Last few weeks have been demanding. I had become truely tired of travelling and living out of a suitcase, tired of 30 hour bus rides, tired of not having a home to come home to, missing work and dreading starting from scratch again. I thought buggerit, even if i miss out on an opportunity of a life time i just needed to go home and rest, if not roost. But again I needed to be patient. Argentinians revealed themselves to be a good sort. And so on one rainy day here, sitting in and trying to consolidate my decision to go home (and any of you that know me well know how i torture myself with my own indeciveness), i started visualising life home and life abroad. The thought of going back to Glen Waverley (not that there anything intrinsically wrong with that) in the dead of winter, jobless and solitary, made me think that hanging out in Buenos Aires till the end of the year, the town that doesn´t sleep and lacks the usual xenophobia one encounters, is probably a brilliant idea. So here i´ll stay. having made a decision finally makes any outcome a good outcome.
This week i went back to Brazil in a mad rush to pick up my luggage and get my life started. Only 2 days there, but bloody interesting. When I get back to the hostel i had been staying, i hear that 68 sydney woman i met last time was still there. But when i went to the tv room to see her, i found her collapsed on the floor with folks around her trying to make sure she didn´t die. She came round finally and i accompanied her to the emergency ward of a state hospital... and remember she only speaks Arabic and english, but she was out of it anyway, and i thought i had to get by with my spanish. Well the doctor who eventually saw her, couldn´t bare listening to me anymore and so reluctantly agreed to speak english. There were loads of folks everywhere, drips hanging off everyone nearly, growns, vomit, emancipated bodies, and medical staff who just get there when they get there. Three hours later, after good ol Fatima gets her morphine hit, we´re back. Turns out she´s been getting robbed a lot, is stressed with high blood pressure and so smokes 3 packets a day. There´s also something fishy going on that she just can´t talk about and something that prohibits her from leaving the country for the next 2 years. Staying in a tiny cheap room with no windows makes her feel like she´s already in her coffin - this looks like a Mike Munroe story. Apart from that, i did manage to have an extremely enlighting and interesting conversation for an hour with a Brazilian - me talking spanish and he portugese!
Oh and i´ll be putting up photos soon, seeing i got myself a camera. Probably not the wisest thing to do 9.30 in the morning, hungry sort of ,and after only an hours sleep, to impulsively stop at the camera shopwindow in the airport ...oh well, now you can see how i´ve grown...as soon as i figure out how to use it.
sábado, abril 29, 2006
jueves, abril 20, 2006
Dogshit...
..is everywhere.
Dentures are displayed on dentists´ shopfront windows. Care to try?
Grilled beef is tender and yummy, and there´s fresh pasta galore.
Police cars have their flashing lights always on, especially when crusing, and are decked with bulletproof vests.
Dentures are displayed on dentists´ shopfront windows. Care to try?
Grilled beef is tender and yummy, and there´s fresh pasta galore.
Police cars have their flashing lights always on, especially when crusing, and are decked with bulletproof vests.
Boys are damn pretty
and girls are even prettier.
Only nerds go out before 1am.
Tango is inescapable.
Only nerds go out before 1am.
Tango is inescapable.
Folks queue up at the bus stop before it even arrives.
City traffic and noise pollution are the worst i´ve ever encountered.
No one has forgotten the dictatorship and they want the Maldives back.
There´s a demonstration and march just about every week
Football rules, and Maradona not only has his face on bottles of wine but he holds such a devine status that I think a church has been started on his behalf.
Folks are loud and kind of hysterical (move their hands a lot when they speak), but very friendly.
A few of my observations, and no, i still haven´t managed to work out my camera.
lunes, abril 10, 2006
jueves, abril 06, 2006
First day in Buenos Aires i spent it in all the wrong places. My walk about in the centre was down the streets where walls had no doors, or otherwise there were huge high rises and loads of suits... not so novel for what i later found out was the financial district. Apart from that i also spent a good 3 hours making my eyeballs bleed over the internet looking for work. After my compulsive procrastination tendencies i decided before i got off the bus in BA that i´d get on to important stuff, like getting a job, pronto! However it ended up being a fruitless attempt, abnd even though i told myself it was only the beginning, impatience got the better of me making me feel disappointed and yukki.
But, the last 2 days were much more interesting and inpiring. I bumped into a mate i met in El Bolson and he took me to a very hip place in town, Palermo, where i started to feel giddy and hopeful once again. Today i also realised i was just a few streets off on my 1st day from where all the action and sights were. Ahora si! Also went to enrol in a language course, and then decided that for now it´s cheaper - and definitely much more interesting - to make friends and practice my language skills.
And another blunder. Going through passport control onthe way here, 2 south Africans on my bus were green with envy when i started showing off my multiple passports. Stupidly, i didn´t realise that my greek passport expires in a few weeks, and i descovered today the greek embassy won´t renew it for me here..long story. So i´ll have to do me a quick boat trip to Uruguay very soon, as well as pay for entry to Brazil later... poo.
Not too bad for the first 3 days oh, and i had a snitzel today the size of my forearm. And if i like it here, i mean a lot, i could even think of getting myself a top apartment in an interesting and nice part of town for about AU$50,000 and screw the outrageous melbourne prices!
But, the last 2 days were much more interesting and inpiring. I bumped into a mate i met in El Bolson and he took me to a very hip place in town, Palermo, where i started to feel giddy and hopeful once again. Today i also realised i was just a few streets off on my 1st day from where all the action and sights were. Ahora si! Also went to enrol in a language course, and then decided that for now it´s cheaper - and definitely much more interesting - to make friends and practice my language skills.
And another blunder. Going through passport control onthe way here, 2 south Africans on my bus were green with envy when i started showing off my multiple passports. Stupidly, i didn´t realise that my greek passport expires in a few weeks, and i descovered today the greek embassy won´t renew it for me here..long story. So i´ll have to do me a quick boat trip to Uruguay very soon, as well as pay for entry to Brazil later... poo.
Not too bad for the first 3 days oh, and i had a snitzel today the size of my forearm. And if i like it here, i mean a lot, i could even think of getting myself a top apartment in an interesting and nice part of town for about AU$50,000 and screw the outrageous melbourne prices!
martes, abril 04, 2006
and hola Buenos Aires!
So I`m in Florianopolis and I`ve had it with being blankita. Even reducing to 15 sunblock doesn`t help. So I goes out there on that beautiful beach with no protection and get burnt again!! I`ve been really slow and lazy here, but no one else is in a rush either, not even in the big towns. No one walks up or down the metro escalator - NO ONE! why would you when there`s a machine that does it for you.
And did I mention how friendly people are here. I learnt the rudimentary and I speak my broken spanish to get by, and they generally get the gist with no arrogant expectation that I should talk Portuguese or otherwise be ignored. After you ask for directions they then say bon viage, when I don´t understand they slow down or apologize for not speaking spanish, everyone who arrives to the bus stop greets each other and strangers warn me of places not to go.
The ride to florianopolis was at night, so the view from my buswindow was a huge endless cloudy night sky which glittered constantly with lightning for hours. Today I arrived in Buenos Aires after a long 27 hour bus ride with boarder check at 3am and the most stinky loo you could imagine (and that was only hours after takeoff. By night time i was almost dry-reaching and i had a good seat up the front!). But on a more interesting note, the landscape till the south of brazil was lush and tropical-looking, full of furn trees of different kinds. The road was a main highway but then in the middle of nowhere they`d be a huge factory or warehouse, or 20 to 30 shacks made with plastic or corrigated iron, and similar under bridges, always with loads of rubbish lieing around. Just before i got in to the bus terminal, i passed a girls´ school i think, suprisingly with only peruvian-looking girls. A few feet down on the dirt footpath was another shack/home where the occupiers seemed to be entertaining a couple of friends over a cup of coffee. You need to maintain your humanity if not control of the universe.
Tomorrow I´m job-hunting, and today - dunno.
Oh and tahnks for the comments everyone ...but will everybody stop being ANONYMUS!
xxx
And did I mention how friendly people are here. I learnt the rudimentary and I speak my broken spanish to get by, and they generally get the gist with no arrogant expectation that I should talk Portuguese or otherwise be ignored. After you ask for directions they then say bon viage, when I don´t understand they slow down or apologize for not speaking spanish, everyone who arrives to the bus stop greets each other and strangers warn me of places not to go.
The ride to florianopolis was at night, so the view from my buswindow was a huge endless cloudy night sky which glittered constantly with lightning for hours. Today I arrived in Buenos Aires after a long 27 hour bus ride with boarder check at 3am and the most stinky loo you could imagine (and that was only hours after takeoff. By night time i was almost dry-reaching and i had a good seat up the front!). But on a more interesting note, the landscape till the south of brazil was lush and tropical-looking, full of furn trees of different kinds. The road was a main highway but then in the middle of nowhere they`d be a huge factory or warehouse, or 20 to 30 shacks made with plastic or corrigated iron, and similar under bridges, always with loads of rubbish lieing around. Just before i got in to the bus terminal, i passed a girls´ school i think, suprisingly with only peruvian-looking girls. A few feet down on the dirt footpath was another shack/home where the occupiers seemed to be entertaining a couple of friends over a cup of coffee. You need to maintain your humanity if not control of the universe.
Tomorrow I´m job-hunting, and today - dunno.
Oh and tahnks for the comments everyone ...but will everybody stop being ANONYMUS!
xxx
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