Argentina, one year in...

When trying to write an entry about Argentina one year in (quite a long on, but there is a joke at the end), you naturally try to divide the country into pros and cons, loves and hates, good, bad and ugly. The things that make you think about raising your kid here, and the things that make you think about selling your kid to pay for your way out of here.

But such is the paradox of the place it really is impossible to polarise the country. The best qualities of the country are absolutely the same things that make it so frustrating, or confusing or challenging. So this is an attempt to merge the two: the good within the ugly, the joy through the pain, one year on.

For those of you who saw us in July, sorry. We were rather more experiencing the hardships than the pleasures. Since then we have followed the golden rule of having at least 3 of the following 4 every day: helado ice creams, carne steak, sun and swim. These things helped.

What we love:

- Energy and exuberance: if you meet someone shy, chances are you‘re talking to a Chilean. You experience many things in this city; boredom is not one of them. At the same time, you’ve got a country of people, from about 8 to 80, running on 5 hours sleep, with all the sulkiness and short tempered irritation that comes with it.

- Pride in the country: this manifests itself in how welcome we’ve been made to feel in their country. Our Argie friends go out of their way to look after us and everybody wants to talk to us everywhere we go (we learnt early never to be in a rush to get anywhere) from offers to come to the hospital during the birth of our child to a taxi driver (who we’d been chatting to about the heat and the need for Air Con) tracking us down in a café later on with a leaflet on Air Conditioning Units. Or, it could be interpreted as just good old fashioned racism. An adoration of all people and things European (like them of course) and a disdain for all things Latin American. We have been told that this has changed significantly since the 2001 economic crash when Argies realised that they had to work with their Latin American neighbours in order to survive and it must also be caveated that this is a very class-ist view and it tends to be the upper class Argies who still think this way. It is surreal though when watching Dougs play cricket at the Hurlingham Club to be surrounded by posh Argies all speaking English like the best of the Home Counties.

- The lack of aggression in the culture: no road rage (they just beep their horns louder and drive faster); we’ve yet to see a fight in a bar or on the street, and you can cycle down the pavement and the pedestrians apologise for being in the way… And on the other hand you’ve got the barra brava, the football hooligans, the leaders of which when in prison recently were visited by the club’s players. Quality role models, no? And you wouldn’t want to wander the villas (shanty towns) at night.

- The 6 month summer (easily the best part!) and the entire city going on holiday for Jan and Feb. On the other hand, try buying something in January and you’ll find a succession of Closed for Holidays signs. Nah, forget it, that’s an out and out plus. Light bulbs and milk can wait until March.

- Chantas: the Argentine quality, much respected, that means you can talk you way in and out of nearly anything; you see this throughout society, from schools to business, where it’s just as ‘respected’ to talk your way into an exam pass as to actually achieve one. Which leads to corruption, scant respect for the law and total lack of respect for institutions (man do I sound my age). But you will never experience that BURNING RAGE on the Underground when some smug ticket puncher hits you with a £20 fine for trying to get home ‘during peak hour’ on your £9 Off Peak Travelcard that was about 20p cheaper than the other one and you didn’t even ask for it anyway...

- Our flat and pool – they are awesome. The down side? I dunno. Sometimes other people use the pool. Air Con is bad for the ozone layer? Polar Bears can just get better at swimming.

- Creativity and originality – no identikit high streets, a franchise free existence. I’ve been in a supermarket maybe twice in 6 months. Love it! Yeah it’s great to be able to buy a range of world foods in your local Tesco’s, but it’s greater being forced to go out for a meal to get them.

- Informality: “meeting starts at 9am sharp” translates to, “I imagine we’ll run into each other some time tomorrow”. You can swear in meetings without anyone batting an eyelid – where else can you say hijo de putain (son of a b….) as a reply to your boss asking you to do some extra work without it causing offence? - and it’s generally better/more respected to express an extreme opposite opinion than none at all.

- Lack of rules: there is something very liberating about being able to cycle on pavements without anyone screaming at you and buying meat off supermarket shelves that is dripping in blood rather than wrapped in 27 layers of plastic. But this flagrant disregard for rules is most appallingly evident in the driving… (see below)

- Vanity: there are few funnier things than watching someone on a train, on their own, entertain themselves by taking photo after photo of themselves on their digital camera, and reading their expressions of, usually, approval and delight, at the results. It’s the only country where you’ll walk into the gents and see guy grooming their eyebrows; inevitable downside of highest rates of plastic surgery in the world, the average weight of a porteno women must be about 5 stone and societal pressure to be beautiful and glamorous led to one less than beautiful man recently petitioning parliament for a law to protect ‘ugly’ people…..

- Porteros: basically the doormen in each building but so much more than that – the ultimate ‘fixers’ who know a man who can for every situation; take the character in the movie who can get you things, release that character from his twenty stretch, sit them outside your door. V v handy. How will we ever live without them again, not sure.

- Attitudes to kids: they love them, take them everywhere, family is the most important thing in the world to an Argentine. Even Dad’s take an interest in their children here. As a result, kids are so content and well behaved and quite happily wander around restaurants at midnight chatting to complete strangers, being utterly charming and annoying no one.

What we don’t love so much:
- The driving is frikkin appalling, 20 people are killed a day in the city and 44% of those are pedestrians, in full knowledge of this people still let their kids climb around inside moving cars, there is no concept that the lines down the middle of the road/motorway designate a novel idea called ‘lanes’, seatbelts are for losers and helmets are an accessory to be worn on your wrist while weaving your motorbike at 140km/hr in and out of traffic on the autopista. Its appalling and the ‘reasoning’ behind it is pathetic, typically ‘its our cultural right to drive fast’, ‘people know it’s dangerous but… what are you gonna do?’ No excuse, it makes India look like Sweden.

- Customer service does not so much run on the mantra that The Customer Is Always Right then The Customer Is Most Likely A Twat, starting with rudeness and degenerating from there. A friend of ours tried to get a book copied in a photocopying shop only to be told it had too many pages (?!) so they wouldn’t do it, you get hung up on by operators, Christ you get hung up on by telemarketers (though no complaints there); we have no idea how these people make any money.
- The bureaucracy: queues queues and more queues. Queues just to get a number for your place in the queue. Each task requires 572 signatures obtained in 72 different buildings (I have significantly lowered my expectations of what I can get done in a day!). Last week I (Katie) was told that I needed to obtain a doctor’s note to prove to my medical insurance company that I was pregnant. As I could hardly see the man over the top of my belly, I could only presume he was joking but upon further bemused enquiry he remained resolute so off I waddled to building number 492 of the day.

What we miss:
- don’t laugh, but at times (such as the Davis Cup tennis), good old fashioned British politeness
- and efficiency!
- British satire – TV, radio, newspapers – god bless podcasts
- the BBC: it is nice to be able to believe things sometimes
- earning pounds
- bacon sarnies
- baked beans
- cricket on TV (Katie)
- not having to look both ways (and up) when crossing a one way street
- taking a taxi without first having an argument with the driver about the necessity of digging the seatbelts out of the boot before the journey commences….
- being able to go places outside the city for the weekend without flying (apparently these places do exist but you need a car and to think that a 6 drive each way is a relaxing start and finish to a 2 day weekend)
- all of you lot (told you there was a joke at the end)