Landmines and Too Much Meat

I was up early one morning, which is not surprising as nobody goes out until the am, and I took some sunrise pics.





So the last two weeks have been fun. I've been learning lots of Castellano and eating ridiculous food. Again, you can see all our food adventures at BK in BA. I've decided that I might cut back on the meat intake for a while because I'm beginning to start getting things that I like to call "meat headaches" and "meat comas". We'll see how successful I become.

So the other day I went down to the Japanese gardens in the big park section of town. I ate at a little sushi restaurant they had. Needless to say it was not very good. I've given up on getting good sushi down here. It was a pretty little park, not what I would call a decent Japanese garden, but certainly a relaxing place to be. They had a pond with what I believe are Koi, which, if you stand on the bridge, will surface and open their moths hoping to be fed. There was also a cool duck that would wander around the park. Here are some pictures.












It's been getting pretty hot down here, and we've seen some crazy heat storms.



I would like to take a moment to talk about dog shit, or as I like to call it here, "landmines". It seems there is no social or financial repercussion for not cleaning up after your dog. That and the lack of well maintained sidewalks, walking around at night can be treacherous.




The holidays are coming up. We're not sure what we're planning to do yet. Apparently the 24th and 25th of December are big party nights. Ezra leaves next week right before my friend Gabe and Courtney arrive. I still have another 5 weeks left. I must say, I do miss NY a bit as I was away for a lot of November as well, but I am looking forward to having a few weeks here by myself.

A side note to start:

Before I start my regular post, I would like to make a comment on my previous post where I had mentioned the unusual amount of 80s music. The other night, Ezra and I were out at a bar/cafe, and the music was pretty loud. Without much choice of ignoring it, it became clear to us that they were playing some sort of 80s super mix. Then, the world stopped spinning and stars collided when the theme song to The Never Ending Story came on. I nearly lost my biscuits. Slightly funnier was the Ghostbuster's theme, but I would have preferred the song from that movie that starts with "pleeeeeasssseeee.....ppllleeeeeeeeaaaassssseeeee...I believe it's magic magic..." At my Spanish lesson my homework is usually to write sentences. I mentioned this weird phenomenon to my teacher at one point, in Spanish no less, and she gladly informed me that the lead singer of A-Ha had learned Spanish from her. I mentioned that I found the whole 80s music thing rather funny, and she promptly taught me the word for "fun", at which point I told her it would serve me better to know the word for "ridiculous".

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So I've been here for over a week now. Definitely working on the tan. I have been learning Spanish as well. I definitely understand a lot more now than when I arrived (which is not hard seeing as I knew nothing), and can pick up on things here and there and even communicate, though poorly. I have a few funny/frustrating Spanish stories:

My first tale of folly took place at an Irish pub near the Plaza Cortizar in Palermo Veijo's center. I wanted to sit down, do some writing and have a Guinness. I went up to the bartender and said "me gusta una Guinness". I found out later that I apparently said "I like Guinness". Kind of silly, but he got the point.

The real funny incident was at Veijo Indecente, a cafe near my Spanish school. The waiter had brought me the check for a meal, but I had ordered an additional coffee as well. When he came to collect the money, I wanted to know how much the coffee was. I couldn't remember and in fact probably hadn't learned yet how to say "how much is this?". So, in my infinite wisdom, I had said "Como mucho?". Now, let me explain a few things. In Spanish, como means "how" and mucho means "much/a lot". I didn't think that this was the way to ask how much but thought the general idea would get across. The thing is, the verb meaning "to eat" is comer, and when conjugated with "yo" which means "I", it becomes... you guessed it, como. You don't need to include personal pronouns in Spanish, so I literally told my waiter "I eat a lot". Funny. Thankfully he spoke a little English.

I should also point out that I am in fact not learning straight up Spanish but "Castellano", which is supposedly what the nobles spoke in the castles of spain, hence castellano. It is also what they speak in Buenos Aires. Not Argentina, per se, just Buenos Aires. I am not sure who else speaks this particular dialect, but I know that if I ever want to learn Spanish fluently, I will likely have to undo a lot of what I am learning.

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I'd like to take a moment to talk about keys. There is a type of key they have here in BA that looks like those old victorian house keys. We have one that opens and locks the top bolt to our door. Now, like New York, that key is a little shaky and was giving us trouble. Well, one night as we were getting back home around 4am (and I should point out that down here people don't go out to dinner in general before 10pm), we tried to get into our apartment and couldn't because our key wouldn't open the door. Needless to say, we were upset, no one more than Ezra, who, for lack of a better term, was fuming. We tried to see if there were any hotels that had available rooms in our area, but our luck was not so good. We decided that since it would only be for a few hours anyhow, that we would sleep in the hallway of our apartment. This, by the way, sucked. We would wake up every half hour or so and try the lock again. Finally, around 6:30am, it worked. We will not be locking the top lock again.

Ezra and I saw the Departed the other day. Strangely enough, most of the movies here are subtitled, not dubbed like in Germany. So not only can we go see a movie in English, but it'll also give us the Spanish translation so we can learn as well. Aint life swell? Movie wasn't bad. Still like the original "Infernal Affairs" a little better. I'm not much of a Scorcese fan, so it was a big deal for me not to hate this movie.

I would like to introduce you to a freind of mine I met down here in Argentina. Her name... empanada. Quite perfectly the perfect snack food, it's flaky dough surrounding steak, cheeese, or ham and cheese. Mmmmmm.





Yesterday we decided to take a break from going out for dinner and try our hand at asado cooking. Unfortunately, I bought what I thought was 2 tenderloin steaks and turned out to be tenderloin cutlets. They came out well though. Here are some pics:










The asado grill is a little different than what we're used to , as it has no vent to keep the coals oxygenated while they're heating up. Ezra had to set up a mini fire on the bottom of the grill and put the coals on top. Then you spread the hot coals out and replace the grill. The grill itself is adjustable so you can get closer or farther away from the fire as you cook. He also grilled some corn and I made guacamole. Once again, I felt like a pile of stacked meat after this meal.

More fun to come as week two of my adventures in Buenos Aires continues.

Some Cultural Observations

It's amazing that I've only been here four days, but I feel like I've been here for a couple of weeks. Instead of running out and doing the common tourist crap, we've been out walking around, checking out different restaurants, bars, and getting to know our neighborhood.

Our place is on the edge of Palermo Soho and Villa(veeja) Crespo. The double L here has a j sound.



We have been hanging out mostly in Palermo Viejo (Palermo Soho and Palermo Hollywood). It's a very hip and social neighborhood with wonderful restaurants and lots of shops. Clothes here are relatively inexpensive when compared to medium to high end stores, but imports are about the same if not more (they wanted over $200 for an airport express). Here are some casual observations I've made:

Fashion:

There is definitely a different bent on fashion in BA. Firstly, haircuts seem to be somewhat Williamsburgish (keep in mind I've been hanging out in the hip part of town). I have seen lots of mohawks, mullets, mohawks with mullets, and other strange hair inventions. It seems like a lot of women wear different layers of thin clothes, or have one interesting feature like a big belt or a shirt that shows one shoulder. .



Otherwise, it's about the same. There isn't anything significantly different, and they aren't trying to coopt American style or try to mimic our fashion. Basically, nothing really stands out as so obviously different

The funny thing is people down here can easily be mistaken for Americans. They all have a very light complexion with a European facial structure. It isn't until they start to whip off Spanish that you can always be certian they aren't foreigners.

Customs:

It is common for two young ladies to walk down the street holding hands or with arms interlocked. And as far as I can tell, either there are more outward lesbians here than I realize or women are more comfortable showing affection with one another.

They do the one cheek kiss. Some places do the two cheeks, and even the three cheeck, and I made the mistake of going for the two ckeek with my friend Paqule and was corrected. I have no problem kissing cheeks, but I prefer the awkward hug. Must be my oafish American sensibilities :)

Music:

Ok, and I am not exaggerating when I say this, but I have heard Men at Work's Down Under maybe 5 times since I've been here. The cherry on top was when the video came on the tv. It's as if after 1988, no more music was allowed to come into Argentina. They love their 80s down here. It's a little funny. You can be in a decent restaurant with white table cloths, and a remixed version of Dead Alive's Spin Me Right Round will come on.

On a side note, yesterday Ezra and I were walking around and there were a whole bunch of girls lined up outside a cd store. He asked me who I thought they were there to see, and jokingly I said the one name I thought would be the funniest and probably not true, Ricky Martin. Turns out, it was Ricky Martin. Ridiculous.

Architecture:

In Palermo Viejo, there are some amazing buildings. There seems to be a strong mixture of a more old, rustic style and new modern looking buildings. The pictures I have below here aren't the perfect example of this, but give you some idea of what things look like. In Palermo Viejo there are a lot of amazing homes with their own garages, courtyards, terraces and atriums. There is also a fair share of graffiti here and there.














The restaurants are also very cool. They are usually open with a lot of natural light. They all have this kind of rustic style that have European quality, or are very modern and could rival some of New York's newest diggs.


People:

Overall the people are very friendly and are happy to see you try to speak their language. Many people have warned me about theft and being careful, of which I have listened to, but overall I don't fele unsafe walking around. There are definitely neighborhoods I wouldn't go to at night or walk around by myself in certain situations, but otherwise things are all good. Mainly, the people are friendly and willing to talk to you if you engage them.











By the way, commercialism still rules



On a side not, I found a film shoot down here. There is apparently a lot of tv/film/commercial production down here. Pakermo Hollywood supposedly has a few cool tv studios that I'll probably go check out or at least walk around the outside of :)
I have definiteley seena lot of ENG shoots (small crews), but this looked like a normal sized deal.

Argentina's version of craft service. As you can see, they are leagues beyond New Yerk, if only because everything looks fresh and edible



Here's a sight we're all used to seeing. I wonder if Local 52 has some sway down here






So that's all I have to say about that. Tomorrow I hope to get out early and take some more pictures, maybe hit up a park or three. Ezra and I are taking Spanish lessons. I hope to be a master of the Argentinian menu by the time I leave.

Buenos Aires: The Adventure Begins!

Before I start, please check out Ezra's Blog for detailed descriptions of our meals and food adventures in BA at BK in BA.

So, Ezra and I caught a cab to JFK Thursday night for a 10:00pm flight out of NY directly to Buenos Aires. It was a 10 and 1/2 hour flight, but it seemed to go by rather quickly. Ezra slept well, but I was up most of the time. I did manage to squeeze in a couple of uncomfortable hours, but what can you do. Anyhow, we arrived in Buenos Aires around 11am (BA is 2 hours ahead of NY).

We got to immigration and waited in a real long line. This was the first time I whipped out my camera. Ezra does not look happy here



Nobody wants to wait in a long line after 10.5 hours of flying. But the prospect of being in BA was keeping us going. By the way, all these pictures were taken with my new Pentax K10D digital camera. I have this sweet fisheye lens that I used a lot.



Waiting for luggage.



Our apartment wasn't ready until Saturday, so we stayed at this little place in El Centro, which is a group of neighborhoods in the heart of the downtown district of Buenos Aires.



So, after dropping our stuff and talking with Jorge, the guy who ran the place we were staying at, we decided to hit the streets and check the city out.

Ezra had come very well versed in the Time Out guide to Buenos Aires, and already had a long list of restaurants to go see.



We found this little place in Barrio Norte that had great empanadas. I won't say more about it as Ezra's basically covered it all in his blog which is all about the food we ate. Needless to say, it was very tasty. Eating beef stew on a hot summer's day isn't always ideal, unless it taste ridiculously good.





After lunch we decided to walk around Recoletta and the surrounding areas.

I picked up a watch at a place around the corner. I don't usually wear one, but I left my phone at home and needed something slick, so I picked up a nice Oceana, or something like that





Buenos Aires is a very big city made up of many different neighborhoods, much like New York. We walked through a few of these, looking for places in the guidebook, on the map, or just to look around.










I didn't bring my medium lens with me when we went out, so I only had my 10-17mm (becomes 16-27mm with my camera) so a lot of these pictures are more than a little distorted. Takes a cool picture, but I promise, as cool as the architecture is here, it's not as wacky as it appears in some of these photos.

We stopped at a cafe near the Recoleta Cemetery
, a famous and grandiose place that I'll definitely come back to later and take more pictures. Recoleta is a mroe upscale neighborhood with a mixture of tourists and diplomats depending on which part you're in. This cafe was jsut what we needed to keep us going.







When you order a cafe in BA you get a tasty little espresso, which are usually accompanied by a packet of small sugar cookies. Right next to this cafe was a massive tree (see pictures above) that canopied part of it. As we walked around, I saw a lot of these ancient behemoths in little parks and gardens.

The rest of these are some more interesting images from walking around.












Ezra made fun of me, and rightly so, for my poor sense of direction in this new city. My excuse was I wasn't paying attention because I was too busy taking pictures. This is only partially true.

Anyhow, after all this we headed abck to our room. I put the camera away for the night and a while later we headed out again to hit up another cafe. It was around 8:30pm and we weren't quite ready to have dinner yet. Everything starts much later here in BA than in America. We figured by 9:30pm people would be out having dinner. Not so. It was pretty dead, and a Friday no less. The place Ezra wanted to check out had a few old people in it, so we decided maybe another time. We walked around for another hour or so and ended up eating at this big restaurant near our building. This was our first steak experience here, and it was definitely not disappointing.

We turned in around 12:30am, determined to catch up on sleep and be all set for day 2.

DAY 2: THE ADVENTURE CONTINUES

We woke up inadvertantly around 8:45am. Much like dinner, nobody was out and about. But we decided to head down to the famous Cafe Tortoni, a popular hangout of many artists, politicians, you name it. It was very nice, parisian, and filled with tourists, some of which who came only to take pictures. I ordered what I imagined to be a small plate of cheese and olives (as it said for one person), and they brought me this giant plate of food. On a side note, the food here is exceptionally cheap. Not a point of pride of the Argentinians, as it is a result of the major economic collapse they had here around the turn of the century. However, it does allow foreigners to enjoy amazing cuisine at 1/2 to 1/3 of typical New York prices.

I made a small dent in the cheese plate, and then it was off to Florida St, where all the main touristy shops are. We walked down block after block of basically the same 5 stores: Sunglasses, Shoes, Clothes, Chachkis, Specialized or American knockoff or an American store. It was interesting, but not very engaging. Ezra did not find the sunglasses he was looking for, nor did I find anywhere to buy new shoes or shirts. My big purchase was a few Cuban cigars, Partagas, to enjoy later. We then headed back tot he room and chilled for a while




Around 3:00 we caught a cab to Palermo Soho and moved into our permanent residence for the next two months. Here are some pictures of the place.











Here is a view from our terrace, which I might add has a sweet BBQ we will definitely use for asado.





This one is a little panorama I whipped together. Click on it for a bigger picture.



Befitting our hedonistic natures, Ezra and I decided to christen the new place with a tasty cigar and some beer the previous occupants, a German couple, had left.




We chilled out for a while and I decided to call my friend Paule. She's a french girl I met in the states through my college friend Vanessa. Vanessa knew I was going to BA, and threw a little party with her friends who had been or were going so I could meet them. Paule had been here for a month and a half already and had found a job working at a shoe design company. I just called her to say hello and let her know I was here, but she immediately invited us out to have dinner with her and friends. We of course didn't make it to the restaurant till about midnight, but we had a great time and a lot of... you guessed it, red meat (there was a little chicken, but who's counting?) They told us about a lot of cool stuff going on around here and where to go to get concentrated Spanish lessons.

Ezra and I got back around 2:30am and here I am posting this immensely long blog entry. It's now 5am and I need to head to bed, not that I have a pressing agenda tomorrow or anything ;)

So that's the first installment of my trip to BA. Don't forget to check out Ezra's blog. No pictures but good food descriptions. I will be out and about with my camera in the next week, so keep checking back for more updates.

Adios till then.