london

I always find London a let down, where ever I am arriving from. Perhaps it is the weather, which is always rubbish. Or maybe the incredible inefficiency. Or the ridiculous prices. London has been my unavoidable transport hub for three decades, yet I cringe every time my plane begins its descent into heathrow, wishing every time that we were landing somewhere else. Get my oyster card topped up (111pounds, and that is with a 35percent student discount) and head for work, wishing I hadn’t boarded the plane in rio.

rio

I cant imagine a city with a more beautiful setting than rio de Janeiro. It has pristine beaches which are exceptionally well maintained by squads of beach cleaners. The hills and water add to give it exceptional views, combined with the lush vegetation found in the tropics. It is a laid back city, where shirts qualify as semi-formal is they have sleeves. People walk all around the city in beach wear and flip flops are the official shoes, coming in every colour and pattern combination imaginable. The life style is chilled as well: sonia tells me she plays beach volleyball for 1-2 hours every morning before work. I ask her at what time exactly she starts her job, and she responds “oh when I feel like it.” All day long, any day of the week, there are people out on the beach. They don’t just lie there sunning themselves though, as cariocas like their exercise. The beaches are filled with surfers, standard beach volleyball, and especially its brazilian variant- a kind of volleyball where you can use any part of the body to get the ball over the net, except your arms. On Sundays, they close the streets along Copacabana and ipanema, turning them into a huge, endless track for joggers, rollerbladers and pedestrians like myself. The air is soft with humidity, and even when it rains, it feels pleasant. I can imagine the lifestyle must be addictive, and if you have lived here it would be hard adjusting to anywhere else.

a death in rio

well i had imagined writing more here about the beauties of rio, and i will, but now.
yesterday one of our group members died.
horacio made the announcement right after lunch: ruth died, in her sleep, age 92.
understandably, many were upset. but i thought, what a way to go! she was a spunky woman with a tremendous zest for life, and she died after a great holiday, peacefully in her sleep, at a hotel on copacobana, after a night of drinking and samba dancing. if i die at that age and in that way, i will consider myself very very lucky.

montevideo

I am not sure I would want to spend the rest of my life in Montevideo, it is a small and provincial variant on Buenos aires. But I certainly would not mind having a flat there. The city is located in a sort of peninsula, so the coastline is long and lined with beautiful flats, most of which have a view overlooking the water. The blocks of flats seemed nice, many having enormous balconies over looking the beach. The beach is completely clean and people swim in it during the summer. Today there were some guys out playing beach volleyball or jogging, but the swimming season has now passed. Then we went through some leafy neighbourhoods with huge houses protected by large gates with fancy security systems. Isabel assured us that this was more for fashion than crime prevention. Crime is low in Uruguay, but some have the idea that having a fashionable high tech gate looks cool.
In the afternoon we headed to the bodegas carrau winery/ estancia. Like argentina and chile, Uruguay is a wine producing country and the people are proud of their local wine, and thus insistent we try it (with good reason). The owner gave us a tour of the property, and we got to go into the cellars….pablo and I ran around like nuts trying to take The Perfect Picture in dim light, holding our hands as still as possible, for as long as possible. In the end our photos came out almost identical, except for the slight difference in perspective pablos extra height gives him. After the tour came the huge meal and wine tasting. There was so much food none of us ate dinner that evening. It was the usual southern cone fare: meat appetizers, followed by meat served with meat. There was pork, chicken and beef, as well as some pate stuff I couldn’t figure out. When I confessed to being the southern cone’s one and only vegetarian, a huge salad and quiche were produced, only a corner of which I could eat. The quantities of wine were equally generous, enough so that at one point the 88 farmer in our group got up and did a tango with an Uruguayan woman young enough to be his granddaughter. Even my father did a little dance for us. “we aren’t exactly rich, but we live well.” Isabel assured us, and I believed her.

bookshops of BA

In chile I had been shocked at the incredible prices of books- 15 euros for a trashy fiction paperback! Pablo had claimed it was due to 1. Chiles isolation 2. Chile being a very small market 3. Chile not having any publishers of note and needing to import everything 4. The government applying VAT to books, unlike in other countries, such as England where books are exempt. Needless to say, I bought no books in chile, although I would have like to have. Argentina is a different case altogether. The books go for about 5 pounds or less each, and the selection is excellent. Even more interesting are the bookshops themselves. On corrientes, my father and I wandered through endless rows of new and used bookshops, but that was nothing compared to el ateneo, a huge bookshop housed in an old theatre! It immediately went to the top of my world bookshop list. The collections were good, both of literature and music, but the setting was the best part. The stage had been converted into a café, and what had been the seats into rows of bookshelves. My father drank coffee and I wandered about in delight. We both noted that the top 2 bestsellers were peron-related: number one was on the last days of evita (how many times can people want to read the same thing over and over again???) and number 2 was about the peronist party. Clearly this country has some political oddities, but agh, the fiction section……

the world according to taxi drivers

In addition to all the wonders of Buenos aires I have already mentioned, I have to contribute a special entry to the city’s taxi drivers. Since my father is not so good walking great distances and gets tired, we have taken a fair amount of cabs. We don’t normally do this, but the taxis here are VERY cheap (a 25 minute drive across town is about 4 pounds), you get to see the city a you drive, and the taxi drivers are the most opinionated on the planet. Everyone seems to want to enlighten and update us on the state of things in the city. Today, for example, we took three taxis. The first featured a lecture on the accomplishments and shortcomings of evita, contrasted against the current government of cristina Fernandez. The driver informed us that the current government are not REAL peronists, but just filled with peronist sounding hot air. (the taxi driver was a real peronist, and nostalgic for the good old days, which were apparently about the time he was born). The lecture included a 10 minute explanation on the peronist doctrine, as it should be.
Lecture two started with a discussion of ethnicity as the driver discussed his Italian versus his Spanish grandparents. From that point he migrated on to the beauties of lunfardo, the odd mix of Spanish and Italian spoken by people in Buenos aires. This led to a hilarious imitation of how Mexicans speak, and from there on to literature (as we were heading to a bookshop).
Lecture three was on the rich and how they got to be that way. This was inspired by our passing some very nice flats in recoleta on our way to Palermo Viejo. We established that these luxurious pads were not owned by foreigners, as my father had enquired, but by wealthy argentines with major inheritances of “landed money.” Somehow, this all led back to evita, as seems to happen regularly here.
If I had more time here I think I would be tempted to write a book: the history of argentina, as told by its taxi drivers. It is a truly insightful experience.

mi buenos aires querido

This must be one of the best cities in the world. A friend of mine claims on his web page that he has lived in montreal, London, cape town and Sydney, and thanks god every day that he was born argentine. I can see why. Both the country and its capital are phenomenal. There are many aspects I could elaborate on here: the architecture with the amazing circa 1900 buildings, or the shopping malls which spurn international marks in favour of their own local brands (cause they are actually better), the diverse neighbourhoods with their sidewalk cafes and boutiques, the people who are both friendly and gorgeous, the flat which have the most amazing balconies imaginable, recoleta with its slightly ridiculous professional dog walkers, the restaurants serving big chunks of steak, and the book shops housed in abandoned theatres with shelves spilling over with latin American classics.
I think I should move here. I wonder how I would justify that to my supervisor….