I was walking back from work last Wednesday, 8:45pm, lugging my computer and listening to Vanguardia de la ciencia (a Sapnish radio version of Tomorrow's World) on my mp3 player when I noticed a poster in a nondescript office window. I looked and it was for a film called El Ultimo Bandoneón (The last bandoneón: the bandoneón being the instrument in the picture, an essential part of the sound of the tango). As I looked at the poster someone said "It's a good film." I turned and there was a smart chap standing behind me, I asked him if it was like "Si sos brujo" (a sweet little film we saw a few months ago). Immediately on hearing my accent the man asked if I liked tango, I said I couldn't dance but I liked listening. He said that he knew a great place to listen to tango and said I should go. He opened the door of the office building and invited me inside while he went to find a pen. He was Dr Silva and the office buliding was his surgery. He was very keen for me to go and wrote out the address, saying it was a magical place "un lugar mágico".

So of course we went....

The place is called El Café de la "U" in a barrio called Urquiza, beyond the end of the subway and a bit off the beaten track. We arrived and felt a little aprehensive, the place was empty and it was 9:30pm... but the waiter confirmed that there was a show and we settled down to have some dinner. An hour later the place was full. We were the youngest there by some way. As we ate I noticed Dr Silva, Liz said to go over, he'd probably be pleased to see his recommendation being taken up, so I wandered over and said hello.

Instantly I became the Irish prodigal son... hugs, introductions (Liz was instantly Irish too) and a promise to talk after the show but for now, he said, I was going to hear some proper tango.

The show was introduced (and organized) by "Gogo" Safigueroa, a journalist, film critic and (I think) radio broadcaster with a voice like a double bass. And, the music was pretty damn good. The band included Luis Anibal who appears in the film, and as the evening progressed, more people in the surrounding tables started talking to us and asking what we were doing, where we lived, telling us little bits and pieces about the singers and musicians. Luis Anibal was phenomenal, and one of the singers, Fernando Rodas I think, was introduced to us as one of the best modern tango singers.

We were also introduced to the audience by Gogo, who thanked us for coming all the way from Ireland (and paying attention to the music). After which the 91 year old chap sitting on the next table that he liked the Irish but the English were a bunch of pirates (can't really argue there).

The owner treated us to a coffee (we needed it as at 2am everyone else was still going strong) and insisted that we return and 'if you need anything at all, just ask').

We finally left our new friends at 3:15 or so (we had to be up at 7:30 the next morning) with promises to return and a date to have a coffee with Dr Silva and practice our Spanish.  ¶ 9:00 PM 1 comments

  Tuesday was the hottest October day in BA history, 34C... 'a little warm' was a good introduction to understatement for my students (they looked at me like I was cracked, warm? It's roasting! Quite warm, I agreed).

There are, though, certain things that my English brain is accustomed to whan experiencing those sort of temperatures that don't seem to be too prevalent here.

Drunks: There are precious few public drunks... they stand out a mile when you see them.

Gangs of red faced drunken lads outside pubs: this lack of public drunkeness extends to all ages. Whereas on a sunny July afternoon you would expect, say, the pubs in Calverley, to have a good crowd the difference here is... there are very few pubs. Most of the pubs that exist are billed as Irish pubs. Bars are, well, bars, you sit at tables, inside or out, there may be a litre of beer on the table between four... on Tuesday the places that were packed were the ice cream parlours.

Mr Whippy: there's an heladeria (ice cream shop) about every third block, or more. No need for greensleeves here.

Off licenses: No need, you can buy beer at the kioskos (hole in the wall corner shops) and, if need be, at the heladeria too. In fact most of the lounging about seems to be in front of the kioskos, where the yoof sip their quilmes and talk football (I haven't seen any Woodpecker cider either).
  ¶ 2:31 PM 0 comments

  Today it's a pretty nice spring day... erm... okay, by English definitions it's cracking the flags, not a cloud in the sky and 30 some degrees. It's still two months until midsummer so I'm not sure I'll be needing my jumpers again while I'm here.

We've had a fairly lazy weekend, Monday to Thursday are routinely just busy with work now (Liz works much harder than me, 11 hour days on Tuesdays and Thursdays, if all her students show up, which they don't)) so it's nice to just kick back and wander, or not.

We went up to San Isidro yesterday, a little suburb of BA where some seriously posh folk live, and we wandered to the riverside to watch the yachts and kite-surfers and paddlers while sipping a beer under a pub umbrella. Very pleasant. There is, in my humble opinion, 75.3% more light in BA than in Leeds... this figure is entirely made up but dammnit that's what it feels like. Sunglasses are not a fashion accessory they're essential.

As is the factor 30, 40 or more. We wandered to a little local bar (Fines Terre, recently used in the filming of Gael Garcia Bernal's latest, El Pasado) for lunch and there was no one about, just the odd few sounds of children playing and the smell of barbecuing meat. Now I guess there's a few post-prandial snoozes and just the sound of birds, and the odd bus.
  ¶ 8:14 PM 0 comments

  Another weekend, another safari, this time to the Recoleta Cemetery (for those of you who aren't flickrianos yet, that link will take you to all the pictures tagged as being from this safari).

We've been to the cemetery before, in March, so this time we were less concerned about seeing Evita's tomb and suchlike (not that we were concerned before but you know how it is sometimes (you have to make sure some people are dead and buried... erm... maybe not) and much more about taking pictures. There were 25 or so of us this time (it's getting a bit successful, because, well, it's good fun: as a measure of success the tag basafari:recoleta has been one of Flickr's hottest tags in the last 2 days) and it's a good job that Recoleta is a cemetery that's already well frequented because we were mob handed.

The hunt for pictures meant that, while the tour groups were being shown round and taking pictures 'This is your Uncle Albert in front of Evita's tomb, this is me in front of Admiral Brown's tomb...' there were 25 people looking up, down, getting onto their hands and knees, crawling into crypts, climbing on statues, making people laugh...


This time we weren't the only English speakers, a chap called Graham turned up (Scottish, here on a gap year I guess) but once again we were in the presence of fantastically friendly people, who patiently let us bumble along in getting-better-but-still-crap Spanish without making us feel bad and without being at all condescending or patronising...

Recoleta is the cemetery for the great and the good, it's overlooked by towerblocks and opposite one side there's a park and high-priced restaurants. The thing that strikes me though is the decay in some of the crypts... you'll have a brand new marble and glass thing next to something where the ironwork is more a memory than actual, where the stone has the consistency of wet sand and the dried flowers and dusty interiors suggest that no one but the tourists are visiting.  ¶ 8:50 PM 1 comments

  The gesture in this photo is pretty common here, you put your thumb and fingers together and, while pursing your lips you move your hand up and down a little, maybe mouthing "que haces?" (can be used for what are you doing, where are you off to, what do they think they're up to and who the hell do they think they are?)... the title is from Roy, click on the photo and scroll down to see the comments for additional meanings.

Anyway, that's just an excuse to put the picture here because I don't have any photos of mornings in an Argentine office.

One of my students didn't show up for his class (it happens, particularly at the 8am classes, that's an hour before they normally start). I give that class in his office so when I'm waiting for him (which is every time, he usually arrives after 8:30, but, like the Argentine stereotype of a Brit, I always arrive one time on the off chance t hat he'll have not gone to sleep the night before (probably the only way he'd be in at 8)) I wait in the reception part of the office, which is a big open plan place.... mornings go like this.

8:00 One lone computer guy is doing something on the other side of the office, he wears headphones and plays no further part

8:10 Tall balding chap (chap A) comes in, says Buen dia... makes himself a coffee

8:30 A woman (woman B) comes in, says Buen dia, says buen dia to chap A.

8:35 A waiter from the cafe downstairs comes in, says buen dia to A and B, delivers a cafe con leche (white coffee) to woman A.

8:40 Man C and Man D enter say buen dia, que tal, como le va (morning, how are you, how's it going), they kiss everyone they meet, it takes a few minutes, all very friendly.

8:50 Receptionist comes in. Says buen dia, goes off to make a cup of coffee, says buen dia, hola, que tal, como le va, como andas to everyone she meets, comes back in ten minutes.

8:55 Man C spends ten minutes preparing his mate

8:57 Man D spends ten minutes preparing mate

9:00 As each new person enters the office they do the same, greet almost everyone, then catch up, then make their mate. For the people who arrive late it takes them half an hour to reach their desks.

9:10 My student phones to say he can't make it. I leave. I have been told that the process for leaving at the end of the day is almost the same only without making the mate.... which, given the obligatory one and a half hour lunch, leaves about four hours a day to do any work. Which is about what I do.  ¶ 2:02 AM 1 comments

  This is a shot that Max, one of the Flikr folk, took yesterday in the Monumental stadium at the River/Boca game.

They had coverage on two of the TV channels, but it was limited to shots of each set of supporters and audio at horse-race-final-furlong- commentary speeds... even at half time.

One of my students' sons refused to go to school today because he's a Boca fan and I guess that today they'll have a bit of stick to take...
  ¶ 8:18 PM 0 comments

  Last night was the night of the museums, la noche de los museos, in which 76 museums were open all over the city, free, from 7pm until 2am. We went to a few in the centre:

The Comisión Nacional de la Manzana de las Luces, is an old Jesuit building, among the oldest in BA, built in the 17th century... there are extensive tunnels underneath it, but a few million other people had the same idea so we contented ourselves with walking round some old rooms that smelled of damp... the wallpaper was peeling too, but then it was pretty old.

El Museo de la Ciudad, was basically full of old doors and vacuum cleaners and such... interesting stuff, no really... and upstairs there was a ton of old toys, including Estanciero! (changed thanks to a correction from Inkel ) a Monopoly clone where you build estancias (ranches) in different parts of the country. Oh and this museum was filled with people saying 'I had one of those' and wondering how much their old toys would be worth now.

El Museo Etnográfico, this was in a fantastic building with a great courtyard behind it. It was stuffed with, well, anthropological stuff from all over the country.

Palacio Nacional de las Artes - Palais de Glace: this is an old ice rink(?), but, unlike the Bradford ice rink, this was designed as a deco paean to skating, oval and marble covered, with loads of columns and a great circular ceiling... now it's an art gallery, and there were some good, some bad bits of art. We were here at 1:30 and it was packed, like everywhere else last night.

There were too many people to get a good look at the exhibits but it was a great taster.

And the ...? the non culture... well River played Boca this afternoon. (3-1 to River, a bit of an upset given current form).  ¶ 11:46 PM 1 comments

  Okay, we've posted a shot or two of the mate before but this is here for two reasons...

1: This is a big wide mate (the gourd) that gives a good picture of the yerba inside... handy for filling while in the car, and handy for sharing. And the smell of yerba? stuff an old pipe bowl with grass cuttings... that's probably as close as I can describe it.

b: Liz is taking good photos... see more here

  ¶ 2:08 AM 1 comments

  We spent the weekend here, in Miramar with Cookie and Johnnie (who are Douglas' (aka Flaco, aka Heather's Husband) parents.

They're a really nice couple, they built the house in the picture. Inside it's all polished wood. The garden is a mixture of wild plants, trees, forest and little oases of grass where Cookie serves cream teas in the summer. Out the back there is a Quincho, a bar/grill where Johnnie does catering (all word of mouth). They lease out part of the ground for beehives (for which they are paid in fantastic honey) and they have lemon, orange, grapefruit and quince trees which provide the raw materials for (among other things) Lemon marmelade and quince jam.

They made us very welcome and we spent a couple of relaxing days learning a little more about the country, the history and the British who came over here in the 1880s and after (both Cookie and Johnnie's grandparents arrived here to work on the railways, which were entirely British). They have fairly posh accents, and are completely bilingual, slipping the odd Spanish word in now and again... They stop everything for afternoon tea (which, my students are always disappointed to find, is not something that we do in Leeds).

So it was a weekend of walks on the beach and cycling through Miramar, which is kind of like Carnforth, or would be, if Carnforth had dirt roads and a better climate (and if you had to drive five hours through identical flat fields of cows to get there). In summer apparently it's a completely different story.
  ¶ 1:06 AM 0 comments