Eating as a vegetarian in a country in which you don´t speak the language is a pain. I am at La Tucumarita on Rivadavia street, sitting in the loft after ordering two little empanadas. One is stuffed with cheese.
I hate speaking here. I feel so stupid, uncultured, annoying. In a restaurant one can´t take the time to try to put a sentence together.
This second empanada has corn and cheese inside. Mmmm...
As I walk through the city I think about coming back to live here (I walked down Ave. Corriente, which had bookshop after bookstall after bookstall, both upscale and discount. This is also the street where the theatres are). It is a grey and drizzly day and I can´t say that Buenos Arieans are particularly smiling people. Perhaps that is just the same in any big city. When I think of living here, I can´t imagine how one neogotiates such a big and unfamiliar city, its neighbourhoods and transport, even if one could speak the language and find work. I don´t even know how I´d begin to think about living in a city like this. This makes me feel limited. People move to strange cities all the time.
Monday, May 18, 2009
12.15pm, Wednesday May 13 ....untitled
I am in an awesome, awesome bookshop/cafe. It is a long, long shop, with the cafe at the entrance - hardwood floor, dark red square wooden tables, colourful paintings of musicians and dancers for sale. An enormous open wrought-iron sliding gate separates the cafe from the bookshop, which has a balcony along three sides of the shop, beginning halfway along. It looks so inviting, all that dark metal balcony and wall-lining shelves of books. There are skinny male booksellers all in black and a huge sociology section. Lots of politics, philosophy. I saw Badiou´s new book, the sequel to Being and Event, on a table! On display! If I read Spanish I would have stayed there for a long time.
Instead I sat down to eat a medialuna (small croissant), hoping to stave off my ravenous hunger until I get to the cafe recommended by W. I won´t linger here as much as I´d like to as I am on my way to San Telmo and need to be back to W´s office by 3.45pm so we can make it to a planetarium show and then to the Latin American art gallery.
Instead I sat down to eat a medialuna (small croissant), hoping to stave off my ravenous hunger until I get to the cafe recommended by W. I won´t linger here as much as I´d like to as I am on my way to San Telmo and need to be back to W´s office by 3.45pm so we can make it to a planetarium show and then to the Latin American art gallery.
The marble cathedral
I forgot to write about the cathedral in Recoleta. It is difficult to remember everything when I have the time to write and to write when I am remembering what I want to get down. Thus, I won´t be detailed but simply mention that the cathedral is amazing, with statuary friezes down the walls and even large dolls in cases, which I think must be representations of young Jesus. It was one of the most sumptuous cathedrals I have seen and I feel sad that I didn´t write about it at the time to describe it better.
I have taken some photos - I´ve been trying not to take too many, just a shot of the most important things, but already I am on to my second disposable camera. I won´t be able to get them developed until I am in NY, so you will have to be patient, but they will come. We shall see if my writing manages to give the right impressions!
I have taken some photos - I´ve been trying not to take too many, just a shot of the most important things, but already I am on to my second disposable camera. I won´t be able to get them developed until I am in NY, so you will have to be patient, but they will come. We shall see if my writing manages to give the right impressions!
Saturday, May 16, 2009
6.46pm, Tuesday May 12 ....pickpocketed already?
Today I sat in a cafe with a blue and pink pastel ceiling, where I was served four different little biscuits with my $6 peso cup of tea. The cafe is in the Recoleta Cultural Centre. I was too tired to write. I certainly couldn´t keep up with Sartre, so I read Sarton, but only for a bit. After finishing my tea I lay down on a concrete bench in the gallery´s courtyard, next to a fountain. I listened to the falling water and pretended to doze.
I enjoyed very much the art at the RCC, new works - a retrospective of a project using cigarette vending machines to display small works by a variety of emerging artists; an exhibit of large resin and glass objects inspired by natural forms but also with an element of the built and technological - large objects, for example giant open pod-like structures - made of shattered glass; giant colour photographs of people at various South American beaches; comics, titled Tesorito, about a mother and her two children, one a baby.
The centre was originally part of a convent and the exhibits were housed in narrow rooms off a central hall, as was the cafe. I´ve never quite seen a gallery like it and it was unusually lax on security guards.
Before visiting the gallery I spent a lot of time walking around the Recoleta Cemetary, a miniature old city of mausoleums for the rich and important. I´ve never seen its like. Inside the mausoleums were shiny wooden coffins, Jesus wall statues, vases, glasses, dishes, flowers, portraits. Some were intricately cobwebbed, others losing sprays of plaster or offering loose planks of wood. Outside of Eva Peron´s family mausolem was a hill of flowers. There were many wandering cats in the cemetary, several peacefully lying under a small tree near a marble bench. I spent a couple of hours wandering around, lost in the plethora of lanes.
Recoleta Cemetery
Today I ate bread stuffed with cheese, olives, tomato and pesto, bought off a stallholder in front of the Recoleta church. I also lost something like $30 to $40 pesos. I may have been pickpocketed but I just as likely missed my purse when putting my money away. Sigh... that´s a fair chunk of pesos, though not that much Australian dollars.
Next, I must tell of the marble cathedral.
I enjoyed very much the art at the RCC, new works - a retrospective of a project using cigarette vending machines to display small works by a variety of emerging artists; an exhibit of large resin and glass objects inspired by natural forms but also with an element of the built and technological - large objects, for example giant open pod-like structures - made of shattered glass; giant colour photographs of people at various South American beaches; comics, titled Tesorito, about a mother and her two children, one a baby.
The centre was originally part of a convent and the exhibits were housed in narrow rooms off a central hall, as was the cafe. I´ve never quite seen a gallery like it and it was unusually lax on security guards.
Before visiting the gallery I spent a lot of time walking around the Recoleta Cemetary, a miniature old city of mausoleums for the rich and important. I´ve never seen its like. Inside the mausoleums were shiny wooden coffins, Jesus wall statues, vases, glasses, dishes, flowers, portraits. Some were intricately cobwebbed, others losing sprays of plaster or offering loose planks of wood. Outside of Eva Peron´s family mausolem was a hill of flowers. There were many wandering cats in the cemetary, several peacefully lying under a small tree near a marble bench. I spent a couple of hours wandering around, lost in the plethora of lanes.
Recoleta Cemetery
Today I ate bread stuffed with cheese, olives, tomato and pesto, bought off a stallholder in front of the Recoleta church. I also lost something like $30 to $40 pesos. I may have been pickpocketed but I just as likely missed my purse when putting my money away. Sigh... that´s a fair chunk of pesos, though not that much Australian dollars.
Next, I must tell of the marble cathedral.
Tuesday continued
W and I passed a cardboard box collector this morning. Cardboard is often what garbage vandals are after and cardboard is a roaring trade. Ah, I see another customer (in the cafe, in case you have forgotten where I am), a dignified woman in red and black also with a plate of three things, so maybe I am not as greedy as I thought.
I am proud of my Spanish speaking. I obviously looked confused as I looked at the open shelves of bakery delights to the side of the shop and the boy behind the counter offered me a plastic basket and tongs. I said, ´¿Como aquí?´and the boy motioned to me to take a table!
It is a chilly morning but the sun is showing itself. Buenos Aires is not beautiful. There are dramatic old buildings in this area, but they are offset by the greyness of the narrow streets. Haedo may be beloved but its houses are hodgepodge and odd, its apartment buildings boxes, though boxes with nice wooden slat shutters. It is like no city I´ve ever seen and I cannot describe adequately the way the houses look: they defintiely don´t give the usual impression of walkway, door, windows on either side. Some are two-storied with balconies...
Yesterday, when I said I was invigorated by the city, W countered that it is tiring always having to watch your bag and worrying about pickpocketing and, of course, actually being pickpocketed or robbed. That pulled me up. I romanticise big cities but I do reckon constantly being anxious on the streets and suffering purse-snatchings would wear thin.
I shall give in and eat the roll - while I delve back into Sartre.
I am proud of my Spanish speaking. I obviously looked confused as I looked at the open shelves of bakery delights to the side of the shop and the boy behind the counter offered me a plastic basket and tongs. I said, ´¿Como aquí?´and the boy motioned to me to take a table!
It is a chilly morning but the sun is showing itself. Buenos Aires is not beautiful. There are dramatic old buildings in this area, but they are offset by the greyness of the narrow streets. Haedo may be beloved but its houses are hodgepodge and odd, its apartment buildings boxes, though boxes with nice wooden slat shutters. It is like no city I´ve ever seen and I cannot describe adequately the way the houses look: they defintiely don´t give the usual impression of walkway, door, windows on either side. Some are two-storied with balconies...
Yesterday, when I said I was invigorated by the city, W countered that it is tiring always having to watch your bag and worrying about pickpocketing and, of course, actually being pickpocketed or robbed. That pulled me up. I romanticise big cities but I do reckon constantly being anxious on the streets and suffering purse-snatchings would wear thin.
I shall give in and eat the roll - while I delve back into Sartre.
Thursday, May 14, 2009
I will skip more flight writing so you can get to the good stuff
Monday, May 11, 9.55pm ....dead-to-the-bone tired
I jot down notes only, as I am tired beyond words. The bus ride from Buenos Aires airport was amazing. BA is an enormous grubby city strewn with trash and full of ugly architecture. It has been a grey day and the city´s people dress without flair. I love it. There is a distinct absence of blondes and rake-thin girls. People here aren´t that thin. I love it. Already on the bus I was thinking of moving to a big city again. I love it, the grand scale of it, the evidence of people in their masses, in their everyday squalor that I find so....invigorating.
I spent the late afternoon talking to W and her sister in their funky office (turquoise blue walls, fairy lights, a leg in a neon green stocking stuck to the wall) on Ave. Ayacucho. W made a lovely dinner of rice and fried eggplant patties topped with a chunky tomato sauce. Very lovely.
To bed!
I jot down notes only, as I am tired beyond words. The bus ride from Buenos Aires airport was amazing. BA is an enormous grubby city strewn with trash and full of ugly architecture. It has been a grey day and the city´s people dress without flair. I love it. There is a distinct absence of blondes and rake-thin girls. People here aren´t that thin. I love it. Already on the bus I was thinking of moving to a big city again. I love it, the grand scale of it, the evidence of people in their masses, in their everyday squalor that I find so....invigorating.
I spent the late afternoon talking to W and her sister in their funky office (turquoise blue walls, fairy lights, a leg in a neon green stocking stuck to the wall) on Ave. Ayacucho. W made a lovely dinner of rice and fried eggplant patties topped with a chunky tomato sauce. Very lovely.
To bed!
from now this blog becomes The South America Diaries!
Monday, 11 May, 3.43am ...it begins
Ahhh, so I begin what promises to be many scatteed hours of waiting over the course of these travels. I have taken a taxi to the Skybus for my Melbourne to Sydney flight. There are now fourteen minutes to wait. Four men in dark clothes ramble the cement hall, dragging their suitcases.
I am calming down now, my anxiety turning towards excitement. In the taxi, my travel worry turned towards home, concern about A, M, Y and the flat. There is nothing to worry about, but still I turn things around in my mind.
The bus has come!
6.59am
Oh, the clouds - I´ve written of them before. I fly over a sea of roiling cloud and the wrinkled-bedsheet mountains of trees emerge. Before, farm spreading to the horizon where the sun layed down a thin pink line that is now a bleeding hazy glow. Perhaps one day it will cease to amaze me when I fly how uninhabited this earth of our is. There were brown plains of houseless farms and now green swathes of fertility. From Melbourne to Canberra it is also checkerboards of farm and rolling hills of trees.
I began May Sarton´s Journal of a Solitude. She writes ´I hardly ever sit still without being haunted by the ¨undone¨ and the unsent´. Yes! Exactly. Oh and out the window the most amazing poofs of cotton-candy clouds, dense balls of feather blowing forwards. Amazing. As far as the eye can see again, but the pink line is gone. Instead a lone puff of mountain a little higher than the rest, a cotton ball hill on the horizon.
We are disappearing into the clouds and the shiny ocean emerges, lit monotone by a bright ball sun. To read, to look out the window, to read, to look out the window, to read, to look out the window... The window is best in a plane.
The piercing screams of the ubiquitous unhappy baby tormented by painful ears is the soundtrack to the stretch and curl of Sydney´s coastline, so, so green and lush with scrub, until the city emerges, islandy and archipelagoish, all protruding boxes of various heights. I can see the seaweed under the water - to the ocean floor from the plane in the sky. As we land we pass boats - big ones and little ones - and we touch down and roll so fast.
The end, flight 1.
Ahhh, so I begin what promises to be many scatteed hours of waiting over the course of these travels. I have taken a taxi to the Skybus for my Melbourne to Sydney flight. There are now fourteen minutes to wait. Four men in dark clothes ramble the cement hall, dragging their suitcases.
I am calming down now, my anxiety turning towards excitement. In the taxi, my travel worry turned towards home, concern about A, M, Y and the flat. There is nothing to worry about, but still I turn things around in my mind.
The bus has come!
6.59am
Oh, the clouds - I´ve written of them before. I fly over a sea of roiling cloud and the wrinkled-bedsheet mountains of trees emerge. Before, farm spreading to the horizon where the sun layed down a thin pink line that is now a bleeding hazy glow. Perhaps one day it will cease to amaze me when I fly how uninhabited this earth of our is. There were brown plains of houseless farms and now green swathes of fertility. From Melbourne to Canberra it is also checkerboards of farm and rolling hills of trees.
I began May Sarton´s Journal of a Solitude. She writes ´I hardly ever sit still without being haunted by the ¨undone¨ and the unsent´. Yes! Exactly. Oh and out the window the most amazing poofs of cotton-candy clouds, dense balls of feather blowing forwards. Amazing. As far as the eye can see again, but the pink line is gone. Instead a lone puff of mountain a little higher than the rest, a cotton ball hill on the horizon.
We are disappearing into the clouds and the shiny ocean emerges, lit monotone by a bright ball sun. To read, to look out the window, to read, to look out the window, to read, to look out the window... The window is best in a plane.
The piercing screams of the ubiquitous unhappy baby tormented by painful ears is the soundtrack to the stretch and curl of Sydney´s coastline, so, so green and lush with scrub, until the city emerges, islandy and archipelagoish, all protruding boxes of various heights. I can see the seaweed under the water - to the ocean floor from the plane in the sky. As we land we pass boats - big ones and little ones - and we touch down and roll so fast.
The end, flight 1.
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