This morning we walked out in the light drizzle of rain and headed towards the Recoleta District of the city.  In 1867 and 1871 there were cholera and yellow fever epidemics in the city and the wealthy classes moved their residences from San Telmo over to this area.  As a result, many of the old money and influential families of Buenos Aires are buried in the cemetery in Recoleta.  But that is not where we were headed.  Our destination was the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, which houses the country’s largest collection of 19^th and 20^th century art.  On display were the usual old European portraits and depictions of babies that look like Elmer Fudd; this style of painting always freaks me out.  But then the collection moved on to some of my favorites—Degas, Picasso, even some Ming ceramics were there in the mix.  There was a collection of decorative tortoiseshell combs—the kind that you see in old Spanish pictures that look like a crown and hold up a veil.  It was fun to see them up close, but hard to imagine how something so large could stay anchored in someone’s hair.  Upstairs was a stunning collection of Latin American art.  I didn’t write down any names or take pictures, but there were some paintings that were just beautiful, and I’m sorry I can’t be more descriptive here.  I would definitely recommend stopping by the Museo de Bellas Artes if you’re in town, the collection is interesting, the location makes for a nice walk, as admission is free, a visit here is easy on the wallet.  Overall the morning was wonderful because it is Sunday and Buenos Aires is so quiet on Sundays.  The sidewalks are clear and the streets void of load, fume belching buses and we had an enjoyable walk and a nice visit to the museum.  By the time we finished at the museum the sun had come out in full force and we had a nice stroll back to our little apartment.

Our first impressions of Buenos Aires were that this is a really cool city.  And not that it’s not—there are many interesting museums, parks, architecture, restaurants, etc. but we’ve noticed other things.  Like dog poo everywhere.  Maybe not everywhere, but certainly often.  This comes from an apparent plethora of dogs who reside in apartment buildings.  In the absence of a yard, they use the sidewalk.  I’m not sure if it is laziness or inability (some dog walkers have 5-10 dogs so it must be hard to stop and clean up), but there is a lot of dookie left on the sidewalks along with cigarette butts and general litter.  All this makes the grassy park areas much less appealing.  That, and the fact that sometimes there seems to be just as much grass as cigarette butts on the ground.  Strangely, unlike Japan it is easy to find a public trash bin.  But this shows there isn’t necessarily a direct correlation between trash bins and trash on the streets.  This relationship must have more to do with people’s attitudes and sense of public responsibility and respect.  Another sign that public responsibility and respect are low here is the abundance of graffiti on the walls from 2 meters and below. 

            It is quite possible that some of our negative reactions are the result of culture shock (though I won’t attribute that for everything—cigarettes, litter, and poo are gross all the time).  We have, after all, just finished a year of traveling in Asia, and most recently, thoroughly developed Asia.  Each day I see a couple Asian faces.  And most of the time that is in a grocery store.  I haven’t been around this many white people since…since high school.  It’s not bad, just takes some readjustment in that I’m not in Asia any more.  It has also been strange getting used to the public smoking again.  I had grown really accustomed to in starting in chain-smoking Indonesia.  But a quick bout of bronchitis, followed by six weeks at home and a month in Japan and Korea has apparently rendered me more sensitive than before.  In particular, in many places in Japan you are not allowed to smoke and walk.  I didn’t fully appreciate this until coming to Argentina and getting stuck on a crowded sidewalk behind a mobile chimney.

            Buenos Aires is not without positive sides though.  One very positive aspect of this city for us is the abundance of bakeries and cheese.  Both products are delicious, varied, and relatively cheap in comparison with where we have been.  The hot chocolate mix I found at the grocery is wonderful.  And the water is safe to drink.  There are a lot of arts and culture type things going on in the city, in fact there is a whole calendar of Spring/Summer outdoor events throughout the city including cinema, a jazz festival, and I think also some theater.  Artisans can be found throughout the city, usually on the main plazas and walkways.  Generally there is a lot of handmade jewelry for sale, but there are also lots of knitted goods, leather products, and other crafts.  Shopping in general is supposed to be good in Buenos Aires, though we haven’t “tried” it, but based on the window displays this seems accurate.  Apparently there is a buzzing night-life, though we are (perhaps lamely) not the type who go out much.  Public transportation is relatively easy to use and also very affordable.  Although, we prefer to walk to avoid the crowds and to enjoy a good stroll. 

            I’ve noticed a couple things about the people in Buenos Aires.  Number one is that people here love to window shop, and its fun to watch people glancing in at the goods.  Almost every single shop has stuffed their window display full of merchandise, and often including prices.  Minimalist displays are a rarity; each shop has a cornucopia of goods spilling from the confines of the window box.  If there is a mannequin it will be wearing a shirt, jacket, pants, belt, shoes, and have an additional pair of pants or shirt draped over the shoulder.   Lingerie shops (and there are many) have everything from socks, bras, underwear (men and women’s), stockings, etc. hanging from the walls behind the glass.  Spandex shops, as I like to call them, are easy to find too.  These sell just about any conceivable form of spandex-shirts, skirts, dresses, gaucho pants, other weird looking genie pants (that re actually kinda popular though i don´t know why…they look like ooompaloopa legs), leggings, etc. all available in a raindbow of colors.  Another common type  of shop seems to sell a combination of watches, picture frames, and perhaps a random appliance or two.  Anyways, if you can imagine, this is a window shopper’s dream (which is probably why there is such a window shopping habit).  You can spend as long as you want gazing at the merchandise, without having to wonder about prices and without having to make that unspoken commitment of interest that happens when you physically walk inside a store.  We often find ourselves stopping to take a look at the array of goods in store windows. 

            The other thing I have noticed, rather a personal opinion, is that in general people here wear extremely boring looking shoes.  Loafers.  Plain sneakers.  There is, of course, the usual abundance of Chuck Taylor style sneakers, but there is nothing that is visually appealing.  Especially not like in Japan where even if a person’s shoe looks weird, at least it looks cool at the same time.  Shoes here just seem very plain and utilitarian.  Also, there is an odd penchant for a certain style of Nike camel-toe mary-janes, worn by both men and women.  To be fair, these shoes are a little bit too odd to be put into the “boring” shoe category.  But they are certainly not good looking, particularly on men with big feet.  To make matters worse, the cut and style of the fabric is pretty sporty looking, and they look strangely clunky (not like the more stylish and understated ones I have seen back home). 

            Actually, they remind me a bit of those sketcher sneakers that were so popular in the nineties (ha!  The nineties!); I hated those.  Not that I had much sense of style then (or now for that matter), but my personal opinion was that those shoes were ugly.  And when I say ugly, I mean hella.  But back to these Nike oddities (and I apologize if you own a pair): there is a Velcro strap and a split toe looking like a hoof in front, and I can’t figure out what purpose this would serve, nor does it seem very comfortable.  However, one of my coworkers back in San Francisco did have a pair and she found them rather comfortable, so perhaps there is more than meets the eye, or maybe they just feel better for walking to work than a pair of heels.  Anyways, I find the abundance of these camel shoes in the Buenos Aires population puzzling indeed.

Some sights:

McNifica: we are McLoving it…especially the part about the gourmet chef.

 

Down the street from where we live…

 

a university

 

and a church (we always hear the bells)

We went to check out a little art exposition at the Casa Rosado today. The Casa Rosada is more or less an Argentine equivalent of the White house, and it’s balcony is where Evita addressed the masses in the scenes made more well-known by Madonna in the film Evita. Anyways, the art show was a little too small to be too interesting to see (it took no more than ten minutes tops to see everything), but it was cool to see the inside of the building because I don’t think it is always as easy to go inside. We sat outside for a while and watched people posing for pictures, as well as a couple kids playing kick-ball against one of the statue podiums…definitely not something that you would see happening at Lincoln Memorial, but I thought it was nice to see the space being used in a normal way. But maybe if I had more knowledge of the statue/memorial I would have found it to be disrespectful instead.

We have an address for the next month.  It’s nothing much, yet it is more than we’ve had to ourselves in a long time.  Our little studio in located in El Centro, which as you can guess, is in the heart of the city.  It can get noisy outside with all the traffic, but luckily our window faces the inside of the block and so is relatively quiet.  The apartment is small, but once again that is relative to where we’ve been stay, so it actually feel pretty spacious.  There is a big, matrimonial (as they say in Spanish) bed, a round table with four chairs, a little stuffed chair, tv, internet, a wall of bookshelves, a few dishes and pots, a couple of gas burners (only one has a handle), and a mid-sized fridge.  The bathroom is small, but has a sink, toilet, and an odd shower-bidet combo.  We would have liked an apartment with a sauna tub, but those were hard to find in our price range.  Basically, our studio has everything we would have wanted out of a hotel/hotel room plus a little kitchen and it works out to be cheaper than staying somewhere else.  So this is where we’ll be for the next month.  Trying to catch up on some things, trying to learn some more Spanish, and seeing what it is like to live in Buenos Aires for a bit.

Buenos Aires feels very European in a romantic but graffitied sort of way, especially compared to where we’ve just spent our past year.  At first glance it seems that there are many beautiful old buildings here, big trees lining wide boulevards, and a new, interesting country to explore.  Since we are planning to stay here for a month, and because we’ve only really been here a day, we haven’t seen many “sights” so far.  Most of the tourist attractions in the city seem to be museums, buildings, a couple cemeteries and various plazas and parks throughout the city.  We have only really walked around the area where we are staying, San Telmo and stop every now and then to look at all the curious items in shop windows, admire brightly colored murals in sometimes unexpected places, or to glance up every now and then to admire the unique aspects of old buildings.  Our first step is to find an apartment, and then somewhere to take Spanish classes, and then we will see how this city really is.