Buenos Aires is a city that appears to be struggling to maintain its posture. Everything seems old and decrepid, from the ancient Peugeot´s clattering around the streets with their dark green and yellow taxi liviery to the telephone lines that weave their way across the streets from building to building, from the boarded and shuttered shops to the pavement that is in such disrepair that one cannot help but feel that a large crevasse will open up under your feet at any given moment. I am so relieved that I am not an elderly lady.... in part because I doubt I would be able to make it to the end of the block without taking a tumble on a loose tile and end up with a ladder worthy of assisting a window cleaner in my stockings... the unintentional suggestive nature of that last sentence sounds dreadful but it made me laugh so it stays in the text!
"Oh young maaaan!!!"
Take a walk down any street in Buenos Aires and you will see where I am coming from. South. Walking towards the centre I spent a good deal of time looking up at the buildings around me. Occasionally a handsome old building is in sight, often in apparent disrepair, with the usual leaking gutters, weed growth and need of a good paint licking. Gaps are apparent in the rows, no attempt made to disguise the ghostly form of the structure that was evident on its neighbours walls. A car park makes use of the open space now. Concrete architectual insults have been thrown up into spaces once home to impressive colonial architecture all over the city, the weathered concrete casting a depressing numbness over the view.
Avenida de Mayo runs from West to East across the centre of town and is claimed by the Argentines to be the widest avenue in the world at over 400 feet. They are welcome to it to be quite honest. In the 1940s the Communists cleared a long row of beautiful Italian renaissance inspired mansions to make way for the new, impressive avenue. Of course the only one that remains, and obstructs the Avenida, is the French embassy! The French calimed it was private land and refused to budge... no stereotype jokes at this point please! But boy is it ugly on Avenida de Mayo. Hideous, bland and cheap looking concrete buildings are packed into the blocks on either side.... rewally quite depressing when you see the eveidence of how beautiful the city once would have been.
And it is here that I realise what I am reminded of... where I could not put my bony finger on it before. I feel like I am walking through the Madrid I picture from the Spanish civil war. It is really reminiscent of the European city that I love so much... though this city is tired and run down, where there are gaps I expect to see piles of rubble, the endless displays of posters for the political elections, the crumbling San Telmo and rubbly pavements everywhere.... I would not have been surprised to see barricades hastily erected across the streets with any furniture that was at hand... it is uncanny.
The one saving grace this city has, is its people. There is an overiding positive feeling from the people that you speak to. From the friendly "buenos dias" in the local cafe to the music that can be heard on every street corner. On Sunday evening I found a perch outside a bar in Plaza Dorrega and watched as the San Telmo antiques market drew to an end. Tango music and the roar of an audience... an incredible bongo performance can be heard around another corner. The area is buzzing with life and the happy locals are having an absolute ball. This is what i expected of Buenos Aires and I love it.
And Recoleta Cemetary was stunning... the walled area where wealthy portenos were buried. Every well-to-do family had or has a spot in Recoleta´s resting place. Ornate structures with glass domes, towers, spires, angels and all manner of decoration form streets inside the walls, the deceased family members´ coffins entombed inside. It is fascinating... and strangely morbid that this should be such a huge tourist destination! Caskets are easy to spot, some open to the elements and clearly crumbling. Food is left out for the multitude of cats... to stop them eating the corpses!
Did I visit Eva Peron´s (or Madonna as one friend referred to her when asking a porteno for directions to her final resting place!!) tomb I hear you cry? I was not going to go out of my way to desperately hunt her down... though the sight of a Japanese family studying a map of the cemetary in detail almost had me laying bets that I would end up at Evita´s tomb should I follow them. I was leaving through the collumns at the entrance when a local lady with incredibly neat English dialect gave me a map and pointed out Evita... oh go on then. I could just make out the black marble fascade over the hoard of tourist who were listening intently to the story of Juan´s battle to have Evita entombed inside Recoleta.
Ha... but one of my favourite moments occurred as I went to bed. The German lesbian lovers arrived that evening. I smiled and gave a cheerful "buenos noches" at the one as she made her way to the female bathrooms... she strode past, slim and upright, hair peroxide-bright, short-cut and overly prim, the sharp nose held up to slice through the air like the bow of U-boat hunting its target and her mouth puled tightly across her jaw with a slight downwards curl at the corners. No reply. On turning back I saw her inspect the view of the bathrooms from a good five paces back. That lady sure knows how to have fun, I can tell!
They had turned the lights off in the main corridor when they went to bed... childish but irresistable all the same, I reached out through my double doors and flicked the floodlights back on again! Back into bed with a grin on my face....
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