On our way home from the pasta store one night, we came across a market with fresh lettuce. Entranced by the prospect of a fresh green salad, something I had not had in weeks, I immediately grabbed a head of greenleaf and some delicious baby radishes to go with it. While I surveyed the flora, Dave gravitated towards the fauna. A scribbled sign in half uppercase half lowercase letters read “Hay corDero PATAgONICO.” “We have Patagonian lamb.” One thing that I have learned is that when a small neighborhood restaurant, cafe, or market has a sign saying “We have ______,” it is generally a good idea to try the _______.
Still skeptical, I came over to the other register after purchasing my veggies from a tired looking middle aged woman. Dave had expressed his desire for the lamb, and was trying to figure out what cut to purchase. We almost ended up with a full rack before we understood that he couldn’t cut it up into smaller pieces. After a little chatting, we settled on what he called the ribs and flank, somehow containing the loin. Whatever the heck it is, it can’t be bad. “This is the tastiest part, I promise,” he assured us. “It’s what my wife likes to have for dinner. It’s got the most flavor.” Well, with those recommendations, I was willing to give it a go.
We put the marbled mass of meat into our fridge and forgot about it for 24 hours. While it defrosted, we called our families for Thanksgiving lamenting the absence of turkey, then planned the next day’s activities: a foray into Palermo Alto and the Museum of Decorative Arts.
After an early morning yoga class and an hour walk, we arrived at the Museo fairly exhausted. What I expected to be a catalogue of furnishings and functional decoration was actually just some rich family’s mansion that had been preserved since the 1940’s. Full of Japanese and french ceramics it was, but a museum it was not. Not much to learn, not much to read about, and opressive guards hovered over us through every room. Come on people, I’m not going to steal a vase, break an urn, or get my greasy fingers on a painting. Give me some space! Dave said that their hyper vigilance was due to my new hot dress, but I remained unconvinced. The female docent skulked about behind me as well.
Tired, hungry, and not a little bit disappointed, we began to pick our way back through smaller streets to avoid the clouds of bus exhaust that shimmer ironically in the afternoon glow, in this city of buenos aires. Then suddenly through the pristine window display I spied racks of the one thing that could counteract disappointment and despair: chocolate truffles.
The purveyor of said delicacies was one Agatha Chocolates, a small enterprise in Alto Palermo. It was the truffles that brought us in, but we left with more than a box of chocolates. Two individually wrapped mousses swayed home in a cardboard pyramid to accompany our Patagonian friend. We chatted with the manager/owner/baker for a while, and D got to practice his Spanish. A week later, she not only recognized us, but asked how the lamb turned out. Ten points for nice people, I say. She even remembered which desserts we had tried, so that we could have new ones on our return visit. I’m ashamed to say that I don’t remember her name.
Refreshed by the expectation of our upcoming meal, our steps were much more lively on the last leg of our walk home; we waited anxiously for the elevator that would bring us up to our 6th floor mini-kitchen so that we could get started.
I took the lamb out of its wrappings, mystified by layers of marble whiteness. Through the middle of the cut of meat was a cylindrical mass of solid fat that was so thick I assumed it was bone. When my knife went through it, I decided that I had better reevaluate my cleaning strategies. Lamb is a meat that has until now remained outside my culinary repertoire. This is probably due to the fact that it is difficult to obtain good quality meat, and that it’s not exactly mainstream in American culture. Since the Indians and Caribbeans love it so, it must be good.
This lamb was an experimental foray into the world of sheep meat, as well as an impromptu anatomy lesson. One thing that I love about cooking with meat is that it forces you to pay attention to the way that organisms are structured; how they move; where bones and muscle meet; and what part of the body you’re trying to cook. Upon unwrapping the baffling tube of fat, I discovered a kidney. Not quite daring enough to try riñon, I decided that the offal had better remain in in the hands of professionals. Once I navigated the labyrinth of ribs, loin, and flank, we decided that simple was best: salt, pepper, and oil. The only ornaments to our main dish were a couple of garlic cloves stuck in what seemed like appropriate locations and a couple of potatoes thrown in the roasting pan. The whole shebang went into our oven.
A moment, please, for our oven. The poor thing was already in its death throes when we arrived in the apartment, dropping the bottom drawer the first time we walked by it. When we opened the door to heat up a delicious tarta from the bakery, a screw snapped out of its holder and the door handle clanged to the floor. Our landlord rather nonchalantly told us he would fix these things, but I was skeptical. A day or two later, the knob that controls the oven temperature cracked while we were trying to turn the heat down. By the time we were ready to cook the lamb, the oven had three settings: pilot light (press in metal rod with leatherman pliers while waving lighted match over tube pouring out gas), high (metal rod turned 180 degrees to absolute minimum gas output), and inferno (any other setting).
Not having had much experience with the testy oven, I tried out the lamb somewhere between hot-as-hell and inferno, planning to reduce the heat and slow-roast the small piece of meat. Seven minutes later, beckoned into the kitchen by the hissing sound of boiling fat, I tried in vain to cool down the oven, but all that was left of the controls was a metal rod connected by...metal wires...to a metal fucking oven! You don’t have be a superb physicist to remember that all of these objects conduct heat. With two dish towels, the pliers, and every single open window, we managed to save the lamb from what I thought was utter ruin. An undetermined amount of time later, after cooking in undertermined thermal conditions, I trepidaciously removed the still searing pan and set it on the stove to rest.
Meanwhile I prepared the first green salad we’d had in nearly a week, delighting in the cool crispness of the radishes in the sauna that our kitchen became after roasting the lamb. We had no sauce save some apricot jam that we were using for toast, and no time to prepare anything fancier; the trip to the museum pushed our dinner back into Buenos Aires time, so we were starving.
D hastily cleared the table of our bags, notes, and books, lit the candles and we sat our weary, dusty bodies down for dinner at last. I am often amazed at how the simplest dishes can produce the most splendid and complex flavors. The lamb was rich, flavorful and for lack of another word: meaty. It wasn’t overcooked, despite the crispy outside, and the sweetness of the apricots was perfectly complimented with the occasional crunch of a a salt crystal or the sporadic clove of roasted garlic. There was silence for a few moments at the table, accompanied by various mumbles of surprise and pleasure from greasy lips as we savored our lamb and gave thanks to the small fluffy beast in Patagonia who made our meal possible.
When we could eat no more, we refilled our glasses, took a break with a salad, and relaxed for a while in contemplation of the third act: dessert.
The pyramid came out of the refrigerator, and we unfolded its sides to reveal an oval of dark chocolate mousse with brownie crust and a short cylinder of mascarpone crowned with a huge blackberry. It is difficult to describe how incredibly happy it made me to have a dessert worthy of our lamb, for truly thes were divine. Not only were the mousses rich and fluffy, but each had in its center a complementary fruit coulis. Sour raspberry to compete with the dark chocolate, and sweet luscious blackberry to sink into the delicate italian cream.
Satisfied now from our gastronomic exploits, our belated Thanksgiving came to a close. It was truly a providential meal, thrown together from supplies and courses that we stumbled upon, or would never had found if it had not been for someone’s friendly advice. We had many people to thank that day: the gregarious butcher, the designer of the all-purpose-ever-useful leatherman, and the Agatha lady. Indulging in a little tentative self-congratulation, we also thanked ourselves, for daring to pack up our lives and leave ourselves open to the possibility of such a dinner. Not every day of our journey was or will be fantastic. There are times when nothing seems to meet expectations, but those moments tend not to last, or they are destined to be conquered by other more memorable pleasures. In this case, as it often is for me, the meal turned out to be our neighborhood’s way of making up for an unexpectedly disagreeable day. M.F.K. Fisher had it right: “At the end of the day you know fate cannot harm you, for you have dined.”
It was a foreign Thanksgiving, not on the last Thursday of November, but celebrated with the very best spirit of our very American holiday. An appropriate mix of cultures, styles, and flavors for this particular year. The sense of providence that the evening produced reminded me that I truly have much to be thankful for. I am on an adventure, running around the world with someone I love, and the people that I love back home will be there when I get back, so I can’t get too lonely.
If, on a winter's night a traveler outside the town of Malbork, leaning from a steep slope without fear of wind or vertigo, looks down into the gathering shadow...on the carpet of leaves illuminated by the moon around an empty grave, what story there awaits its end? -italo calvino
Saturday, November 25, 2006
Friday, November 24, 2006
Barrios
“Barrios”
24 Noviembre, 2006
As the days go by our little barrio, Palermo Soho, becomes more familiar. Each time that we run errands we take a different route back to the apartment, finding out where the best fruit and vegetable stands are, who has lamb for sale, and where the ecclectic clothing stores are. Much of the shopping is beyond our modest budget, even with the exchange rate, but it’s quite fun to be in the midst of a fashion district. Instead of factory-direct clothing, I can splurge on a dress that a designer actually made herself. Also, everyone goes shopping. Every species goes shopping too; today, I kid you not, there was a German Shepherd staring wistfully at a lavender suede leather handbag.
This is where the students studying abroad, as well as the tourists directed by their guidebooks go in search of hip Argentinian designer clothing. There’s a lot of creativity and a lot of marketing going on at the same time, which makes for an interesting environment. Wading through the propaganda and the bargains to find something that is both well-made and interesting is difficult, so we do a lot of walking and window shopping. This may irritate my boyfriend, who thinks that I am an obsessed maniac, but this is just the way one must behave, if one can only buy one pair of heels this trip. I’m not about to make some hesitant decision. This is a very serious matter, deserving much thought and deliberation, not to mention many blocks of walking
On one such expedition, we found a chocolatería. Not quite the same as the decadent Chocolate Bar in Mahnattan discovered by one M. Warren, they do produce a fantastic chocolate ice cream, and one of my all-time favorite flavor combinations: white chocolate truffles rolled in black tea leaves. It’s crunchy, it’s smoky, it’s sweet, and it melts in your mouth. Yes, I’ll take a box of those.
There are also more practical spots to discover in the neighborhood, like the Post Office for our weekly postales, the internet café, and the grocery store. We had a nice chat with a butcher yesterday about the different cuts of lamb, and ended up with what I think is a flank and tenderloin. My food vocabulary is increasing daily, as well as my knowledge of meats. Some of the things I didn’t even know in English, let alone Spanish! I feel like I’m working up to being able to order in a parillada without embarassing myself, now that I can articulate the difference between a flank steak, rib eye, and tenderloin (or entre vacío, ojo, o lomo). Bring on the menus!
I felt truly ignorant when our favorite baker presented three options for quiches and I hadn’t the faintest idea which one was filled with what. Two weeks later, having sampled the leeks, swiss chard, buttnernut squash, and corn, it becomes significantly more difficult to forget the names of each tasty vegetable. Tasting is truly the best way to learn vocab. Sometimes you can’t even go by sight or pointing and have to jump out on a limb. Our first week here we ordered a pizza with, among other things, morrónes. What to my delighted eye should appear but thick slabs of roasted red peppers, nestled in among caremelized onions and mushroms. Surprises like these are much appreciated. Luckily, I had my most unpleasant food surprises in Spain; I now know the names of most of the offal, that I don’t like morcilla (blood sausage), and would prefer not to eat canned vegetables.
Once these lingüistically problematic territories have been navigated, one can continue to negotiate physical space.
After familiarizing ourselves with Palermo Soho, we have set our sights on La Recoleta, a slightly more sedate and older neighborhood which contains a slew of museums and cultural activities. There are more middle aged business people with families, fewer hipsters, and nary a foreign college student to be found outside the overtly tourist museums. Wednesdays are our Recoleta day, when we cash in on the $10 peso evening movie tickets (USD $3.25). It’s a little quieter than our neighborhood during the day in Recoleta, but during the weekends much of the city flocks to the open air restaurants, the green spaces around La Flor, a huge stainless steel sculpture of a flower that opens and closes with the sun, and around El Cementario.
The flower sits upon a 10 foot tall granite cylinder filled with water, probably 20 yards in diameter. The pistils are huge light bulbs that remain unlit during the day, and I’m sure they are an impressive sight at dusk. So far, we’ve only observed it in the afternoon, when the sun’s golden rays burnish the steel to bronze, and the reflections of the water throw light up onto the sculpture and around onto the rolling green hills that surround the statue for almost a quarter of a mile. It’s a relatively new addition to the city, within the last five years, but it’s quite the iconic structure.
Another staple of our visits is the Museo de Bellas Artes, a broad collection, and free every day of the week. It’s fun to be there around 5:00 pm when the school groups come in for their tours. The kids know the place and almost treat it like their own living room, pointing out favorites to friends and rushing around to find a particularly disturbing or interesting painting. On the weekends, scores of runners are out in the parks of the Paseo de Recoleta which runs around the museum and contains several small pools where kids can play with miniature fully working sailboats and hydrofoils, if their parents or grandparents would ever surrender the controls.
Our next cultural destination was the Cementario de Recoleta, the huge necropolis plopped right down in the middle of this affluent neighborhood. The site sits on top of of a hill, guarded on three sides by a towering wall of at least 20 feet. Poking up from above the cement you can see the back sides of tombs, small cupolas, crosses, and parts of angels floating above the sidewalk. We unintentionally circumnavigated the cemetary, not knowing how to find the entrance, which finally emerged with its renaissance style white marble pillars and portico after a good long walk. The surface area is about 2 city blocks square, but what we discovered after walking inside is that the tombs extend quite a ways beyond the surface...both up and down.
Once you pass through the iron gates which run between the high white pillars carrying the momental command, desire, and hope “Resquiat en Pax,” the city seems to have whirled about itself in a magical storm and condensed into a tiny version of itself. For the cemetary is a city on a miniature scale; there are streets, gardens, abandoned tenements, huge monuments, sleek modern skyscrapers, families, tourists, stray cats, brochure vendors, government officials, and even mini neighborhoods.
The noises of the city fall away, for a visitor of the cemetary literally is above the streets, and tall cypresses loom mournfully over the main pathway leading in from the entrance. Birds circle around, and ghost-like pale cats lounge about in the central rotunda, stalking the streets like souls who have some unfinished task to complete. If you strike out from the central green space, away from the towering evergreen trees, it is easy to become completely lost. The alleyways and avenues of the cemetary are just like city streets: some are wide enough for two-way traffic, for three to walk abreast, and others are thin slices through layers of tombs, with just enough space for one wanderer. This diminished scale increases the eeriness of the streets, making an ordinary sized human feel slightly shrunken. A sense of weight, of foreboding settles in, increasing with the ever-staring angels and carved likenesses of the deceased peering down from atop the marble, granite, and concrete structures. A spiritual weight rests on your shoulders, emanating from the ground, the walls, the air, and other indefinable sources. If this weren’t creepy enough, there’s a smell about the place that is hard to pin down, a musty sweetness that might come from the mold growing on the oldest structures, might come from car fumes on the street, or might be the result of “other” things.
I loved it.
The place is absolutely fascinating. There are tombs that were built in the 1800’s when the city was still younger than the interred, some of which have been cared for during the last two centuries, with spiralling staircases leading down into catacombs for many generations of family members. Other old tombs are in such a state of disrepair that their rusted doors are falling off, bricks and rotting wood fill the sacristies inside, and the familial names have started to wear off. Every tomb tells a story, and those who are more secretive than others inspire stories and fantastical tales to be invented. What tragedy befell the Moreno family after they buried their father in 1950 so that they could not care for the grave? Why is only the younger daughter of the Olivieris given an inscription? How would you feel holding the iron railing as you descended into the tombs of your forebearers? What does it smell like at the bottom of a catacomb? But not all the questions and stories are weighty and grave (pun intended!): how on earth did the Jockey Club get the money to build their first president a monstrous sepulcher complete with four leaping horses and sprawling maidens...and then build three more just like it!? Why do all the architects have the ugliest graves? Who the heck picked that picture of grandma to sit next to her for eternity?
Another reason for my enchantment with the cemetary is that many of the graves were built in the twilight hours of art nouveau, from 1900-1915. The style had already faded back in its birthplace of Paris, but apparently it blazed on in Buenos Aires. The sinuous lines and flowery carvings are perfect for giving a truly otherwordly air to a monument, not as if the place needed any help.
I wandered around for about an hour by myself, losing Dave immediately and unintentionally as I scoured the streets and alleyways for interesting sights. It was nearly closing time when I realized to myself “Hey, self, there might be some important people there.” Then, almost as if on cue, a fellow wanderer asked me if I knew where Evita’s tomb was. Unfortunately in my meanderings I had not stumbled across the resting place of Argentina’s most famous first lady, and was forced to return to the world of the living to find out. Dave, always prepared, came with a map of the cemetery. This, while illuminating and most helpful for finding the big sights like the Duarte monument, took away from some of the mysteriousness.
But the mystery of the Cementario is only part of its nature; the cemetary is not a static land, about to slip into the ether with its population of corpses. The living city of Buenos Aires is invested in it as well. People still come to put roses and carnations in the gates of Evita’s tomb, families clean up and pay their respects, and some of the buildings have glass windows with potted plants; these are obviously used on a regular basis. Also, as we overheard by eavesdropping on a tour, families trade and sell their plots and tombs: a real estate market exists within the necropolis, and families hard on their financial luck can put their mausoleum on the market, move out all the old ashes, caskets, and bodies so that some familiy with new money can take over. It’s a neighborhood with its own infrastructure, investments, and economy, a microcosm of society...except it’s for dead people! Craziness, I tell you.
Each part of the city is distinct, and they change so fast that you can be walking down a street, and all of a sudden you don’t see twentysomethings in black leggings and jean skirts, but you see fortysomethings in matching sweater sets and Mercedes Benz dealerships...that’s were the good ice cream is. But there are many more barrios to explore, and that’s for another time.
Hasta pronto!
24 Noviembre, 2006
As the days go by our little barrio, Palermo Soho, becomes more familiar. Each time that we run errands we take a different route back to the apartment, finding out where the best fruit and vegetable stands are, who has lamb for sale, and where the ecclectic clothing stores are. Much of the shopping is beyond our modest budget, even with the exchange rate, but it’s quite fun to be in the midst of a fashion district. Instead of factory-direct clothing, I can splurge on a dress that a designer actually made herself. Also, everyone goes shopping. Every species goes shopping too; today, I kid you not, there was a German Shepherd staring wistfully at a lavender suede leather handbag.
This is where the students studying abroad, as well as the tourists directed by their guidebooks go in search of hip Argentinian designer clothing. There’s a lot of creativity and a lot of marketing going on at the same time, which makes for an interesting environment. Wading through the propaganda and the bargains to find something that is both well-made and interesting is difficult, so we do a lot of walking and window shopping. This may irritate my boyfriend, who thinks that I am an obsessed maniac, but this is just the way one must behave, if one can only buy one pair of heels this trip. I’m not about to make some hesitant decision. This is a very serious matter, deserving much thought and deliberation, not to mention many blocks of walking
On one such expedition, we found a chocolatería. Not quite the same as the decadent Chocolate Bar in Mahnattan discovered by one M. Warren, they do produce a fantastic chocolate ice cream, and one of my all-time favorite flavor combinations: white chocolate truffles rolled in black tea leaves. It’s crunchy, it’s smoky, it’s sweet, and it melts in your mouth. Yes, I’ll take a box of those.
There are also more practical spots to discover in the neighborhood, like the Post Office for our weekly postales, the internet café, and the grocery store. We had a nice chat with a butcher yesterday about the different cuts of lamb, and ended up with what I think is a flank and tenderloin. My food vocabulary is increasing daily, as well as my knowledge of meats. Some of the things I didn’t even know in English, let alone Spanish! I feel like I’m working up to being able to order in a parillada without embarassing myself, now that I can articulate the difference between a flank steak, rib eye, and tenderloin (or entre vacío, ojo, o lomo). Bring on the menus!
I felt truly ignorant when our favorite baker presented three options for quiches and I hadn’t the faintest idea which one was filled with what. Two weeks later, having sampled the leeks, swiss chard, buttnernut squash, and corn, it becomes significantly more difficult to forget the names of each tasty vegetable. Tasting is truly the best way to learn vocab. Sometimes you can’t even go by sight or pointing and have to jump out on a limb. Our first week here we ordered a pizza with, among other things, morrónes. What to my delighted eye should appear but thick slabs of roasted red peppers, nestled in among caremelized onions and mushroms. Surprises like these are much appreciated. Luckily, I had my most unpleasant food surprises in Spain; I now know the names of most of the offal, that I don’t like morcilla (blood sausage), and would prefer not to eat canned vegetables.
Once these lingüistically problematic territories have been navigated, one can continue to negotiate physical space.
After familiarizing ourselves with Palermo Soho, we have set our sights on La Recoleta, a slightly more sedate and older neighborhood which contains a slew of museums and cultural activities. There are more middle aged business people with families, fewer hipsters, and nary a foreign college student to be found outside the overtly tourist museums. Wednesdays are our Recoleta day, when we cash in on the $10 peso evening movie tickets (USD $3.25). It’s a little quieter than our neighborhood during the day in Recoleta, but during the weekends much of the city flocks to the open air restaurants, the green spaces around La Flor, a huge stainless steel sculpture of a flower that opens and closes with the sun, and around El Cementario.
The flower sits upon a 10 foot tall granite cylinder filled with water, probably 20 yards in diameter. The pistils are huge light bulbs that remain unlit during the day, and I’m sure they are an impressive sight at dusk. So far, we’ve only observed it in the afternoon, when the sun’s golden rays burnish the steel to bronze, and the reflections of the water throw light up onto the sculpture and around onto the rolling green hills that surround the statue for almost a quarter of a mile. It’s a relatively new addition to the city, within the last five years, but it’s quite the iconic structure.
Another staple of our visits is the Museo de Bellas Artes, a broad collection, and free every day of the week. It’s fun to be there around 5:00 pm when the school groups come in for their tours. The kids know the place and almost treat it like their own living room, pointing out favorites to friends and rushing around to find a particularly disturbing or interesting painting. On the weekends, scores of runners are out in the parks of the Paseo de Recoleta which runs around the museum and contains several small pools where kids can play with miniature fully working sailboats and hydrofoils, if their parents or grandparents would ever surrender the controls.
Our next cultural destination was the Cementario de Recoleta, the huge necropolis plopped right down in the middle of this affluent neighborhood. The site sits on top of of a hill, guarded on three sides by a towering wall of at least 20 feet. Poking up from above the cement you can see the back sides of tombs, small cupolas, crosses, and parts of angels floating above the sidewalk. We unintentionally circumnavigated the cemetary, not knowing how to find the entrance, which finally emerged with its renaissance style white marble pillars and portico after a good long walk. The surface area is about 2 city blocks square, but what we discovered after walking inside is that the tombs extend quite a ways beyond the surface...both up and down.
Once you pass through the iron gates which run between the high white pillars carrying the momental command, desire, and hope “Resquiat en Pax,” the city seems to have whirled about itself in a magical storm and condensed into a tiny version of itself. For the cemetary is a city on a miniature scale; there are streets, gardens, abandoned tenements, huge monuments, sleek modern skyscrapers, families, tourists, stray cats, brochure vendors, government officials, and even mini neighborhoods.
The noises of the city fall away, for a visitor of the cemetary literally is above the streets, and tall cypresses loom mournfully over the main pathway leading in from the entrance. Birds circle around, and ghost-like pale cats lounge about in the central rotunda, stalking the streets like souls who have some unfinished task to complete. If you strike out from the central green space, away from the towering evergreen trees, it is easy to become completely lost. The alleyways and avenues of the cemetary are just like city streets: some are wide enough for two-way traffic, for three to walk abreast, and others are thin slices through layers of tombs, with just enough space for one wanderer. This diminished scale increases the eeriness of the streets, making an ordinary sized human feel slightly shrunken. A sense of weight, of foreboding settles in, increasing with the ever-staring angels and carved likenesses of the deceased peering down from atop the marble, granite, and concrete structures. A spiritual weight rests on your shoulders, emanating from the ground, the walls, the air, and other indefinable sources. If this weren’t creepy enough, there’s a smell about the place that is hard to pin down, a musty sweetness that might come from the mold growing on the oldest structures, might come from car fumes on the street, or might be the result of “other” things.
I loved it.
The place is absolutely fascinating. There are tombs that were built in the 1800’s when the city was still younger than the interred, some of which have been cared for during the last two centuries, with spiralling staircases leading down into catacombs for many generations of family members. Other old tombs are in such a state of disrepair that their rusted doors are falling off, bricks and rotting wood fill the sacristies inside, and the familial names have started to wear off. Every tomb tells a story, and those who are more secretive than others inspire stories and fantastical tales to be invented. What tragedy befell the Moreno family after they buried their father in 1950 so that they could not care for the grave? Why is only the younger daughter of the Olivieris given an inscription? How would you feel holding the iron railing as you descended into the tombs of your forebearers? What does it smell like at the bottom of a catacomb? But not all the questions and stories are weighty and grave (pun intended!): how on earth did the Jockey Club get the money to build their first president a monstrous sepulcher complete with four leaping horses and sprawling maidens...and then build three more just like it!? Why do all the architects have the ugliest graves? Who the heck picked that picture of grandma to sit next to her for eternity?
Another reason for my enchantment with the cemetary is that many of the graves were built in the twilight hours of art nouveau, from 1900-1915. The style had already faded back in its birthplace of Paris, but apparently it blazed on in Buenos Aires. The sinuous lines and flowery carvings are perfect for giving a truly otherwordly air to a monument, not as if the place needed any help.
I wandered around for about an hour by myself, losing Dave immediately and unintentionally as I scoured the streets and alleyways for interesting sights. It was nearly closing time when I realized to myself “Hey, self, there might be some important people there.” Then, almost as if on cue, a fellow wanderer asked me if I knew where Evita’s tomb was. Unfortunately in my meanderings I had not stumbled across the resting place of Argentina’s most famous first lady, and was forced to return to the world of the living to find out. Dave, always prepared, came with a map of the cemetery. This, while illuminating and most helpful for finding the big sights like the Duarte monument, took away from some of the mysteriousness.
But the mystery of the Cementario is only part of its nature; the cemetary is not a static land, about to slip into the ether with its population of corpses. The living city of Buenos Aires is invested in it as well. People still come to put roses and carnations in the gates of Evita’s tomb, families clean up and pay their respects, and some of the buildings have glass windows with potted plants; these are obviously used on a regular basis. Also, as we overheard by eavesdropping on a tour, families trade and sell their plots and tombs: a real estate market exists within the necropolis, and families hard on their financial luck can put their mausoleum on the market, move out all the old ashes, caskets, and bodies so that some familiy with new money can take over. It’s a neighborhood with its own infrastructure, investments, and economy, a microcosm of society...except it’s for dead people! Craziness, I tell you.
Each part of the city is distinct, and they change so fast that you can be walking down a street, and all of a sudden you don’t see twentysomethings in black leggings and jean skirts, but you see fortysomethings in matching sweater sets and Mercedes Benz dealerships...that’s were the good ice cream is. But there are many more barrios to explore, and that’s for another time.
Hasta pronto!
Thursday, November 23, 2006
Iamthecoolestpersonontheplanet
I would like to state officially that I am the coolest person on the planet. Most of you may not have come to this realization yet, but it’s true. Do you know how I know this? The New York Times tells me it is so. The boy and I emerged from our apartment after a lovely dinner of butternut squash ravioli care of the Verm y Chelli, the pasta factory down the street, and then ventured off to plug in to the ‘net. After nearly an hour of Peru travel organization, I decide to indulge myself a bit and check out headlines on the NYTimes. Not surprisingly, they do not interest me. I immediately scroll down to the pretty little squares on the bottom of the page indicating multimedia and magazine presentations for small-minded folk like myself who need more aesthetic stimulation than the dry news world can normally provide. I see that the new “T” magazine has been released. Ordinarily this would not warrant interest, because the ridiculous fashion, home decor, and architecture in TimesStyle magazines are übertrendy, impractical, and frankly 70% of the material is unattractive, however “stylish” it may be.
Travel does interest me. And what should the new T magazine be, but travel! Click I go, whizzing, or rather wheezing at the speed of the not-so-broad-band connection at the locutorio. As the image files load at an agonizing pace, a headline appears. A spiritual shaft of light emanates from the fluorescent bulbs overhead, choral music fills the air with ethereal chanting, and Bacchus smiles down upon me from on high. I see pixelated on the screen: “Dining out in Buenos Aires: Palermo Viejo”
This boon comes on the heels of another episode of Adventures In Dining, a tragicomic short play adapted for the page. We decided to take the recommendation of our venerable landlord, Ruben, and visit La Escondida, an apparently popular parillada. The parillada is a phenomenon particular to Argentina, with its millions of acres of arid pampas grass: prime beef territory. I was first acquainted with the parillada on North Miami Beach, at a restaurant called La Vaca Gorda (lit. "The Fat Cow"). This street side café is nestled in the middle of an Argentine neighborhood and serves not much else but meat. You can buy a sausage wrapped in a steak, covered in bacon, then grilled. Having just come from a long hot day at the beach, we were given strange stares when we ordered a vegetarian snack of soup and empanadas. I expected, even hoped for similar fare at La Escondida.
My culinary expectations were met, but not nearly in the manner I imagined. I left the house hungry, still not accustomed to the 10 pm dinner hour; due to this alteration of mind, I should have been on my guard against hasty decisions. Alas, during my perusal of the menu I failed to notice the fatal words: “salad bar.”
I believe they were even written in English. As we entered La Escondida, we found that the restaurant sprawled back into an old warehouse, strongly resembling middle of the road dinner chains back home. A sense of foreboding passed over me, settling heavy on my mind as we passed by the salad bar.
This said, the food wasn’t bad. My steak was well cooked, and D’s rib eye wrapped in “pancetta” that mysteriously resembled bacon was delicious. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was that we had stumbled upon a watering hole for the petit bourgeoisie. Large extended families of Palermo’s middle class flocked to this place. It was packed with even early on a Sunday night, and by the time we left at 10:45 there was a line of some twenty five people outside the door. When I felt the need for some greens to go along with my 18 inch asado (a cross section of the ribs) I had to muscle with old grey-haired ladies at the salad bar! This is not exactly the kind of experience that pleases the holistic diner; there is more than the palate that needs to be satisfied at a restaurant.
In retrospect, Ruben’s recommendation wasn’t terrible. The food was fine, and the meal didn’t break the bank. The funny thing is that I could envision our diminuative landlord sitting down for dinner with his mujer, and having her fight it out at the salad bar. Just wasn’t quite the right place for us. What I should have realized is that I needed advice from a different source, one that more reflected my needs and desires.
Here, ready to fulfill my every gastronomic need, is advice from someone I trust, a source that I admire, at times revere, and occasionally envy. There is now a smorgasbord of restaurants laid out before me; let the dining commence!
This brings me in a rather roundabout fashion (please excuse the ebullience, I’m having a moment) to my initial statement that I am the coolest person on the planet.
I have rarely been in a place that the New York Times considers cool. True, some may say that the Times is behind the latest fashions, that the paper’s taste is bourgeois, not avant garde, that it is stuffy and less liberal than its projected self-image. Pooh on you, negative nillies and jealous naysayers! You just wish you were this cool. We have “discovered” for ourselves the coolness of Palermo Soho, and even if we’re not hip enough to really belong, we’re here. I bask in the glow of self-congratulation for which every explorer desires. I am in the moment, living the pages of the Sunday Times. That, my friends, is cool.
One could also observe that this is also the anti-cool, that the appearance of our barrio in the Paper is but another sign of the encroachment of wealthy New York jetsetters who come for the cheap eats and high fashion of BAires. There are quite a few Manhattan-esque twentysomething girls to be found on the streets and sidewalks around our apartment on the weekends, indicating a strong tourist presence (the antithesis of cool). This phenomenon, while irritating, affirms the paradox of cool: if a place is so cool that everyone goes there, it almost inevitably drifts from the trendy to the kitsch. In my rationalizing way, I’m going to say that finding Palermo in the magazine is the antecedent to its fall into kitsch. This way, we can still be cool, but get out in time to save ourselves. This timing is quite perilous, for as Mr. Kundera tells us, kitsch is what kills the soul. Are we kitsch? No, I think not. And if we were, how would we know? Kitsch is delightfully ignorant of its kitsch-ness. I’m going to continue to bask, thinking positive thoughts.
It’s funny that I pay more attention to the NYTimes when I travel than when I’m at home. Perhaps its because of my sister and D’s addiction to the news cycle, or I just crave a bit of American culture when I’m away. Of course, my .5 seconds of fame from the March 2003 Sunday Travel section comes to mind, when a NYTimes reporter stumbled upon my travel-weary form on the steps of the Prado, and I think fondly of that different type of coolness: someone wanting to publish your perspective. Meditations on this variant of cool may be saved for another time.
Being newsworthy is fun, and I think that it pleases me because I don’t often get to feel cool or trendy. I’m not jaded enough to roll my eyes and dismiss the article as “so last season.” I am a wide-eyed wanderer, at times in need of a little affirmation that my path has merit. This part of the world is new to me, and so I need to investigate, discover, and question. These processes are not at all a guarantee of success, so whenever I can have a little guidance to nudge me along the preferred path, I'm grateful for that.
The road less traveled is good and all, but it's a hell of a lot of work breaking your own path the entire way.
Travel does interest me. And what should the new T magazine be, but travel! Click I go, whizzing, or rather wheezing at the speed of the not-so-broad-band connection at the locutorio. As the image files load at an agonizing pace, a headline appears. A spiritual shaft of light emanates from the fluorescent bulbs overhead, choral music fills the air with ethereal chanting, and Bacchus smiles down upon me from on high. I see pixelated on the screen: “Dining out in Buenos Aires: Palermo Viejo”
This boon comes on the heels of another episode of Adventures In Dining, a tragicomic short play adapted for the page. We decided to take the recommendation of our venerable landlord, Ruben, and visit La Escondida, an apparently popular parillada. The parillada is a phenomenon particular to Argentina, with its millions of acres of arid pampas grass: prime beef territory. I was first acquainted with the parillada on North Miami Beach, at a restaurant called La Vaca Gorda (lit. "The Fat Cow"). This street side café is nestled in the middle of an Argentine neighborhood and serves not much else but meat. You can buy a sausage wrapped in a steak, covered in bacon, then grilled. Having just come from a long hot day at the beach, we were given strange stares when we ordered a vegetarian snack of soup and empanadas. I expected, even hoped for similar fare at La Escondida.
My culinary expectations were met, but not nearly in the manner I imagined. I left the house hungry, still not accustomed to the 10 pm dinner hour; due to this alteration of mind, I should have been on my guard against hasty decisions. Alas, during my perusal of the menu I failed to notice the fatal words: “salad bar.”
I believe they were even written in English. As we entered La Escondida, we found that the restaurant sprawled back into an old warehouse, strongly resembling middle of the road dinner chains back home. A sense of foreboding passed over me, settling heavy on my mind as we passed by the salad bar.
This said, the food wasn’t bad. My steak was well cooked, and D’s rib eye wrapped in “pancetta” that mysteriously resembled bacon was delicious. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was that we had stumbled upon a watering hole for the petit bourgeoisie. Large extended families of Palermo’s middle class flocked to this place. It was packed with even early on a Sunday night, and by the time we left at 10:45 there was a line of some twenty five people outside the door. When I felt the need for some greens to go along with my 18 inch asado (a cross section of the ribs) I had to muscle with old grey-haired ladies at the salad bar! This is not exactly the kind of experience that pleases the holistic diner; there is more than the palate that needs to be satisfied at a restaurant.
In retrospect, Ruben’s recommendation wasn’t terrible. The food was fine, and the meal didn’t break the bank. The funny thing is that I could envision our diminuative landlord sitting down for dinner with his mujer, and having her fight it out at the salad bar. Just wasn’t quite the right place for us. What I should have realized is that I needed advice from a different source, one that more reflected my needs and desires.
Here, ready to fulfill my every gastronomic need, is advice from someone I trust, a source that I admire, at times revere, and occasionally envy. There is now a smorgasbord of restaurants laid out before me; let the dining commence!
This brings me in a rather roundabout fashion (please excuse the ebullience, I’m having a moment) to my initial statement that I am the coolest person on the planet.
I have rarely been in a place that the New York Times considers cool. True, some may say that the Times is behind the latest fashions, that the paper’s taste is bourgeois, not avant garde, that it is stuffy and less liberal than its projected self-image. Pooh on you, negative nillies and jealous naysayers! You just wish you were this cool. We have “discovered” for ourselves the coolness of Palermo Soho, and even if we’re not hip enough to really belong, we’re here. I bask in the glow of self-congratulation for which every explorer desires. I am in the moment, living the pages of the Sunday Times. That, my friends, is cool.
One could also observe that this is also the anti-cool, that the appearance of our barrio in the Paper is but another sign of the encroachment of wealthy New York jetsetters who come for the cheap eats and high fashion of BAires. There are quite a few Manhattan-esque twentysomething girls to be found on the streets and sidewalks around our apartment on the weekends, indicating a strong tourist presence (the antithesis of cool). This phenomenon, while irritating, affirms the paradox of cool: if a place is so cool that everyone goes there, it almost inevitably drifts from the trendy to the kitsch. In my rationalizing way, I’m going to say that finding Palermo in the magazine is the antecedent to its fall into kitsch. This way, we can still be cool, but get out in time to save ourselves. This timing is quite perilous, for as Mr. Kundera tells us, kitsch is what kills the soul. Are we kitsch? No, I think not. And if we were, how would we know? Kitsch is delightfully ignorant of its kitsch-ness. I’m going to continue to bask, thinking positive thoughts.
It’s funny that I pay more attention to the NYTimes when I travel than when I’m at home. Perhaps its because of my sister and D’s addiction to the news cycle, or I just crave a bit of American culture when I’m away. Of course, my .5 seconds of fame from the March 2003 Sunday Travel section comes to mind, when a NYTimes reporter stumbled upon my travel-weary form on the steps of the Prado, and I think fondly of that different type of coolness: someone wanting to publish your perspective. Meditations on this variant of cool may be saved for another time.
Being newsworthy is fun, and I think that it pleases me because I don’t often get to feel cool or trendy. I’m not jaded enough to roll my eyes and dismiss the article as “so last season.” I am a wide-eyed wanderer, at times in need of a little affirmation that my path has merit. This part of the world is new to me, and so I need to investigate, discover, and question. These processes are not at all a guarantee of success, so whenever I can have a little guidance to nudge me along the preferred path, I'm grateful for that.
The road less traveled is good and all, but it's a hell of a lot of work breaking your own path the entire way.
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
City Life
Sipping decidedly better than normal coffee at McDonalds, enjoying the Wi-Fi, I present to you a snapshot of city life, here in Buenos Aires. As I type, a class of schoolchildren tramp in for an English lesson, ordering at Mickey D's as an "American" cultural experience. I guess they're not far off. McD has adapted its enterprise rather amazingly to the Argentine way of life, illustrated by both the inclusion of the espresso bar (AKA McCafé), the "Me Encanta" placemats (me encanta ir al parque con mi novio/I love going to the park with my boyfriend, me encanta comer churros/ I love to eat churros), and the dulce de leche ice cream. Ironically, McD's belongs to the neighborhood more than our other Wi-Fi hotspot Spell Café, mostly patronized by American and European tourists. But it's not extremely easy to get "work" done here.
Most of our work is done in a locutorio, or internet café. This means clacking away in search of Inka Trail hikes and various Peru fun-ness, but sometimes you just gotta take a break. I know, I know, here "work" has an extraordinarily loose definition, but I´m okay with that. But work it is, and the search continues. Enough of that boring stuff.
The whole "getting up on time" shtick is still a little beyond our capabilities, but we worked out a pretty sweet routine of Spanish lessons in the morning, cleaning and grocery shopping, followed by an afternoon walk or run, an early dinner and then reading at night. Cloudy skies swirled by our balcón early this week, making us glad
that we had a good book to accompany us. To parallel the epic journey through, up, and across the Southern Cone, we have embarked upon an equally epic literary adventure: a complete read through of The Lord of the Rings. Currently, we are at the end of book 3, halfway into the Two Towers. D has never read the entire book, so it´s been quite enjoyable. We take turns reading aloud, although I tend to do most of it. Reading aloud is a skill that I honed quite well in my former life as a teacher, and I now find that the activity which I previously relegated to kindergardens and books on tape is now quite pleasant. Also, my Ent voice is stellar. You should hear it.
There was much LOTR this week, including a viewing of movie I on Sunday evening, and an entire day of documentaries on Thursday, of which I am mildly ashamed.
This was a monumental week for the travellers; we ventured (gasp!) out of our neighborhood. Shocking, it is absolutely shocking. We chose for our destinations two exemplars of the fine arts: Centro Cultural Borges and the Museo de Bellas Artes.
Centro Borges was supposed to be a museum-like operation that held the World Press Photo Exhibition...it turned out to be the top floor of an enormous shopping mall called Galerias Pacífico, the renovated Museo de Bellas Artes. The photography exhibit didn't disappoint, but it felt bizarre to be walking around above Christmas decorations and sale signs on our way into the gallery.
The actual MNBA (Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes) was quite worth the trip, and we've been back twice since then. The impressionist collections were pretty neat, and there is an entire floor of Argentine art that is incredible. My favorite painting is a modern oil of the continent of South America turned upsidedown so that Tierra del Fuego is in the "northeast" corner of the map. North America is shrunk down to a squirrel-pelt sized chunk of land in the lower right hand corner, reminding me of the West Wing episode when C.J. finds out that the mercatur projection is racist and classist.
My second favorite was a retrospective on an artist named Florencio Molina Campos, a self-taught cartoonist who became famous during WWII. The caricatures of horses and gauchos reminded me of a time when Disney was Walt, and the studio was a nexus for creative talent, not the decadent picture-factory that still bears the Disney name. I highly recommend a view: artist's website.
When our knees could bear the marble floors no longer, we took refuge in the café and the cinema, fortuitously discovering that Wednesdays are discount days at the theater (we will be attending every following Wednesday). We stumbled upon a huge café next to the cemetery that served chocolate a la española, and I nearly died with paroxysms of joy. Fortunately, I did not join Evita in El Cementario de la Recoleta, and we wrapped up our art-packed outing with an Almodóvar film and a dose of Madrileño Spanish. Warmed my heart, that did. "Volver" was quite good, and better than I expected.
A well-rounded urban day, filled with food culture, and a bit of adventure. We should get out more often =).
Most of our work is done in a locutorio, or internet café. This means clacking away in search of Inka Trail hikes and various Peru fun-ness, but sometimes you just gotta take a break. I know, I know, here "work" has an extraordinarily loose definition, but I´m okay with that. But work it is, and the search continues. Enough of that boring stuff.
The whole "getting up on time" shtick is still a little beyond our capabilities, but we worked out a pretty sweet routine of Spanish lessons in the morning, cleaning and grocery shopping, followed by an afternoon walk or run, an early dinner and then reading at night. Cloudy skies swirled by our balcón early this week, making us glad
that we had a good book to accompany us. To parallel the epic journey through, up, and across the Southern Cone, we have embarked upon an equally epic literary adventure: a complete read through of The Lord of the Rings. Currently, we are at the end of book 3, halfway into the Two Towers. D has never read the entire book, so it´s been quite enjoyable. We take turns reading aloud, although I tend to do most of it. Reading aloud is a skill that I honed quite well in my former life as a teacher, and I now find that the activity which I previously relegated to kindergardens and books on tape is now quite pleasant. Also, my Ent voice is stellar. You should hear it.
There was much LOTR this week, including a viewing of movie I on Sunday evening, and an entire day of documentaries on Thursday, of which I am mildly ashamed.
This was a monumental week for the travellers; we ventured (gasp!) out of our neighborhood. Shocking, it is absolutely shocking. We chose for our destinations two exemplars of the fine arts: Centro Cultural Borges and the Museo de Bellas Artes.
Centro Borges was supposed to be a museum-like operation that held the World Press Photo Exhibition...it turned out to be the top floor of an enormous shopping mall called Galerias Pacífico, the renovated Museo de Bellas Artes. The photography exhibit didn't disappoint, but it felt bizarre to be walking around above Christmas decorations and sale signs on our way into the gallery.
The actual MNBA (Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes) was quite worth the trip, and we've been back twice since then. The impressionist collections were pretty neat, and there is an entire floor of Argentine art that is incredible. My favorite painting is a modern oil of the continent of South America turned upsidedown so that Tierra del Fuego is in the "northeast" corner of the map. North America is shrunk down to a squirrel-pelt sized chunk of land in the lower right hand corner, reminding me of the West Wing episode when C.J. finds out that the mercatur projection is racist and classist.
My second favorite was a retrospective on an artist named Florencio Molina Campos, a self-taught cartoonist who became famous during WWII. The caricatures of horses and gauchos reminded me of a time when Disney was Walt, and the studio was a nexus for creative talent, not the decadent picture-factory that still bears the Disney name. I highly recommend a view: artist's website.
When our knees could bear the marble floors no longer, we took refuge in the café and the cinema, fortuitously discovering that Wednesdays are discount days at the theater (we will be attending every following Wednesday). We stumbled upon a huge café next to the cemetery that served chocolate a la española, and I nearly died with paroxysms of joy. Fortunately, I did not join Evita in El Cementario de la Recoleta, and we wrapped up our art-packed outing with an Almodóvar film and a dose of Madrileño Spanish. Warmed my heart, that did. "Volver" was quite good, and better than I expected.
A well-rounded urban day, filled with food culture, and a bit of adventure. We should get out more often =).
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
La Llegada
I now live in Buenos Aires, on a happily bustling street in Palermo Soho called J. L. Borges. Yes folks, that’s right; I have fulfilled my lifelong dream of living with Borges. Yet I feel slightly out of place here in this, the trendiest of neighborhoods in B.A.: after spending several years on the precipice of the ghetto, it seems odd to be smack in the midst of hip fashion, ‘expensive’ restaurants, and young people. There are no screaming couples or children out back, no whining police sirens, nor street signs in the unintelligible but familiar Haitian creole. The style of Palermo is also a stark contrast to the American suburbs of my youth: the lawns, SUV’s, and military families with 3.8 children. I’m living in the East Village, but confoundingly doing it within our budget. It blows my mind, especially when my friend just tried to move to said Manhattan neighborhood and couldn’t do so with her investment banker’s salary.
At times here I feel incredibly wealthy: we can afford to live in one of the coolest barrios, albeit after three solid days of apartment hunting all over the city, in every real estate agency that we laid eyes on. We have also managed to jet off to foreign lands for 5 months without a hope of potential employment, the longest I have gone without working since freshman year of college. It’s a little scary, but we should be able to make it with the dollar riding high at 3.15 Argentine pesos. Yes, my old teacher’s pay would make me part of the upper class here, but I’ve let that go for a while. In a fit of self-justification I tell myself that the lack of income makes me a little closer to the average BA citizen, but I know that it’s not really true.
I feel like one of the Idle Rich, a sensation that is more foriegn than the language, the food, or even the sights here in Argentina. All that I’m missing is a tiny canine to stuff in my Louis Vuitton purse, and some big-ass sunglasses with the letters C, G, or D glimmering in bling on the sides.
But that’s not me. I get a lot of looks on the street, and I’m not sure if they are because my blonde hair and blue eyes scream “I’m not from here,” or if my clothes aren’t the latest and hottest fashions. Falling comfortably back into Spanish-speaking life, I forget that people who meet me immediately assume that I’m an invading foreigner, ignorant of customs and culture.
Fortunately I have two things working rather strongly in my favor. One of these I discovered by using luck and a bit of intuition. The other is a universal truth: everyone loves teachers. It is considered a sin upon humanity to dislike a teacher on sight, even if the U.S. still won’t pay them, but that’s another story for another day. Getting back to my superpowers...The first genuine smile that I saw from a porteño, as they call themselves in Buenos Aires, was when I spoke the magic word: Miami.
Miami, as the legend goes, is the capital of South America. I didn’t realize it that much when I was there, partly because my job was all-consuming, and partly because the people that I interacted with on a daily basis weren’t from South America. Here, now say with pride “Oh yeah, I’m from Miami.” Immediately, I am a creature of wonder, an exotic resident of the land of turquoise waters, and free from any America prejudices. It’s beautiful, liberating, and quite useful. Everybody wants to know what life is like in Miami, if there really is a golden land full of latinos. Perhaps in less cosmopolitan areas this fact won’t be worth as much, but for now I’m going to milk it for all it’s worth.
Yet Buenos Aires is nothing like the fabled Miami. The more time that I spend here, the more it reminds me of New York. Clearly there are some key differences, but so many places have analagous forms in the Big Apple that they seem like sister cities. During our search for apartments we wanted a central location, ending up in an old hotel in the equivalent of Time Square. The tourists and the neon signs, cheap restaurants and fast food places made me a little stressed out. Luckily we didn’t have to spend much time there, or I don’t think that I would have liked the city much at all.
Like New York, Buenos Aires is also the nexus of immigration. Part of the same wave of European immigrants that poured into Ellis Island in the early 1900’s spilled over onto the shores of Argentina, and found plenty of room in the capital city. As our friendliest taxista told us: “Italy didn’t have anything, Germany didn’t have anything, Spain didn’t have anything, nobody had anything! So they all came here.” This working-class immigrant past still lies beneath the surface of the city, and shows itself in sometimes unexpected ways. There are fewer characteristically Spanish last names here; about a third are Italian, with some German and Eastern European mixed in for flavor. There’s tango, and there’s also the food.
On our first full day in the city, we found ourselves wandering around a bustling shopping district in an attempt to become better oriented. This worked, after a fashion, but it also made us extremely hungry. We wandered in to a swank Italian restaurant right next to the Apple Store B.A. . A Polish waiter ushered us to our table, asked me if I was from the Ukraine, and then showed us the menu replete with fresh-made pastas. My papardelle arrived steaming and happy in a bed of mushrooms, and had the yellow tinge of true egg noodles. Sigh. When I rolled a strand around my fork it was slightly elastic, not mushy at all. Swoon. Then, after the first bite I realized that it was cooked to perfection: I met a tiny bit of resistance at the center, truly ‘al dente.’ I’m in love. Since then, I’ve had brick oven pizza, sopressata, fugazzeta, gnocchi (ñoquis), and real parmesan. People talk about the steak here, and the quality of the beef, but I’m all about the pasta. Sure, the asado is delicious, and it’s hard to beat a medium rare skirt steak with chimichurri sauce, but these pale in comparison to the divinity of homemade pasta. Viva Italia!
Affirming our decision to reside in Palermo Borges gave us another gift, in addition to Ficciones and El aleph. There lies, not six blocks from our tiny apartment, a pasta factory. Now there’s no need to ever venture out of our neighborhood. When we can cook perfect pasta in our own home, made the same day or the day before, why on earth would we go to a restaurant? Already we have been entranced by five kinds of ravioli, stamped out in a 6 foot tall machine that looks like it should be rolling out newpapers instead of plump packets of pasta. In the words of Virginia Woolf, “It is enough. It is enough.”
Thus, we begin to feel that we have trully arrived, and are no longer in transit: searching for a place to belong. Dave chats with the lady at the pasta store, we find a panadería to patronize daily, and the old guy who sells the chickens has somewhat less of an indifferent glare when we pick up some farm-fresh eggs.
The immersion project for DDH proceeds, with gradual success. Each spanish conversation is a little easier, and though it sometimes takes us 15 city blocks to understand one sentence, we manage to understand each other. I have revived the tradition of my 10th grade Spanish teacher, and Dave now conjugates one verb a day in all 13 tenses. “Estoy, estás, está, estamos, están comiendo?” This odious task which I dreaded every week now delights him, and I suppose the repetition is helpful. We are also slowly branching into literature, updates to follow.
While the “Rey of Castellano” continues to conjugate, I think it’s time for lunch. It’s good to be here.
At times here I feel incredibly wealthy: we can afford to live in one of the coolest barrios, albeit after three solid days of apartment hunting all over the city, in every real estate agency that we laid eyes on. We have also managed to jet off to foreign lands for 5 months without a hope of potential employment, the longest I have gone without working since freshman year of college. It’s a little scary, but we should be able to make it with the dollar riding high at 3.15 Argentine pesos. Yes, my old teacher’s pay would make me part of the upper class here, but I’ve let that go for a while. In a fit of self-justification I tell myself that the lack of income makes me a little closer to the average BA citizen, but I know that it’s not really true.
I feel like one of the Idle Rich, a sensation that is more foriegn than the language, the food, or even the sights here in Argentina. All that I’m missing is a tiny canine to stuff in my Louis Vuitton purse, and some big-ass sunglasses with the letters C, G, or D glimmering in bling on the sides.
But that’s not me. I get a lot of looks on the street, and I’m not sure if they are because my blonde hair and blue eyes scream “I’m not from here,” or if my clothes aren’t the latest and hottest fashions. Falling comfortably back into Spanish-speaking life, I forget that people who meet me immediately assume that I’m an invading foreigner, ignorant of customs and culture.
Fortunately I have two things working rather strongly in my favor. One of these I discovered by using luck and a bit of intuition. The other is a universal truth: everyone loves teachers. It is considered a sin upon humanity to dislike a teacher on sight, even if the U.S. still won’t pay them, but that’s another story for another day. Getting back to my superpowers...The first genuine smile that I saw from a porteño, as they call themselves in Buenos Aires, was when I spoke the magic word: Miami.
Miami, as the legend goes, is the capital of South America. I didn’t realize it that much when I was there, partly because my job was all-consuming, and partly because the people that I interacted with on a daily basis weren’t from South America. Here, now say with pride “Oh yeah, I’m from Miami.” Immediately, I am a creature of wonder, an exotic resident of the land of turquoise waters, and free from any America prejudices. It’s beautiful, liberating, and quite useful. Everybody wants to know what life is like in Miami, if there really is a golden land full of latinos. Perhaps in less cosmopolitan areas this fact won’t be worth as much, but for now I’m going to milk it for all it’s worth.
Yet Buenos Aires is nothing like the fabled Miami. The more time that I spend here, the more it reminds me of New York. Clearly there are some key differences, but so many places have analagous forms in the Big Apple that they seem like sister cities. During our search for apartments we wanted a central location, ending up in an old hotel in the equivalent of Time Square. The tourists and the neon signs, cheap restaurants and fast food places made me a little stressed out. Luckily we didn’t have to spend much time there, or I don’t think that I would have liked the city much at all.
Like New York, Buenos Aires is also the nexus of immigration. Part of the same wave of European immigrants that poured into Ellis Island in the early 1900’s spilled over onto the shores of Argentina, and found plenty of room in the capital city. As our friendliest taxista told us: “Italy didn’t have anything, Germany didn’t have anything, Spain didn’t have anything, nobody had anything! So they all came here.” This working-class immigrant past still lies beneath the surface of the city, and shows itself in sometimes unexpected ways. There are fewer characteristically Spanish last names here; about a third are Italian, with some German and Eastern European mixed in for flavor. There’s tango, and there’s also the food.
On our first full day in the city, we found ourselves wandering around a bustling shopping district in an attempt to become better oriented. This worked, after a fashion, but it also made us extremely hungry. We wandered in to a swank Italian restaurant right next to the Apple Store B.A. . A Polish waiter ushered us to our table, asked me if I was from the Ukraine, and then showed us the menu replete with fresh-made pastas. My papardelle arrived steaming and happy in a bed of mushrooms, and had the yellow tinge of true egg noodles. Sigh. When I rolled a strand around my fork it was slightly elastic, not mushy at all. Swoon. Then, after the first bite I realized that it was cooked to perfection: I met a tiny bit of resistance at the center, truly ‘al dente.’ I’m in love. Since then, I’ve had brick oven pizza, sopressata, fugazzeta, gnocchi (ñoquis), and real parmesan. People talk about the steak here, and the quality of the beef, but I’m all about the pasta. Sure, the asado is delicious, and it’s hard to beat a medium rare skirt steak with chimichurri sauce, but these pale in comparison to the divinity of homemade pasta. Viva Italia!
Affirming our decision to reside in Palermo Borges gave us another gift, in addition to Ficciones and El aleph. There lies, not six blocks from our tiny apartment, a pasta factory. Now there’s no need to ever venture out of our neighborhood. When we can cook perfect pasta in our own home, made the same day or the day before, why on earth would we go to a restaurant? Already we have been entranced by five kinds of ravioli, stamped out in a 6 foot tall machine that looks like it should be rolling out newpapers instead of plump packets of pasta. In the words of Virginia Woolf, “It is enough. It is enough.”
Thus, we begin to feel that we have trully arrived, and are no longer in transit: searching for a place to belong. Dave chats with the lady at the pasta store, we find a panadería to patronize daily, and the old guy who sells the chickens has somewhat less of an indifferent glare when we pick up some farm-fresh eggs.
The immersion project for DDH proceeds, with gradual success. Each spanish conversation is a little easier, and though it sometimes takes us 15 city blocks to understand one sentence, we manage to understand each other. I have revived the tradition of my 10th grade Spanish teacher, and Dave now conjugates one verb a day in all 13 tenses. “Estoy, estás, está, estamos, están comiendo?” This odious task which I dreaded every week now delights him, and I suppose the repetition is helpful. We are also slowly branching into literature, updates to follow.
While the “Rey of Castellano” continues to conjugate, I think it’s time for lunch. It’s good to be here.
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