seems everyone learns it. Given the beauty of the women and the athleticism of the men, tango seems like the perfect dance for Argentina.
Around 1976 a military dictatorship took over Argentina. 30,000 citizens disappeared. From what I have read, they were imprisioned, tortured and killed. It’s an ugly story. It has seriously imprinted the conscience of this country. It seems that the country has still not come to terms with what happened. It seems that maybe they did not address it openly enough. I am not sure. What I do know is that they are still reeling from the affects thirty years later. They have not totally moved on. Maybe they have not moved on at all other than getting rid of the dictators. It makes me think about how Rwanda is addressing their crisis and it once again makes me think the Rwandan way is incredible. Things that fester especially on a societal level are just not good. I hope this is not festering in Argentina.
A lot of people lost everything in their bank accounts when things collapsed earlier this decade. I understand the elite didn’t lose theirs. I understand people use cash and don’t keep money in the banks. An American working here told me how he received a $1.56 check from his bank and a letter saying they had made a mistake and reimbursing the mistake. His Argentinian secretary who lost everything and presumably keeps her cash in her mattress could not understand a bank reimbursing for a mistake which no one knew about and that they would do it when the cost of the reimbursement was more than the returned amount. I guess if I had been screwed over by the banks who must be pretty unregulated here, I would keep my money in my mattress, too. Makes me wonder how Argentina will totally get past this one.
I found a tourist guide to Buenos Aires yesterday and it talks about the typical Argentinian male – what he thinks, says, feels and eats – and it confirms my suspicions… “always ready to make new friends”, “likes to party and have fun”, “good level of culture, loves wine and typical Argentinian food”, “quite monothematic: always talking about soccer, women and continuously insulting politicians”, “falls in love easily and likes to have a girlfiend”, “he loves asado”, “meat and wine are the ideal combo”, “he eats out in restaurants or gets food by delivery” and “he enjoys mate in anytime and anywhere”. Well, that’s an Argentinian in a nutshell. I thought just about this much. I used to think I would run to Netherlands if I had to bail on America, but I think Argentina is becoming my favorite most-livable country beyond home. The weather sure is better than Netherlands and the language is a lot easier, too.
Tags: argentina, south america, Travel
vagabondrick
Very interesting – especially since my only exposure to Argentina comes from the movie “Evita” which I assume is highly fictionalized