Blah blah blah, lady of the people, didn’t actually have vast personal embezzled wealth etc.
The Argentine capital reminded us of nothing so much as major cities in Italy or Spain, rather than what we’d come to expect of South America. They certainly drive like Italians: one hand on the wheel, one hand on the horn and the transmission left at the last speed bump.
A quick note about the currency. The Argentine Peso is a damn liability for both locals and tourists. Decades of obsession with Peronist fiscal policy meant that the locals developed a habit of buying and hoarding US dollars rather than see their savings inflate away. To counter this, the government instigated a limit to the amount of US dollars each citizen was allowed to possess per year. The fairly predictable result is that there is now an established black market (the
dolar blue) where one can exchange one’s filthy gringo Benjies for Argie pesos at between 150% – 200% the official exchange rate.
It’s so established that the various exchange rates are published in the local papers every morning. You can find money changers in most tourist areas, but risk the chance you’ll be fobbed off with counterfeit notes or marked for a mugging. You’ll get a better rate for pristine 50s and 100s, literally because they fit into a suitcase and travel easier. Owing more to my inherent laziness, I changed my cash with the hotel concierge at 13 to the dollar (official rate A$9.5; best case ‘Blue’ rate A$14.4 that day), so they took about 10% of the savings for themselves. It still felt pretty gangster.
Some Monopoly money, yesterday
Our hotel was in the fairly posh Recoleta district, home to the eponymous cemetery. Evidently this is
the place to be seen dead. Here’s the view from the hotel:
Day and night for some extra moodiness
One can buy a plot there for fixed time periods or in perpetuity. Families that did the latter but then died out have their tombs sealed and left to the ravages of time, which looks pretty spooky. The walls of the cemetery also have economy-class pigeon holes in which to file your mortal remains if you’re working to a budget. Otherwise it’s a massive testament to egotistical one-upmanship, with each family and person of note attempting to out-do their neighbours in post-mortem grandeur. Apparently it’s known for people to rent a plot for one day in which to be buried, only to be exhumed the following day and reinterred someplace more modest.
It’s also (possibly) where Eva Peron is buried in her family’s mausoleum, which I managed to not notice at the time. It explains the flowers, though.
I’ve genuinely seen smaller towns than this place. I felt a bit weird strolling about, taking pictures, as it seems of dubious respectfulness, but then the attention probably suits the inhabitants down to the ground.
Look at this guy in his bathrobe
Chan read that a thing that one should do in Buenos Aires is watch a performance at the Teatro Colon, as the acoustics are among the best in the world. So we duly bought tickets for
El Ángel De Fuego, which, the online bumf said, had Spanish and English subtitles. It did not. It was sung in Russian with Spanish subtitles. I’ve read the synopsis in English subsequently and I’m not a great deal wiser. It had a crazy lady searching for her lost love, who may or not exist/be an angel; her compliant male friend who is irretrievably lost in the friend-zone; a bloke’s heart gets pulled out; a massive carousel appears periodically on stage for some analogous reason that sailed right over my head (carousels are big in Buenos Aires for some reason); Mephistopheles and Dr Faustus rock up and banter for a bit in a scene that drives the plot not one iota; crazy lady joins a convent, causing the nuns to all go mental and get their boobies out. Then crazy lady gets burned as a witch.
Something for everyone, then.
Just what the blistering blue fuck is going on?
We took another walking tour with a British bloke who’s been living here for a while. He showed us around the Plaza de Mayo, where Falklands veterans have a semi-permanent live-in protest underway. They are servicemen who didn’t see actual combat as such, but were deployed to various postings in South Argentina. Apparently they were all deemed to be agents of a military dictatorship when they returned after the conflict, were pretty much ostracized by everyone, and found themselves unable to find work and other various misfortunes. To catch everyone up at this point: Argentina had a military dictatorship at the time of the war. The Falklands invasion was an attempt to regain patriotic favour with an unhappy populace, but instead turned into the final nail in the Galtieri regime’s coffin.
Pictured is the other side of the tower from my picture at the top of this post.
You can see Evita haranguing the rich on this side, whereas the other has her smiling benevolently on the poor.
We took in the National Congress and one of the 20 copies of ‘The Thinker’ by Rodin, the big hack that he was.
The most eccentric building we saw was the Palacio Barolo: a 1923 neo-gothic building which is an allegorical allude to Dante’s Inferno, set on 14 floors comprising purgatory, with god represented in the dome at the top. Hell is on the ground floor. The ‘A’ in
Ascensor (lift) is made of a masonic compass symbol. Clues to Illuminati everywhere.
The Plaza de Mayo has semi-permanent riot barriers in place, as this country has a habit of both spirited protest and a singular lack of moderation.
We were taken via the guide’s favourite wine shop: a nice little place that was both friendly and generous with the samples. it transpired that they were having a tasting the following evening and –since we were making a habit of getting lost in foreign language middle-class activities- we signed ourselves up. Naturally it was all in Spanish, although the owner also spoke English so we had a bit of a side-natter while her colleague enthused elaborately and very technically about the wines in Spanish. We ascertained a fair bit from his gesticulations and the handful of words we do know, though. Christ, we’re classy.
I still have no idea what’s going on, only now I’m markedly more drunk, which helps.
We took afternoon tea at L’Orangerie at the Alvear Palace hotel, as this is apparently another thing to do. I couldn’t care less about afternoon tea as a concept because: a) I don’t drink tea; and b) it’s cake and sandwiches, and there’s only so excited I can get about either. Chan is more civilised than I, however, and occasionally takes me to such places in an attempt to drag me out of the gutter.
We had intended to spend a couple of days across the way in Montevideo, but after looking at the travel time and bugger-about factor on the day, we knocked it on the head and booked into another hotel across town in San Telmo.
Like any diligent tourists, we visited La Boca, or rather the brightly coloured
Caminito - an area preserved and embellished specifically for tourists- as the area around it is rough as badgers. It’s in the shadow of the massive
Boca Juniors stadium and is a network of tat shops, restaurants and tango dancers vying for tourist gratuities.
And since our thirst for tat browsing is apparently unquenchable, we had a browse at the Feria San Telmo: a street market which is notionally an antiques fair, but is a giant mess of music, food, trinkets and the occasional bit of Nazi paraphernalia. It’s surprisingly hard to find Christmas tree decorations though, and they are Chan’s favoured form of souvenir. We did however find some trolls which will do.
The cafés here follow a traditional European coffee shop pattern: largely voluminous, dark, wooden spaces served by aging waiters dressed in white shirts and aprons. We visited the La Puerto Rico a couple of times, which was the Pope’s old haunt. The coffee is strong and the sandwiches formidable.
In case you don’t know, they eat a lot of steak here.
Parrillas are traditional Argentine steak houses where the meat is cooked on an elaborate metal grill frame over a wood fire. We went to one of the more famous establishments,
La Brigada, where their gimmick was too present you with a slab of roast beast and then carve it in front of you with the edge of a spoon.
Never eat a steak bigger than your own head
We visited a few of the larger art galleries and also the pope’s old manor: the Metropolitan cathedral. It looks for all the world like a town hall:
The crypt of the ‘Great Liberator’, General José de San Martín, is located here. It’s rather impressive. the women depicted around him represent Argentina, Peru and Chile: the countries he fought to liberate from the control of the Spanish Empire. Rumour has it that his coffin is on an incline as the church suspected he was a closet Mason, so ensured that his head faced towards hell. Priorities, guys.
Kurzfassung auf Deutsch: Wir haben Buens Aires besucht. Ich habe Geld auf dem Schwarzmarkt gekauft. Wir haben die größte Steaks, das ich je gesehen habe gegessen. Es ist schwierig, hier Weihnachtsbaumdekorationen zu kaufen. So haben wir mit hässlichen Plastik Trolle improvisiert.
