My Sunday in Buenos Aires
My girlfriend is from Argentina and we try to visit her family in Buenos Aires almost every year. Buenos Aires is an amazing city, full of exciting things to do and wonderful people who have helped me to feel welcome here. Here is a description of my Sunday in Buenos Aires…
Jogging in Buenos Aires
I woke up on Sunday morning and decided that I was going to go for a jog. I knew that later I would be having an ‘asado’, an Argentinian barbecue, so I wanted to work up an appetite.
There is relatively little green space near where I’m staying, so in order to get to a park that is nice for jogging, I first have to run quite a long way down busy roads that are flanked by multi-story apartment buildings.
How do you like to keep fit? Is your city good for jogging?
Things you see every day in Buenos Aires
Every time I run down these roads, I see a number of things that are very typical of Buenos Aires. I see beautifully artistic murals of Diego Maradona, who has a God-like status in Argentina, painted onto the walls. I see many professional dog walkers, but of a sort that I had never seen before coming to Buenos Aires.
Dog walkers in Buenos Aires walk between 10-15 dogs at the same time. Strangely, I never see any of these dogs barking, biting or misbehaving.
I also see doormen washing the floors and polishing the doors and door handles of their respective apartment buildings. In Buenos Aires, the vast majority of apartment buildings have a doorman. I’ve never quite understood why this is the case, or why these doormen are necessary. Why would anybody need to have their door handle polished every day? Our doorman is a lovely bloke called Christian. The door handle to our apartment building was recently stolen by copper thieves, so Christian’s workload has been slightly reduced.
Do you see any of these things in your country? What unusual things can you see on the street in your country?
Poverty and crime in Buenos Aires
Unfortunately, another thing I see is many different groups of homeless people sleeping on mattresses in the middle of the street, and other impoverished people climbing into bins, scavenging for things that may be of any value. With an inflation rate of 143%, many people struggle to make ends meet, and a staggering 40% of people live in poverty here. The poverty is visible everywhere you go.
The soaring inflation has many consequences, one being that anybody who has any Argentinian pesos immediately wants to convert them into US Dollars before their value disintegrates into nothing. However, the government has deemed this process illegal, meaning that Argentinians have to trade their pesos for dollars on the black market and then keep large amounts of dollars in cash hidden in various places in their apartments. Consequently, criminals are incentivised to burgle houses, knowing that they will be handsomely rewarded for their efforts. This is just one of the reasons why violent crime is so rife in Buenos Aires. Indeed, every family living in the city, including my girlfriend’s, has a catalogue of horrible stories in which they were the victims of, sometimes very violent, crimes.
Is there a lot of poverty and crime in your city? Are things getting better or worse?
Greeting and physical contact in Buenos Aires
Anyway, after having run round one of Buenos Aires’s beautiful parks a couple of times and then come back home again, I take a shower and head over to my girlfriend’s parents’ flat, which is just a stone’s throw from my girlfriend’s sister’s flat, where I am staying. When I arrive, I give one kiss on the cheek and a hug to all of my girlfriend’s warmly welcoming relatives - her dad, Guillermo, her mum, Mara, her brother, Santiago, and her uncle, who is in fact a priest, called Pedro. Yes, a hug and a kiss even for the men, this is how all Argentinians greet each other.
Argentinians are very friendly and very keen on physical contact. The other day, my Argentinian friend, Octavio, was giving me a lift in his car, he was in the driver’s seat and I was in the passenger seat. He was so insistent on making physical contact with me as he passionately told me his stories that he was practically sitting on my lap by the end of the journey.
Do you like to make physical contact when you are in conversation? Is this common in your country?
Swearing in Buenos Aires
During the course of the meal, various members of my girlfriend’s family, including Pedro the priest, pepper their conversation with typical Argentinian swear words. Argentinians have very creative swear words, often involving prostitutes, genitalia, and the genitalia of a female parrot. There is, however ,no greater expert, no wiser scholar, in the field of Argentinian swear words than my girlfriend’s aunty Anna. Aunty Anna has a mouth that produces swear words at approximately the same rate as the Argentinian central bank prints Argentinian pesos. The result is that the shock power of Anna’s swear words is roughly equal to the purchasing power of the Argentinian peso.
Do you swear a lot? Is this common in your country?
Asado (Argentinian barbecue) in Buenos Aires
Shortly after I arrive at the flat, Guillermo starts the fire in his barbecue and we sit together on his balcony with a cold beer. This is the beginning of the sacred Argentinian barbecue ritual of ‘asado’. Asado, meaning Argentinian barbecue, is something often enjoyed by family and friends on a Sunday in Argentina. It involves slowly cooking high quality Argentinian beef over hot coals. Guillermo has taught me that patience is the key ingredient. As he grills the meat, he oozes patience. Between chain smoking and adjusting the coals in his barbecue, he moves with the tranquillity of a sloth moving from one branch to another.
When the meat is finally ready, we, the family sit down while Guillermo shuffles back and forth between the barbecue and the table, each time bringing out different cuts of meat on a metal platter. It’s customary in Argentina to drink Argentinian red wine during an asado. I don’t like the taste of red wine but drink it anyway in order to fit in and feel more Argentinian. I eat and eat and eat until I am absolutely stuffed. When the eating is done, there is a ceremonial applause for the asador (barbecue chef). The female members of the family then proceed to tidy the table and do the washing up but they, strangely, receive no applause for their labour.
Do you have something similar to the Asado in your country?
Napping in Buenos Aires
In England, it would be frowned upon to go for a nap in the middle of a family get-together, but in Argentina it’s encouraged. ‘Go on, have a lie-down!’ they say. So I go away for a nap and resurface after about an hour and we all recongregate around the table to chat, eat various sweet foods and drink a type of bitter Argentinian tea called mate.
Do you like to take naps? Do you get enough sleep?
Football in Buenos Aires
The evening plan is for me, Guillermo and Julieta, my girlfriend’s sister, to go and watch a football match in the south of the city between a team called Arsenal Sarrandi (the home team) and the team who my girlfriend’s family supports, Rosario Central (the away team). Argentinian football fans are the best in the world, and every game here is attended by bands that play trumpets and drums and help to create a real party atmosphere. Away fans have been banned from visiting stadiums here, and so the three of us must conceal our identity as Rosario Central fans.
Do you like to attend sporting events?
The Falklands War
As an Englishman, I have another reason to conceal my identity inside Argentinian football stadiums. In 1982, Argentina and the United Kingdom fought a war over a small island off the coast of Argentina called the Falkland Islands. Due to the incredibly large number of wars that Britain has been involved in in the intervening period, the Falklands War has been largely forgotten in the UK and I imagine that most young Brits have never even heard of it. Not in Argentina. In Argentina, every single football stadium is covered in flags that glorify Argentina’s efforts in this war. Occasionally, the fans sing ‘he who doesn’t jump, is an Englishman’, and of course I have to jump an sing in order to keep my English identity hidden.
Had you ever heard of this war?
More football in Buenos Aires
As we approach the neighbourhood where the stadium is located, Sarandi, it becomes clear that it is quite a poor place with lots of slum housing. Guillermo tells me it might be a good idea to leave my valuables in the car.
Prices in Buenos Aires
Guillermo then goes to the ticket office and buys our tickets for a combined total of 4 quid. The incredibly low price reveals an important fact about Buenos Aires – that it’s incredibly cheap for foreigners like me. In London, I never go out for breakfast, it’s too expensive, but in Buenos Aires breakfast in a café only costs £1.75, and I’m determined to make the most of it. Every morning I go to a different café and have the delicious typical Argentinian breakfast of a coffee and two ‘medialunas’. If you want to know what a medialuna is, imagine a French croissant pumped full of butter, sugar and calories. I’m living like a king!
Is your native country cheap for foreigners? Have you ever been to a country that is cheaper than what you are used to?
Take-away food in Buenos Aires
We enjoy the football and the magnificent atmosphere inside the little stadium. Rosario Central end up winning 2-1 and we successfully manage to keep our identity as Rosario Central fans hidden. On the way home we are feeling a bit peckish so we stop off at a popular take-away restaurant to pick up some empanadas. Empanadas are tasty pockets of shortcrust pastry usually with meat, chicken or cheese fillings. Waiting in the queue to order, I look down and see an image of Diego Maradona’s face tattooed to the calf of another customer. What a lovely way to finish the day!
What take-away food do people like in your country?
This is a list of key vocabulary and expressions from the article in order of how useful they are. The student must choose 6 items from the list to study in the lesson.
To have their door handle polished
The vast majority of (something)
To have heard of (something/ someone)
To make the most of (something)
To end up somewhere/ (doing) something
To burgle (something)/ A burglar/ A burglary
To struggle to make ends meet