Buenos Aires, Tango & Spanish

It took me a while to work out Buenos Aires. At first I thought it was a bit crap; its not a particularly beautiful city and during the day there isn´t a lot to see or do. After a while though I realised it only really comes alive at night. You could go out every night of the year in BsAs and someone would be having a party somewhere. The whole city seemed obsessed by Tango; whether it was the music, the clothes or the singing & dancing. Tango suits the locals´personality, it gives them a chance to show off.

My plan was to enrol on a Spanish course here, I had learnt enough Spanish in the previous month to get by, but I was tired of not being able to talk to half the people I met and thought by learning a little more I would get a lot more out of my trip. The course was great, there were only 3 of us and a teacher - all lovely women (Nealie, Gretchen and Liliana). We had a laugh and it didn´t feel like work, just having fun whilst we learnt something useful. As well as being fun its helped me a lot, I´m a lot more confident about speaking now and can actually have half decent conversations in Spanish. I can´t believe less than 2 months ago I couldn´t speak a word.

I got on with the girls in my class well, and we went out at the weekend. We saw a traditional caberet show (romantic singing and tango dancing) and ate more of the lovely steaks they cook here, and drank the gorgeous red wine. On Saturday night a group of us went out - organised by the Spanish school - and saw more live music. At about 1am we went to a milonga, a traditional tango club. It was like a pick up joint - the ladies would sit at tables around the dance floor whilst the men would cruise round, looking for someone to dance with. If you make eye contact with them, that means you have to dance, so the 4 of us who had stayed out late (the rest had wimped out and gone home), were busy trying to look at anything but the other men - we were with a local girl, Maria, who said that if we danced more than a few dances with a man he would be expecting you to go home with him, and none of us wanted that! It was fascinating to watch though, and trying to work out the ´rules´ like when you were allowed to talk and how many dances you were supposed to dance. It was great going out with Maria, as we found out loads about the local culture.

I have to mention the cafes in BsAs as they are fantastic - there are lovely cafes everywhere, not a Starbucks or Costa coffee in sight. I spent most of my free time either drinking coffee, eating steaks, drinking wine or going to one of the fantastic markets. I definitely put on all of the weight I lost in Chile, and more.

All in all, I like BsAs, but I couldn´t live and work there - going out til 3am every night would kill me!