Buenos Aires

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I guess I had to leave Buenos-Aires to start writing
about it. I will start with the idiotic statement that
the most fun I had in Buenos-Aires was when I was in
Rosario (to all of you that slept through Argentinean
Geography lessons - it´s about 4 hour drive from BA,
really not in it). I was in BA 17 days (I think) and I
still have no idea what I did there for so long. Not
that I was bored, the city is huge and has a lot of
stuff in it, I don't remember having any free time
that I didn´t know what to do with, but I somehow
managed not to do much in these 2 weeks and still
being busy and always tired - it seems that no matter
what I was doing in BA I was always tired. The city
itself in most parts seemed to me like a huge version
of south Tel-Aviv (unattractive torn-down ´shikunim´),
except for the fact that once in a while you run into
a huge church or a square, and the city center area is
ALWAYS PACKED with people, so to me it had more of a
metropolitan feeling than NYC.
One thing that I really do like here until now is the
food - after eating mainly ethnic fast food in the US,
because that was what I could afford, almost every
meal I had here was so good. They almost don´t have
here cheap-restaurants/ethnic-fast-food - it´s either
McDonalds style or a full restaurant with a waiter and
all, which are usually cheaper than getting Chinese
food in NYC… So I really like red meat and dulce de
leche, which already puts me in a good position, but
surprisingly enough, even when I got chicken it was
usually very tastefully cooked (the only problem with
the food here is that it is not very diverse).
I landed on a Friday morning, and decided to take the
public bus to the city because it was by far the
cheapest option, and finding it was my first chance to
try my Spanish skills - to sum it up, it wasn´t easy
but I managed to find a guy at the station that
explained everything to me (you need coins!) in a
Spanish-English mixture. The bus turned out to be
quite an experience - although I spend a good 2.5
hours on it, it passed through weird areas of the city
and its suburbs that otherwise I would´ve never
reached - streets that the most popular vehicle on
them were horses with carriages, a big weird market,
neighborhoods with much smaller torn-down houses (and
big impressive churches every once in a while) etc. I
picked 2 hostels from my Footprint guide, 1 of them
had room, and although it was quite expensive in
Argentine standards, I was too lazy to look for
another one. Then I started wandering around the city
center without a specific cause, since I still had
time until check-in. I went through Plaza de Mayo, the
main square that has in it the Casa Rosada (Pink
House, their version of the White House) and a whole
bunch of nice buildings, Florida st. - a pedestrian
street that is always full with ppl, and Plaza San
Martin that since it was a nice day had quite a lot of
ppl tanning on its grass - yes, in the cities here and
in the US ppl tan on the grass in public squares, not
just on the beach. I went back through Av. 9 de Julio,
the ppl here are suppose to be proud of it being the
widest avenue in the world - I personally think that
having a 20 paths avenue in the middle of your city is
annoying and noisy. At the evening I went to a Chabad
synagogue (pretty much the only one I could find, and
even that wasn´t easy. Apparently it was a Chabad
synagogue, but not the one that strangers - usually
Israelis - come to…), and after that the Rabbi invited
me to a Shabbat dinner in his house, so we went there
with one of the local teens that he teaches (which
was the only guest there apart from me, the only
others were his wife and his 3 really cute little
kids). So his kids were really cute to play with, he
speaks good Hebrew because he studied in Zfat (we
spoke a mixture of bad Hebrew, English and Spanish
because everybody had different 1st and 2nd
languages), and his wife is an amazing cook (just the
starters - I never enjoyed so much from salads. Try to
put avocado, olives and green onions in the same bowl,
you can´t go wrong) so I had fun. That was also my
only Jewish experience in BA (the next local Jews that
I met were in Rosario).
On Saturday there was a big custom party that the BA
CouchSurfing group (they are very active) organized.
Most ppl said it was great, but I personally thought
it was just another party, didn´t even find a couch
and the worst thing is that I had my small bag with my
camera (and some other useless stuff) stolen because I
was stupid and just left it on a sofa, and I lost
quite a lot of pictures (since around the end of
September, so no more pictures for a while).
On Sunday I walked around the San-Telmo market, which
was close to my hostel, but it was pretty touristy and
mainly had a bunch of antiques and useless stuff. I
also decided that I need to work a little on my
Spanish to get it going, so on Monday I started a week
of Spanish classes (4 hours a day). Studying was
pretty enjoyable, somewhat helpful, gave me some
confidence with speaking, and it was a pretty good
place to meet some cool ppl (but since it was only a
week, not to develop any lasting relationships), but
getting up every day in the morning made me really
tired and it was pretty expensive so I didn´t continue
there for more than the week. I didn´t get to see a
lot of the city during the week, except for one time
when I went with a Brazilian girl from school (she
didn´t speak English, so we had to speak Spanish,
which made the conversation very limited) to the
Recoleta cemetery - it´s amazing, but some of the
prettiest buildings in BA are graves! I also went one
time to a free concert of a local band in a cultural
center near my hostel (that I stayed in just because
it was fairly close to school), which was kinda nice -
I think that all of the other ppl there were friends
of the band. Another thing that I did quite a lot
during the week was after-school activities, one was
just a meeting to practice our Spanish and we had a
salsa lesson (after which I really think that I am a
lost cause) and a tango lesson that went somewhat
better.
At the weekend I joined, quite spontaneously and in
the last moment, a BA CouchSurfing invasion to
Rosario, which was organized quite spontaneously. It
started with a couple of ppl that wanted to go to
Rosario, and ended up being a weekend full of fun, in
which a whole bunch of CouchSurfers came from BA to
Rosario, surfed the city´s best couches and the group
from the 2 cities did so many fun things together that
some of the CSers from Rosario organized for us. We
arrived at Friday night to Rosario, went to our houses
(I surfed the couch of 2 Italian girls that do an
internship in the consulate in Rosario, together with
a Peruvian guy that temporarily lives in Rosario and a
Christian guy from BA that his last name is Levy -
don´t worry, we slept on different couches/mattresses
😊, and then straight to a party that had a reggae
band and then music that lasted until the morning
(like they always do around here - you don´t get home
before 7am). Then we slept a little, and met at a
beautiful park that goes along Rosario´s river to
chill, chat and make ´free hugs (abrazos gratis)´
signs. The group, from both cities (and, of course,
with surfers from all over the world - the only
continent that didn´t have representation was Africa)
was really good and we had fun just doing whatever.
After that we gave free hugs to ppl in the park (we
made signs in different languages, but nobody could
understand the Hebrew one 😊, and then went to the
nearby international food festival to give free hugs
over there too - that was obviously fun, most of our
clients were senior citizens or kids (they weren´t
shy!). So I had to try the Iranian Kebabs at the food
fair (after not eating one since I left Israel, in NYC
I preferred Falafel, because it was much more
affordable), and in the park they had every possible
fruit candied, so I had to try the carameled ´dvelim´
and the candied strawberries, so, mom, you will be
glad to know that the guys over there laughed that
every time they saw me I was eating something (they
also have everywhere over here in the streets ppl that
make carameled peanuts and sell them on the spot -
very cheap and quite addictive). At night we went
partying again - to a party that was meant to raise
money to some underprivileged kids project, and was
great - really cheap alcohol, not too crowded, good
diverse music, and of course - our great group, I
think it was one of the first time I actually enjoyed
a party. At the fair (Israeli stand), at the party and
among the couchsurfers I also met some of Rosario´s
Jews - and, yes, some of them have family in Haifa,
but no, none of them was Shi´s cousin 😊. The next day
we kinda took it easy, and eventually gathered under
Rosario´s very impressive flag monument (at night it´s
blue and white - if you replace the sun in the middle
with a star of david you get ours), went around the
food fair to see and get food and at night went to a
salsa party (already said that I can´t dance it?) and
from there straight to the bus that arrived back to BA
at Monday morning… That was one crazy weekend - fun,
fun, fun (BTW, that is where the pictures from my new
camera start from).
On Monday I moved to a hostel in Palermo that some CS
ppl recommended me, that had really cool atmosphere
and nice staff. But I moved from there after 1 day
because I finally found a couch to surf. My hostess
was a really cool woman that traveled all around the
world, and around May going to the middle-east (I´m
not sure that she is coming to Israel, but I tried to
persuade her to…).
Apparently, there was a Jewish film festival in one of
BA´s malls (its owner is Chabad and it has the only
kosher McDonald´s in the world outside Jerusalem, not
that I ate there…), so on Wensday I went to see West
Bank Story (so maybe the Cahbad thing wasn´t my only
Jewish experience in the city…) - to those of you that
haven´t heard about it - it´s a short movie that sums
up the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through a
´Westside Story´ style musical - stereotype-based
humor like I like, find it and see it! After that they
screened some boring documentary, so I decided that I
still have time to catch the Sudamericana (somebody
knows it? Did it replace the Libertadoes or is it
something different?) Semi-Finals between River Plate
and Arsenal (the Argentinean one, not the British), so
I walked out in the middle and started making my way
to the River stadium (took a couple of trains and then
just followed ppl). Eventually I came quite early and
ended up in the seating ´yazia´ (the more expensive
tickets with the less fanatic fans, not necessarily
what I intended, but apparently that was what the
stand I came to sold, and it turned out ok because
River lost in ´pendelim´ - there was no overtime for
some reason - and I was there alone), and there
managed to find the only gringos in the stadium (an
American family) so I had who to talk to until the
game began. The game was pretty good, had some
interesting moments but ended 0:0, they had more
´hazizim´ in the beginning than in Kiryat-Eliezer
which impressed the Americans, and even though we had
seats we obviously spent most of the game standing and
cursing the referee (I am still not sure how you say
referee in Spanish, but there was a lot of ´hijo de
puta´. When I didn´t feel like trying too hard I just
cursed in Hebrew…). Before the movie, I went to the
Policia Federal (something like the Argentine FBI)
Museum, that I found in a Lonely Planet book under
´quirky Buenos-Aires´, and quirky it was - it had
absolutely no sign, so without the exact address it is
impossible to find, it is apparently more than a 100
years old, it is free and according to their guest
book I was their first guest this day… Apart from the
normal exhibits of uniforms, weapons and communication
methods from all of the periods, they had a display of
the skeleton of a dog that ´was killed in the line of
duty´, exhibit of weird betting games, and restoration
of famous crimes including restored plaster mutilated
bodies that was too gory even for me.
On Thursday I went around Palermo a little, and at
night went with a bunch of CS ppl to a night club - it
was free and had also live bands (but pretty late, I
couldn´t stay for most of it), but nothing special. On
Friday my hostess went away for the weekend, so I had
to move again, and ended up spending the night in a
pretty shitty hostel in San-Telmo. During the night I
went around Recoleta and Palermo a little, and by the
evening I was so tired that my nap turned into a full
night sleep… So the next day I moved again to a nearby
cheaper and more normal hostel, and went to wander
around La Boca. It is amazing how so close to the
extremely touristy and beautiful area of the football
stadium and Caminito (a small street with colored
houses and artists’ market) ppl live in such poverty
in made-up tin and wood houses. At night I went to yet
another party with the CS crew (it started at 2am and
we went out around 5:30…), which was again free and
not bad, but nothing special…
On Sunday I headed to another destination from my
´quirky Buenos-Aires´ list - Tierra Santa, the first
religious theme park in the world (yep, a Jesus theme
park). It wasn´t as funny as it could have been and
there weren’t any rides, but some of it was amusing.
They had a show of photos from Israel, and most of the
park was restorations of scenes from J.C.’s life -
most of them were quite seriously looking, but some of
them were ridiculous enough to enjoy. At night I went
to a Tango class that went fairly well, but my level
wasn’t really high enough to take part at the dancing
after the class, so I chatted with some other CS ppl
that were there until it was time to go to sleep.
Yesterday I took a night but to Cordoba, I took the
higher class (cama - bed) which means you spend the 10
hour ride on an armchair the size of a big TV ‘kursa’
that goes back quite a lot - comfy sleep… And they
even had food that I can eat - I took the veggie meal
because I didn’t want any ham and cheese sandwiches
(which nobody got at my bus - the normal food was an
ok looking chicken - but the bus companies are
notorious for distributing them), which for some
fortunate co-incidence had rice cakes instead of most
of its bread too. I got this morning to my hostess’
apartment, which is quite nice, and Cordoba seems like
a much saner city with an old city center.
Nevertheless, I might go back to BA from the Mendoza
area to a CS camping weekend in Tigre on the 8-9/12
and from there fly south (to Ushuaia) instead of
flying back, and may come back again, just because it
is on my way back north…
So… have fun everybody and write back (even if I don’t
always get to responding, I always enjoy reading
what’s going on with you).
Abrazos (gratis),
Roí (that’s how you spell my name in Spanish - I took
it from a Siddur)

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