DEL.ICIO.USFor tThe Journal-Constitution
Published on: 06/24/07
(Last of a five-part series)
 SOYIA ELLISON/Special | ||
| A costumed gaucho barrels down the sand-strewn street toward the brass ring at the Feria de Mataderos. | ||
 SOYIA ELLISON/Special | ||
 SOYIA ELLISON/Special | ||
 SOYIA ELLISON/Special | ||
 SOYIA ELLISON/Special | ||
| Men roast meat on giant grills and triangled poles at the Feria de Mataderos, a weekend market outside Buenos Aires, Argentina. Women serve fresh-made locro, humita, tamales and empanadas. | ||
Buenos Aires, Argentina — Today I hopped the train to Tigre with my friend Ely Suarez, a Spanish journalist I met in my tango class.
Tigre lies about 50 minutes from Buenos Aires on the edge of the Paraná delta, a tangle of streams and rivers that feed the Río de la Plata. We took a boat-bus to a small restaurant on the water, where we sat in the sun and feasted on steak and pork, potatoes and apples. As Ely said (in Spanish, of course), "Today, we are queens."
We walked off our lunch along a backwater canal, lingering now and then to admire the cabins on stilts that dot the waterway. Afterward, we took a quick spin through the town's enormous market, where I bought a hunk of basil-infused cheese before we boarded the train for Buenos Aires.
I've had a few horrible days here, days of insecurity and uncertainty, but right now I feel content, ready to share my list of things I love about my adopted city.
People who like people
The day I was to move into my apartment, I went to the wrong building.
I was running late and feeling frantic because I had no cellphone to call my landlord, petrified she would leave and I'd have to start apartment-hunting again. So when I saw a building that looked like mine, I stopped and rang the buzzer for what I thought was my apartment. No answer. I tried another, and this time a man answered. I began explaining my problem in bad Spanish. Finally, he stopped me to say, "You can speak to me in English if you want."
He buzzed the other apartments on the floor to see what he could learn. Then he came downstairs, barefoot and with a bleeding gum — maybe I'd interrupted his flossing — to tell me he couldn't find anyone.
"Are you positive you have the right place?" he asked.
Only then did I dig through my purse and find the scrap of paper with the correct address. I felt like such a moron. I apologized again and again. But he just laughed and wished me luck.
I've encountered that kind of generosity here again and again. Storekeepers who don't have the item I need write down the name and address of a place that might. Taxi drivers charge me less than the price on the meter when they've taken the wrong street. People I barely know invite me to dinner in their homes.
Too, the ease with which people here express affection astounds me. Everyone says hello and goodbye with cheek kisses. Friends end phone calls and e-mails with some form of un beso, or un abrazo, which means "a kiss" or "a hug." An elderly lady who asked me for directions called me "mi amor."
Porteños make a stranger feel at home.
Who has room for dessert?
Argentines are skinnier than Americans, and I can't understand why. They eat four meals a day — the last between 9 and 11 p.m. Rarely does a green vegetable pass their lips; they subsist largely on steak, pasta and pizza. And yet the World Health Organization reports that the obesity rate here is 18.5 percent, compared with 29.5 percent in the States.
Maybe they have better genes, or maybe they walk so much it just melts away. I hope it's the latter, and that I'm walking enough to counteract these late-night meals and malbec. Because I love the food here.
Menus tend to go on for pages and pages; trying to decide what to order can take half an hour. My favorite foods are the native dishes from the north country, particularly locro and humita.
Locro is a stew made with white beans, corn, chorizo sausage, chunks of beef and whatever else the cook feels like putting in it that day. Accompanied by a basket of sopping bread, it's perfect on these cold late fall days.
Even better is humita, a cream corn-ish concoction that, like locro, is never prepared quite the same way in any two places. You often find it tucked inside empanadas, but it's best when prepared en chala. In this form, the mixture — a sweet-but-not-too-sweet combination of creamed corn, eggs, peppers and cheese — is wrapped in corn husks, tied with string and boiled. It arrives at your table looking like a little present on a plate.
And of course, I can't talk about food in Buenos Aires without mentioning dulce de leche, the ubiquitous creamy caramel in chocolate bars, in ice cream, in cakes, in pies, in just about every dessert you order. Not that I ever have room for dessert. Sometimes I do as the Argentines do and have it for breakfast, in a pastry.
Flattering flirtation
Argentine men appreciate women. When they pass an attractive woman on the street, they utter piropo, or flirty compliments, perhaps something along the lines of "wherever you go, flowers must spring up," or "so many curves, and me without brakes." These lines are spoken softly, just for you, not yelled from halfway down the block.
You may also hear piropo in businesses or bars: Once I walked into a shop shortly before closing, and the owner said I didn't need to hurry, for me he'd stay open till 2 a.m.
I know that the feminist in me should be offended, that women are worth much more than the sum of their physical parts. But there's something old-fashioned about piropo that appeals to me. It's rarely if ever vulgar, and it seems to be said with more admiration than lust.
I've read — though I can't say it's true — that the practice arose in the days of the great immigration boom, when men far outnumbered women and had to go to a lot of trouble to attract the attention of the few women who were here.
I'd be lying if I said I didn't feel a blush spread across my face and a giggle rise in my throat when I hear a bit of piropo. It brightens my day.
Come to the 'Cabaret'
Tourists who drop in for a week or so probably don't realize what a vibrant arts scene Buenos Aires has. I certainly didn't. But beyond the tango shows, beyond the popular Latin American art museum Malba, lies a world of theater and music, painting and sculpture. And it's all affordable.
Entrance fees at public museums run 1 to 3 pesos, about 33 cents to $1. Private museums charge a little more. I paid $2 to tour Museo Xul Solar, which showcases the colorful and often whimsical paintings of Solar, an avant-garde artist of the mid-20th century who also invented two languages and designed tarot cards, a "non-chess" chess game and color-coded pianos. If he'd had more of a knack for publicity, he might have been another Salvador Dali.
And I paid nothing to attend a concert at the tiny museum of Carlos Gardel, where four guitarists played tangos and folk songs called milongas for a crowd of about 35, all that would fit in the enclosed courtyard. (Gardel is the country's most popular singer, dead now for more than 70 years.)
Best of all is the theater. The biggest houses lie along Corrientes Avenue, and people refer to shows as being "on Corrientes" or "off-Corrientes," just like Broadway and off-Broadway. Thus far, I've seen "Camino del Cielo," a pitch-black tale about a concentration camp commander who tries to pass off to a Red Cross inspector his camp as a cheery village, and "Cabaret," an all-Spanish version of the Sally Bowles story, complete with a two-story pair of fishnet-clad legs center stage.
The most expensive tickets to "Camino" were around $7; my ticket to "Cabaret" cost $33, but that was for a seat at a table three rows from the stage. As the show's Emcee would say, "Here, life is beautiful."
Grabbing the brass ring
You won't find many stores open on Sundays. But who needs stores when you have ferias, the fabulous outdoor markets scattered throughout the city's parks and plazas on weekends, usually Sundays?
San Telmo's is most popular with tourists, who can watch street tango dancers perform as they prowl in search of souvenirs and antiques, including some of the prettiest vintage jewelry I've ever seen. I prefer the feria in Parque Centenario, a market that rings a big park in the quiet barrio of Almagro. Here you'll find more everyday stuff — from socks to toys to CDs, along with the requisite handmade earrings, knit scarves and antler-handled knives. Used-book stalls line one of the park's edges, and you can find a few in English if you're willing to rummage. You won't hear much English spoken here, though.
My favorite feria of all is the Feria de Mataderos, on the western outskirts of the city, perhaps a 45-minute bus ride from the city center (if you can figure out which bus to take). It's worth the effort. Scores of craftsmen sell handmade arts and crafts — lots of leather goods and jewelry, of course — as well as more unusual items such as musical instruments and little lighted glass houses. Dozens more sell homemade food to take home, spiced olive oils, honey, chimichurri, jams, cheeses.
Meanwhile, a procession of singers and dancers performs on a central stage. Because this is a feria of the campo (countryside), you won't hear tango, but rather the folk music of the Argentine provinces. The food, too, is the food of the country. Men roast meat on giant grills and triangled poles. Women serve up fresh-made locro, humita, tamales and empanadas.
And on the festival's outskirts, costumed gauchos take turns galloping at full speed down a sand-strewn street. They stand in the stirrups with daggers in their teeth, and just before they reach a tall wooden beam, they grab the dagger and lift it above their heads, trying to snag a ring about the size of a man's wristwatch.
I stood in the midst of the throng one recent Sunday, eating a giant bowl of ice cream softened by the sun and watching feria-goers folk-dance in the street. The men stood in one line, the women in another, and they stomped their feet and clapped their hands above their heads as they circled each other. I felt as if I were in another world. And I couldn't imagine any other place I'd rather be.
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