Nuestra Señora de Buenos Aires

I feel at home in Buenos Aires. 14,000,000 people, subway, 16 lane avenues, air pollution, night clubs, restaurants, museums, probably the best shopping in the world, beautiful people, beautiful men. and tango.
when i first arrived to Bs.As. 8 months ago i stayed for 9 days, which was just about enough to complete the Lonely Planet "must see"s, i knew i will be back - for the tango, the shopping and the boys...

Tango

one thing i realized pretty soon was that i can go and live in Latin America or India or the Easter Island but i will never learn to be one of them, i will never be able to alter my perception of time. i will always run. the more i slow down the more i start thinking about the meaning of life. the more i think about it, the less meaning life seems to have. ever since i realized it i try to keep myself running at all times, it makes me more relaxed. buenos aires is perfect for marathon runners like me. it never stops, never sleeps. probably the only city in South America that wilfully abstains from taking siesta. if you want to go out on friday night, where ever u go, dont get there before 2 a.m., the place will be empty. and dont try to make plans for saturday morning, u will probably still be out. same goes for saturday night. you will probably also go out on at least another 2 nights of the week. dont worry if you will have to go from the club straight to the office, there will be more people like you in the neighbouring cubicles. just make your 'mate' drink a bit stronger that day. even if you go out every single day during several years you will never run out of new venues. this city has the most amazing, vibrant and rich cultural life. it's peer to London, Berlin or New York. and then it has the tango...
the tango was born here in the 30's. in the 80's, when radio killed the video star, disco killed the tango in a bloody battle. now tango is in it's renascence. 'all star's, mollets, moustaches, marijuana and tango. just like we have "our" salsa. with all the fashion around tango it still has a touch of underground and exclusivity to it. it is its own world, where every one knows everyone and all the tango shoes fabriques make big size shoes for the european girls that come to learn. the prima balerina in one of the oldest tango shows in town is an israeli girl... and i already met her.
a 'milonga' is the "tango discotheque", where girls color their lips red, put on 10 cm high heels and pose for the boys. boys possess the exclusive right to invite girls for a dance. interestingly enough it's nothing like the meat market tha goes on in the salsa clubs. it's all about professionalism. if you can't move those feet you'll stay on the bench no matter how cute your ass is. which makes it all harder for me and keeps me dancing with the old men who press me against their beer belly and keep bumping into other couples on the dance floor. but hey, trust the dude, i'll be swinging around the dance floor with a hot latino in no time! as i should, since i'm in a real tango ammock. i'm taking 2-3 lessons every day, with my private teacher or in some studio, and every time i go out it would be to some tango show or tango live band or tango whatever. i love my obsessions! they keep me sane.
tango is beautiful, passionate and some say addictive (my teacher goes to 5 milongas a week). but if you ask me why am i really doing this, spending all this time and money on classes and on buying new shoes, while i could spend my last 2 months on the Machu Pichu and the Galapagos, i cant really tell. i dont have ambitions to become a real dancer starting it at age 26. beeng the 21st century woman that (i pretend) i am, i find high heals unexceptably opressive for the woman, i hate the strict division of gender roles where the man always leads and the woman always follows, and i want the boys to be making themselves pretty so that i ask them to dance. moreover, this dance is so technically intense that i won't even be able to go beyond the basics in the little time i've got left. and the high heals - oh my god are those ugly! but for one, after 8 months of living in a backpack i got really jaded. one more amazing mountain, one more huge waterfall, one more beautiful city. one more friend for one more day. one more 20 hour bus ride to another new country. once i started looking for the meaning of it all i knew something went askew. so i stopped, i took a breath and i went to do what i love best - settle down, make local friends and find something to do which will keep me well busy and which i can later put under the title of a "cultural experience" in my journal so as to say that it was all worth it. when i just came i obsessed over spanish, then it was bolivian history, chilean slang, coca leaves, rock climbing, now its the tango... because i'm not the "Lonely Planet South America on a Shoe String" kind of girl, and defintely not into the "after-army-fiesta-lets-make-every-one-think-israelis-are-the-biggest-dumb-asses-in-the-world" thing. and honestly, right now i couldnt care less about the Machu Pichu. but i find it absolutely fascinating to learn how you have to put the "mate" herb in the "mate" cup in a 45 degrees angle, heat the water to only 80 degrees and always pour it into the cup over the metal straw. always hand the "mate" cup with the straw facing the other person, and never say "thank you" when your "mate" is handed to you because it means that you're not participating in the next round. and you can't learn this if you're traveling on "around the world" ticket - thailand, australia, new zealand, chile, argentina, brazil, france, slowakia and back to england in 6 months. i'm taking my time, sipping my "mate", making friends with the lady from the shoe store and learning how to tell jokes in spanish. i'm 26, life is eternal, i will never have wrinkles and i will come back for all those beautiful mountains and rivers i've missed. maybe i did become a little bit latino after all...

Machos, Machistas y Machetes

yesterday, sitting in the subway, watching people, i came to a conclusion that some 80% of the men around me are beautiful. 60% are stunning. 30% are to die for. when you think about it, Bs.As. beeing the second biggest city in the world that's a hell of lot of handsome men out there!
no, no, no! let me start again.
in the last month, traveling around argentina again, getting to know people, i came to a conclusion that 80% of the men around me are terrible spoiled brats. 60% are assholes. 30% - i dont even want to go there. and when you think about it, and look at their pretty faces, and think about it again, it can bring you down big time.
i will not go into details, but i will only say that all local girls i talked to agreed with me. and i will teach you 3 special words, peculiar to argentinian spanish:
porteño - a person that lives in Bs.As. (because it used to be a big port city)
histerico - a person that changes his behaviour every day, not knowing what he wants and confusing other people
chamullero - full of shit
and right away you can make your first spanish sentence:
porteño histerico chamullero.

i do sound bitter i realize that. i must notice though, that argentinians, when you analyze them outside of their gender, are one wonderful folk! even in this huge city, where everyone complains about urban alienation (, consumerism and and global warming) if you stop in the middle of the street and look lost, within a minute someone will stop next to you and start giving you detailed direction.
they love their families, they love their country, and they looove talking! they honestly sincerely enjoy human interaction. beautiful people, as i already mentioned.
and that's why i'm staying. tango - lifamim hamarak hu rak terutz...