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?

Dead Legs

I've been in constant pain for about thirteen years, courtesy of my years spent kneeling in airplane bellies loading luggage for Air Canada.  The pain started in my neck, spent a few years exploring my back, and eventually migrated to my left hip.  It's not crippling pain, but if I spend more than fifteen minutes sitting down on a hard surface, it's hard to concentrate on anything else.  I've gone through four physiotherapists, two acupuncturists, a neurologist, and two chiropractors.  About six years ago, I gave up and decided to just live with it.  The only thing that seems to help is doing yoga.  I ordered a couple of yoga DVDs about a year ago, and whenever I do the beginner one, I'm almost pain free for hours at a time.  Two days ago, I decided it was time to graduate to the intermediate DVD.  This one involves far less gentle stretching with deep breathing, and a lot more flopping around gasping for breath as I try to keep an eye on the demonstration while strangling myself with my ankles.  My legs have been so sore for the past two days that I haven't even noticed any hip pain.  Probably not the best time to take a tango lesson.

Our instructor was Enriqueta Kleinman, who had taught my Special Lady Friend a few months ago when she was in Calgary.  Jen really wants to tango when she gets here in February, so we figured it would be best to take lessons from the same teacher.  Enriqueta ushered Steph, Johnny, and I into the studio and told us we should put on our tango shoes so the lesson could start.  Uh . . . . tango shoes?  "You mean, you've never tangoed before?"  The lesson plan was revised, and we spent the first part of the hour practicing walking in time to the music.  It's not so easy to move your feet to the beat of music with NO PERCUSSION, especially for those of us with dead ears and screaming hamstrings.  After several laps around the studio, we paired off for some basic steps.  I tried to ignore Enriqueta's body crushed against mine, her eyes boring into my soul, and just focused on not breaking her toes or driving into a wall.  She tried to throw me off my game with double entendres ("Not such long steps!  You are too big for a woman to take!"), but I managed to make it through the hour without drawing blood.  I even signed up for a second lesson.

Dead Ears

Mike is back in Calgary, and The Honeymooners have been visiting Iguazu Falls for the past four days, so I've been using my free time to buckle down on the old Spanish studies.  It's really embarrassing how little Spanish I've learned, considering I've been here for three months now.  I've been primarily hanging out with native English speakers, so I guess it's not too surprising.  Still, when people ask me how long I've been in BA, lately I've been tempted to say, "oh, a couple of weeks now."  I just can't stand the look of pity or derision that inevitably follows when people realize I'm still effectively a deaf mute after all this time.

When Russell Crowe was doing promotional work for Robin Hood, one of the interviewers chided him for his terrible accent in the film.  Crowe's response was, "you've got dead ears, mate."  I assume a telephone was also thrown.  I'm not passing judgement on Russell Crowe (I haven't seen the movie), but the phrase 'dead ears' has stuck with me.  I think I'm making progress, but when I try to have an actual conversation, I immediately blank out and can't make out a single word.  At first, I figured it was the same social anxiety that causes me to instantly forget people's names when I meet them, but what if my ears are dead?  This would also explain why I can't carry a tune.

Another problem is that I'm not really studying Spanish, I'm studying Rosetta Stone.  Straight A's man, I'm practically fluent!  I just need real live people to speak incredibly slowly, and offer me three different choices for my answer.  Ideally, there will always be a visual clue, so if the person is holding a cat and one of the answers has the word 'gato' in it, I can pick that one.

Canadian Graffiti

Buenos Aires is a treasure trove of street art.  There are huge pieces on most walls, ranging from hasty tags to elaborate murals.  While not technically legal, a blind eye seems to get turned towards graffiti, or maybe it is so prevalent that no one can be bothered to paint over it.  There are a few walls that operate as a kind of political facebook.  Every night, someone whitewashes over the previous day's message and posts a new slogan in letters six feet tall that can run for an entire block.  There are street art tours that will bus you around to different pieces and let you know about the artists responsible for each one.

A few days ago, I went to a graffiti class with Steph and Johnny.  It turned out to be a stencilling class, and the instruction was face-palmingly obvious.  See, what you do is, you cut out the part that you want to make a picture, and you don't cut out the part that you don't want to get paint on.  Despite being the equivalent of a Grade 2 art class, we had a pretty good time.  The 'teachers' were an amiable set of brothers who provided an impromptu political history lesson as we painstakingly tried to colour between the lines.  Steph made a 3D airplane, Johnny made a tank with a speech bubble ("FART!"), and I made an Ace Frehley with chunks of his eyes missing.  I guess I failed Grade 2 art again.

Cry For Mike

My pal Mike flew back to Canada yesterday.  He had been here the whole time that I was, providing moral support during my midlife crisis.  A better dog poop spotter, you will not find.  Together, we learned the proper time to order fruit salad, why scuba dude graffiti is everywhere, and that geo-caching is stupid.  Mike didn't have the foresight to sell his house in a divorce before coming down here, so looming financial constraints meant it was time to leave.  His apartment is paid for until February third, though, and he left me the keys so I could keep using the swimming pool.

To give him a proper sendoff, we had a pool party on Monday.  There ended up being twelve people, which was appropriate for a Last Supper (assuming that Jesus was there in spirit).  It had threatened to rain all day, but the weather cooperated long enough for us to enjoy a steak dinner and some Spenglish conversation.  Of course, some idiot had to do a cannonball into the pool at the end of the night, but luckily I remembered to take the camera out of my pocket first.  ¡Salud, Mike!

Food Porn 2: The Legend of Curly's Gold

I'm not normally the type to make New Year's resolutions, but this year I was overruled by my own body.  My gastrointestinal tract resolved that I should lose 10 pounds.  Or maybe it just decided to follow the lead of the locals and spend January on vacation.  Whatever the reason, for the first week of this year my body refused to digest any food.  I had to bail on the trip to Patagonia with Johnny and Steph, although spending 18 hours in the bathroom of a bus would probably have been a pretty funny story after I went through a few counselling sessions.  After seven days without a proper meal I had some catching up to do, so I made reservations for Mike and I at La Vineria de Gualterio Bolivar.

We arrived before the doors had opened, and met a lovely Australian couple who were also waiting to get in.  We ended up sitting next to Jess(i?)e and Matt, who provided excellent company and were celebrating Matt's birthday.  The chef had previously worked at El Bulli, the Catalan shrine to molecular gastronomy that routinely tops lists of the best restaurants in the world.  La Vineria de Gualterio Bolivar serves only a set sixteen course tasting menu, which balloons to twenty courses if the person you are with doesn't eat seafood.  Take that, you stupid stomach!  Here are a few of the highlights:

The second appetizer plate.  The waitress was talking very fast, and switching between English, Spanish, and French, so I didn't understand all of the descriptions.  The spoon on the left was a slush ball of something on top of some other things.  The middle one was chicken strips on quinoa.  The final spoon held a croquette of liquid Parmesan, which tasted about how it sounds.

I believe this was called Gesundheit Salad

A perfectly poached egg wrapped in crispy pastry, with creamy goat cheese, truffles, and other stuff.

Smoky seaweed, pumpkin octopus ravioli, creamy pâté, crunchy soybean bits, the ubiquitous other stuff.  When hot water was added, this created a dish that all miso soups want to be when they grow up.

On the right, a 'truffle' of I forget.  On the left, a tiny jar of perfectly clear chicken soup.  Served with an absinthe spoon, for some reason.

Pork covered in some kind of foam, with apple gelatin and other stuff.  Mike: "This totally makes up for all of the seafood."

Dry dulce de leche cookie dough with a milky hot chocolate shot.  The first time I've ever made cookies in my mouth, and they turned out great.

There were several other dishes, including beef cheeks on quinoa souffle, a pineapple and Campari slush, a dessert with ice cream made from dry ice, you get the idea.  One of the better meals I've had, but it was a bit gruelling.  We were there for three and a half hours, and even though it was easily the most expensive restaurant we've been to in BA, it was also the only one without air conditioning.  By the time we paid the bill and burst out into the mercifully rainy night, it felt like we had run a marathon.

2011 Stumbles Out Of The Gate, Lies Down For A Nap

The honeymooners arrived on December 29th.  Steph and Johnny will be here for most of January, which means it is time to get out of the city.  With Steph and Johnny, I mean.  I'm not running away from them.  To celebrate New Year's, we invited Andres and Alejandra over for dinner, as well as Andres' brother, sister in law, and nephew.  We supplied a few salads, Andres brought all of the meat, bread, wine, champagne, and dessert.  His brother brought extra table settings and salt.  Andres also took care of all of the grilling, which left me free to entertain our guests with my pathetic Spanish.

At midnight, we were enveloped in a fireworks display provided by all of our neighbours.  It seemed like everyone in BA had a stash of fuegos artificiales, and we watched from the roof for over an hour.  Sadly, Mike was stricken by a nasty stomach virus and spent the whole time in bed at his apartment.  We think it was the same one that got Brendan around Christmas, and I'm pretty sure that I have it now.  I've been been commuting between the couch and the bathroom since January 1st, and really hoping to feel better in time for the 18 hour bus ride to Patagonia tomorrow.