Any time you enter a café or bar in Buenos Aires and order a beer or a coffee, you don’t just get the drink – if you ordered a beer, you’re likely to get a bowl of peanuts, and if you ordered a coffee, you’ll get a tiny little cup of water (sometimes bubbly) or orange juice, and a small snack, like a cookie, chocolate, or piece of plain cake. I love the little touches like this that I’ve encountered around here.
Deluge of one; drought of another
February 17th, 2010
For the last two days or so, Buenos Aires’ physical environment has been exceptionally copacetic. Not that it hasn’t been great to begin with, but recently, the two major things I’d have quoted as drawbacks have also been absent: the hot, sticky heat, and the dog droppings that mark the sidewalk literally every few steps.
Leaving so soon?
February 13th, 2010
It’s another hot, humid Saturday afternoon in Buenos Aires. The sound of a lonely bandoneon is lazily aspirating from my laptop’s speakers as I circle my room, gathering this and that, arranging my things neatly into my suitcase and backpack, and reflecting on the time I’ve spent here.
Capoeira in Buenos Aires
February 3rd, 2010
One of the many things I’ve been eagerly anticipating about being in Argentina is the chance to train Capoeira with other groups – possibly even in Brazil, should the opportunity for a side trip arise. Before I even left Toronto, I was searching for and bookmarking the sites of a number of different Capoeira groups in Buenos Aires.
There’s a fairly large number of groups and locations here. So much so that I’ve made a secondary project of cataloguing these classes on a Google map, and their schedules in some kind of mental map, so that I can assess, on any given day, my chances of being able to make it to a class.
Well, if getting lost on the streets of a new city is a traditional rite of passage for every traveller, then the 21st century’s contribution to it is to get lost online.
When home is not like home
February 1st, 2010
I’m in the wrong restaurant.
You know the kind – salt, pepper and Kikkoman on the table. Dragon-adorned, printed-paper placemats providing cultural factoids. Servers who, while competent and friendly, greet me in Spanish. Predominantly white patrons whose gaze follows me as I seat myself.
At least one patron continues to stare at me as I eat. I stare back.
Posts