Obsessive Argentina
I’m starting to fall in love with Argentina. It was a struggle at first coming to Buenos Aires from Peru, but the people are warm and so hospitable. And the women so beautiful! After getting out of the city, I really started to get this place, this land, this people. Actually, I am not sure I will ever understand them, but I see that they are a happy lot and they have a wonderful country to be happy in. They’re different and I celebrate their difference. I still can’t follow their Spanish. I wonder if other Spanish speaking countries can! Ushuaia and El Calafate have a lot of English speaking people and I think that is what touched me and let me understand more about these people. I’d like to come back with better Spanish skills and see if I can understand their Spanish and understand the people more. In the meantime, I take note of their oddities and obsessions.
The women wear pants. Sure, I see some skirts, but they generally wear slacks. As a whole, we’re talking about women that have amazing figures so I take note when a skirt walks by. OK, maybe this is my obsession, not theirs 🙂 They wear jeans. More jeans on women than I have ever seen. Maybe it is from their gaucho tradition. I do not know. Fashionable jeans here have holes in places where some supposed designer genious has determined that they should be. I hate that. I do not understand that at all.
I do not understand how they keep their great figures. This is not a country of exercise although like New York City and other cities in gringo land they walk constantly. And they better because they eat more fattening and sugary food than I can fathom. Yesterday I go to breakfast and I am given the choice of sugary croissants (medialunas – half moons) or chocolate cake. Yes, chocolate cake for breakfast. And, of course, coffee. The coffee here is very good. They don’t produce their own, thankfully, so they import the best from other countries that know how to grow the good stuff. They drink coffee in quantities that would embarass Seattle.
Argentinians can’t talk without using their hands. Just like Italians. A lot of Italians immigrated to Argentina and maybe that is one of their contributions. I bet you could drive an Argentinian crazy by tying up their hands and making them talk.
When I was in Peru, I noticed they are obsessed with Beatles and John Lennon music. They like the real thing and they like to play it with their pan flutes. I like the Beatles, too, but it isn’t like they are making new songs. I can now confirm that Argentina is obsessed with Pink Floyd. I do not understand the connection between this culture and Pink Floyd music, but there has to be one. I like Floyd so my ears pick it up easily and I am hearing it everywhere. There is such a thing as inappropriate music in a given situation. Take the other night for instance. I was waiting in the airport in El Calafate for a plane that was 90 minutes late when a Pink Floyd song was played through the airport system. Actually, they were only playing Pink Floyd music, but this was not just any song. See, on the Dark Side of the Moon album which basically obsesses (maybe that’s it! Pink Floyd is an obsessively theme-oriented band continuously obsessing on life!) on things that drive people crazy like money, time and war and there is this “song” called “On the Run” in which it has a guy running madly to catch a plane which he misses and then proceeds to watch it crash and then proceeds to laugh like a madman because he missed the plane that crashed. It’s great stuff, BUT ARGENTINA IT IS TOTALLY INAPPROPRIATE TO PLAY THROUGH THE AIRPORT PR SYSTEM!!!!!!!!! It brought back a memory from the Roger Water’s concert. He had replaced this portion of the album with something like a rocket taking off and video images of planet stuff or something like this. I guess he has determined that crashing airplanes is no longer so funny. As it once was in 1972!?! I still like the image of someone thinking they were screwed by time when it actually did the reverse. I just don’t want to hear it before I board the plane 🙂
I think maybe Britain should give the Falklands back to Argentina. I assume they were once owned by Argentina, but I am not even sure about that. Let’s say Britain should hand them over because of proximity. I know the Falklanders don’t want that, but who gives a falk about them! Argentina is obsessed about those islands and it would be a wonderful goodwill gesture. Maybe give the Falklanders dual citizenship and allow Britain to reserve the right to take them back if Argentina drifts away from democracy again. I’m just not totally sure Argentina would prefer to have them than to be able to obsess on having them and blame Britain for something.
It’s almost as messy with other claimed territories including Antarctica, South Shetland Islands, South Orkney Islands, South Georgia Island and South Sandwich Islands where Argentina and UK and Chile have their various claims. At least everyone signed a treaty on that one and no one is starting any wars over these penguin-dwelling islands. At least not now that is. You have to see a map of Argentina according to Argentina to get the full picture of their obsession with being an even larger country. The map shows Argentina as you can picture it plus a chunk of Antarctica and these islands in between as if no treaty had ever been signed and Britain never existed on the Falklands. I think it is kind of funny. I picture a map of the United States with Canada and Mexico as states. Hell, why stop there. We already think we run the whole world so why not add another couple hundred states!?!
And then there is the yerba mate stuff. I have watched the Argentinians with it and it is a drug. I don’t care to read up on what technically qualifies as a drug, but this one meets my definition. Oh, we’re all drug addicts and it’s only a matter of how serious the drugs you consume. You need coffee everyday – you’re a drug addict. You need cigarettes everyday – same. You need heroin everyday – same, but obviously different. Argentinians have the yerba mate paraphernalia. They have their stash, too. You can buy it by the kilo. They pack their stuff into the mate bowl, stick the straw in it, add the hot water and puff, I mean, sip away. One person drinks their bowl and then they add more water and pass it to the next. They pass it around and around. It’s the greatest drug ritual on earth! Everyone’s doing it. The rituals of drug use bind us together. I didn’t get the coffee thing in the past, but I love joining my mom in the morning for a cup of the stuff. And let me tell you, it does affect your brain! People love to smoke cigarettes together. It makes them more than one. Needless to say, marijuana has a ritual of bringing people together, too. And then there is the greatest one of all – alcohol. Societies have great halls dedicated to the ritual of drinking alcohol with your fellow mates. Cocaine and opium and, I suppose, pill-popping start that way, too. Unfortunately, the hard drugs always break down into the ritual being a solitary one. Maybe that’s what makes them the hard drugs. I have to say that I feel more sorry for the Mormons and like religious folks of the world than the heroin addicts. But then again, maybe religion is just another mind-altering drug…
Tags: argentina, south america, Travel
vagabondrick
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