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Saturday, March 28, 2015

Buenos Aires - I'm going to take you to a tango show!

Buenos Aires (Argentina)
28 March - 06 April 2015


The question I get asked by all and sundry is ‘What is it about Buenos Aires’? In the immediate moments after I hear the question I always find myself in that inevitable space of having to fumble for the appropriate verbs and adjectives, I simultaneously berate myself for not ever having developed a stock answer, but now, with the equivalent lucidity of a man that’s consumed three glasses of Malbec and has hit that ‘sweet zone’ of temporary enlightenment, I figure that I don’t ever really need to have one. The question is about as complex as answering ‘why are you in love?’, I mean how do you formulate an answer and provide a significant amount of justice to the weight of that feeling? I know that I can frame the response in terms of what initially drew me in, which was the steak, red wine and its vibrancy of life, but that’s basic talk, that’s just Buenos Aires 101 for the newbie.  I  could then add something about its energy, passion, lifestyle, architecture, sense of style, sense of self, nightlife, the cobble stoned streets of San Telmo, café con leche and medialunas in Dorrego Bar, the roar of the crowd in La Bombonera, the dog walkers handling 10 dogs at a time on the tree lined streets of Palermo, watching the afternoon sun light up the buildings with a glorious burnt orange hue over Puerto Madero, walking Defensa on market day, sipping cocktails and feeling the buzz of Plaza Serrano, looking at the uniquely framed Punta de la Mujer, infiltrating a cross fit class in the parks surrounding Madero, empanadas, dulce de leche, having three bites of walking across Avenida 9 de Julio, not grasping the weird locks of our apartment on Humberto Primo, talking about going to a tango show, actually going to a tango show…you see, the point ends up becoming so irrelevant because in the end it all rests within the realm of my own personal connection with the city and how this place makes me feel. That’s something that I can’t convey in it's entirety, you can’t simply give that to somebody, you can only hope that someone else gets the chance to have that experience and also, perhaps, feel the same sort of thing as you do. So when Inga’s flight touched down at Ezeiza on the 29th of March all I was hoping was that this town would somehow permeate her pores and pass on that same vibrant energy that had mesmerised me for so long.

San Telmo - Buenos Aires - Argentina

Sunrise in San Telmo - Buenos Aires - Argentina

Obelisco de Buenos Aires - Avenida Corrientes - Buenos Aires - Argentina
Puerto Madero panorama - Buenos Aires - Argentina

Drinks on Plaza Serrano - Palermo - Buenos Aires - Argentina 
When you front up to the starting line of a 3.5 month adventure you convince yourself that you have all the time in the world, whilst at the same time secretly whispering to yourself, in your 'other' internal voice, ‘yeah but time will pass us by so quickly’, and you know in yourself that you’re right. This adventure originated from an idea that was formulated in Paris, that when said out aloud at the time sounded like pure fantasy, and yet as I drifted through the now familiar streets of San Telmo, there I stood, in another city, on another continent, Inga in situ and me waiting for us to started.
The decision for both of us to do this was a huge roll of the dice on both parts. Travelling with friends, family members, partners, etc can be fraught with danger. The traps are an ever present reality. Spending so much time in the company of one another can quickly undo a relationship and turn it into a pile of rubble, but with that said, where there is risk there is also the chance for an equally large reward. So as I waited at the overcrowded arrival gates of Ezeiza airport and spotted that familiar face in a very foreign crowd all I was able to say when she approached was ‘hey, look at you’, not the most profound opening line of all time but at least I had time on my side to be able to improve on that!
Corridor entrance to our apartment - Humberto Primo - San Telmo - Buenos Aires
 
Our apartment - Humberto Primo - San Telmo - Buenos Aires
 
Our home in Buenos Aires was a great apartment on Humberto Primo, literally on the doorstep of Plaza Dorrego, a place where for me I believe that a person can find the essence of this city. On Sundays the plaza, and the avenue that it sidles up against (Avenida Defensa), comes alive with the chatter of people through its markets, the sounds of tango and the movement of people in dance, cafes filled with Portenos and tourists alike, parillas filling the air with the aromas of all sorts of grilled meat, the clinking of glasses filled with Malbec and the unique sound of Argentinian Spanish. For me it felt somehow important that Inga fall for Buenos Aires the same way that I did and the only way I could think of doing that was to throw the wall of Buenos Aires straight at her on arrival. Walking through the throngs on Defensa, heading up to Plaza de Mayo and admiring the uniquely coloured Casa Rosada, walking Avenida Pres.Roque Saenz Pena and being pulled into the central vortex of the city as represented by the Obelisco de Buenos Aires, an historical monument located at the intersection of Corrientes and Avenida 9 de Julio. This to me is how I believe a city can be truly experienced but especially a place like BA where walking the streets really allows you to feel the vibrancy and its pace of life. As I’ve commented many times before in this blog, I often find the best way of getting to know a city is to just walk, to go, explore and discover, whether that be with a certain intent or wandering aimlessly in the hope of acquiring those ‘happy’ accidental discoveries. I was more than happy that with Inga her modus was similar to mine, although I found out very quickly that she adopted the exhausting principal of ‘walk until you drop’, mitigated by only by the fact that refreshment stops for us both were for the most part cocktail sessions somewhere in the city. An outsider viewing our movements could quite easily have been fooled into thinking that our journey through this metropolis was nothing more than an extravagant bar crawl!
Gardelito, Defensa on a Sunday, he's just such a part of the city. This is the personification of San Telmo - Buenos Aires - Argentina
 
If it's a glass of Malbec then it must be Argentina - Puerto Madero - Buenos Aires - Argentina
Love this place - Dorrego Bar - San Telmo - Buenos Aires - Argentina
 
'Seriously Mafalda!?' - San Telmo - Buenos Aires - Argentina
 
The 30th of March brought with it an important milestone for Inga, her 30th birthday. It was this date and of course the 2nd of July, my 40th, which essentially provided the bookends to our intended South American adventure. It was these two dates that we selected months ago as being ones that we wanted both wanted to celebrate in this town. So, as opposed to the previous day where we experienced Buenos Aires on the street, I thought that, post morning champagne celebration, which also involved some extreme skill on my part where I caught the flying rebound of the champagne cork off the living room wall (trust me, it looked impressive), that we head out to the heliport at San Isidro and take to the air in order to gain some vertical perspective of what is the second largest metropolitan area in South America after Sao Paulo.
Somewhere over the Rio de la plata - Buenos Aires - Argentina
Puerto Madero from the air - Buenos Aires - Argentina
 
Looking back now, several months removed from where it started, you realise that in writing at ‘arms length’, the location of where a place resides in your mind is always punctuated by the moments that you carry in your memory for what and how those moments made you feel. I do recall on one particular evening whilst taking a walk through the parks surrounding Puerto Madero that we encountered a cross fit group mid-session. What’s fantastic about this area and I guess about Portenos in general is that they enjoy getting out and doing things, now that may be in the guise of going to cafes, restaurants and bars, or as in this instance, keeping fit. Puerto Madero of an evening is filled with inline bladers, runners, meandering couples and fitness groups, something that we of course intended to be a part of. So with the stealth and deft touch of a blind elephant in a China shop, we infiltrated one of these groups by mimicking exercises from the safe distance of 5 mtrs, because as a foreigner, you know, you’ll never be spotted with your cloak of invisibility!? Sure enough, within seconds the instructor was calling us out and beckoning us to join in, without a second thought Inga does and enters the fray and of course I follow. Now, I don’t want to say that the gringo ring-ins showed the Portenos of Puerto Madero a thing or two about exercise, but yeah, we absolutely owned them!


'El Che' mural - Carlos Calvo - San Telmo - Buenos Aires - Argentina

 


Mothers of the disappeared mural - La Boca - Buenos Aires - Argentina

 


El caminito - La Boca - Buenos Aires - Argentina

 


 
Estadio Monumental - Belgrano-  Buenos Aires
 
Estadio Monumental - Belgrano-  Buenos Aires
 
Drinks at Floreria Atlantico - Retiro - Buenos Aires - Argentina
 

When you think of Buenos Aires there are places and things that immediately come to mind, places that punctuate your consciousness, but in the same way these places and events are unique in the manner in which you experience them. So when I think of us in San Telmo I remember the mural of ‘El Che’ on pasaje San Lorenzo, the accompanying words which I now know to say ‘For love, use a condom’ or I think of wandering the multi-coloured streets of La Boca and El Caminito and remembering that greater than the vibrant colour was the acquisition of the best Pisco Sours in the whole of South America ( we didn’t know it at the time but our extensive testing over three months was definitive, Buenos Aires (La Boca) owned the title even though Chile and Peru disputed intellectual property rights) or I think of the inspired 3am suggestion by Inga whilst lying in bed that going out for drinks would be a much better way of passing our time (and I had to agree) or I think of rocking up to the well known restaurant of La Brigada in San Telmo well after midnight and the waiters responding almost incredulously to our question of whether they were still open ‘…but of course we’re open’…but of course we repeat to ourselves, this is Buenos Aires and this is where a so much living is done between the hours of midnight and 6am. This is a town where you can walk into a florist, waltz passed a very non-descript door and descend stairs to one of the coolest bars in town (I’m looking at you Floreria Atlantico)  but it’s also a town where old school charm is still maintained and none better than within the four walls of the well known Café Tortoni. It’s a city of passion, as encountered by our trip to Estadio Monumental where one bright April afternoon we caught the local derby between River Plate and their inner city rivals San Lorenzo, and it’s a city of culinary delights, mostly of the carne persuasion, as typified by our visits to Don Ernesto, La Brigada and Desnivel but more importantly highlighted by our expert opinion which of them had the best chimichurri (The most necessary of condiments in Argentina – and - It was Desnivel by the way). The ‘key’ to feeling a city, this city, is to immerse yourself the best  way you can in whatever it has to offer, and sometimes, if both you and the city are on the same wavelength then something magical can happen. Buenos Aires to me is some place that I have to feel and not just see, and, far more importantly I think, one of those rare places that even though it isn't home it somehow still allows me to feel at home, and if I  mayspeak for Inga also, I think it’s a place that she fell for in the same manner as I have and did again. Why and how that happened is not so important as the fact that it did and the fact that I really hoped that it would. Buenos Aires never ever seems to disappoint and is always able to give so much, this occasion was certainly no exception and for that, Buenos Aires, we say ‘Muchas gracias!’.

We were there! It says so!! Don Ernesto - San Telmo - Buenos Aires - Argentina
 

Friday, March 27, 2015

Sydney: Trienta y cuarenta - the tour of never say never!

Sydney (Australia)
27 March 2015




El treinta y cuarenta es un sencillo juego de casino muy popular en Francia, pero poco conocido fuera de ese país.

In 2005 Australia qualified for the World Cup for the second time in their history, the wait since the last occasion had been a long 32 years. There were many times during that period when all of us despaired at the qualifying path that would be dealt to us in each four year cycle. There were nights of anguish and cruelty, there were nights of hopelessness, but, on one particular November evening in 2005, John Aloisi struck the ball into the bottom right hand corner of the net and the 80,000+ parochial Australian crowed erupted in a manner I had never experienced before or since. The words that rang true on that evening, ring true  as equally today, ‘You can never say never’. Life at times can seem to be so predictable, so straight forward but in a short half breath, the ground beneath your feet gives way and you’re left in altogether different reality. Sometimes the opportunities that this presents amounts to possibilities that you could never have fathomed in the second before the event took place.
So now, in the tradition of all my other kick-off write ups such asLife in a year full of Saturdays’, ‘The wingand a prayer tour’, ‘Don’t call this a comeback’, ’43: The tour of awesome’, ‘Argentina– The two-timer tour’,  I give you Trienta y cuarenta’ – the tour of never say never!

Part of this write up also needs to be dedicated to the continuation of an epic story in the making. For those of you who have missedRiga – Latvian Nightmoves’ andParis: Who the hell saw that coming, you would know that Inga and I met in Riga, had our first date in Paris and now, effectively, we’ll be having our second date in Buenos Aires…but of course, how in the world would you ever follow up an epic first date like Paris. For those of you that want to know, the city of good air will resolve your dilemma!

3 months in South America with two major birthday milestones, 30 & 40, time to get started!