Hablamos spanglish.

Nate and I arrived in Argentina with any study of Spanish well in our past (Emily: 6 years ago, Nate: 8 years ago). From those long, boring hours of high school Spanish we retained only an extremely limited vocabulary and an extensive knowledge of Mexican Day of the Dead folk customs (well, technically I have most of the knowledge of Mexican holidays, since Nate’s Jehovah’s Witness Spanish teacher apparently excised all holidays from the curriculum). In order to survive life in Buenos Aires, we decided to brush up on our meager skills with Spanish classes at the University of Buenos Aires (aka la UBA). The school has a series of classes, Español para Extranjeros (Spanish for Foreigners) that are tailor-made for our purposes. We go to class for two hours of mostly laid back conversation every day, and we hope that our Spanish is improving.



I like the Spanish classes because I have learned key life lessons, like the Spanish names for various internal organs, allowing me to avoid them on restaurant menus. (Tip: you probably do not want the mondongo). And I like the other extranjeros, who come from around the world, with various stories as to how and why they ended up in Argentina. I also like the Laboratorio de Idiomas, the charmingly decrepit building that houses our classes. So far the roof has not collapsed on any of my classes, but I believe it could happen any day. -EMW

Penguino Sighting

It seems like only yesterday that I was writing about not wanting a gigantic, fatty, sizzling steak for lunch. And here I am, about to write about having a gigantic, fatty, sizzling steak for lunch. On Friday, after spending an hour in line at the Correo Central, Emily and I decided to treat ourselves to––yes! you guessed it! Gigantic, fatty, sizzling steaks! We headed to a tiny café in San Telmo to enjoy vacio, bife de chorizo, choripan, and papas fritas. We also decided to go the extra mile and blow $3.25 on a liter of wine. What we weren’t prepared for, however, was our very first penguino sighting. Our gruff waiter delivered our vino tinto in the most charming penguin pitcher that either of us had either seen. Not even Emily’s astute observation that it looked like the penguin was vomiting blood was enough to ruin it. We hope that this is the first of many penguino sightings to come. Stay tuned. –NSH

Let Them Drink Jugo

When we first weighed the pros and cons of living with a host family, the fact that breakfast was included in our rent was something of a selling point. However, after arriving, we quickly came to realize that “breakfast” means something entirely different in Argentina. Whereas I generally like to eat a bagel or a bowl of cereal, Argentines are mostly content to drink juice and sip coffee in anxious anticipation of their lunch, which is almost always a gigantic, fatty, sizzling steak. Because we’re not much interested in eating steak at noon, Emily and I were originally a bit disappointed to discover that our breakfast would consist merely of juice. However, the juice is so spectacularly good that we’ve decided we wouldn’t have it any other way.

The fact is, not only do Argentines love orange juice, they love fresh squeezed orange juice. On most bustling street corners, there’s someone there to press you a fresh cup on demand. Granted, this is something of a luxury street food item––whereas sugar-coated peanuts cost $0.33 and a hot dog $0.66, fresh-squeezed orange juice will run you closer to $1. That’s right, you’ve got to really, really want it. But because so many of the drinks we’re familiar with (including coffee, beer, and, according to Emily, Diet Coke) are inferior to their equivalents at home, it’s pretty nice to have access to a variety of orange juice that beats the pants off of Minute Maid. This is why the sound of the juicer whirring every morning has become our new alarm clock. -NSH

Juan who?

Nate and I came to Buenos Aires with a list of three Argentine artists we were fond of and thought might conceivably serve as topics of conversation. Borges (duh), Lucretia Martel, and Juana Molina. (Okay, and also Jose Gonzalez, if you count Swedes born to Argentine parents, which we're not.) While everyone here of course loves loves loves Borges, we’ve been striking out trying to find an Argentine Juana Molina fan. Juana Molina is an Argentine television actress, with a show called “Juana and Her Sisters,” which her record label inaccurately claims was “a hit in the Spanish-speaking world.” I promise you that this is not true. She has in fact achieved a small level of worldwide fame as a singer-songwriter, but she remains unknown in her own country. I asked Carlos, our host, whether he liked her, and he said (approximately) “Juan Molina? I don’t know him.” Carlos is much keener on Robbie Williams.

A few days after my conversation with Carlos, when my Spanish class read a passage on one Miguel Molina, a German student asked if Juana Molina was, perhaps, the sister of this Miguel. Our mild mannered teacher reacted with surprising force. “NO! He is not her brother. He is not even her cousin. They are not related, and Juana Molina is not popular or well-known here.” I have not yet had the courage to inquire about the popularity of Lucretia Martel. -EMW

Another Man's Treasure

This weekend we made two separate trips to San Telmo. Located just a few blocks south of the Casa Rosada (pictured below), the barrio is well stocked with cafes, tango bars, cobblestone streets, etc. Immediately following the first game of the World Series (“Los Cardinales! Asombroso!”), we headed down to attend a birthday party for the roommate of one of Emily’s classmates. Most of those in attendance were Americans, but we did talk to one guy from Mexico City who came to Buenos Aires to study cooking. He considers the trip somewhat of a bust because of the lack of picante in Argentine cuisine, and we all spent awhile lamenting about how salt and beef can only get you so far, and how we all could have really gone for a taco. We met some other people too, including a too-drunk guy who spent an hour analyzing the mid-term elections back home––everything from marquee Senate seats to obscure state Attorney General races. I think it was while railing against Lincoln Chaffee that he started gesturing too wildly, and spilled half a bottle of wine all over the floor. Soon afterwards we left.

But we came back only a few hours later. Every Sunday San Telmo plays host to an antiques fair in the small Plaza Dorrego. There’s lots of tangoing for tourists and booths selling everything from colorful old gramophones to crudely painted Che portraits and mate cups fashioned from animal hooves. We ate churipan (take a Chicago brat, cut it in half, stick it between like half a loaf of bread and you’re in the neighborhood) and drank orange juice (stay tuned for a future post about Argentina’s love for orange juice). We also picked up a poster-sized guide to cuts of beef and ogled antique maps that were way too expensive for us to buy. All in all, a fine day. -NSH

In the Jardín Japonés

We used one of the warm and sunny days this week to check out the Jardín Japonés, an immaculately landscaped garden created in 1979, on the centenary of the arrival of Argentina’s first Japanese immigrants. The map seemed to suggest that the garden was located just past the zoo, but when we arrived there, we found your average, run-of-the-mill park, complete with sunbathers and people tossing tennis balls to dogs. We pondered whether it was possible for the city to be lazy enough about celebrating its Japanese citizens to simply set aside a patch of grass and call it the Jardín Japonés. But we found the real garden soon after.

Upon arriving, we realized that we weren’t quite sure what we were doing there. Having no special affinity for Japanese culture, and not having experienced all that much of Argentine culture, why were we interested in an Argentine homage to the Japanese? We never did answer this question, but we did eat some pretty tasty sushi. We also watched children feed koi fish, walked the circumference of the garden, and managed a Gothic Lolita sighting. Gothic Lolita sightings are usually enough to make any trip a success, so I guess we ended up to the good. -NSH

Educational and ludicrous activities.

The Casa Rosada is Argentina’s more festive, pink counterpart to the United States’ White House. Apocryphal tales as to the origin of the pinkness of the Casa Rosada abound – my personal favorite argues that the building is pink because it was painted with cow’s blood. Awesome. I had also heard that the Casa Rosada featured a crypt, and while I didn’t have any expectations it would equal Paris’s catacombs or the bone church of Kutna Hora, after visiting Recoleta Cemetery, I had high hopes that we would not leave the seat of Argentina’s government without seeing some bones.

Unfortunately, when we arrived at the building, we learned that tours were indefinitely suspended. The surly woman who demanded our identification before letting us enter the lame museum in the basement of the Casa Rosada had no idea when, or even if tours would recommence. Instead of a tour, we wandered through the unedifying museum, examining the official cake cutters and the ceremonial pants and reading the bizarre English-language signage, which informed us that the museum was available for “educational and ludicrous activities.” I looked in vain through the museum for the discussion of the Dirty War. The clever museum designers had managed to avoid any kind accounting for the years of military dictatorship, disappearances, and deaths by pretending the last 30 years hadn’t happened. The museum’s brisk march through Argentina’s history stopped at the year 1976, when the military dictatorship began, with no mention of any subsequent events. A list of Argentina’s presidents near the entrance to the museum ended at 1976, without a mention of even the current president and occupant of the Casa Rosada. -EMW

Fear the Mermaid

Our favorite museum in Buenos Aires remains the aforementioned MALBA (Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires). This weekend we went to see if the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes could compare, but we found ourselves a bit underwhelmed. Our guidebook promised works by European masters including Renoir, Rodin, Monet, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Van Gogh, but neglected to mention that their representative canvases were, well, pretty weak. In the case of the Renoir, hilariously weak. But we dug the Manet painting and the Rodin sculptures, and saved the promising second floor––works by Argentine artists––for another day.

We did find the special exhibition––a career retrospective by contemporary artist Renata Schussheim––really entertaining. The faux-Egyptian beauties pictured above belong to Schussheim. My favorite of her works, however, was an installation in a separate room, involving a sculpture of a mermaid standing against the railing of a ship. There was a fan blowing, so the mermaid’s hair kept ruffling, and the room was lit to mimic moonlight on the ocean. I wasn’t at all sure what I thought about this piece until leaving the room, where I saw a girl of 5 or 6 pleading with her father not to have to go back in. Apparently the lovelorn mermaid scared the bejesus out of her, while the naked dog-faced women had no effect. Who would have guessed? - NSH

Buenos Aires petting zoo

Last week, Nate and I went to the Buenos Aires zoo, hoping to take advantage of the relatively sparser weekday crowds and enjoy a few quiet moments with the animals. Our plans were thwarted, however, by a school holiday known as a “day of reflection.” Held every twenty days, these are apparently intended to give teachers an opportunity to spend a day contemplating education. It also gives parents a chance to take their children on a weekday visit to the zoo, and the place was swarming with families when we arrived. Ultimately, the crowds did nothing to diminish our enjoyment of the zoo, and instead were a major enhancement to our visit. While at zoos in the United States the primary source of entertainment is observing animals in habitats as closely approximating nature as possible, in Buenos Aires the primary entertainment at the zoo is observing people interact with animals. At seemingly every turn, zoo employees hawk approximately gallon size containers of generic animal food, which indulgent parents never failed to purchase for their children. Oh, the hilarity that resulted: teens using food pellets to lure a muskrat out of a pond for cell phone camera photo ops, young children nearly losing an arm throwing food into the disgusting open mouths of camels, everyone blatantly disregarding the signs on a few animal’s cages that read “do NOT feed these animals,” etc. All in all, a treat. -EMW

Senor Pollo

One of our favorite places to walk by on bustling Av. Cabildo is a small stand called Senor Pollo. In case your Spanish isn’t quite as amazing as mine, that’s translatable as Mr. Chicken. Anyway, Senor Pollo typically features a near-unfathomable number of chicken breasts, drumsticks, and flour-coated “milanese” style cutlets stacked twenty or thirty high beneath the register. Refrigeration is not a priority at Senor Pollo. Just the other day, we were made privy to the inner-workings of Senor Pollo’s operation. Apparently, the inventory at Senor Pollo is transported in the back of an enormous open-air truck. We took a picture for posterity. -NSH

Algo Profundo

As much as people wax poetic about the elegant simplicity of baseball, let’s face it. It’s pretty complicated. I’m not talking about calculating VORP, or when to squeeze bunt. I’m just talking about the rules. I realize that in some ways this seems kind of strange. In America, nobody ever has to explain to anybody how baseball works, but at some point we all figure out about balls, strikes, force-outs, tagged runners, and fielding errors. However, in Argentina, they have no idea what any of these things are. Baseball is completely boring and illogical to them, not unlike the way the British monarchy is to me.

Fortunately, baseball––at least playoff baseball––is still broadcast down here. But this doesn’t stop the announcers from doing everything they can to ruin it. They do this primarily by acting as though the only interesting thing that can possibly happen is a home run. When someone hits a home run, they yell “ALGO PROFUNDO!” and then they make a noise like “Lolllolllollllolllo.” Kind of like what they do when soccer players score. Which, I think, is really lame. Folks who complain about Hawk’s home run calls, or Ron Santo’s radio announcing, need to get a load of this. They’ll never complain again.

That said, I do appreciate that the members of our host family make an effort to learn about baseball. They do have, however, an unfortunate knack for entering the room immediately after a pitch is thrown, and staying only for the length of time it takes the pitcher to adjust his jock, blow onto his hands, and shake off five or six calls from the catcher. This lack of action never fails to confuse them. Also confusing: “What is an out?” and “Did he do an out?” More recently, they’ve given up trying to figure it out. Now they’re merely interested in who is playing. I think they thought the whole thing was finally finished when the Tigers beat the Yankees, but I didn’t know how to explain that it merely meant that the Tigers would advance to another series––seven games this time, instead of five. The World Series is totally going to blow their minds.

In short, don’t look for Argentina at the next World Baseball Classic. They’re not going to be there. -NSH

Boca-River, River-Boca.

After the asado, we felt too meat-gorged to do much besides stumble down the street to the Viejo Lobo, the neighborhood bar where the Boca-River soccer game was being shown. Boca and River, the two most popular soccer teams in Buenos Aires, play each other three times a year in what is apparently a “Superclasico” game. One taxi driver informed us that of all the many soccer rivalries in all the world, all soccer fans know that Boca-River is the best, far better than Manchester United-Arsenal, Real Madrid-Barcelona, etc, etc, or any other national rivalry. Unfortunately, apparently everyone in our neighborhood also knew this, and the Viejo Lobo was packed, with only a few lawn chairs available. We grabbed them and enjoyed an extremely indirect view of the game on a tiny television. -EMW

Meat, salt, wine.

On Sunday, Carlos prepared an asado for the family, our first experience with the traditional argentine meat-fest – it’s similar to an American barbecue, but with more meat. Preparations for the asado started early, and we woke to the sounds of Carlos cleaning the grill on the patio outside our room. By 3 pm, after elaborate fire preparations and hours of slowly cooking the meat, the asado was ready: first, sausage, followed by morcilla (blood sausage), followed by steak, finished off with more steak, and accompanied by wine. According to Carlos, the only acceptable ingredients in the asado are meat, salt, and wine. We violated this by having a tiny portion of salad, but the meat:vegetable ratio remained appropriately high. -EMW

Escandalo!

My concern about being estranged from news that’s happening in America was laid to rest last week when, upon boarding the subway, I was handed Le Razon, a free newspaper outlining the major stories of the day. Here you can see a breaking piece about Mark Foley and his salacious IMs, complete with a photo of… well... actually, I’m pretty sure that’s Bernard Ebbers, CEO of WorldCom. -NSH

Vamos al Club

Our host, Carlos, has succeeded in convincing both Nate and myself to enter a 10k race in November. Nike is holding six 10ks on November 12 in different countries throughout Latin and South America, apparently as some sort of exercise in corporate sponsored regional solidarity. Carlos sold the race to us not on the basis of solidarity, however, but because we will be rewarded with t-shirts for entering. And medals, if we finish.

Yesterday we went to the athletic facility of the University of Buenos Aires with Carlos and our housemate Nathan to commence our intensive training. We began with an impressive eight laps around the track, and I feel that we are well on our way to a successful 10k. Next challenge: actually registering for the race on Nike’s impenetrable website. -EMW

Los Gatos!

On Thursday we visited the Recoleta Cemetery, an ornate mini-city of mausoleums located behind imposing walls. Apparently, only the incredibly wealthy can afford to have their coffins placed in these ostentatiously decorated tombs. However, many of the tombs are so badly dilapidated that one could (if one wanted) reach inside, lift the coffin lid, and see the rotting remains of some legendary tango dancer. It's actually more tempting than it sounds. Anyway, we did manage to find Eva Perón's resting place, and we snapped some pictures of some of the more elaborate graves. We also survived all of our encounters with the hordes of feral cats who roam the narrow alleys between the mausoleums. They're the biggest cats I've ever seen, and I don't really want to think about what they're subsisting on. -NSH

Birth of a Blog

We've decided to set up this blog as a way to transmit stories and pictures from our time in Argentina. We figure it's a convenient way for friends and family members to check in on our travels. The blog's title refers to a film that we saw on one of our first nights in Argentina. Malba (Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires) hosts regular screenings, and on this particular night their schedule listed a showing of El Circo Fantasma, a film by Elia Kazan. As it turns out, El Circo Fantasma (The Ghost Circus) is the Spanish title for Kazan's 1953 film Man On A Tightrope. However, the print was so badly damaged that--despite our meager Spanish--the subtitles were more useful for making sense of the narrative action than the muffled dialogue. This odd disconnect seemed somehow representative of the absurdity of our situation. Hence, "El Circo Fantasma!" -NSH