Cheers to 2014!

This New Year’s Eve was my quietest one in years. While I had plans to spend it with friends, I ended up being sick on the 31st, so decided to stay home. In the end, I was quite glad I did. I spent a quiet night reflecting on my year, before watching the city erupt in fireworks from my balcony.

Buenos Aires doesn’t really do one big organised fireworks display, like Sydney, or London or New York. Instead, everyone lights off their own fireworks, from their rooftops, balconies and the street. It was quite a magical sight seeing the night sky light up all over the place, including right in front of my balcony. While I do feel this is a little unsafe, and quite cruel to the thousands of dogs in the city (especially considering the fireworks last a good hour, with random ones going off for at least another 2 hours), I can’t help but get swept up by the magic of fireworks.

So as I stood watching the colourful twinkling erupt over the skyline, I took a moment to look back on my year. 2014 was packed with a number of incredible moments and learning experiences.

After accumulating too much stress and anxiety through two years of my Master’s degree, whilst juggling a few jobs, I decided on a bit of a whim to move to Buenos Aires, a city I’d been dreaming about visiting for years. My doubts were quickly eased as I slipped into life here and it quickly became home.

Along the way I’ve had the opportunity to travel within Argentina, to Uruguay and Brazil (ok, I hopped across the border for a few hours – it still counts!). I’ve made amazing friends from around the world, who have become like family. I have two Argentine families who have provided me with so much support here, making my time that much easier, and giving me the security of knowing that I have people to call in case of any emergency.

I’ve celebrated birthdays, farewells, Thanksgiving and Christmas. I’ve met so many interesting people with incredible stories. I’ve found a job that I absolutely love and that allows me to combine two of my biggest loves: travel and writing. I’ve been learning Spanish (an ongoing process), and I’m even taking lessons at long last (word of advice – unless you’re very good at picking up languages, you don’t just learn a language by osmosis. You do need to study). I’ve learnt so much more about Argentine culture and history, about the customs and cultures across the rest of South America, I’ve tried new foods, new drinks, new dance styles, listened to new music, encountered different viewpoints and lived outside my comfort zone. I’ve learnt to be be present, to appreciate each moment and to really embrace life to the fullest. Most of all, I’ve learnt to be really grateful for all I have, and the amazing people I have in my life, here, back in South Africa, and scattered around the globe (shout out to my wanderlusting friends on their own journeys in far-off places).

I can’t really put into words how wonderful and meaningful this year has been for me and how much I’ve experienced. It’s been chaotic at times and I’ve worked extremely hard, and slept very little, but it has all been worth it. I’m content and happy, and that is a beautiful thing. So thank you to 2014 for the lessons and opportunities.

2015 promises to be an exciting year as well. I’ll be going back to South Africa for a a month, before travelling to Brazil, then back to Argentina. I have a number of exciting projects lined up, and many travel plans.

To all who read my tiny corner of the internet, a very happy new year to you! May 2015 bring you all much happiness, and plenty of exciting experiences!

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With Spring comes new adventures and new ventures. To make my blog a little bit more accessible across all platforms, I’m now on Bloglovin as well. For those of you who prefer to do your blog reading on Bloglovin:

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Roses blooming in El Rosedal

Life Lessons Learnt from Argentines

Argentina may be full of problems, most notably the current economic turmoil, and spiral into a recession, but there is a lot the rest of the world could learn from the Argentine people.

1. Living in the moment.

Admittedly this is born out of the fact that Argentines are overly used to economic crises, and have learnt there’s not much point in planning too far ahead when the future is always uncertain, (and, as my students who work at a life insurance firm assure me, this has negative impacts on their debt, savings and long term money planning), but still, the principle of living life in the moment, and really enjoying the present is something we can all learn from.

After spending the last few years always stressing about what comes next, I’ve finally learnt to slow down and fully appreciate the moment I’m in. I stop, pretty much on a daily basis, and take stock of how beautiful life is right at this instant and how grateful I am. I’m aware of what I’m doing, and it feels like each day has meaning, rather than simply rushing through life, waiting for the next thing.

Of course, this means that I’ve also put off long term planning for a bit, as I currently have no idea when I’ll be returning home. But I’m enjoying the not knowing right now.

2. Passion

Passion is ingrained in Argentines, especially in its two most obvious and talked about activities: football and tango. I think my world cup posts conveyed Argentina’s passion for football, the one thing that can make grown men cry here. And tango is pretty self-explanatory for anyone who’s watched this intimate dance, dripping in passion and intensity. But Argentines are passionate people as a whole, in all aspects of their lives. Whether it’s construction workers conjuring up poems to women passing by, loud arguments between passengers and bus drivers, fighting lovers, or exuberant friends, people let it all out here.

Being surrounded by this constant show of passion and emotion has certainly taught me to be a bit more open as well as to really reflect on what exactly sparks my lust for life, what drives me and what stirs up a passionate response in me.

3. Appreciating communal and outdoor spaces

Every weekend the parks and central spaces are bursting at the seams with people – families, couples and groups of friends, sitting on the grass drinking mate together, running, cycling, rollerblading, slacklining, or just taking a stroll. I thought this was a city thing – since Capital Federal is phenomenal at organising free events and taking good care of public spaces – but I saw the same thing in Tandil. People truly make the most of the open spaces available to them, appreciating the time spent outdoors with loved ones.

I think this is something we don’t do enough of back home. We have so much beauty in Cape Town specifically, but people are more likely to head to the shopping malls than to go and enjoy the public spaces. And maybe that has to do with the close knit communities people weave here – both with their families and groups of friends. A park is surely a much better place to connect with the people you care about than a mall.

4. Slow meals

This one fits in neatly with the others. People here know how to enjoy a long meal. Maybe I am biased by the families that have kindly taken me in since I’ve been here, but people sit down and enjoy a meal and bonding together over it. Sure, we may only eat from 9pm onwards, but still. Although I come from a family that has always placed importance on sitting down together at meal times, it’s something that I have let go of at certain times in my life (like in Mexico when I seemed to forever be eating on the run). Here I sit down, chat with my flatmate or my friends and savour my food (perhaps too much, given my expanding waistline).

It’s the perfect expression of point 1, appreciating the moment and point 3, with the importance of communities – heck also of point 2, because Argentines are pretty passionate about food, particularly if it involves steak on a parrilla.

Porteño’s live good lives, in spite of the many difficulties life presents. I read a list ranking the happiest countries recently, which was dominated by the Latin American nations. There is evidently something in the Latin blood and culture that is to thank.

And I, for one, am so much better off for the time I have spent here.

On language misunderstandings and police stations

The process of learning a new language is a bit of a roller coaster. One day you understand nearly everything that is being said to you, giving you this massive high and sense of achievement, and the next day you understand nothing, and come crashing down. Then there are the times where the language barrier and misunderstandings leave you in weird and wonderful (or just downright strange as well as terrifying) situations.

Like on Friday.

I’m in the process of applying for my work visa (which I’ve been trying to do since I got here but my documents from SA took nearly 4 months to get here with the Diplomatic bag, proving that sometimes the free option is not the best one); part of the process is being issued a Certificado Domicilio (basically a certificate confirming that you live where you say you live). To get one, you go to your nearest police station, give them address and they come by a day or two later and check that you live there and give you the certificate. Nice and easy.

So there I was in the police station, giving my details to the lady, when the police officer who had shown me in came up to the table and starts asking me something in Spanish. I’m concentrating super hard to try and understand but I really have no clue, so I’m just smiling and nodding, saying Sí, sí to whatever she is asking me. She leaves, I finish the form and arrange a time for them to come around, and then she returns. I understand enough to get that I’m supposed to go with her. Since I have no idea what is going on, and my instinct is to obey the uniformed police officer, plus she seems really sweet and kind and is evidently asking me nicely if I’ll go with her, I follow her. At this point I’m presuming there is some additional thing I need to do to get my certificate.

Next thing I know, we are going down stairs to some kind of basement area, 2 stories underground, it’s starting to look dodgy and I realise we’re heading to the cells. I’m thinking to myself, what have I got myself into?! I have my laptop with me, plus a bunch of cash, my passport and ID, I’ve heard enough stories about police corruption, I’ve not understand anything this officer has said to me, so who knows what I’ve agreed to. I start feeling a bit vulnerable and very apprehensive.

My anxiety is not eased when we end up in a holding area, where a criminal (well, to be a bit more PC, someone who has spent some time in a police cell, and looks fairly dodgy) has just been released from handcuffs and whose lawyer is being read some kind of release conditions (I presume, I’m still not understanding any of the Spanish at this point, since learning vocabulary related to crime and law aren’t high up on the priority list of necessary Spanish). The officer filling out the form now asks for my name and details, and the officer who brought me down here tells him I’m foreign. At which point he, to my massive relief, switches into English and asks for some kind of identification so that he can write down my details. I hand over a copy of my passport, still confused as hell, now thinking that he’s filling in a form related to my Certificate of Residence. Then I see the lawyer is signing a document that has my name on it and I’m being asked to sign. I have a moment of momentary panic, wondering if I’ve admitted to aiding a criminal or am being implicated in something. Finally it dawns on me that I’m simply being added as a witness, and I finally get out of my bewildered haze and ask the police officer who speaks English if that’s what I’m doing.

Hallelujah, that’s what it is. All I’ve been asked to do is sign as witness, given that the police officers cannot, and I’m the only other non-police-employed person in the station at the time. I turn to the friendly female police officer with a smile of relief and tell her aaah, entiendo! I finally understand what she was asking of me. I get thanked profusely and then I’m finally free to go.

I am, of course, hugely relieved at this point, and feeling a bit silly about my momentary panic. Of all random situations I’ve ended up in because of communication misunderstandings, this one was by far the strangest and most bewildering.

But hey, I can now cross “witness the release of a prisoner in a foreign country” off my bucket list.

The Romance of the Foreign City

I’ll admit it, I’m a hopeless romantic. Not in a relationship/dating sense (quite the opposite in fact), but when I travel I turn into a falls-head-over-heels-in-love romantic, especially with regard to new cities and places.

One of the simplest pleasures in life for me is exploring a new city, walking its streets, saturating my senses with new smells, sights and sounds, and trying to get under its skin, to feel its pulse. More often that not, I’ll find myself seduced. If I had to make a list of cities I’ve loved (and still do), it would be fairly long. I can find something to love about most places I visit. But there is a difference between these fleeting affairs and my big loves.

My first great love was Mexico City. This was my first solo adventure and I moved across an ocean and a hemisphere to the second largest city in the world by myself, without putting too much thought into it, or – truthfully – doing much research into the city. I don’t regret this at all. It created the conditions for a surprise love affair, as the city quickly and unexpectedly grabbed hold of my heart. I was supposed to be in DF briefly to do a TEFL course. I stayed for 10 months. It seduced me with its sprawling mass, incredible cultural richness, multitude of museums, art scattered all over the city streets, enticing food, warm people, its passion and brashness, the fast pace and rushed faces coupled with quiet spaces and green parks, its vibrant colours and sounds and a spirit and soul that was intoxicating. I loved it, but I left, returning home to continue my studies.

And here I find myself again on an adventure, falling in love with a new city. Buenos Aires is my second big love. It is softer, less brash and in-your-face than DF, quietly enveloping you into its fold. It’s an easy city to love, with its old-world architecture and charm, cobbled streets, tree-lined avenues, parks bursting with families enjoying the green spaces, it’s many coffee shops offering a quiet time-out. At the same time, it has this contradictory chaos, with stark modern buildings standing close to old churches, gridlocked traffic and disregard for road rules, insane pace the city runs at where there is always something to do at every hour or the night and day and of course the sheer number of things on the go at any given time. It’s common to walk home from a bar at 1am and still see families eating dinner at a restaurant, or a pair of grannies enjoying a cup of coffee at a sidewalk cafe. It’s chaotic in its sense of time, and urgency, as people rush around filling up way too many hours a day, but simultaneously don’t stress over actual deadlines and getting places on time. It is slow and fast, modern and old, European and Latin all at the same time.

More than the city itself, it’s the people here that make it such an amazing place. Whenever I’m in Latin America, I know exactly why I chose Latin America – the people and the culture. People here are so incredibly warm and inviting, whether they are simply kissing you on the cheek as a greeting, going out of their way to help you when you can’t express what you want in Spanish, or welcoming you into their homes. What makes people here even more interesting is their rich heritage, with most people having close links to other places thanks to a history of immigration, as well as freedom of movement between South American countries. It’s amazing to see so clearly the mark of so many different cultures, creating a great melting pot of people.

Of course every great love has its sticky moments and points of conflict. I’m not blind to the problems here, and I’m certainly not immune to the bad economy (since I’m earning in pesos and don’t have a source of dollars to fall back on), the social and political problems (especially striking bus drivers). But I see its faults and love it anyway. I love it for its beauty, its pace, its people and its buena onda (good vibes), and for the many lessons it is teaching me every day that I’m here.

Maybe I’ll fall out of love one day, or perhaps I’ll be seduced by somewhere else – lord knows I have terribly itchy feet and can’t seem to stay in one place for too long. But for the moment I am blissfully happy in Buenos Aires, and am happy to call it home.

Reclaiming a Sense of Normality

Travel is a great way to escape the mundane things in life. One of the things I love about living in a different country and city (I feel like I’ve written this sentence countless times…) is doing things I normally wouldn’t do back home. This applies to activities and places that just aren’t possible at home – i.e. I wouldn’t go to a milonga to learn tango at home, or eat choripan at a street parrilla in Cape Town. There is also this sense of urgency to do everything. Some expat friends and I have this list of things we need to do here before we leave and it just keeps growing longer and longer, and it’s fairly stressful at times! It’s akin to the sense of panic I get when I think of all the places in the world I still need to see, and all the books I still need to read. No pressing deadline can compare to these self-imposed deadlines to read and see as much as I can in my short life.

This sense of urgency to do things just doesn’t exist for me when I’m at home (in my home country /town). Not in terms of the wanderlust and reading, but the drive to fill my time seeing the places and people around me. Perhaps this is my fault really – one should be able to see your own city with the same sense of wonder as you do a foreign city. But I digress. Back to the urgency I feel here: I love it because it is constantly pushing me outside of my comfort zone, and forcing me into all kinds of interesting cultural experiences.

But every now and then you just need to normalise a bit, especially when you’re planning on being in a place for a long enough period to call it home. Having been here for only 2 and a half months, it really does feel like home already.

Which is probably why I’ve settled into more of a routine, doing things that make my life feel a bit more normal. This has meant going to the movies, cooking myself the kind of dinners I would cook back home, having long and lazy brunches on a Sunday morning with a friend, having deep and meaningful conversations about our lives. And, most recently, this past Sunday it meant making myself pancakes for breakfast and chilling in my pj’s in my apartment, eating said pancakes and watching series, followed by a mission downtown to browse for a while in an English bookstore.

So as much as I want to keep busy and try and do as much as I can well I’m here (because, after all, what is the point of flying half way around the world, if I’m not going to thoroughly make the most of it), it’s equally important to take a time out every now and then and just find a sense of normality and balance once more.

To end on a less deep and meaningful note, I also know I’m back to a kind of normal because after 2 and a half months of no injuries, I managed to smash my head into my window frame last night (ask anyone who knows me well – I have a penchant for giving myself concussions). The knock was not too bad, but I did manage to graze my scalp. Now I do not handle blood well at all.  I have been next to the hospital bed trying to be there for my mom, and having to go sit down somewhere else to keep from fainting because I couldn’t deal with even watching them draw her blood. So needless to say I wasn’t thrilled when I put my hand to the back of my head and it came away with blood. It was the closest to tears I’ve come since I’ve been gone, and if it weren’t for the time difference, I’d have instantly logged onto skype to talk to my mom for some comfort. On the bright side, I am clearly settled enough to slip back into my mindless ways, and thus injure myself in the stupidest of ways. And that folks, is what is called the silver lining.

Sunset 2

“And if travel is like love, it is, in the end, mostly because it’s a heightened sense of awareness, in which we are mindful, receptive, undimmed by familiarity and ready to be transformed. That is why the best trips, like the best love affairs, never really end.” – Pico Iyer

Sunset 1

“Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.” – Henry David Thoreau

Café Culture

Buenos Aires is frequently referred to as the Paris of South America, thanks in large part to its cafe culture. Everywhere you go there are cafes on the sidewalks. These do great traffic in the morning, with the work crowd grabbing the standard cafe y medialunas (coffee and croissants), with the lunch crowd, with the five o’clock, after-work pre-dinner crowd, and the late night post-dinner crowd. Basically they’re always full.

The cafe culture here will also be my financial downfall. Everyday, without fail, I end up in a cafe, enjoying the fantastic coffee, delicious medialunas and free wifi. There is no need to go anywhere close to Starbucks with their over-priced and over-roasted coffee.

The other day, I decided to treat myself yesterday to the famous Cafe Tortoni. This cafe is one of the oldest, and certainly the most famous, in the city, situated on the beautiful Avenida de Mayo. It is something to behold with its grand interior, beautiful artwork and waiters dressed in tail coats. I was also pleasantly surprised by the very reasonably priced menu, although its definitely a place for coffee and tea, rather than a traditional Argentine meal.

Then the fun started. The service. I can handle bad service when it is so bad that it becomes comical. I had the unfriendliest waiter in the world. The poor man was as surly as can be, did not once crack a smile, every time I managed to get his attention, shot me a look of pure disdain. The highlights were his face when I asked for the wifi code, and his slamming down of the bill on the table. Clearly he was over having to deal with hordes of tourists each day being so bothersome as to come into a restaurant and try to order food and drinks!

A quick perusal of Tripadvisor tells me that I am not the only one to get bad service there recently. Still worth the visit, I’d say, although perhaps only if you get a kick of bad service! Perhaps next time I’ll go to their evening tango show to see if that is worth the hype.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I think it’s time for my morning coffee and medialunas…

The Return of Public Transport

Before I left South Africa, I came across the Buzzfeed post, named “The 21 Most Socially Awkward Things That Happen On The Tube.”

I identified with each and every item on that list, as I had flashbacks to living in Mexico City when I was using the underground every day (read about my weird, wonderful and downright creepy experiences on the Mexican underground here and here).

Now I’m living in a city again which has an underground and a properly integrated public transport system. I’ve adjust very quickly to using the subte (as the underground is called here), helped by the fact that the city area itself is relatively compact, and the system is easy to use.

It has also meant that I’m forced, once again, to confront my love-hate relationship with public transport.

Pros:

• I LOVE having an easy-to-use system that is also cheap. Thanks to the steep petrol hikes back home, I was quite happy to leave behind my trusty steed, Pedro (My silver, ever so slightly zef Toyota Tazz, Sports Edition – Ha! – with its Bellville, CY-til-I-die number plates)*.

• Instead of crying every time I fill my tank, I now pay just 4.50 pesos to ride anywhere on the subte system. I can also use my subte card on the buses and trains, which conveniently lets you run into the negative numbers if you use the system late at night with no credit. Bonus: the buses and trains are even cheaper than the subte.

• The whole system is easy to use and gets you pretty much everywhere you need to be. And when the subway system stops at around 10:30, 11pm, and you’re out drinking and/or dancing, there are ample taxis to whisk you home, which are also reasonably priced (unless they perceive you to be an easy-target tourist and don’t put the meter on).

Cons:

• Hot. Hot. Hot. Aircon apparently does not exist on the subway. There are fans in the stations and the windows are open in the trains, but all this does is move hot air around. Being underground in a normal city is hot and humid at the best of times, add in BA’s high humidity and you have an oven down there. It’s easing up as the weather cools down, but I wouldn’t want to be on the subte during December/January.

• People invading my bubble. Last week I took a train to the South, outside the city limits. On the way back, standing as one does on the train, I had a woman next to me coughing the plague, without covering her mouth, and edging ever closer to me, for whatever reason. I spent fifteen minutes of my, luckily, short trip trying my hardest not to breathe.

• Peak times. Being on transport during peak traffic brings to mind Terry Pratchett’s one Discworld novel, The Unseen Academicals, and his description of a football crowd as an entity called “the Shove”. You have to go along with it, there is no fighting the Shove.

That being said, peak times here don’t feel as overwhelming as they did in Mexico. There seems to be a bit more awareness of boundaries and there is no need for a separate female section to protect women from the “accidental” touching situation. Maybe I’m just desensitized, or it has something to do with the size of the city, or I’ve just learnt the fine art of maneuvering through the crowd, but it doesn’t bug me so much here.

For all the downsides to subways and buses, I still love it, maybe because I’ve never grown up with a proper public transport system (or have been in a position privileged enough never to need to use it).

 *Too understand this reference, you need to grasp the truly South African concept of Zef. See: Zef: “South African term that can be likened to ‘Kitch’ or ‘common’.” -Full definition on Urban Dictionary. Freebie: Jack Parow’s “Byelville”.