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....