Back in BsAs

Since I got here on Thursday, I've been on the hardcore nostalgia tour of Buenos Aires. My bus from Mendoza got in at 8 in the morning, and my hostel check-in wasn't until two, so instead of doing something reasonable like, I don't know, checking my e-mail or having a relaxed brunch, I walked the six miles from my hostel downtown to the Jumbo (a massive grocery store/Wal-Mart-type hybrid) in Belgrano and then part of the way back, taking a detour to go past my old apartment building and another to check out my old gym. It was surreal realizing how deeply the map of Buenos Aires is etched on my brain, walking into places I never thought I'd see again, passing buses whose numbers set off a flash of memory (that the 111 will take me to class is information I somehow know, but I can't remember anymore what class or even what building).

A hallway at Puan.  The big red banner says (I think - the picture's hard to read)
"We Go with the Leftist Front."

The following day I took the rickety wood-panelled Linea A subte train to Puan, the University of Buenos Aires's Filosofía y Letras campus where I took a Latin American Literature class. I'd had a complicated love-hate relationship with that class - I loved the brazenly intellectual, leftist atmosphere and the dreadlocked students in happy pants, hated the shit that we read. (Just read every single modernist manifesto ever written to approximate the experience). The front hall of the building is still plastered with posters announcing Socialist party rallies, students still share pot and mate in the main courtyard, and there's still a sort-of-inexplicable cluster of stalls selling bootleg DVDs on the first floor landing. From Puan, I tried to go to Parque Rivadavia, where you can buy a bootleg DVD of pretty much any movie ever (I was looking for Tropa de Elite), and instead walked like three miles in the wrong direction, out to the very outskirts of the city, at which point stores and people thinned out so dramatically that it became clear I had done something wrong. That was the one time so far my directional instincts have failed me.

Graffiti on a San Telmo street corner.

The less said about Friday afternoon and Saturday morning, which I spent struggling to get money, the better. Suffice it to say I spent enough time in Western Unions (yes, plural) to last about six lifetimes. Saturday I wandered into San Telmo, a neighborhood known for its antiques and street art. Finally solvent, I treated myself to lunch at El Desnivel, a parrilla where I ate my weight in buttery lomo beef with garlic sauce, fries, and chimichurri.

Today I took the 92 bus to the Feria de Mataderos, which is on the outer edge of the city - maybe about twenty minutes past the Garaje Olimpo, which was one of the main torture centers during the military dictatorship. I remember hearing a story from one of my UBA classmates about a man who lived across the street and boarded up his front porch so he wouldn't have to hear the screams of the victims. These days the building is covered with commemorative and political graffiti.

A stand at Mataderos selling humitas, tamales and empanadas.

The Feria de Mataderos was just as I remembered it. Booths selling jewelry, alpaca knitwear, leather alpargatas, handmade cheese. Traditional dancing in the square in the middle, dancers occasionally lost in
a cloud of smoke from one of the grills nearby. Foods typical of the north - locro, a corn-based stew, and humitas, a sweet corn tamale stuffed with cheese. Random men dressed in full-on gaucho gear: poncho, leather hat, knife in a detailed leather case.

And, most importantly, the same stand where, three years ago, I bought my Jesus sandals, so-called because they're basically a bunch of leather straps tied to my feet. I wore those sandals into tatters; they're now in a box under my bed, too gross to wear and too beloved to throw away. The fact that the sandals were there at Mataderos - the stall in the same place, even - and that they were available in my size is a small miracle.

Not that nothing in Buenos Aires has changed. I was here in 2008 when the first Starbucks in Argentina opened. Now there are Starbucks everywhere, some in near-Best-in-Show proximity to each other. And the inflation continues to blow my mind. The exchange rate since 2008 has changed to four pesos to the dollar from three, but even with my American money Buenos Aires is far from the budget paradise it was three years ago. The cheapest bottles of wine clock in at about eight pesos apiece, and an helado at one of the big chains (Volta, Freddo, Persicco) costs about twenty pesos - that's five U$D.

Obviously, I haven't been discouraged from eating ice cream. The cone I had today - chocolate amargo and dulce de leche dipped in chocolate - was harder to eat than a live eel (it melted all over everywhere and I ended up with chocolate all over my face) and also maybe literally the most delicious thing I've ever eaten. Like, actually.

It's weird to be here by myself. On the plus side, I can do strange nostalgic things like visiting Puan and going on razor-strike missions for sandals. But honestly, it's a little lonely - lonelier than it's been, because it's not like I'm looking for random traveler-friends, which are always easy to find. I'm looking for my study-abroad friends, who are also easy enough to find (I mean, one of them sleeps ten feet from me at home), but who aren't here. I miss you guys. Buenos Aires will always rock, but not as much as you.

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