The End

Well, I was almost out of toothpaste, and I couldn't find the brand I liked anywhere.  So I came home.  What have I learned from my time in Argentina?

1.  Eggs don't need to be refrigerated.
2.  Any construction job can be completed using only a hammer and chisel.
3.  Always straddle two lanes when driving, just to keep your options open.
4.  Ice cream delivered to your door on a motorbike tastes better.
5. Charcoal > Propane
6. Speaking English with your friends every day is a fun and easy way to not learn Spanish.

I'm happy to be back in Canada in time to enjoy the snow and cold, and looking forward to seeing some familiar faces.  If I ever get a phone, you should call me!  Thanks for feigning an interest in my self absorption, this will be the last post you have to read.  ¡Adiós!

Going Out With A Bang

Jen arrived a week ago, and we've been trying to squeeze all that BA has to offer out of my remaining time as an expat.  I know the city marginally better now, and we've been blessed to have a few serendipitous encounters with the kind of random awesomeness that make this such a great town.  On Friday we stopped in Plaza Dorrego for some sangria, and my favourite caricaturist Leonardo was there to sketch our enormous chins and pointy elbows.  Just two more drawings, and the next one is free!  On Saturday we were walking between Recoleta Cemetery and the Big Ass Metal Flower, and stumbled upon a band in the park playing covers of 70's hard rock.  They ignored our request for Black Sabbath, but the singer did an amazing Robert Plant, so we let her off easy.  On Sunday we managed to score one of the coveted balconies for two at Amici Miei.  Our Italian feast was complemented by an impromptu drum-off between two rival gangs of hippies.  The streets below us turned into a mass of barefoot ravers, but we were high enough that we could enjoy the spectacle without having to smell the patchouli.

On Monday, we took the ferry to Uruguay for two nights at Posado De Campo Gondwana.  It's a winery/orchard/guesthouse just outside of Colonia, and was a welcome respite from the claustrophobic streets of San Telmo.  I had become accustomed to the broken, garbage-strewn sidewalks and screeching, exhaust-spewing buses of San Telmo.  Two days of laying in hammocks listening to the distant buzz of cicadas and the occasional thrum of a hummingbird was almost too bucolic for words.  There were bicycles and horses to ride, but we ended up just lazing around the saltwater pool most of the time.  Gondwana was run by a Swiss couple named Andy and Isabella, and on our first night there they cooked up a traditional Uruguayan asado.  We had grilled goat cheese, choripan, two kinds of blood sausage, baked potatoes, several salads, a stuffed chicken loaf, and a few different steaks.  After dessert, Andy brought out shot glasses along with bottles of homemade Limoncello, Grappa, and walnut liqueur.  As the bottles got emptier, Andy's German accent got thicker.  When the conversation started veering towards eugenics, Jen and I decided to call it a night.

Since returning to BA, we've been making big plans for a wild night out at one of the the many clubs that are open until dawn.  As each night wears on, we start dragging our feet, neither wanting to be the one to wuss out, but not really in the mood for crazy party action.  We're in our thirties, there is nothing to be ashamed of!  We had another tango lesson with Enriqueta, and have been practicing our moves on the roof.  Not sure if we can do it in public without embarrassing ourselves, but tonight is our last night here so we might try to hit up a milonga.

Oh Jenny, You Came And You Found Me A Turkey

Tracy, Tyler, and I didn't get our act together in time to go see Vampire Weekend.  The show was starting quite early, and we still had to go out for really terrible sushi, so we pulled the plug.  It was sixty-five bucks a ticket anyway, there's no way I'd pay that much to see them in Calgary.  I don't like their music, so there's that, too.  Instead, we went to La Cigale to check out some local bands and wash the awful sushi taste out of our mouths with Jameson's.  The bands weren't too good, and we were about to get a cab to the suburbs for karaoke when we ran into the dude who had DJ'd (DJed? deejayed?) between bands at Plasma the night before.  We followed him and his pals up the street to a 3 story club in a converted mansion.  There was one table that was just a bunch of big holes in the floor.  You sit in a hole and the floor becomes a table.  The future is now, people!

Sunday was a day of rest.  After a bit of souvenir shopping at the Defensa Street market, we spent the evening eating Chinese food and watching trashy movies on TV.  Tyler and Tracy left on Monday, and I began the final countdown to my Special Lady Friend's arrival.  Jen and I started dating in June, and have now been apart for longer than we were together before I ran away to play expat.  I don't think we could have made it without Skype.  She gets here on Friday morning, and I will have ten days to show her the highlights of Buenos Aires, buy her a zebra hoodie, and enjoy conversations that aren't cut off by my crappy internets.  Then, it's time to go home.  I miss my friends and family, and need to get back before my niece and nephews forget who I am.  Also, I'm flying standby on Tyler's passes, and if I don't make it out of here by the 21st of February I'll be stuck until April at least.  Just like old times!

The Gods Must Be Crazy

The Gods of standby travel were angry, it seems.  The flight that Tracy and Tyler were going to take from Calgary to Toronto had a broken toilet.  Due to government regulations, the plane had to go out with 40 empty seats, lest an unseemly line form at the only functioning crapper.  Of course, this meant no room for standby travellers, and a backlog of bumped passengers filling up the rest of Sunday’s flights.  They couldn’t make the connecting flight to Buenos Aires, and all seemed lost.  They did manage to get to Toronto the next day, but there isn’t a scheduled flight to BA on Mondays, so they spent the night in T.O.  Tuesday’s flight to BA was oversold, but they decided to try for it anyway.  The plane took off minutes ahead of a blizzard that forced the cancellation of over 300 flights, and my brother and his Special Lady Friend were on board!

Having spent thirteen years working for airlines and flying standby, I know the frustration and helplessness of watching an anticipated holiday crumble in front of your eyes.  I also know the elation of having certain disaster averted by those magic words over the airport P.A.: “Martin, party of two.”  I went to meet them at the airport, and we were all giddy at the prospect of five days of hangouts.  Wednesday night, we had some people over for roof dinner.  We spent Thursday touring San Telmo, hanging out in Plaza Dorrego, and napping.  We woke up from our naps at 11pm and headed out for a steak dinner and some bar hopping.  Friday, we went to the leather district in Villa Crespo (not what you think), and then hit up Palermo to watch the pigeon fights.  At night we went to a club in La Boca called Plasma, which was having a Johnny Cash tribute with local bands.  It was kind of weird; they mostly played covers of Rick Rubin era Cash, which meant we heard covers of Johnny Cash covers of Soundgarden, Nine Inch Nails, and Skip James.  There was a pretty nice echoing version of Ring of Fire in Spanish, though.  Today, we went to Recoleta Cemetery, and as we were walking to see the Big Metal Flower, we heard Vampire Weekend doing sound check for a show on the roof of the design mall later tonight.  Let’s go!

Yo No Entiendo

The past week has been the first time since arriving in BA that I've been alone.  I've reverted to my natural state of hermitude, rarely leaving the apartment except for exercise or groceries.  Facial hair is getting longer, eyes becoming wild and suspicious.  Most of my time has been spent plowing through Rosetta Stone in a last gasp effort to get a handle on Spanish.  I'm getting close to the end of the course, but it doesn't look like a light bulb will go on and I'll be magically fluent by the time I "graduate".  I know, I should have just taken real Spanish lessons, but that involves actually talking to people, and why do that if you don't have to?  It's a bit of a Catch-22.  I'll never get any better without practicing on real people, but I'm not good enough to even start practicing.  I tend to shun most human interaction anyway, so why am I even trying?  I have it made, the perfect excuse to avoid any unnecessary socializing.

I am looking forward to some necessary socializing, though.  Gods of standby travel permitting, my brother Tyler and his Special Lady Friend Tracy will be arriving tomorrow afternoon.  I've been crafting a schedule of enlightening and educational experiences for their visit, which we can ignore while drinking beer and playing cards on the roof.

The Honeymoon Is Over

Steph and Johnny have just left for the airport, heading back home to enjoy a lifetime of marital bliss.  Before they left, we cranked the touristing up a notch and bought tickets to a tango show.  Bar Sur is situated on a picturesque corner in San Telmo, and the interior reeks of romantic charm.  It is a small room with tiny candlelit tables hemming the performers in on three sides, leaving about 100 square feet of performance space.  We had the option of paying only for the show, or we could also prepay for dinner, which turned out to be a huge mistake.  It's not nearly as cheap to eat in Argentina as it was five or six years ago, but you can still have a nice steak dinner for two with a good bottle of wine for around twenty dollars, if you know where to look.  The dinner at Bar Sur was 120 pesos each (about 30 bucks Canadian), and drinks were four times as expensive as anywhere else I've been.  The first course was the worst empanada in Buenos Aires, a sub-Hot Pocket of slimy beef.  The main course was ravioli that had been overcooked into porridge and salted so much that it was almost crunchy.  For dessert, ice cream that may have once been vanilla, but had long since graduated to triple freezer-burned.  It was breathtaking, really, the kind of meal that takes careful planning to pull off.

The show itself was excellent.  It wasn't exactly authentic, especially the dancing, which had been tarted up for foreign consumption.  Tango originated as a dance between men who were waiting in line at brothels.  Those guys would probably be rolling over in their syphilis riddled graves if they saw the Bar Sur show.  It was a Ringling Brothers version of tango, with enough kicks, spins, and near misses to populate a new Matrix sequel.  Very athletic, and quite entertaining.  The musical performers changed throughout the night, but the first ones were my favourite: sunburned Rick Mercer on The Loudest Accordion Ever, and Alfred Hitchcock's dad on piano.  At the end of the show, the dancers selected random victims from the crowd to go up and dance with them.  I managed to fake an old football injury the first time I was asked, but the second dancer didn't fall for it.  I'm looking at MY FEET!

The Saddest List In The World

I was pretty excited to find a used copy of The Yiddish Policemen's Union at Walrus Books.  I was even more excited when I opened the book and this fell out:

Who wants to start a book club with me?