A Traveler´s Moment

Steffani is cuddling next to me on the sofa. Joe is readin on the couch. amazing how "OK Computer" can bring people together...
I´m having a traveler´s moment. It´s when you catch yourself in the most random of all places, surrounded by these random people of random nationalities. you know them 48 hours, but you share 48 hours of drinking and 5 hours of dancing in the drag-club, which non of you shares with your best friends at home, but only with each other. u´r leaving in 45 minutes, and you´re not taking email addresses, cause u´r never going to write. its all about this one single moment in time, which u cant hold and u cant keep.
I´m leaving. a big hug to Mike and Cele. I´m sad. I know I´ve been attached. This is the first time in 3 weeks that I´m here, that i got attached. a pretty weird feeling. after 120 goodbyes and hellos, all of a sudden this one is different from the others. but i have to let the feeling pass, cause i´m on a night bus again, after 10 hours i´m in a Cordoba, a whole new world.

In Cordoba I hit an extremely depressing and lonely hostel. Willy sais it´s low season. We sit at the table and for long hours while he tells me stories about wild israelis that travel in big groups. they bring trouble and leave distruction after them. but some of them are nice he sais. some of them dont want to travel with other israelis. he shows me his guest book, with many pages written in hebrew, girls leaving their telephone numbers ornamented by flowers and hearts; boys leaving their email addresses "for more info".

i take a walk in the city. contemplating again on the reasons for which i took this lonely jurney with my low tolerance of beeing alone. i remeber Joe´s words "yeah, we all get lonely, but u know, some people thrive on this situations...". it makes me feel even lonelier. Cordoba is ugly.
i walk in a mini-supermarket. the dude at the counter asks everyone how´s it going. i take advantage and give him an elaborate answer. he´s interested in my accent. i have a date.

Franco is a history student. he´s not very cosmopolitan, and he knows as many words in english as i in chineese. he imagines that in israel all men wear turbans and that arabs and jews are basically the same. and we are. basically.
but he´s skinny and cute. a nice guy, u could tell. his cordobes accent is funny as hell, he buys me a pizza and he´s very patient with my spanish because he thinks it will pay off.
i pull out my usual trick - take all and give nothing. he is not happy about it. i leave.

Willy and I sit at the table again. he´s angry at the gevernment for selling the oil drill-holes to north americans, while argentina has to buy her oil from bolivia. he shows me on the map where the poverty - the povreza - of the country is concentrated, and tells me how his grandpa lives without electricity or running water.
"we are a third world country" they keep telling you. but its hard to comprehand. they mostly have european facial features, in the cities everyone dress neatly, there´s a good system of transportation, a well developed tourism, u can drink tap water, the only war they fought in the recent past is the war over the Falkland Islands (which are not even the main land), people are very polite, everyone ques at the bus stop and at the grocer´s, old ladies are sitted in buses and you get your coffee served with a small glass of water. and yet, they insist every time, "we are third world". and then u know, they are, and they dont need to explain.
a good joke a heard from a Buenos Aires jew - "a family opens a busines and the father sais - Ok guys, if the busines goes really well, in the summer we can go on a one month vacation in Israel. if, on the other hand, the business fails ... we will all move to israel."

willy is gorgeous, but this place is as lonely as it can be. i´m moving out.