It is warm here. It hasn’t been below 21° C (70° F) since I arrived, even in the middle of the night. During the day, it’s quite humid and sticky, and the sun is all up in my face in a way it hasn’t been the entire time I’ve been in Europe. I think I need to buy a pair of sunglasses and something SPF >30.
Many people in Europe told me that Buenos Aires is the most European city in South America. South Americans I’ve met refer to BA as “the Paris of Argentina”. This is the first South American city I’ve ever been to, so I can’t really comment on how “European” it feels relative to the rest of the continent, but I will say that it doesn’t remind me very strongly of Paris, and I was in Paris a couple weeks ago. The place Buenos Aires reminds me most strongly of is downtown Los Angeles, which I suppose just demonstrates that if you take a First World city and infuse it with a heavy dose of Latin culture, or take a city with a Latin culture and infuse it with a First World (or near-First World) economy, you wind up in roughly the same place.
From all appearances, there is a great deal of money floating about in Buenos Aires. There are many high-rise buildings, (one of several ways in which BA does not resemble Paris) I’ve walked past several places where significant construction and road repair works seem to be underway (I wrote my initials in wet cement yesterday!). The towering office buildings appear to house local offices for many major multinational firms, including everyone’s favorite Bob developers (P.S. I promise not to rip on Redmond in my next post).
The world’s cuddliest evil empire comes to America del Sur
I have been drinking the tap water for a week now, with no apparent ill effects. I have not felt unsafe anywhere yet, although so far I haven’t been in any of the sketchier parts of town. Buenos Aires is also vastly easier to navigate than any of the cities I’ve been in up to this point. After seven months in Europe, it came as quite a shock be in a place where streets that seem to run North-South, East-West actually do! Say what you will about the charm and mystery of Old World cities, but I’m going Nuevo Mundo grid system FTW.
Saturday night, walking back from a bar/club/venue (where I witnessed a neigh-inexplicable kabuki/drum corps/mime/circus acrobatics/dance show) a driver pulled over and asked me for directions. Not only did I know the street he was asking about, but thanks to the rationally laid-out street plan, I was able to give him useful directions (in Spanish!). I was quite impressed with myself.
For the most part, I find Argentinian Spanish easier to understand than Spanish Spanish. This is probably because it’s more similar to Mexican Spanish, which is the dialect almost everyone who studies Spanish in the United States learns.
However, there are some idiosyncrasies to the Argentine argot that continue to throw me. First, ‘y’ is pronounced like a cross between a ‘z’ and a ‘sh’ sound. Think of the sound in the middle of “discussion”, maybe. For example, I’m staying on Avenida de Mayo, and while I would pronounce Mayo as “mai-yo,” the locals here say something closer to “mai-zhoh”. That one takes some getting used to and some back-and-forth to figure out when you’re saying the same word in a different dialect, but it’s not too troublesome.
More problematic is the use of the pronoun vos, which completely replaces tú (informal 2nd person, ‘you’) in Argentinian Spanish. Not only is vos itself a new word to listen for, but it comes with its own set of verb conjugations that are unfamiliar and difficult to find information about. My understanding is that vos is a relic of an earlier form of Spanish, sort of like “thee” or “thou” in English, but still alive and well in Argentina. It’s the coelacanth of the Spanish language!
When I said there’s money in Buenos Aires, I do not mean to suggest that it’s at all evenly distributed. There’s more visible poverty here than any place I’ve been previously (with the possible exception of Croatia). When eating dinner alfresco, I’ve been approached for my leftovers several times. There are homeless people camped out even along major thoroughfares, and plenty of beggars. The children begging are the hardest for me to deal with emotionally, and this is the first place I’ve encountered them. I’ve also been warned that child-beggars can occasionally become knife-wielding child-muggers if rebuffed. In any case, I made a donation to Homeless International to rebuff my own guilty conscience.
To date, I haven’t really felt unsafe anywhere in Buenos Aires. But, unlike in Europe, I’m taking the warnings from locals seriously. I’ve been to sections of Paris and London that were supposedly really sketchy, and found them to be totally unremarkable. I’ve been avoiding the really sketchy sections of Buenos Aires. More than one person has commented that it’s a good idea to carry two wallets: a real one, and one to give to muggers. I bought a new wallet at a street fair yesterday and I’ve transferred my important cards and most of my money over to it.
In other news, the “World’s most annoying financial crisis” continues, although either the situation has improved since Slate’s writer visited in December, or he was exaggerating the severity for dramatic effect. Despite the signs reading NO HAY MONEDAS (literally, this reads as the rather-existential: “There are no coins,” but “We have no coins,” is a more accurate translation), I can report that the monedas do exist, they are simply few and far between. Through careful hoarding, and selectively handing over 5-peso notes for 4-peso bills, I have managed to accumulate around 4 pesos worth of coins, and I did spend $1.25 (the $ sign is used for pesos here, which is rather confusing to an American) on a bus ride.
It’s amazing the way people react very differently to different cities, at an immediate, visceral level. You’d think judgment would be reserved while the new place is explored. *** Your partiality for N-S, E-W street grid systems is humorous and probably betrays your roots. I agree with you though: a cardinal point grid is more rational and easier to learn quickly. (It’s the same aerial overlay each time). Angling, kinked, and interrupted streets always seem like third-rate planning. *** Is BA as sprawling and decentralized as LA? Is the feel the same?
don’t forget to visit the sunday antiques market in san telmo!
I miss grids- Tallahassee seems to be more on the stupid suburban sprawl/windy European road “plan” than a grid (a la Chicago).
At first, I thought by “the world’s most annoying financial crisis” you were just generally referring to the economic crisis in general- which everyone interested in politics seems to have “The Answer” for (especially if they don’t like Obama- but even those who do).
The “z-sh” sound is even weirder than the Spanish lisp, oh well people trash me for blunting “a”‘s (this is a product of the “Chicago accent” apparently), so to each his own.
~Steve