Bite me
Trip Start
Dec 29, 2007
1
10
42
Trip End
Ongoing
Buenos Aires,
Argentina
Friday, January 25, 2008
Our evenings usually include a jog around Plaza Irlanda but it wasn't until recently that I noticed, behind a weeping willow, a statue of Padraig Pearce! Parks here are full of historical monuments & Pearce is presented as a freedom fighter. The park commemorates the Irish Argentine bond. Again architecture would not seem complete without a little 'airbrushing' so as you will see in the pic there, we now know where the hidden scenes of 'Into the West' were filmed
TATO was here
! It really is a worthy nominee for the PROC website. Being anywhere near parks in the evening is like giving mosquitos an open invitation to bite you at will so pick up some kind of repellent spray. The little runts converted my ankles into a Picasso masterpiece. Capital Federal (the city of BA, not the province of BA) is laid out in the same manner as an American city, divided into blocks of ~100m with most streets being one way & each barrio usually containing a handful of public parks complete with a carousel. Public transport here is first class. The subway system, SUBTE, functions the same as London or NYC & for $0.90 per trip you can't go wrong. Taxis are to be found everywhere in BA, all 32,000 of them, so you are never short of a lift. Buses only take coins & a useless piece of info: traffic lights turn from red to yellow before turning green here.
Our very own Centra is replaced by MAXIKIOSCO which are more plentiful than Starbucks & Subway combined. A popular fetish of the Argentine diet is HELADO (icecream). It is extremely good but matches Irish prices. HELADERIAs are to be found on any half busy street. The 2 flavours that you have to try are SAMBAYON (eggs & white wine) & DULCE DE LECHE. Keeping with food, fruit here is savage. VERDULERIAs (greengrocers) are located on every second street with masses of fruit on display usually taking over half the footpath surrounding it. It's worth noting that many shops close for a siesta for about 3-4 hours in the afternoon & close at 9ish.
Friday night signalled the start of the weekend & a house party at one of Vanesas work colleagues, Mariano
Carousel
. They don't quite compete with us in the drinking stakes it's fair to say, mainly due to the monstrosity of food but they do mix drinks like crazy. We started with a wad of SANDWICHES DE MIGA. It's a sandwich, with no crusts but has 3 layers of bread which are filled, very popular here. This was washed down with various beers, champers & wine. Then there was about 10 courses of tapas accompanied by songs from a typical argentines childhood booming through the room, some which were translated versions of pop songs from my youth & some ... well ... a mix of edam & cheddar provoking plenty of dancing & losing me in conversation.If you decide to try talking the talk over here, there are a few points you should be aware of. Firstly when you see a word written with 2 consecutive 'L's or a word containing a 'Y' in the middle (except if the y is beside another vowel), they are both pronounced 'SH' so 'EL POLLO' (chicken) becomes pronounced EL PO-SHO and 'AYER' (yesterday) becomes A-SHER. Secondly, the letter 'S' is pronounced very subtley in the middle of a word making it virtually impossible to hear, an example being the word 'BOSQUE' (forest) which is pronounced BOK-K to the untrained ear. Thirdly the letters 'B' and 'V' sound interchanged in the language mainly due to the speed at which people speak but actually follow an insane irregular system. Finally those studying spanish, the 'tu' form of a verb is replaced by 'vos' which is conjugated differently so if they haven't lost you in conversation thus far, count yourself up s**t creek!
