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!