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Published: November 26th 2011
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I woke up (disappointed that I hadn´t acquired a cape and super powers), and ventured into town, following a guy´s advice to head to a market filled with live music, coffee and second hand clothes stores. Perfect! I can celebrate my 6,916 mile journey into another culture by spending Sunday on Brick Lane! It seems that the Buenos Aires town-planners have made navigation more fun by deciding not to display any street signs, possibly so that the locals can laugh at young, female, solo travellers squinting at upside down maps. Failing to locate the first turn, I selected a harmless older woman to torment with bad Spanish: "Don-daaay ezz Plazzza Deriego.... por favor?"
Her face contorted itself into an expression of half disdain, and half confusion:"como?"
Crap, I´ve just used up my entire Spanish vocabulary, and apparently it´s both offensive and incomprehensible. It must be time to point at my map while speaking slower and louder: "Plaza Dereigo... Donde?".
"No se."
That means "I don´t know"! It turns out I am fluent after all, and practically Argentinian already! I smile, say gracias, and stride off in the wrong direction.
The next guy could understand my question
(which I realised was utterly pointless if I could pick out only three words of the reply). I nodded knowingly, pretending that I was following his words rather than his hand gestures. By now I was in a less than nice part of town, but was still surprised at how much it looks like your average Western European city, perhaps with a few more people cooking on the side of the road or rummaging through bins. The ´bustling Sunday market´ was in fact a coffee shop with a TV showing the news. Piecing together the reports with my trusty Lonely Planet info, it seemed that a national election is just around the corner, and that a woman called Christina is almost certainly going to be re-elected (maybe because the general public have been led to believe they´re voting in a ´who´s had the most plastic surgery´ competition). The coverage then switched to a huge socialist protest which I inadvertantly ended up marching in for a while on my way back, before escaping into a restaurant to eat the best pasta and pesto ever (which along with anything else Italian, seems to be an Argentinian dish of choice).
My utterly
excrutiating first Spanish lesson was the next morning. The teacher decided that we should sit next to ten Chilean backpackers, who were definitely close enough to hear the extent of my ignorance. I´ve since been told that it´s pretty painful for people to witness us native English speakers trying to learn another language. We just don´t have the same incentive to learn, or understanding of how to go about it. My teacher queried what I meant by knowing "next to nothing", by asking me how many tenses I knew; "present perfect, present progressive, past progressive, preterite, subjunctive, conditional..." Apparently there are 32 in total. It was pretty hard for her to digest that I had absolutely no idea what these meant... in English! Realising the extent of the challenge ahead of her, she went off to pick up some colourful kids alphabet flash cards with pictures of dogs and cats on them.
To recover from the trauma, I headed to the main square and sat down on a bench outside Congress, reading the section of the Lonely Planet which states that people from Buenos Aires (Porteños) are known for arrogantly thinking they are very European and superior to the
Casada Rosada (The Pink House)
Where all the politics and that goes down... rest of their country and subcontinent. Argentinians apparently have the most cosmetic surgery and the most psychotherapy of any nationality, but most of this is restricted to the capital. As I thought to myself that this sounded like a pretty big generalisation, a middle aged guy started saying something to me in Spanish. Clocking that I looked confused, he tried again in perfect English, explaining that he´d lived in London until he was 15 (as his father was a diplomat) before returning to Argentina during The Falklands, then running off to Mexico to play his guitar and escape the violent miltary coup who were not fans of liberal, arty, long haired hippie wannabes such as him. He very quickly angled the conversation at blaming the British (and our awful superiority complex) for everything that´s ever gone wrong in Argentina and in his life. In the next breath he told me Argentina is a true world leader, unlike the rest of Latin America, and especially those countries whose people are predominantly indigenous: “some are so stupid that they can´t even speak Spanish, can you believe it?!” He entertained me with more political views…. "Of course 9/11 was a conspiracy, how can
you possibly think anything else?" And the ultimate "sometimes, you just need a dictator if you´re going to implement socialism properly". He was actually very intelligent, and rationalised what he was saying; but he still put my lack of agreement down to the fact that I am an ignorant, pompous, war-mongering Brit. His monolgue lingered on "the war" for a loooooong time, and I prayed that he wasn´t going to test my ´British ignorance´ by asking me for an opinion, because he would only be proven right! The numbers of people on the streets in this rich city began to make sense as he told me about their 2001 economic crash, which was so severe that even upper-middle class people lost everything. Apparently since the husband of Plastic President took over (followed by her) the economy has been remarkably stable and growing fast; but still a large proportion of the homeless are victims of 2001.
Feeling better informed, I headed back to backpacker world. The rude Mancs were still in my room, and still rude; the tasty tasty murderers were still at the bar, and I still felt jet lagged and adverse to alcohol. When you´ve lost your invincibility
cloak, the size of this hostel actually makes it much harder to meet people. Mean inner monologue started giving me a hard time again about how I should really get the balls to stride up to one of the groups and declare: "Yoohoo! Relax guys, I´ve arrived!" Wimpy inner monologue was victorious again though, by reminding me that on all of my previous travels, meeting people has just happened naturally and I shouldn´t feel the need to force it.
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Janneke
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Sounds Terrifying...
....good on you. I tired learning Spanish in my first year of uni in preparation for a similar trip sometime in my future. It was a complete an utter failure. So good luck...hope you get further than me! And don't get mugged...