La Boca! And the Swedish connection...

I went on a little trip with students from the Academia this afternoon while Max's class had some extra study hours to make up for lost time from yesterday's holiday (my turn tomorrow).


We went to La Boca ("the Mouth"), which is one of the poorest parts of Buenos Aires. The mouth of the river is situated here in La Boca, hence the name. It's a traditional working class part of town, which is located next to the original port of the city. I'm saying original, because the river around the port wasn't deep enough to allow passage for large ships, hence they moved the port to the coast and closed this area down for major shipping. Now there's only a smaller container storage facility and some ship yards left. The closure of many import/export companies and loading docks caused a high rate of unemployment in La Boca, which also explains why this part of the city is not as well off as the northern parts.

La Boca is famous for its pride, in fact people in this barrio (neighborhood) sometimes call the area "La Republica de Boca", as if it was its own country. The pride extends of course to all items and people that come from their barrio, especially all things soccer.

The local soccer team, La Boca Juniors, plays in the first league, and its fans are known to be the most loyal and extremely rowdy! We've considered going to a match, but tickets for people that are not part of the local club (i.e. tourists) are extremely expensive, as they get sold from club organizers to tourist companies for sometimes more than 10 times the original price of the tickets. Rip-off!!! Anyways, we did walk past the stadium, which is prominently clad in the team's yellow and blue colors.

Funny story about those colors. When the people of the barrio originally had to decide on the team colors they didn't seem to have a strong preference either way. As most of them worked in the port, they supposedly decided as some kind of a joke to use the colors of the flag of the next ship that would enter the port. And guess which European country's ship showed up first? Right, Sweden!!! Kudos to our friends in Stockholm! I guess your legacy will live forever in a futbol team from Buenos Aires! :)

During our tour of La Boca we walked along El Caminito, which is really just one street that has been transformed into a patchwork of colorful house fronts by some local artists (and probably some savvy business people that were looking to establish a tourist attraction). The houses are primarily made of wood and metal, recycled off old ships that were dismantled in the port. Hence the mixture of materials. In order to make it all look more appealing they added the various colors, using leftovers from ships that needed a new coat of paint.
I took a bunch of pictures, so here's a selection to give you guys an idea of the color madness...

Once you pass El Caminito and go a few streets farther, the real La Boca comes out, which is also comprised of houses primarily made of wood and metal, but not quite as colorful. In fact, most of them are pretty run down and falling apart. Only a few houses have concrete or stone fronts (if the families could afford it), but even for those houses, it's just the facade. The rest of those houses (the side and back walls) are still made of wood and metal.

People share those houses with multiple families, oftentimes fitting 8-10 families in one house (!), sharing one bath and one kitchen across all of them. Explains how many immigrant families that moved into this area in the barrio in the 19th century ended up mixing cultures and creating a new identity for this area. Even to this day the practice is being kept, despite the fact that many of the houses seem to be falling apart and get VERY hot in the summer (right now). The metal walls get so hot that many families spent a significant portion of their time outside of the house, including eating dinner, entertaining, etc. either in front of the house or in the local park.

There's quite a bit of crime in this area. Fortunately it's not serious crimes. Mostly thefts, i.e. pickpockets. So we've been warned to watch our stuff, even more so than in other parts of town...

Fortunately our visit went without a hitch (probably helped to be in a larger group and have a local tour guide with us) and we even lucked out and all made it home before the torrential downpours this evening. Let's just hope that the weather cools down for the next few days like the weather man promised...

Fiesta Gaucha!

Today we spent the day on the Estancia La Cinacina in San Antonio de Areco, a two-hour bus ride outside of Buenos Aires, to attend a traditional Gaucho party (Fiesta Gaucha). As you know, Gauchos are kind of the cowboys of South America and, in earlier days, made up the majority of the population in rural areas such as the pampas. Our tour guide explained to us that the term Gaucho originates in "lonely person", and their loneliness came from the fact that, being descendants of both indigenous and European people, they didn't really belong anywhere and were heavily discriminated against by the urban population. So the Gaucho spent most of his life herding cattle and hunting. This is what life must have been like before the invention of the Internet and Facebook...

Nowadays, the Estancia La Cinacina is of course a tourist attraction with hotel, swimming pool, and souvenir shop. Several other visitor groups were swarming the property over the course of the day. So the experience might not always have been 100% authentic, but nevertheless it was really a fun day!




We started with horseback riding. They have at least 30 beautiful horses on the Estancia.

The "fiesta" itself was a 1-2 hour lunch with traditional music, dances, and meat. LOTS of meat! 

They served very generous portions of sausage, chicken, and various kind of beef. Very tasty, but impossible to finish up everything. Ranzenpflege!

The highlight was clearly the competition in the afternoon, when they had a few Gauchos competing against each other on horses: 

For instance, one task they had to perform was to pick up a ring with a pole while riding by with a horse. As the announcer explained, this Gaucho tradition was used when two men were competing for the same woman. The winner was allowed to propose marriage to the woman with the ring he just grabbed and kiss her once. If she agreed to the proposal, she would kiss the Gaucho back. To reject the proposal though, she would instead kiss the horse. :-) 

After another 2 hour bus ride, we were back in Buenos Aires in the early evening. Great day. Adios! 

HOT!

It's getting HOT in Buenos Aires. A bit early since it's only spring here - summer doesn't officially start til the beginning of December I think. It's currently in the low 30's Celcius, so approaching 90's Fahrenheit. And of course decent humidity. Let's just say staying cool and fresh is a futile attempt.

Despite the heat, we did venture out after class today on a tour through Puerto Madero. Maribel from the Academia led our rag-tag group of fearless urban warriors on the 2-hour tour (see her in the picture above explaining the history of the area).

In a former life one of Buenos Aires' ports, Puerto Madero is now a redeveloped area. Super modern, super expensive and to be honest, feels a bit like an exclusive ghost town after the bustling crowds of the inner city. Most buildings in this area are only 5-10 years old; very few have been renovated from old warehouses to new chic hotels.

We walked along the canal, and then crossed the Puente de la Mujer ("Women's Bridge") before heading to the Ecological Reserve at the other end of this part of town. The bridge (picture above, in white) is supposedly depicting a woman dancing tango. I guess if you squint your eyes or have a few extra glasses of vino you might actually see it... :) Salud!

First week and counting...

First off: Happy Turkey Day to our Seattle/US crew! For the rest of you, happy Thursday! ;)

Hard to believe we've been in Buenos Aires exactly one week now. It feels a lot longer.

Between finding the apartment, taking Spanish classes, getting used to the heat, and planning our next weekend excursions, time has flown by. But now we've settled nicely into a routine here.

The attached picture is a view from our apartment building, the roof top deck, at night. As you can see, mostly other apartment buildings, and to the far left were there aren't many buildings is one of the city's largest parks. More fun pics to come in the next few days, we promise!

Ok, time now for Sylvia to stop procrastinating on her homework (while Max has already started!). :) Chao!

First day of Spanish classes

Today was our first day of Spanish classes at the Academia Buenos Aires. Classes start at 9.30 in the morning, so like typical Germans we got up early enough to be there well ahead of time. Well, that didn't quite work out: the subway (Subte) broke down in the station right where we got on (Dominik: insert the obvious joke). More and more people came into the train, and it was already getting pretty hot down there. So after 15 minutes or so, we decided to go back up to the street and take a cab instead.

Of course it took another 10-15 minutes to hail a cab and then got stuck in traffic on one of the main streets leading into the city center. So long story short we were over 30 minutes late (gasp!). Luckily we'd just missed the introductions and orientation piece, but made it for the class assignments.

Max ended up in course 1B (first level second part, since he already knows some stuff - thanks Rosetta Stone and Arturo! :) ), and Sylvia is in course 4A. Let's just say the first day was a little bit overwhelming. Makes you realize how rusty you get if you don't use a language for 8+ years! :)
The classes lasted 4 hours and we then went home for a siesta (this might be our new favorite time of the day!), and then grocery shopping and homework in the evening. This is most likely going to be our new daily routine during the week, with more excitement on the weekends...

Moved in!

Today we found a nice one-bedroom apartment in the heart of the Palermo district of Buenos Aires! We met with the owners, a nice young couple, quickly agreed on a lease - and moved in right away! We're going to live here for the next two months and use this as our "base" for a few local excursions, and also as our new home where we can relax and hang out (in German: Rumhängen!) after our Spanish classes and before our Tango lessons...

The apartment is fully furnished, so all we needed to move in were our two backpacks and the first month's rent.

Apparently there's even a roof top terrace with a BBQ grill, guess we'll have to check it out tomorrow.

Hope you guys are doing fine and had a great weekend - come visit us in Buenos Aires! :-)

Day 2 in short

Some people, let's just call them Schwominik Daibold, asked for a short summary instead of long blog posts. So here's our day 2: we rode the subway, went to Palermo, got hit by an iceberg, and Sylvia is back at Russell. :-)

Buenos Aires, día uno

We made it! After months of preparation and scaling down our essentials to two backpacks, we left Seattle for Argentina. Thanks for the ride to the airport, Brandon!

In Dallas, we had a layover for a couple of hours and a brief moment of surprise when they announced that due to a strike by air traffic controllers in Buenos Aires, they would have to confirm first whether the flight would be able to actually land once we'd get there (so looks like these things do happen even outside of Europe...). But ultimately, we flew out with only a few minutes delay.

The plane was a rather old Boeing 767-300, with no in-seat entertainment system (rough life!), but other than that the 10h 40min flight was smooth and at about 9:30am local time we arrived safely in sunny Buenos Aires!

Immigration and customs were a breeze. No questions asked what the heck we're intending to do in their country with only a return ticket from Chile 4 months later, also they didn't even look at our customs declaration form. And unlike our American and Canadian friends, we didn't have to pay a $131 "entry fee". They must love us Germans... :-)

The time zone in Argentina is UTC-3. So when it's 9am in Seattle, it's 2pm in Buenos Aires and 6pm in Germany. So our inner clock is now completely screwed up and probably it'll take us a day or two to adjust.

For the first few days, we're staying at the Sandanza hostel in the San Telmo district. They also arranged for a safe cab from the airport to take us into the city (the airport is about half hour south west of downtown). As we've been warned, the driving style was of the aggressive-insane variety, which meant Max couldn't even look half of the time at the maneuvers our driver was pulling and even Sylvia would not consider driving here for a while. :) Fortunately there was plenty of things to look at passing through the suburbs into the city. Traffic is crazy and it's amazing people get within inches of each other and don't cause major collisions. The landscape was a mix between mostly run-down apartment blocks (reminded us a lot of Eastern Europe prior to renovations), and lush parks.

The hostel is pretty much as we expected: cheap and crazy. The lady at the reception gave us a warm welcome and told us that our room won't be available for another couple of hours because it will be disinfected today. Okaaay... :-)
I guess it's good they take care of their bugs before it becomes an epidemic. So instead of crashing and taking a nap right away, we had to come up with alternate plans for a few more hours. Fortunately we caught a second wind and ended up exploring the San Telmo neighborhood by foot. We walked to the Plaza Lezama and encountered the typical array of retirees, dog walkers (everybody seems to have a dog here!) and young families hanging out.

For a mid-day snack we turned into a local cafe called Bar Britanico and successfully ordered our first meal (2 milk coffees, croissants, and water). Ok, so we'll admit it was more in English than Spanish this time, but we are working on it... :) The people here are incredible friendly, and everybody we've met so far has been very helpful. I guess they get enough tourists here that their English gets plenty of use.
Since it was nowhere close to the time we were supposed to be back at the hostel, we ended up taking another detour and headed towards the Centro of the city. The streets are crowded by a  mix of cars that would not pass their next emission test, city buses, and brand-new European luxury vehicles.

Along the way, trying to get to Plaza de Mayo (one of the biggest plazas in the city), we stumbled across a few smaller but beautiful parks (see picture on the right). They all seem to be placed next to beautiful old buildings that are now either used by the government or as schools/universities. Notice the cool purple trees? We've seen those all over the place here, they must be in blooming season right now.

After walking for about half an hour, we finally made it to the Plaza de Mayo. It's a huge park taking over an entire city block, flanked by multiple government buildings, the Casa Rosada, and newer office towers. Since we were already close by we decided to try and find our language school, which is located in one of the side streets of the Plaza de Mayo. Sylvia was hoping to be able to practice her Spanish on the locals for a few more days before chatting with the teachers at the language school (and having to admit how rusty her Spanish is), but Max wanted to check out the school right away, so we went up, introduced ourselves, and chatted with some of the staff and teachers. 

Mostly locals on staff, but of course the girl we'd been talking to per email from the US turned out to be from Germany, close to Stuttgart (Max will correct me here shortly exactly from which town she was). :) Turns out she's from a small Kuhdorf near Pforzheim.

So filled out some forms, promised to be there on Monday morning at 9am to get our orientation and class placements, and went on our merry way, back towards the hostel.

Finally got the room, cleaned up and took a nap. Before long it was 9pm in the evening and we ventured out one more time to dinner. Just a few blocks away from the hostel is the Cafe San Juan which was recommended to us by hostel staff and got very good reviews online. Turned out the food was AMAZING!!! Had two tapas for appetizers and then shared a main dish. We got lucky, since that place also seems popular with the locals, and got one of the last free tables without having a reservation. Next time we'll plan more ahead, just in case. Happy and full and tired, we are now ready to wind down the first big day of our journey across the world. Stay tuned on more happenings the next few days! Ciao & Adios!