Details

Montevideo - Buenos Aires

Montevideo has world class architecture, although it is a little rough around the edges.



This is about what I expected from South America.


Not this.



Needless to say, I fit the bill of the Partido Obrero. This sign reads "To complete the National Project, the protagonists must be workers!!





I ordered an orange juice (right) with my breakfast. Josh ordered a breakfast that came with orange juice (left). And yes, that is a classic Josh laugh attack.



While I'd love to digress about taking a buggee around the backroads of an old, colonial town in Uruguay, or describe exactly how I ended up on a pub crawl which terminated with Alex throwing his underwear at me in drunken rage, I'd like to take a moment to acknowledge some of the details that have made this trip a delightful romp, a sea of confusion, and an exhausting lesson.

1. The Chilean National Team Fight Song

"Vamos! Vamos Chilenos! Vamos a ganar alguna vez mas!!" And I think it repeats. Who knows. We heard this song blasting from a soccer video game this guy was playing in our hostel in Tigre, a suburb of Buenos Aires. Ostensibly this kid was a Chilean soccer player, but to me this seemed unlikely. I only saw him play computer games and video games, glancing furtively around every so often. At night he blasted Reggaeton from his headphones, perpetuating my hatred-of-the-ages for public, terrible music. In general, I also hate sports video games, but this one was way too loud and was severely disruptive to my Rummy game. Alex, who was reading 1984, didn't seem phased. Josh, who is a big fan of sports games, apparently loved it. He has been singing the Chilean fight song ever since, except he only knows the first two phrases so it is both incomplete and laced with Josh's affected style of singing. Now it's in my head too, so every once in a while one of us will start singing it, and then the other, and then Alex will look around embarassed, and then we'll stop.

2. Chris (alex guesses this name is spelt without an H)

Chris is a very nice haircuttress from the Flemish part of Belgium. She wears her hair extremely short (shorter than Alex but longer than Josh), is taller than all of us, is a bit prissy and also a bit eccentric, and has an ambiguous sexuality. In fairness, the only evidence of this last detail is that none of us were interested in her, although she was pretty, and she was clearly uninterested in any of us, although we are clearly eligible, strapping men. We had several awkward and unceremonious departures from her - in Montevideo's bus depot, in a marketplace, after a boat ride. Every time, however, she shows up again just as suddenly, at the Red Hostel, at a tour of a theater, and who knows, maybe some other place. It's a weird dynamic. She never laughs at our jokes, although she frequently laughs at us. She doesn't say anything, except sometimes she's dancing around or gibbering something excitedly. None of us are particularly sad to see her go, but all of us generally enjoyed her company.

3. No Americans

Very few, anyway. Has its goods and its bads.

4. Quadruple cheese burger.

Did I mention this already? It comes from Burger King, there are four patties. Josh and I have set a rule that we will not eat fast food until out of BsAs, but Alex is getting to the point where he is basically rabid about wanting one.

5. The cities

Alex is incessantly searching for the nice parts of town. The towns we have been to have fantastic architecture, with cupolas and intricate masonry, art decco and brilliant tiles. These are cities that grew into the most fashionable, most ritzy places in the world around the turn of the 19th century. Following years of tweed-coated populism, political warfare, and overall economic tomfoolery, the glory of these cities descended, and so did the upkeep of barrios. Like all guidebooks say, there has been a "renaissance" of restoration, and so forth, but clearly a lot of neighborhoods are just messed up. Alex has not been happy with this, calling Montevideo's old town a "disgrace" and saying that Buenos Aires is in fact not the "Paris of the South."

Every once in a while, we walk through a neighborhood that has been beautifully upkept. Western designer brands line the walks. This is the case with Calle Florida in Buenos Aires, a place that Josh likens to New Jersey and Alex thinks is more cosmopolitan than any neighborhood in the U.S. Hanging out there today, I tried to fit what we've seen in Buenos Aires into a homogenous, urban mold. "It's like any city. Take New York," I expounded, as if my few minutes in each neighborhood made me understand the way this world worked. "Calle Florida is 5th Avenue. Corrientes is Broadway. San Telmo is SoHo, and Palermo is Greenwich Village. La Boca is like Harlem, I guess, full of history but dangerous." It's easier to understand a new city if you think you've seen it before.

I've scoffed every time that Alex has complained, but these are not New York, and not even the "Paris of the South." These are rough cities, cities that don't really look like they're on the move. Amidst the glitz of the shopping district, back alleys contain women and toddlers sifting through trash. Cranes do not cover the skyline, and streets seem to remain in a state of permanent construction. A gang of young men go through a garbage heap on a street corner, and following a brief discussion, a cop moves on his way. Some jerk named "Fitzgerald Kennedy" walks with you for several blocks before being told sternly that we are not interested in his bar. During a blackout, some guy pisses on Congress.

At the same time, these are lovely, old, and character-filled cities. Mothers still march on the Plaza de Mayo every Thursday. The young woman in business heels on the street smiles at you quickly before crossing the impossible intersection. Standing on the balcony of my hostel room, I can see all the way to the Pink House and the Rio de la Plata delta, and the tapered glow of ten thousand warm lights. It's pretty beautiful.

Epilogue:

Alex finally got his quadruple stacker.