Malbec, Europe and Politics in Argentina
The jet lag has finally subsided and I’m now totally immersed in the reality of Buenos Aires where (when stripped of its tourist traps) is a vast bustling city of winding streets, Spanish speakers and the perfect way to ease into a magical Latin American life. Take a turn down any cobbled laneway in the warm spring sun and for a second you will be convinced that you are actually in Paris. Another turn and you’re in Italy or maybe even Greece. I say that this is a good gateway to the Latin world but the European influences are staggering in the incredible architecture, food and general cultural habits. If you wake up early enough you can often catch residents cleaning their streets outside, for $6 you can catch the extensive bus system to anywhere in the city and croissants (medillunas) are a quite common Argentine breakfast. So really I didn’t feel too far away from home at all. Naturally my next task was to thus seek out the unusual traits that drew it away from it’s European counterparts and you only need to look at the time to spot your first difference. Jeopardizing my jet lag even further was the discovery that the pace of Argentine life is incredibly slow and everything starts late - really late. At 10pm on any night of the week, the streets are full of residents eating their dinner (my main meal was served at 11.20pm a few nights ago) and even the coffee shops remain open this late too. As a result the clubs are empty until around 3am when the crowds finally start to roll in and somehow everyone can still function on such little sleep! More unusual habits began to peer out at me such as Dog walking being a career choice here and a day doesn’t go by without seeing countless people walking with up to 20 dogs in tow. You can also walk down the street with a beer in your hand, bus drivers are a little reckless and tend to speed, there is an abundance of retro cars amongst the city, it is incredibly hard to find a resident that understands English and once again I am totally lost in translation. That being said I was still too comfortable and the reality of South America felt far from hitting me. It was this Sunday that the country faced its congressional elections and as a result of the vote there was also a ban on selling alcohol and drinking alcohol throughout the whole 24 hour period (why wouldn’t people need a drink after messing with politics?!). Anyway to a great extent the tempo of the city slowed even further as people made their way to local polling stations in an orderly fashion and I didn’t even see a single protest despite a tumultuous political underbelly. It wasn’t long before we encountered some local residents who wanted to have a drink and laughed as we questioned the temporary drink restrictions. A few foreign words in Spanish at the supermercado and the shop assistant was scanning through chocolate bars and placing bottles of Malbec into a bag for us. We then climbed several flights of stairs in a nearby house, greeting their flatmates on the way through winding corridors of an old European-syle house and finally onto a stunning rooftop. We basked in the warm evening sun and drank amazing Malbec (seriously the best quality wine I’ve had in a while and half the price of anything in Australia) whilst listening to Cumbia music and Spanish conversations. Our hosts of course offered us food at around 11pm and we carried on drinking into the early or late hours. It was in this moment that I truly felt the first breath of the real Latin America. Looking across the horizon at the backs of buildings, you are stripped away from the frontal European facade. Colourful roofs, laundry, people dancing in the sun and the echoes of Latin music immediately plunged me into a sense of utter excitement. This was real. I’m in South America and it’s extraordinary.
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Tamara DavisonNepal, China, Malaysia, Australia, Argentina. Archives
November 2017
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