I’m tipsy, full, and finished. I guess I could be doing worse adjusting to the rhythm of life in Buenos Aires.
A foreword: my first day has been pretty lax. I arrived around noon and I’m getting picked up at at 10:30 tomorrow morning to go to the place I’m interning at.
But, back to my mental/physical state: I’d been warned that life here is different – of course, where isn’t life different when you travel? But we’re talking about meals here. Food! For me, life revolves around eating times. And though I’d been briefed on the Argentinean meal routine by the genial gynecologist who sat next to me on the plane (small breakfast, early lunch, a snack between 5 and 7, and real dinner at 9), I was not prepared for the added variable of my hostel-mates. That, I think, is what truly threw me off.
That’s not to blame them. I take responsibility for my overly-social tendencies. These are people I’m living with; I wanted to bond. I’m already thinking I’ll succumb to the urge to take a few tango lessons.
(Did I mention I’m staying at a tango-focused hostel? Well, now I have.)
So, I wanted to eat with others, but having only arrived shortly after noon, it was a bit too soon to get to know the ebb and flow of the joint, or – given everyone’s excited talk about their milonga (tango) plans tonight – say, “Hey, let’s make dinner plans!”
So, I floated in and out of the hostel, taking care of errands here and there (and encountering my share of foibles), hovering over the occasional conversation to see if I might have a dinner-mate. On one floating-out trip, I picked up an Argentinean potato tortilla (essentially an 8″ deep-dish potato quiche) and a bottle of wine, thinking that the tortilla would make a modest fallback dinner, and amidst the half-dozen residents and my hosts, I wouldn’t be left with too much of the 2006 Syrah to quaff.
Wrong.
I wound up digging into the tortilla, and it was an epic battle to finish (but tasty, if a little heavy on the salt). The tangueras were too busy getting prepped to sit down for a glass of tinto. In a fit of celebratory grandiosity I tossed the cork in the garbage, so I was left with no option but to polish the bottle off after being assisted about 1/4 of the way through.
Perhaps with a decent bottle of wine costing about $4, I need to lay off the instinct to not waste a single drop.
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