Smooth entry into one of the worlds most boring places... sorrrrrry but that's how i feel.
On my last night in Buenos Aires i had a home-cooked german meal, thanks Cata, excellent red regional wine and as many cigarettes as i could smoke between coughing fits. But i was packed, thanks to Saloni's no-nonsense packing strategy, and during the day i had the chance for some going-away chats with Luciana, Alejandro, Rosana and Fernanda where i was able to relax for the first time in a week and enjoy the company of my friends, although i was seriously deliriously exhausted. I impressed myself, my goodbyes weren't sombre but animated get togethers.
I wasn't thinking of who i wouldn't see again, or rather not for a while, nor of the places i wouldn't be going to anymore, nor the routine if any that i had. I couldn't think that far into the realm of possible scenarios and futures, it simply was too much. The numbness obliterated my tears and better still i was able to function as a person until i got on that plane. The exhaustion worked to my advantage cos my 45 hour door-to-door trip had me passed out for most of the ride, even the despicable Sydney to Melbourne bus ride, allowing me to arrive friday morning in melbourne full of beans and talk my brother's head off. My dad received me with open arms and a bowl of fish soup at 9am, obvious to him that that's what i would want.
My first impression of my peoplesss and my surroundings was, ... not as violent as i anticipated. Coming down the Hume highway i saw the open fields with some cows and within 15 minutes i saw the 20 odd sky rises that concentrate to make melbourne city centre. I was in australia and i was not in argentina but i couldn't feel it. I suppose my subconscious had gone into auto pilot, treating this as another one of my transportations, and so taking every minute as it came to me and like i had never seen or been there before (that's not to say i had no idea where i was, on the contrary, i knew excactly). I felt contradictions, the familiarity from a distance and all. My past and The Travel was neither here nor there. But hell! i felt good and as excited as diving headlong into a ginormous chocolate cake! YUM.
However, one little thing that made me cringe was the aussie whine, aoohhh, the drawl that sounds so
Cath and Kim - an aussie comedy, for those who don't know, that takes the piss out of australians and then ends up being the national dialect aaarggh!! where
yes becomes yiiiiiiis and
nice becomes noyice, the horror... And language is an issue here for me. It took me 3 days to say a full sentence in greek with out mixing it with spanish, and with english for that matter, but it's not like i've said anything in spanish properly in days. I so hope i don't lose it, entonces todos que pueden escribirme en espaNol deben que hacerlo para que no me olbide todo que aprendi y me vuelvo una boluda sin todas las huevadas que uno aprede hablando con la gente, cachai?
Things are exactly how i left them, streets are wide and clean with lots of trees, there's that huge middle class, even if lower-middle (which is light years away from the explosive poorer majority of Latin america), people are politically apathetic, indigenous people are being told how to live their life, again, (like it really worked last time), and even though it appears that governments aren't as corrupt here as they are there, they're still greedy lying scumbags, although i hardly needed to remind anyone of that. On my fourth day here i realised i hadn't walked out on the street, out of the house, or further than a few metres from the car i was in. From house to car, from car to house. So i take a walk around my neighbourhood to see that not even old people greet you anymore, that's if anyone is alive on the streets of suburbia.
On the 5th day i had the mandatory brawl with my dad over and done with, but that took my dopey glad to be back grin off my face. Apparently I'm not complaining enough about being unmarried and childless, but you know dads... can't exactly tell them to shut it. So now, 10 days in the country and i've just got used to the sound of autralians speaking (it's actually a big deal), spoken to some old friends, and have blended into the australian landscape like i'd never left. Got on the road with my car and passed roads and places i have known all my life and cringed with familiarity, cos it had that feeling of regression, of backwardness, of a feeling like the last 2 years never happened. And then i'd get flashbacks of walking down Pyuerredon and turning into Santa Fe, making myself at home at Allan's oasis of a home, passing one of the many fruit and veggie shops, of the buses screeching so loud while they pass you and leave you deaf and in a puff of smoke, watching people in the Subte like everything they do means something, observing with my sociological eye to what degree a person can stay disconnected from others in a crowded train carriage. Well the train carriage i got onto here was very much empty since public transport is a joke - imagine paying $10 for a daily ticket when back in Peru it would grant me 10 hours of long distance travel. ok, so i can't make those comparisons but PT is undoubtedly a million times better in America than here.
Nevertheless, It's nice to be home.
