Cows and more cows

A couple weeks ago we went to the school commencement ceremony for Rosana's little brother. It wasn't a graduation so much as a end of year show for the parents, in which the kids from each grade level put on a dance or skit. The school, which is public, is essentially a big, sky lit atrium with a half dozen or so small classrooms along each of the walls. There are about 200 students in the entire school, but because it isn't big enough to hold all of them at the same time, half attend classes in the morning and the other half attend classes in the afternoon. All of the kids are from the neighborhood, and a parent or relative walks them to and from school each day. At the end of the morning or afternoon you will see groups of 10 - 20 women mostly congregated outside a school waiting for it to let out. The doors are closed and locked during school hours, so the parents have to wait outside for the kids to be dismissed. The students all wear white lab-type coats and the teachers all wear frilly aprons that look like something that would have come with a Betty Crocker baking set for adults. All in all the schools seem to be well-cared for. The teachers seem to be very committed to the students and to know all of their parents, and the parents in turn seem know the school and teachers, because they are there everyday to meet the kids (and almost all of them are on foot - relative to the U.S. very few people drive in Buenos Aires, eventhough there are a ton of buses, taxis and cars on the roads). They also chip in to support the school financially with money for things it doesn't get from the government. This is a pic from the first or second grade skit, which was about a cow, and is an homage to everything that comes from cows ... there was yogurt, milk, cheese and the cow. I didn't see a side of beef. Cows are central to the Argentine diet and culture, and people eat immense amounts of beef and milk products. They are cheap, a good source of protein and fill you up. I'm not quite sure how it is that they don't all end up weighing 250 pounds. There is obesity here too, but far less than in the U.S. if you go by people you see on the street. I don't think they eat 'as much' as we do at home. For example, in Rosana's house we have only one big meal a day with meat, veggies or salad and potatoes or pasta. That's in the afternoon. In the mornings we just have tea with milk, bread, cheese and yogurt, and in the evenings the same or ham and cheese grilled sandwiches or pizza. Also, the cheese we eat is called 'queso cremoso' and its soft and flavorful but isn't is fatty or greasy as cheddar or mozzarella or the cheeses I'm used to. It melts, but doesn't exude a lot of grease or fat. I'm not sure what they do to it. But my pants still fit. The other pic I've posted to the right is the park in Parque Chacabuco, with a view of condos along Avenida Asamblea, one of the main streets in the neighborhood, and representative of many of the avenues in many of the neighborhoods of the city. Here you find people jogging the block around the park, toddlers with parents - there are babies everywhere here - and people just hanging out and strolling in the early evenings or on the weekends. This afternoon we leave for Salta by bus and will arrive sometime tomorrow.

Futbol

There are 20 clubs in the 'A' professional soccer league in Argentina. Unlike professional sports in the U.S., where major cities have one or at most two teams, half or more of the top soccer clubs here are based in or near Buenos Aires and represent 'barrios' or neighborhoods. For example, Boca Juniors, the most well known, is from the southern neighborhood of La Boca, River Plate, the next most popular, is based on the north side of the city in Nunez, and San Lorenzo, is from Parque Chacabuco, where I am. Each club has its own stadium which can hold 20,000 to 30,000 persons. And they aren't always that far away from each other. For example, the next neighborhood over from Parque Chacabuco (literally less than a mile) is Parque Patricios/Pompeye which is the home of the club Huracan (Hurricane), who have the coolest art deco stadium and symbol (a giant weather balloon), then only two neighborhoods and less than two miles over from that is La Boca. Some of the clubs are 100 years old and to say the people who live there are passionate about their teams is an understatement. People grow up worshipping their club and go to or watch ever game religiously. And though I've seen lots of people wearing their neighborhood or club's jerseys downtown (which is neutral territory), you won't see many River Plate jerseys in Boca Junior's barrio and vice verse. It's not such a smart thing to do. Soccer games are controlled chaos. There are a ton police and they don't let the fans of the two teams mix. The visiting team fans enter the stadium separately and leave 30 minutes before the home team's fans get to leave. Literally, you have to hang out 30 minutes after the game is over and all of the visiting team fans are out of the neighborhood. This, to prevent fights. There are 4 sections of the stadium. One for 'normal' home team fans (meaning they are not drunk, shirtless and burning anything that's not concrete), one for the home team 'fanaticos' (who are drunk, shirtless and burning things), one for normal visiting team fans and one for the visiting team fanaticos. This is sunday afternoon futbol in Argentina. Today is a big day because there is a 3-way playoff going on between Boca Juniors, San Lorenzo and Tigre, who all won last weekend leaving a 3-way first place tie at the end of the season. On Wednesday, San Lorenzo beat Tigre 2-1, so if they win today they are the champions, and if not Boca Juniors will play Tigre. Rosana and I were in La Boca last weekend because my spanish teacher from San Francisco was here with a group touring and he managed to buy second hand tickets to the last game of the season and took some people from his group. Rosana and I weren't so brave - and they were expensive on top of that. But we hung out at a park for a while. Here is a pic of some kids who were playing soccer in the park. They were funny ... first they were playing soccer, then some other kids game along with small fireworks and they all shot of the fireworks, while yours truly was waiting for someone to loose a finger, then the fireworks were over and they started playing soccer again. I got the feeling that they hung out there all afternoon and early evening and weren't about to leave until their moms called them in for dinner. 

San Martin de Los Andes

San Martin de Los Andes is 2 to 3 hours north of Bariloche by bus. It's a small town that sits on the edge of a lake, and as with Bariloche, there are mountains and lakes around it where you can trek, go out on boats, kayak, ride horses, etc. It's small, cleaner and quieter than Bariloche, but still tourism is pretty much the economy. Most of the town is made of wood and there are rose bushes all over. When we arrived by bus, we walked a few blocks from the bus terminal to a b&b that the owners of the cabin we rented in Bariloche told us about. It was about twice as much as we paid in Bariloche, which didn't make sense to me and at any rate was more than we wanted to spend, so we rented a place right across the street instead. We ate lunch and then looked for what to do. We ended up hiking a trail that runs from the lake a mile or so up a hill to a look-out point at the top. There is a small village at the top, and we were told that they are part of the Mapuche indian tribe. I wasn't clear weather the land belongs to the tribe or the pueblo just happens to be there. The view from the top was great. In one direction is a panorama of town and in the other direction is the length of another large lake with mountains in the distance. We hiked down the back-side of the hill to a tea house run by the tribe. When you arrive, you ring the bell out front and no body answers. Then you walk around back to the house behind the tea house and clap your hands a few times and say "senora" and a woman comes out to unlock the tea house. It was the one cold day we had in the mountains, and the tea was hot and they had home made bread. We hiked back up, and down, to the town, showered and went in search of patagonia lamb and trout for dinner. This is a picture of the grill the cook the lamb on. It's a mechanized rack that turns in a circle around a pile of hot coals or wood. Those are whole lambs split in two, and they were good.

More About Bariloche

Here's another picture of Lago Nahuel Huapi on the shores of Bariloche. We made it to El Bolson, a pueblo 70 miles south of Bariloche, on Tuesday. It's a small town located in a valley between two mountains, but there's no skiing so it has a completely different feel from Bariloche. I don't think I saw a building bigger than two stories. You've got locals, and a bunch of artisans who come to spend their summers there and sell their work to tourists. Tuesdays are street fair days, and folks sell their wares in stalls around the central plaza ... everything from leather belts to bone-handled knives to jewelry to waffles with fresh berries and cream to home made beer. Despite the fact that they are there because of tourists, many of the tourists are local Argentines who are spending part of their summer holidays in the mountains or have second homes there. El Bolson has a pretty authentic, sleepy, artsy, hippy-ish feel to it, not unlike Fairfax in Marin. We ate pretty much everything in sight ... Armenian empanadas (they were like spiced beef homentashin - check my spelling), to spinach, corn and cheese tarts to waffles with fresh raspberries, strawberries and cream. Rosana had never seen a waffle before. And you might ask what a waffle is doing in the middle of Patagonia. Again, the non-latin European part of Argentina. It's really a melting pot of people and cultures, though spanish and italian are by far the dominant two. We drove another ten miles to Lago Puelo, where we ate lunch by the lake and took a boat ride out on it for a better view of the mountains. There really wasn't much to Lago Puelo, so we headed back to our cabin in Bariloche and made plans to take a bus 3 hours north to San Martin de Los Andes on Wednesday. We hadn't planned to go there intially, but we had pretty much seen everything wanted to see near Bariloche and weren't ready to go back to Buenos Aires just yet. Unless you are going to spend a lot of time trekking trails in the mountains or camping - neither of which we were set up to do; I had a swiss army knife but that was about the extent of it and they heaviest action it saw was cutting smoked cheese, you can see most of the sights within driving distance of Bariloche in a few days. It turned out to be a good thing that we went to San Martin, because we had a good time and both ended up liking it better than Bariloche. The couple who rented us the cabin in Bariloche had lived for 5 years beforehand in San Martin and the way they described it, Bariloche is were Argentines go to ski (and non-Argentines go because they've heard about it), and San Martin is where Argentines go to get away to a tranquil mountain town (and few non-Argentines go). It's much smaller than Bariloche and situated on the shores of smaller lake. More about it tomorrow. Boca, Tigre and San Lorenzo all won today, so there's going to be a big 3 way play off next week for the championship.

Bariloche. On Friday afternoon, we took the bus to Bariloche. The trip is a little more than 20 hours by bus, but it somehow ends up being less painful than an airline flight half as long. Long-distance bus rides in Argentina are comfortable. There are 3 and sometimes 4 different classes of buses available, and you can take a 'semi cama' (half-bed) or 'cama' (bed - which is a misnomer because the seats don't recline all the way; there is a 'super cama' where they do), its like being in business or first class on an airline (minus the china and silverware). The seats are big and comfortable, there's air conditioning, food, drinks and movies ... August Rush and Pride and Prejudice in spanish and I can´t remember what else. The ride to Bariloche cost about $70. Distance wise, its probably the equivalent of going to Denver from San Francisco. Bariloche is beautiful, a bit like Tahoe ... beautiful snow capped mountains, blue lakes, pine trees and hiking trails. The city itself is kind of a tourist trap. There are chocolate shops, restaurants, hotels and lots of stores that sell tshirts that say ¨mis papas fueron a Bariloche y no me trajeron mas que esta remera¨ (which means my parents when to Bariloche and all they brought me was this tshirt). There are great berries, chocolate, micro brew beer and smoked meats here. Odd combination, but there were a number of Germans and Swiss who came here. We are staying in a b&b type cabin that is made entirely of wood. When you walk on the slats or up the stairs, the whole house creaks. It´s beatiful ... two levels, two bedrooms, stocked kitchen, nice open living area. All that for less than the price of a motel 8. 'Bunglow of the Forest of the Elves' if you come. I recommend it. They seem to be fascinated with Elves and Dwarfs in this part of the country. They sell them in town (the tshirt and chocolate shops), and today we hiked to ´the waterfall of the dwarfs´. Last night Rosana had nightmares about evil dwarfs, and I heard her talking, though I didn´t know they were drawfs at the time. We rented a car and have been cruising around the area, hiking and eating. There´s not that much to do in Bariloche itself. It´s the surrounding mountains and lakes that are the draw. Fortunately we came a couple weeks before high season. There aren´t that many people here yet, so it was easy to find a place and the trails and such aren´t that crowded. Tomorrow we are going an hour or two south to a town called El Bolson, which is supposed to be nice. We may spend the night there, depending on how much there is to do, and then come back to Bariloche on Wednesday, and probably head back to Buenos Aires on Thursday or Friday in time for the weekend. There is a big soccer game this weekend. Boca Juniors (Diego Maradona´s old club) was in first place, but tied or lost the last two games, and Tigre and San Lorenzo both won their last 2, so there is a 3 way tie for first. Since we live in the neighborhood of San Lorenzo, it should be a fun weekend. That´s all for now. If I don´t post pics before the end of the week I will this weekend.

A Union For All Reasons I spent the last few days meeting a few local attorneys and others here in Buenos Aires who I'd been introduced to through mutual friends. When I wasn't doing that, I walked around Boedo, Caballito and Almagro, which are typical 'porteno' neighborhoods centrally located in the city that are relatively short bus or subway rides to downtown. I'm looking to rent a place for a couple months in one of those neighborhoods. They are close to Rosana's parents' neighborhood and have a very different feeling from the parts of the city that are more popular with tourists - Palermo (the Soho of the city), Recoleta (which has nice hotels, shopping and the cemetery) and San Telmo (the historic Tango district). I have nothing against those barrios. They are the place you want to be if you've never been here before, and where I lived and spent my time last year when I first came. But they are to Buenos Aires a little like the Marina, Union Square or Fisherman's wharf are to San Francisco - beautiful, interesting and distinctive but not places where you'll get a sense of how middle or working class portenos work and live. Well, you can, but there are just that many more tourists, yuppies and the businesses that cater to them. Most people who can afford to live in the 'North' part of the city (Recoleta, Palermo, Belgrano), if they live in the city at all. Many live in Olivos or semi-suburban neighborhoods further to the north. The problem I'm discovering is that there isn't much for rent to tourists in these neighborhoods where I'm interested in renting. Basically, I've discovered that there are two rental markets. Those for residents and those for tourists. If you live here, there's tons for rent all over the city. Seriously, there's at least one real estate broker on every block and plenty for rent as well as for sale (listings are posted in the window, just like at home). The price for a decent one or two bedroom place is about US$400 to 600 per month. But you need to be a resident to rent them and the minimum period is usually 2 years. If you are a tourist, you are more or less confined to using one of many web-based agents who rent out apartments (owned by locals) by the day, week or month or craigslist (which really hasn't caught on here for anything - but there is some there). The problem is that 90% of the places are in the neighborhoods most tourists want to be in (surprise) and I don't, and that 100% of them charge double the local rate. So, a nice one bedroom place runs about $900-$1000 a month (still very cheap compared to staying at a hotel). In summary, agents/owners gouge tourists who rent, everyone knows it and still does it, its still a bargain so everyone's happy. Welcome to Argentina (to be fair, I can't think of anything else off hand where foreigners are treated differently or have to pay a different rate ... so if that's all there is that's pretty good). My biggest complaint though is the dearth of nice, temporary places for rent in the neighborhoods I'd like to be. Fortunately I can take my time looking. This is a photo of the office of the labor union for artisanal carwashers (not to be confused with the other carwashers' unions). I stumbled across it toda while I was walking around. There's a union for everything here, but according to the papers here 50% to 80% of the working population works in the black market, so they are outside of the system and the unions. Welcome to Argentina. I'm not sure if all the unions here have collective bargaining agreements with their employers and the like, or serve some shorter purposes. I'd like to sit in on the meeting where the artisanal carwash workers hammer out a contract with carwash owners. How do you round up everyone? And, by the way, where are all the carwashes? I haven't seen one yet.

Bloqueos

On Thursday students and professors from a post-secondary art school staged a street show in Avenida de Mayo, one of the main avenues in downtown Buenos Aires. The show was a form of protest against the planned closure of the school and similar post-secondary schools where students go to study art in order to become art teachers. The schools are publicly-funded and students only pay a small, token amount in order to attend them. The municipality (or state, I'm not sure which it is) has said it wants to close or consolidate the schools, presumably in order to reduce the number of teachers, students and, corresponding the cost. Many students wouldn't be able to afford to go to a private art school, and, of course, the teachers don't want to loose their positions, hence, the Bloqueo (literally, "Blockade" but it can be any protest or picket where a street is partially or totally blocked). In this case it was well organized and looked like they got permission ahead of time. The photos above are of the same street. You can see that half of it had traffic flowing and the other half was full of placards with their schoolwork. That's the Casa Rosada in the background, where the President's offices are. There were probably a couple hundred students with a thousand pieces of work taped on these placards or set on the street or fixed to the walls of the buildings along this part of the street. It was peaceful and everyone was simply hanging out, with volunteers asking passers by to sign a petition against the closure. There was a print that I very much liked. The student who'd prepared it had already left, but her classmates were looking after her stuff and gave me her cell number. I called her to tell her that I like the print and to ask her whether she has to turn it in at the end of the semester or whether she would entertain selling it to me. She called me back a couple hours later and told me that her professor told her she could sell it if she wants. Unfortunately for me, she also consulted him on price and she wanted market price for a Gallery in posh Recoleta rather than a sidewalk on the Avenue. Oh well, next time don't speak spanish with an American accent. I suppose the bloqueos aren't all that different from protests and pickets in the States - they're for the most part peaceful, authorized, etc... But, they seem to be a more ubiquitous and accepted form of complaining here and occur in ways that range from the very organized and problematic to the impromptu and odd. For example, in April and May the government attempted to increase the export duty (or tax) on the powerful beef, soy and wheat industry (agriculture is the biggest industry here). Farmers or their supporters responded by blocking the highways leading into Buenos Aires with their trucks and such for a period. There was a period of days to a week or two where you couldn't find meat, milk, eggs and other staples in the market because of shortages. The government's position was that the farmers were making record profits from high worldwide commodity prices so that they should be sharing some of that with the rest of the country (just like the debate over record oil company profits at home). However, in addition to duking it out in the media and congress, the farmers blocked the roads in order to make their point in a way people, and hence the government, will feel more acutely. The police are reluctant to intervene and forceably remove protesters because they don't want to escalate things. They'd rather talk, negotiate, make half-promises and let the situation diffuse on its own. In this case, the farmers gave in and let traffic roll again. The export duty increase bill lost by a single vote in congress in July. That episode may have been the biggest news all year here, because of the food shortages and because the deciding vote against it was cast by the Vice President (imagine a Bush bill in the senate being defeated by a single vote cast by Cheney, then you have the picture).

At the other end of the spectrum are protests that seem odd. For example, there was a heat wave this week that caused power outages and, according to the papers, some of the people in the affected neighborhoods protested in the street for a while. Hardly seems worth the effort in 100 degree heat with 99% humidity.

Houses

One of the things I like best about Buenos Aires is how some of the older houses are designed. If you are in the heart of nicer parts of the center of town, in Recoleta or Palermo, most of the dwellings are very nice high rise apartment houses 10-15 stories high. However, in the neighborhoods just a little ways out of downtown, the apartment buildings give way to more single or two story homes. Some have beautiful stone and iron work, comparable to brownstones in New York or the woodwork on victorians in San Francisco. But others reveal nothing more than a concrete wall along a sidewalk with a single panel metal door. There's no front yard. To look at them from the street, you wouldn't even know that anyone lived there. Inside, the center of the home is an open air patio and the rooms and kitchen have doors or windows which open up to the patio. The patio serves a number of purposes. It provides daylight without the need for external windows. It circulates fresh air and provides ventilation. It provides an outdoor space (I've never seen a backyard in Buenos Aires). And you get to listen to the rain fall on the patio tile at night while you sleep. This is a picture of the patio at Rosana's house. What I like about this concept is that it's almost the opposite of what WE do. With houses being so expensive back home, and their price being measured in living space per square foot, the concept of having 'unused' space in the very center of a home is quirky or illogical because it takes away from the number and size of rooms and, hence, the resale value. But it seems to me that this is the way we should live. Is it the size of the room that's more important or the quality of light, air and flow? Which brings me to a related observation, which is that most things are noticeably smaller here ... houses, rooms, shops, streets ... the very space you have to move around in wherever you happen to be (though the widest boulevards I've ever seen are also here; you almost can't get across them in a single green light). People appear as though they are used to, and perhaps even prefer, close proximity and a lot of togetherness. As if, if they had the space and solitude that we enjoy, it might somehow feel wrong, like clothes a few sizes too big or lonely. It's not uncommon for a family of 5 or 6 people to live in a tiny two bedroom, one bathroom home. The second picture above is a little window that looks out from the shower. There are birds in the trees right outside, which sing most of the morning and afternoon. This morning while I was showering I saw two of them doing something that wasn't intended for me to see, not more than several feet away from the window. He was pretty quick about it.

When is a peso worth more than 1 peso? About halfway through last summer, in Salta, suddenly no one had change (coin money) or wanted to part with it. So, when you went to the bakery, to corner stores or to other mom and pop shops, they'd almost always ask you for correct change. I remember this one time (... when Rosana and I were in band camp), a store in the center of town refused to sell Rosana approximately 20 pesos ($6) worth of school supplies because she didn't have exact change. I was wondering how much money they'd lost over the course of the day in order to save 25 cents here and there. I'm not exactly sure what the problem is, and why the treasury doesn't just print more coins. But it ends up having a big impact on your daily life in unexpected ways. Case in point - there is a pretty good subway system in Buenos Aires, but it doesn't cover all the city. Most people take 'colectivos' (the local term for buses) everywhere. The good news is that there are something like 200 different bus lines covering the entire city of about 15 million people, it only costs 1 peso (30 cents) to ride them to the end of the line and you rarely have to wait more than 5 minutes unless it's really late in the evening. A taxi, by comparison, can run 20 or 30 pesos ($6 - 9) even for relatively short rides within the center of the city, so they are out of reach of most people for everyday use. The bad news with the buses is that those 200 bus lines are operated by about 200 different companies, they don't sell bus cards, they don't give change, there are no transfers and there's no 1 peso note (the paper notes start at 2 pesos). So, you have to constantly hoard your change. If you've got a buck in change coming to you, never ever give the vendor another 1 peso coin so that he can give you a 2 peso note back. That's a rookie manuever. He will always ask you politely if you happen to have 1 peso, and you have to always politely respond in turn that, oopps, sorry, no you don't. Or else you may find yourself a peso coin short of a bus trip home. I actually get excited when someone gives me a small handfull of change. There's a rumor that some bus companies have started a side business selling change - since they have it all - for a 2% or 3% comission. Which makes me wonder whether the government wouldn't do better nationalizing the buses instead of the airlines (the government nationalized Aerolineas Argentina recently). At least then it would make a little profit. The fun may not last much longer though. Supposedly, some bus lines have begun to sell bus cards.