Notes from Tango Town

I'm going to do this blog a little differently now.
Instead of narrating it as a story (I got to Buenos Aires, got familiar with the apartment, street, city, etc, went to school...) I'm compiling a set of musings on this city, so each blog will be shorter and more varied. Enjoy :)

There's something about this city that I just love. Maybe it's the architecture, a bizarre mix of gleeming skyscrapers and art nouveau - all curves and cupolas - and those cute little cottages all squished together like in Lima. Or maybe it's the parks that pop up wherever you turn, with playgrounds and tree-lined paths for walking the innumerable dogs of the city. Or perhaps how incredibly European it feels, stirring memories of Florence and Vienna, and yet with it has its own unique southern charm. Whatever it is, it's now my favorite city in the world.

I find this a little sad: La Florida, a street in the center of town, used to be Buenos Aires’ cultural center, where all the Parisian-taught modernist painters and writers and intellectuals used to hang out and discuss how to break society’s conventions like rhyme and realism. Now it is just a long street of shops, a huge outdoor mall, entirely run by convention.

Everyone says that below the equator toilets flush backwards (though I still haven't officially checked) but I never knew that locks were backwards too! It's taken me a while to get used to unlocking the doors to the right, but I have high hopes I'll get it before the end.

The subways have open windows. I’ve never seen open windows on subways before. It’s good, because it gives you a life-saving breeze when it’s crowded and stuffy, but it makes you wonder…what if someone threw a bottle out the window? Would the entire train derail and we’d all die, just because of litter?
I have to say my favorite subway line is A – it’s the oldest line, made in the early 20th century and still has the original cars with wooden benches and swinging flower-shaped lights. It gets equally crowded at rush hour, but somehow you feel better about being human sardines – remembering all those 1920’s era business men in their funny hats doing exactly the same thing almost 100 years ago...