Monserrat

I spent a week and a half searching for an apartment in Buenos Aires. Renting as a short-term foreigner had it's disadvantages, since most leases run as long as two years. Rental agencies and private owners alike know this and take unashamed advantage of the hundreds of foreigners who come into the city as students or travelers. There are numerous possibilities. You can rent a room in someone's home, rent a furnished apartment or rent a room in a house full of other foreigners. Prices run from US$200 to US$800 a month depending on the area you want to live (although I'm sure you could find some places that are even more expensive). I searched for a room in a house with other foreigners through rental agencies, craigslist and on a housing search group on the couchsurfing website. Since I wanted something on the cheaper side and near the Library of Congress, my options were somewhat limited. In the end, I picked a house a few blocks from 9 de julio in the Monserrat neighborhood, just below the Avenida de Mayo. It really wasn't that difficult of a choice, really, even thought the room was a bit more expensive that my other options (these options included a room in an apartment with five other women that consisted of a mattress on the floor and only one bathroom, a room in a house that smelled like mildew and had a teeny tiny bunk bed, and a house that felt like a cave but that had nice roommates).

Monserrat is a neighborhood somewhat similar to San Telmo, with narrow streets lined with old buildings that date back beyond the last century. This house was at least 100 years old, but had been nicely updated. The agency claimed it had space for six people (with two of the rooms boasting two beds for those traveling together), but when I moved in there was only one person living there, an Uruguayan twenty-something studying film and the cinema school in San Telmo. The ceilings were impossibly high, at least 14 feet, and we had a glass-covered patio towards the center of the house. One of the rooms came off the kitchen in the front, with a second door to the entryway that also led to the front bathroom. The entryway also led into the patio, and the remaining rooms split off from there, each connected to the other through the patio or by interior doors. The back two rooms had access to the second bathroom, a large room with stained glass windows looking into the bottom part of my room (which included a loft area). Thank goodness the windows were not only opaque but also under the stairs...otherwise things may have gotten a bit uncomfortable from time to time. Not only did both bathrooms have the ubiquitous bidet, but our bathroom in the back even had a bathtub, a rarity in Latin America (or at least in my experience). As I mentioned earlier, my room was spit into two, with a loft area above. The idea was to have a bed in the room below as well for two people who are traveling together, but while I was in residence the bottom part stayed empty. The upper part, where I slept, contained a bed and a closet and not much else, but had a beautiful window that looked out over the patio and had a view of the sky through the glass windows above the patio. Truly, the only draw-back to the place was that we were three houses down from a veterinary clinic, which also doubled as the local Humane Society. They must have had quite a large kennel in the back of the house, because we could hear the dogs barking constantly. This wasn't just a dog or two barking when a stranger walked past their home. This was at least ten dogs going nuts every time someone went back into the kennels. It usually started at about 8:00 am and lasted until around 10:00 pm. You couldn't really hear it in the front of the house, but it echoed in the patio and in my room (being the closest to the windows above the patio). I'll admit I learned to tune it out, but the first few mornings were, well, frustratingly un-restful.

After maybe five days living with my new Uruguayan roommate, a Spaniard (well, more specifically at Catalunian) moved in. Probably the most unfortunate thing about renting a room in a house for foreigners run by a rental agency is that we have no say as to who moves in. I was frankly amazed at the rental process. I simply showed up and paid my security deposit and the first month's rent. That's it. So I know that there are no such things as background checks (ha!). We were very lucky that the our new roommate turned out to be a wonderful addition to our house. The poor thing showed up to see the house with bags in tow, fleeing a cockroach ridden apartment in the Once neighborhood. He told me after seeing the third cockroach in as many minutes he scrambled for a new place and that he slept with one eye open the only night he spent there. I have never been the only girl in a house full of guys before, and I'll admit I was a little anxious as to how it would work out, but it worked out really well. Ok, so I did get a bit frustrated by the Uruguayan's tendency to not wash the dishes until the next morning (which for him was around 3 pm), but that's relatively easy to put up with when you know it's only for a month or two. To tell the truth the Uruguay was a bit of an odd bird, but harmless. For most of my stay it was just the three of us, with the exception of two of the Spaniard's friends who more or less couchsurfed with us for a few weeks (although at different times).

I'll get into the more exciting highlights of my stay in Monserrat in the upcoming posts. But from day to day my routine consisted of cooking breakfast at home (usually oatmeal), drinking some mate or tea with the Spaniard and heading off to the library for four or five hours. The library is open 24 hours a day Monday to Saturday, and it was nice to take my time in the mornings. Sometimes I would start at the library as late as two or three in the afternoon and work until after dark. On my walk home I'd stop at one of many resto-bars off the Plaza del Congreso to drink coffee and eat empanadas and watch the people in the plaza. Probably every third day there was some kind of demonstration in front of the Congress building. After coffee and a snack I'd head home, try to get some work done in the kitchen, drink more mate with the Spaniard, maybe cook some dinner and watch a movie and go to bed or head out to meet some friends at a milonga or at a bar or restaurant. Ah, the good life....

San Telmo

I passed the first two weeks or so I was in Buenos Aires in a hostel in the neighborhood of San Telmo. Famous for it's Sunday antiques fair and for claiming a strong tradition of small tango clubs (milongas) and historic cafes, it's a pretty fun neighborhood. While some of my porteño friends claim that they can't stand San Telmo, I like it. The neighborhood is (forgive me for using this word!) gritty, with narrow streets, old houses , antique shops and small boutiques and art galleries (and a reputation for being somewhat dangerous for tourists after dark). It sits right below the downtown, with it's most well-known street, Defensa, running straight down from the Plaza de Mayo to La Boca. If you walk toward the river you end up in the upscale neighborhood of Puerto Madero and will eventually run into the natural reserve that runs along one section of the river. Walking away from the river you run into 9 de julio, one of the widest streets in the world. If you cross 9 de julio (which is impossible to do in the span of one red light unless you RUN) you end up in Monserrat and eventually hit the area around the Congress building.

I stayed at this same hostel six years ago, when I was doing research for my masters thesis. It's called Sandanzas (I'm including a link to the website here because I really do think it's a great spot). It wasn't quite like deja vu to be there again, but it was close. I still remember the walk from the hostel to the San Juan subte (subway) station that took me to the Library of Congress newspaper archives. The neighborhood has changed somewhat from what I remember...there are more empty buildings and "for sale" signs, more graffiti, more trash. Not that I remember Buenos Aires as a terribly clean city. Beware of dog poop landmines on the sidewalks all you who want to walk the streets of Buenos Aires someday! The first time I stayed in San Telmo the antique market filled the Plaza Dorrego and spilled out into a few surrounding streets, with the antiques concentrated in the plaza and booths of handicrafts and hand-made jewelry lining the sidestreets. Now all of Defensa Street is closed on Sundays, with thousands of tourists and locals wandering past booths that are open well into the evening. Only the traditional antique booths close at dusk, the owners packing away chandeliers and goblets, crystal decanters and antique telephones, costume jewelry and gemstones alike into cardboard boxes and hauling them back to the stores that line Defensa. During the day the whole plaza looks like a giant yard sale for the rich, with the contents of mansions laid out on plywood tables. I'm sure most of it is junk, really, but it is impressive none-the-less.

I spent much of the two weeks in San Telmo searching for an apartment. Since I was planning on staying for a little over two months I wanted to have an apartment within walking distance to the Library of Congress. Hostel living is not really that great if you're looking to actually get some work done. But I will admit to some touristy activities while at the hostel. I spent a lovely evening eating the most delicious steak that has ever graced my taste-buds and conversing with a Californian and an Irishman about energetic healing, took a tango class with a bunch of rowdy Basques, got my hair cut, toured the cemetery in Recoleta for the fifth time, chatted well into the evening with the owners of the hostel and slept long passed when I should have hauled myself out of bed almost every morning. It pretty close to being on vacation.

The night of tango lessons with the rowdy Basques deserves a more detailed explanation. One of the last nights I was in the hostel a group of six Basques (five men and one woman) checked in for a few days. They were on their way back to Spain after coming to Argentina for a friend's wedding. We talked them in to taking a tango class that evening despite the fact that men would far out-number women, a situation that hardly ever happens in any kind of partner-dancing class (at least in my experience). I have often had to dance with another woman in a tango or samba class, but never have I seen the men paired with other men. The Basque guys just jumped right in with no thought as to whether the gender of their partner had any effect on their images of masculinity, an act which I'm not sure would be replicated by most straight men from the US. And these guys were straight. It was probably the strangest but most entertaining tango class I've ever had the pleasure to be a part of. These guys were a riot. We all ended up at a milonga that night set up at a local cultural center a few blocks away, and one of the guys kept trying to convince me he was going to take me out to dance in the crowd of obviously experienced tango dancers even though he had never even heard tango music before that night. We got as far as half-way to the dance floor before he finally chickened-out, shocked that I actually took him up on his offer.

I finally moved my stuff to my new apartment after almost two weeks in the hostel. I looked at maybe five apartments, most of them in the Congreso and Monserrat neighborhoods. In the end I picked a house just off 9 de julio. I'll fill you all in on my B.A. apartment in the next installment...

Recoleta Cemetery

My camera had an unfortunate accident involving a head-on collision with cement while I was in Buenos Aires. But I was able to take some photos of the cemetery in Recoleta before the poor camera's untimely demise. Rest in peace, little Nikon. You did all point and shoot cameras proud. Here is a tribute to your last days....

Buenos Aires

It's not as if you won't notice after reading even a little of this post, but I love Buenos Aires. I love that there are lots of independent theaters and art galleries and cafes with live music. Bookstores abound and they even sell books at newspaper stands. Not just pulp novels, but Borges, Cortázar, Saramago, García Márquez. You can go to a milonga in San Telmo or Palermo or Almagro and dance tango until dawn, wander the streets of Recoleta and gawk at the luxurious homes and shops, buy mouthwatering choripan from street vendors in Puerto Madero for the price of a coffee back home, gorge yourself on steak in restaurants both pricey and cheap, sip a glass of house wine that sells for less than a bottle of Coca-Cola, picnic in the parks in Palermo, visit the Japanese gardens, or simply sit in one of the ubiquitous resto-bars that grace what seems like every street corner and watch the people walk by. Just thinking about empanadas for lunch, facturas and yerba mate at 5:00 with friends and a late dinner makes me want to get on a plane right now and head further south. Ok, that's me waxing a bit poetic. Like I said, I love Buenos Aires. Say what you like about ridiculously enormous cities, the crowds, the smell, the noise, the traffic, the pollution, the crime, but I would still jump at any opportunity that comes my way to spend a little more time in Buenos Aires.

I'm not really sure where to start with this part of my travels. This blog has been neglected of late, I know, and any kind of chronological order has been shot to hell. So maybe an episodic approach might be a better tack to choose. So for the sake of just getting this post published, here's a story, an episode if you will. Otherwise I'll get so lost in remembering things in order that I'll never get it written down. I'll call this one "Blind Theater."

You could, I suppose, translate teatro ciego as "theater of the blind" as well, but it doesn't really sound as nice. I like the literal translation of "blind theater" better. In the neighborhood of Abasto, close to the Carlos Gardel Museum, stands the Centro Argentino de Teatro Ciego, a nondescript theater that produces shows that are made for and largely by the blind. But these plays and other theater productions are not only for the blind but place the seeing public in the shoes of a blind "spectator." The shows are put on in the dark and incorporate not only sound but also smell and touch.

One rainy Saturday night a Spanish friend of mine called me late to see if we could snag some tickets to the late performance of the new play Luces de libertad. Argentina had recently celebrated the 200th anniversary of the May Revolution, the revolution that sparked the war that eventually led to the independence of the majority of Latin American countries. The play tells the story of a black slave in Buenos Aires (yes, there were slaves in Buenos Aires, although there are very few families of African descent in Argentina now) who gets romantically involved with a young criollo man who is wrapped up in the May Revolution. I wasn't all that excited about getting dressed up and going out in the rain that evening, but my friend harassed me into venturing out and practically dragged me to the theater. She even had the nerve to call the theater to see if they would delay the start of the show by five minutes so we could make it before the play began. And the theater agreed!

So how do you put on a play for the blind? Or that even goes beyond this and strives to give the sighted audience an experience that mirrors the feelings of being blind? We were led into the theater itself by staff members, each person placing her or his hands on the shoulders of the person in front of him or her. The theater is entirely dark (and having been in true dark inside caves previously, I can tell you that it was indeed entirely dark) and we were helped into our chairs by the staff of the theater. Or perhaps even by the actors themselves, I'm not sure. One of the actors warned us that it can be disorienting at first to be in the dark, in the complete dark without being able to see even shadows of objects. And he warned us sternly of not turning on cell phones or illuminating watches during the performance. And at some point, without warning, the play began. I won't really go into the plot more than I already have, but I will say it was well written. They did an incredible job of describing things in such as way that you could imagine it in your head but without straying from the norms of conversational speech. It didn't sound false or contrived when characters gave the audience and idea of what things looked like, what sounds meant, etc. even though in a play for the sighted these things might be left unsaid.

The play integrated sound, touch and smell with a deft touch. At first it was strange, but after a few minutes I began to imagine in my head the actors and staging and sets and costumes. I began to forget I couldn't actually see anything. It was eerily similar to how I imagine things while I'm reading a novel. Nothing was very defined or sharp or terribly detailed, more like an impressionist painting rather than a realist or even surrealist one. But for me, these images supplanted any awareness I had of being seated in a chair in a dark room. When the characters were washing clothes, you could hear the water and smell the soap. When one was cooking, you could smell the burnt sugar of the dessert she was making. The actors used the entire room as their stage and their voices appeared in front, behind and to the sides, as if you were inside the play and not a spectator. Actors would softly bump into the audience members, rubbing a leg while walking past with their own legs or lightly placing a hand on a shoulder or arm. The most impressive moment for me was when two of the characters swam across a river. Not only could you hear the sounds of the water splashing and the labored breathing of the swimmers, but you could also feel the splash of water and smell the riverbanks. And the sounds and splashed moved across the room, giving the impression of movement, as if these actors were truly swimming across a river that had magically appeared at our feet. I was impressed at the ingenuity of the whole play, but this scene left me dumbstruck. At the end of the play the lights slowly came up and we were able to see for ourselves the actors who we had been listening to for the past hour and a half. I had imagined a cast of a least ten or fifteen, but eight actors stood before us at the end, dressed in plain clothes. According to the playbill, over half the actors are themselves blind. It took me at least twenty minutes into the play to realize what kind of dedication it must take to learn a play like this, since it is not only the audience but also the cast that is in the dark. There are no visual marks to follow, the actors are not wearing night-vision goggles to know where to walk or where to stop or how to maneuver among the audience members. It must be like memorizing a dance, three steps to the right, two to the left, run six steps ahead and fall to the ground. I wonder if at some points the actors were having conversations with themselves and not with other actors playing the second part in a discussion.

I have no idea if there are other blind theaters out there. Surely in a city like New York or London or Paris or Madrid there may be. But if you happen to find yourself in Buenos Aires I highly recommend attending one of the plays put on at this little theater in Abasto. You won't regret it.