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Published: October 16th 2008
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We are off to San Telmo today. This is the barrio where you find used junk…better known as antiques. We are so good at the subte we can make the change from linea D to C and ignore the fact that each platform is called something different. You get off at Nuevo de Julio station and walk underground to Diagonal Norte station. Pretty good for a guy who thought our subte stop was called Salida for the first two weeks here.
This barrio is one of the oldest in BA but it has seen better times. A yellow fever epidemic in 1871 chased out all who could afford to leave to the then upscale Ricoleta and Palermo barrios (where we now live) but this may have been an architectural blessing in disguise as no one modernized this area as they did all of the northern barrios. So you get a good view of how the place looked back at the turn of the century. Oh I forgot…can’t say that anymore. Turn of the 20th century is more accurate I suppose. The Plaza Dorrego is where the main action is…junk sellers by day, milonga (tango) dancers by night. Of course the night time activities usually happen past my bedtime.
We walked down to the old Mercado Municipal that had one of the most interesting guys selling meat in one of the stalls. He seemed to know everyone, smiling and joking. The meat was secondary to the conversation. I could spend all day just watching him and his customers interact. Actually I was tempted to buy a slab of meat just to have the privilege of meeting this guy.
Next we found ourselves heading for a Japanese restaurant on the A line. The train stop is Pasco but as I glance out the window I see our subte zooming past the station. By the time we get off at the next station I figured out that going one way the train stops at one station and going the other way it stops at the station we just past. They did this just to ruin my new found subte ego. And unfortunately this was one of the few stations that you cannot get from one platform to the other within the subte station. So you gotta go upstairs to the street, jaywalk across and go down to the other entrance. With the market dropping so precipitously I convinced the station guy to call across to the opposite side to let us in for free. 33 cents is 33 cents…I look at the 15 minutes this non verbal explanation took as money well saved. But the real reason for this long winded subte story is the train itself. The A line has a few of the original wooden cars. As you probably know the BA subte started way back in 1913 so it has quite a history. And there are no more splinters left in these wooden seats. You can sit there looking at the wonderful incandescent lighting fixtures and imagine the thousands maybe millions of bottoms that occupied that same seat. Another factoid I just heard about from el professor Amigo is that these A line stations are color coded since people back in the early 1900’s were not as literate and needed an easy way to tell the stations apart. So you can still see the colored ceramic tiles in each of the stations. We finally got off at station chartreuse.
We find the Japanese restaurant but it is a store instead. Another “lost in the translation” story. Kazuko checks out the soy products while I assume the sitting position that I usually find myself in when Kazuko does her shopping. People watching is more fun.
We are now getting very hungry. Kazuko makes a command decision and we pop into this little place that caters to the locals. We feel confident since the waiter is older than me and should know what he is doing. Bad assumption. We point to what we want off the menu…the daily specials. He then brings us bread and cheese…and shows us how to open the cheese packet. Very nice guy. When the food arrives I get what I ordered but the chicken that Kazuko ordered somehow changed into a salad. We thought the salad was part of my meal although it was rather large. We wait and wait for Kazuko’s meal and finally the waiter came over wondering why Kazuko isn’t eating her salad. She explains in her best Spanish that she ordered the chicken. He got part of the conversation right…I think when Kazuko flapped her arms. So here comes the chicken but by then Kazuko had helped me eat my calamari stew and some of the infamous salad. We took the chicken home.
Another day, another adventure. You know life is too easy when you can read the menu, tell waiter what you want and expect to get something close. I am going to be bored when we get home. Maybe I will feign ignorance of the English language just to liven things up.
Chow
Danny
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Linda & Rich
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ste
So, how was the calamari stew? Can't imagine what that would taste like... Linda