Feliz Nueva de Julio!

It is snowing today. Although the ground is not cold enough for anything to stick I did have the fortunate experience of witnessing a 5 year old on the corner who was seeing snow for the first time in thier life. The girl's mother was explaining to her what the falling white flakes were, either that or she was telling her not to eat it. Honestly I am not actually sure which. I hear NYC is 95 degrees with nearly equal humidity, I will take this any day. So I woke up very late today, something about the cold that slows the motivation to pull one's self out of a comfy bed. I hit my mental snooze button at regular intervals. The plan for the day was to visit the barrio of La Boca. Me, Nick and Nicole made our way to a cafe a few blocks away for breakfast. Today being a national holiday the place was crowded with people having big liesurely lunches. The couple next to us had ordered the mixed parilla meat plate for two. The parilla is basically an open charcol grill that seem to exist in almost every cafe and restaurant here. Anyway the waitress set down a chaffing dish the size of a pool table that was filled with the most obscene amounts of red meat. The dish was so large that nobody could help but laughing. Upon seeing our reaction the gentleman of the couple told us we could help ourselves, apparently this is very comon in BA. Although I really wanted to grab a blood sausage and run it through the old wood chipper that is my mouth I had to resist because it just felt kind of uhm .... odd. I opted for the Matambe which appeared to be similar to a stroganoff served with papas espanola which are very thick fresh fried potato chips. Being a three day weekend all of the ATMs were seemingly out of cash - "No plate", this limiting the options that the day held due to a cash shortage I returned home to a schedule of intermittent reading and napping. Ok it's now eveinging and some people are coming by for food and drinks, must get myself cleaned up or at least more awake. Never made it to La Boca.

muchos muchos frio

A cold snap has finally hit and perfect timing as well as I just purchased a new and stylish winter coat!

The pic to the left is the Cafe Tortoni logo but I intend to appropriate as the new monogram for all of my shirts, towels and sheets.


Finally some pics here


They are out of order much like my mind right now but enjoy.

Tonight I was napping when all of a sudden a chorus of "oohs" and "ahhs" reverberated through the apartment complex . Tommorrow being Nueva de Julio(Day of Independance) I thrust open the door expecting to witness flowering fireworks lighting up the winter sky. No such luck, it turns out it was the quarter finals of the Copa America and Argentina has just scored their first of four goals against Peru. Argentina swept Peru 4-0 so tommorrow being a national holiday I am imagining folks are going to be in doubly good form.

I have a bad habit of working backwards - what about yesterday?

Yesterday Savina came by the apartment and we drank more coffee and haphazzardly went about a castellano lesson(they don't call it Spanish in BA), from there we moved on to a cafe here in Palermo. Savina got clued in to the fact that the cafe served alfahor from Havana Cafe there which are widely reputed to be the best bar none. So in addition to ordering more cafe con leches I also ordered said alfahor. Savina proceeded to cut the alfahor into three pieces presumably for the table, yet while engaging us in imperfect tenses took the liberty of demolishing the entire desert. Upon finishing Savina declared "La puta que lo pario" which has a rough translation of "the whore that gave birth to you", Although this sounds fairly harsh I believe the english equivalent to be "son of a bitch!" She then advised us to order one for ourselves as well. Brilliant.

Our new friend Nick invited us to dinner with his friends Gnome, Ariana and her friends whose name ecsapes me at the moment. The place was called the Green Bamboo. A small gem of a Veietnamese restaurant in Palermo Soho. On the way to the restaurant Roman the manager of Lo Ded Jesus spotted us through the windown and came running out to say hello, told us to sit and came out with a bottle of wine. Roman is a real character who needs to be on Food Network or Top Chef. At one point the conversation turned to names. When I explained my entire name which is someting like 8 sylables he retorted "why you parents give you so many names when I am just going to call you Kiko anyway?" Ha ha ha ha. I tried to pay for the wine but he was having none of it then it was off to the Green Bamboo.

The problem with these 10:30 sit down dinners here is that before you know it your watch says 2:40AM which is exactly what happened.

Oh by the way it is now officialy cold here. 6 degrees Celcius to be exact.

che boludo

Sory about the title but I just became hip to it though, its local slang. It's not really appropriate to say to people you don't know very well but it is fun to say.

Savina is the name of the new spanish tutor. She has flaming red hair. She came by yesterday to give us some schooling. She stayed for a couple of hours. In addition to drinking strong coffee and conjugating verbs, there was much cultural talk about everythying from Borges translations(its a sacrilege according to her) to their beloved Che Guevara and the economy. She is coming by again today. At 6 dollars an hour its quite a bargain. We attempted to make her Mate which is basically a yerba buena tea. However the drinking gourds we bought had not yet been cured for 24 hours. She laughed at the total tourist Mate package we had purchased. Anyway she seems pretty cool. She lives in San Telmo which is known for the big Sunday market, with antiques and tango etc. She is going to show us here neihborhood tommorrow as according to her Sunday in San Telmo are not to be missed.

Every Thursday for the last 30 years the Mothers of the Plaza De Mayo have marched in protest at the Plaza De Mayo in the front of the presidential palace. The group is comprised of Mothers of the various 30,000 sons who "disappered" during the dirty war. I was looking foward to seeing this prior to coming. I have been informed though that the march has stopped as the current administration seems amenable to loooking into the atrocities(operation condor) with the possibilites of war crime trials. My loss, their gain.

Had a great meal last nightat a restaurant here in Palermo called Lo De Jesus. We came on the earlier side and had a table outside under a heat lamp. After devouring a subperb medium rare filet, the manager an Italian named Roman who spok some english joined us at our table, he also introduced us to his friend Al Pacino who looked like a Porteno version of Don Henley Fry from the Eagles and his other friend affectionately known as "payoso" or clown. The clown had a bad habit of sticking his hands in the air ala Rickard Nixon doing his V signd. Pacino bore no resemblance to the actor but seemed to have cultivated that internation man of mystery thing pretty well. At one point the clown had to be restrained from throwing a plate after I started quoting lines from Scarface. I guess you could say he was very excitable. Anyway we drank wine and talked for a couple of hours. I don't imagine it will be tough to get a table there from now on.

Dinner time in BA is at 10:00. A cab driver gave us the breakdown on meal times. Breakfast is sometime before noon, lunch is between 12:00 and 2:00 and dinner as I mentioned is at 10:00. When he was asked what people did when work ends at 6:00 and dinner at 10:00 he casually replied "we make love." Ha ha ha ha. No wonder the city has a population of 14 million.

ramblings

Alfajors - two sweet biscuits filled with dolce dulece, sinfuly delicious.

Lorco stew, heavy navy bean type of stew with sausage and bacon. The bacon is more or less chunks of pork fat still attached to chunks of bone. It's good but the constant pulling of bone out of your mouth is sort of a buzz kill.

The Italian food here is fantastic.

Malbec is the main grape. Instead of being used as a blending grape like in France here it stands on its own. You will find Trapiche almost everywhere here. It is the default house wine.

The four way intersecton without stop signs or traffic lights. I can't figure this one out. Most people don't stop and look they just slow down and if they can proceed blow through the intersection. You would think this would severely impact the mortality here but it doesn't.

Sidewalks. The sidewalks here are in a state of disrepair for the most part. You will have a beautiful block of colonial buildings that are impecably maintained but the sidewalk in front of them are just crap. Also the sidewalk changes here every 10 feet or so. It will be black and white tile, followed by large squares, followed by lined concrete etc. all within the same block.

The double L in Argentina as in parilla or calle is pronounced "zh" or "sh", prononcing double L as a Y sound will get you nowhere very quickly.

Lunfardo is a cache of Argentine Spanish slang that is widely used. There seem to be conflicting stories as to its origins. You can veiw a comprehensive lunfardo dictionary here:

http://www.elportaldeltango.com/english/dicciona.htm

Graffiti is ubiquitous. Although its not like taggers in the US looking for cred it is mainly an outlet for political messages instead of act of vandalism. I don't imagine its legal but it seems to be condoned to some extent.

Argentine women are simply beautiful.

Is this thing on?

Things have been a bit of a blur the past couple of days. A couple of late nights. Yesterday was great, went and visited the Casa Roja or the Pink House where the presdient lives, its not actually pink but more of a salmon. After that it was a quick walk down Avenida De Mayo to Cafe Tortoni. Walking inside was like stepping back into the early part of last centure. A beautiful cafe comprised of stainded glass, marble columns, lots of brass and beautiful leather upolstered chairs. This was a favorite haunt of Carlos Gardel who is the Argentine Frank Sinatra, Luis Borges and Garcia Lorca. On the way we stopped by a Porteno cafe for a choripan which is an extremely fatty chorizo served butterflied on crusty bead. Although not exactly heart smart its truly delicious. Later we went to Million which is a converted 4 story mansion where in the back court yard they were shoging Bergman's 'Fanny and Alexander.' It was great to watch a Sweedish movie with Spanish subtitles. So that was yesterday's spanish lesson I guess.


We have made some friends down here already. Last night were invited to one of these new firends Hip Hop party not far from the hotel. They were spinning some decent old schol stuff and socializing was done in both Spanish in English which was good.



We left Ricoleta for loft in Palermo which I love love love, the place is 2 blocks from the Plaza Serrano. I will be sad to not wake up to the tray of medialunas(croisants) with dulce dulece, a pot of coffee and fresh squeezed orange juice outside the door. You get used to that realy quickly. On the way out of the hotel I met the Director of Latin American operations for Google. I guess his corporate apartment was there. Anyway he gave me his buizness card I should probably email a resume his way.

Belated Happy 4th of July. I am feeling a state of independance.

Its is one of those truly beautiful days today - like the abscence of temperture, neithere hot nor cold just neutral and still. Everyone seems to be in a good mood as a result. That being said I shouldn't be inside banging on the keyboard. I will talk more later.

Tuesday No Jacket Required

Ola,

Today was spent in the barrio of Palermo. The reason for the visit was to try to secure an apartment for the rest of the month. Mission accomplished. The place is a funky two story loft in a place called Palermo Soho, not to be confused with Soho Hollywood, or Palermo Chico(it's good to know real estate is out of control everywhere on the planet.) It's two stories with a spiral staircase, half the roof is sky light and the layout is very open. One of my favorite features though is a fire pole from which you can slide down from the second floor to the foyer space between the dining area and kitchen. This foyer area is mostly stone with a rectangular wood inlay in the middle. After inquiring about this wooden inlay the owner procedeed to lift up one of the many panels comprising the inlay which revealed a tiled stand up pool. Basically its a chest deep basin for cooling off. I have never seen anything like it. Hilarious indeed. I will post some pictures of the space on Thursday - the move in day.

After squaring away the living situation it was an afternoon spent shopping in Palermo. The ulterior motive for shopping was to find a new Fall coat. While I was diligently searching for "Thee Coat" it was more or less of an excuse to practice Spanish via consumerism. So today's lessons came from retailers. While I didn't actually succeed in finding a good garment I did manage to learn how to ask all sorts of questions in Spanish about size, color and style by asking "how do you say ..."

"Como sedice _______?" The vocabulary builds at an astonishing rate when people are trying to sell you something.


The jacket/coat thing has become a bit of a joke as it has been declared the coldest winter in Buenos Aries in 42 years yet I have not needed any more protection than an old rag tag sweater at any time. Requesting a table outside at a cafe is met with looks that seem to say "crazy gringo."

Back to the retail thing. Upon entering one particular storeI was greeted by two sales people. Sales person number 1 began showing me a rack of leather jackets. After a few minutes I inquired about the nature of his injury as he was wearing a burly splint on his left foot. It turns out that he plays for Boca Junior the preminent football club here in BA. Discussion soon turns from jackets to football. At this point sales person number 2 comes over and pulls out his season pass for Racing the rival footbal club. A war of words between the two ensues leaving me caught in the cross fire. They finally resolve their issue by agreeing to disagree but moments later sales person number 1 is shoving a flip book in my face. The flip book replayed the 1986 World Cup Quarter Final where Maradona scored the miraculous goal known as "the hand of god." Not to be outdone by the flip book showcase, sales person number 2 produces his cell phone and proceeds to show me the same highlight in full motion video of the same event. This whole ordeal seemed to diffuse the hard sell they should have been giving me on a leather jacket. It appeared that this sports event has that "Do you remember where you were when Kennedy was shot?" type of importance. These folks love their football.

On the way back to Ricoletta I was amused to see a street performer whom at a red light invaded the intersection and began to perform fire juggling in front of the stopped traffic. After many cycles of catching burning sticks he approached the stopped cars with flaming sticks in hand to ask for money. I don't know about you but if a man with torches approaches the driver side window of my car I double check that the door is in fact locked. I guess it was somewhat surprising to see two cars award him financialy for his efforts.

OK it's dinner time. I will talk more later.

Day One

Greetings from South of the Equator albeit a day late. Things got off to an inauspicious start at Kennedy as as the airline oversold the flight by twenty some odd passengers. In a fit of panic the folks at the gate started offering up 800 dollar vouchers to any passengers who were willing to take the big bump. While this offer sounded tempting it struck me as equally tempting to try to negotiate asking for a first class upgrade on the next flight out in lieu of their crappy voucher. After some deliberation amongst the desk employess they agreed to the terms of my seat surrendering. So it was wheels up at last night at 10:50 instead - hot towels all the way around!

Today was spent within the tether of the Ricoleta neighborhood. Impressions this far would be it's Paris with Palm trees, a bit of Havana(some broken infrastructure) and some good old New York City(plenty of cabs and food options every five feet.) The weather is fantastic. Although it's Winter I can't help but mistake it for Fall. The air is crisp but not cold. Sweater weather at its' finest. I enjoyed a nice outdoor lunch of a handful of some of the best empanadas and a cold beer (which set me back all of $4.00 US.) After lunch I headed to the Ricoletta Cemetary where amongst many other national heroes Evita lies. In addition to dead people the quasi-labyrinth is filled with mostly friendly cats of all colors, makes and models. Additionaly these felines seem to understand the importance of a photo op. It's known to be the largest swath of real estate in BA where nobody actually lives. After that it was the mundane - looking for a cell phone, a good jacket and the obligatory getting lost because it's now dark and your Spanish is crap.

Anyway after a glass of Malbec and some Silversun Pickups on the iPod its out in search of a decent Argentine steak dinner.