Che Boludo!

I did not realise up until now the scale of this city. Measuring population is always a tricky excercise, city population, metropolitan population, where does it end, where does it begin? As Mr Wikipedia informs us: "The question of which are the world's largest cities is a complex one, to which there is no single correct answer, simply because there are many different ways of defining a "city"


Momentarily, however, I am not interested in the concept of a "city" but hard figures and league tables. On a metropolitan basis, Buenos Aires is 17th in the world, London lying in 18th and Beijing in 19th. As a nice little comparison, Hope does not have a figure on Wikipedia (though Castleton was 750 in 2000) Glossop was listed as 32,000 in 2001, Glasgow: 2.1 million, Manchester: 4.2 million and finally Buenos Aires weighs in with a cruiserweight 13.2 million. The whole of Scotland is around 5 million.


I am now living in a flat somwhere in that sprawl. To be more exact, the Barrio is called Palermo Viejo, not to be confused with Palermo Soho, Hollywood, Alto, Chico or just Palermo. It is located in the north-west of the city.

This is the trendy, cutting edge, independent fashion district. Filled with plazas, bars, book shops, street art and trendy shops, which, seem to work on the principal that the fewer clothes or goods there are in the shop, the more expensive and desireable they are. Despite the rising inflation and the poverty of the city, Palermo seems to exist in a little bubble of comercial bliss. Though I have not yet really expereinced it, there are clearly some people in BA who make a lot of money.


I like it in Palermo. Despite the trendy, somewhat pretentious air that surrounds it, here is also where the bohemian types thrive, lots of little cafés, restraunts, boliches (clubs), bars, record stores, design practices, art gallerys etc. It is the place where things happen. The equivalent to Brooklyn, NY or Rue St Laurent etc, Montreal, Barri Gotic/Raval in Barcelona, Barrio Alto in Lisbon and so on. There is one in every city and it is usually the most interesting (for me anyhoo) area.


Unfortunately for me, Palermo is a long way from the USAL buildings, centred around Calle Callao y Cordoba, Tribunales/Recoleta area. It is about 45 minute walk from here. Luckily for me though, I am around 2 minutes from the transport hub of Palermo, Plaza Italia, a big sprawl of a roundabout bordered by green space and the huge exhibition hall. Nearly all bus lines heading in this direction trudge through the traffic at Plaza Italia, not to mention the subway line, which links me with the uni in one quick journey down linea D. Public transport here is good, easy to use and cheap. Especially the buses, carefully discovered through the invaluable Guia T, a guide to all bus routes in the whole city, using a big grid system to match up your departure and destination points. Journeys on both subway and bus are around 90cen or $1 (pes), cheap. I think I may even have conquered my fear of buses.


Tomorrow uni starts, we are given two weeks to choose what courses we want to take, attend classes, test the water before deciding upon 5 courses to register with. I get the feeling it is quite a different academic experience here, or so the international staff were desperate to press home. There is a lot of responsability on the individual students and there is a seemingly endless list of things we need to remember/do, places we need to be, paper we need to sort through. So far I am considering classes in Argentinian History, Literature, Portuguese, possible journalism, maybe art history and maybe politics. We will see after these two weeks. Also we are planning our first adventure outside of the city: Salta! Oh and last night was a good test of my spanish, a game of extreme pictionary (mimes, songs, drawing, plasticine) all in Argentinian. Many, many new words...some of which cannot be repeated on this page(!) I wonder if my list of new words sums up what I have been doing between posts? Psychoanalyse me.

New words:

• che boludo* ~ idiot (can be used friendly or nay..)
• boliche* ~ club
• blandito ~ soft
• desafinado ~ out of tune
• un mango* ~ 1 peso
• mariquitas* ~ ladybird
• me arde ~ it stings me (I cut my thumb..)
• pendejo* ~ kid
• pucho* ~ cigarette
• quilombo* ~ mess

*=Lunfardo