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.