Getting used to the Porteños way of life

Mes chers amis,

Already ten days in Buenos Aires but it feels like I arrived yesterday. Buenos Aires, like many other capitals in this world (think of Paris or London for instance) is said to be very different from the rest of the country. The city has its own identity and Porteños (Buenos Aires inhabitants) take a lot of pride in this.

Language is a good example of this: Spanish here sounds quite different (and much nicer, believe me) from the way it is spoken in Spain. It's closer to Italian, very musical and less aggressive than in Sevilla for instance. Also, a lot of words are slightly different in Argentina.

About a third of the 40 millions people in this country live in BA. But apparently the remaining two thirds don't really like Porteños. That's something I'm gonna investigate while traveling in Argentina! But even without having seen the rest of Argentina, it's already obvisous that BA sets itself apart from the rest, on many levels. An obvious reason is that it is much more connected to the rest of the world, and that it concentrates most of the wealth and power in this country. I'm not going to tell you what I've learned about Argentinian politics so far, it's way too complicated. They are holding elections for the upper house in a month or so, and in  a nuthsell, "messy" - excuse the bad pun - is probably the word I would use to describe the Argentinian political landscape.

I've had a drink tonight with Nahuel, an Argentinian friend I met a few years ago while on holidays in Turkey. I had only come across him once since, totally by accident queuing at one of UCL many coffee shops, without even knowing at that time that he was studying there! I realised he was in BA only yesterday, when I saw a picture of a River Plate game he posted on facebook, and because he is leaving in two days for Nueva York, we managed to meet in the centre of Palermo, in Plaza Serrano (a new favorite!) after my work. Now that's what I call good timing! The discussion we had reinforced many of the feelings I had about this city.

Anyways, let me now tell you about my first week at AU Group in a few words.

I'm currently doing a small internship in a firm called AU Latina, the LATAM branch of a French group, doing credit insurance brokerage. Basically, this means that they help firms wanting to protect themselves against non-payments and find the best insurance policies for them, but they are not an insurance company per se. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_credit_insurance) It is still a small office, and therefore I help with many different tasks. I often go around the city in the morning to deliver important documents to clients, which enables me to discover new areas of Buenos Aires, while the afternoon is devoted to more administrative tasks and client meetings. The current office is an extension of my boss Rafael's house, which makes it much more lively than I could imagine: We often have his kids around, and when I left the offfice on Friday, Rafael was shooting noisy pigeons with an airgun. Not the most stressful internship I've done so far!

Parisian buildings in the exclusive area of Retiro

Teatro Colón 

But as you may have guessed, I didn't travel to Argentinia only for the love of good work: Buenos Aires nightlife aslo deserves some credit. People call Buenos Aires "la ciudad que nunca duerme" (the city that never sleeps), and rightly so. That's what I realised, when at around 2am on Saturday night, Henri, a Franco-Argentinian guy I met here told me: "Oh tonight I'm not going out, I have three exams next week. I mean, if you go to a bar or a club I'll come with you but I won't stay long, it'd be good if I'm in bed by 5 am".

Remember that I've lived for three years in London, where many clubs close at 3 am, so this kind of rythm is quite a shock. Here, you have dinner at 9.30 or 10pm, start pre-drinks at around midnight and never head to a club before at least 3am. I think the trick is to sleep between 6 and 8pm, but even though, your sleeping pattern is so disturbed that you have no way to avoid a painful Monday morning. But, hey, I'm not complaining, at least these guys know how to party!

And no, I haven't spent the whole weekend recovering in bed. I actually went to el Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (in my defence, it was raining on Saturday afternoon), where you can find an impressive collection of European Impressionist paintings, and some not so convincing Argentinian master pieces.

Unlike Argentinian painters, world famous Pampa beef truly met my expectations. To give you an idea, I just had for dinner a massive 550g beef steak, tender, tasty and costing a bit less than 2€. That will be sadly missed when I'll be back in London!

But it's time for me to go to bed, I'll leave you with a picture of a shop window in Palermo, as you can see, a more casual but sill very trendy area of BA. 

 Un abrazo,

Votre vaillant riton

First few days in BA

¡Hola from Buenos Aires, bienvenidos a todos!

So here I am, thousands of kilometers away from most of you, my left wrist in plaster (and my left arm slowly approaching half its normal size) but still in top form and enjoying every second of my day!

If you don't have time to read through all this article:

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Big news, I'm alive, in Buenos Aires, and jetlag is over.

Now, more details:

First impressions (and lessons):

1) It's super cold over here. We're approaching the end of winter and the weather during the first three days clearly reflected it: grey and freezing cold (between 5 and 15°C). Now we finally have some sun, but temperatures are still quite low. Apparently the city has experienced a massive heatwave a week ago, with temperatures getting into the 30+ °C (historical record for the season), but I missed that.

2) BA seems to offer so many hidden treasures! Architecturally speaking, it's a bit of mess, but anywhere in the centre you'll be able to find a building that reminds you of Paris, Madrid, or some Italian city, even if it is trapped between two sovietic-style blocks. The European influence is very strong in this city full of "emigrados". And it is cleaner than what I expected, even

if "Porteños" keep saying the opposite. Don't worry, I'll take some pictures so that you can see it by yourself.

3) Driving in Buenos Aires requires skills rarely seen on our side of the Atlantic. Traffic is very dense and drivers keep changing lanes to overtake each other, while remaning surprisingly calm and without much aggressivity. It would be fine if only cars drove that way, but bus drivers are even worse! And of course, using a flashing light is clearly not part of their habits.

4) The Argentinian way is quite chill. It'll take the time it needs, take it easy.

5) "Che Lulu", a clean and colourful guest house in Palermo Soho I could recommend, is apparently located next to many gay bars. To be honest, I haven't seen any, but at least you won't feel offended like me if one of the guests ask you if you are "straight" or not.

6) Money: Changing money here is quite a big deal. As you probably already know, the Argentinian economy is in a pretty bad shape at the moment. Inflation is very high: the official number is around 10%, but the true number seems closer to 30%, as the government loves cooking its economic indicators. For this reason, and because of a will to control capital flows in and out of the country (and probably for some other weird reasons that I have not figured out yet), there exist two different exchange rates in Argentina: the official one (currently around 5.7 pesos per USD) and the unofficial one (unofficial, but everyone knows and talks freely about it). To benefit from this unofficial (and better) rate, you got to go right in the centre of BA, in a pedestrian shopping street where you'll find some people spending their all day yelling "¡Cambio, cambio! ¡Euros, Dollares!". Once the rate agreed with them, most of the time the actual exchange takes place in a small and dark office, where you have the disturbing feeling to be dealing drugs with the mafia... But anyway, I got 11.6 pesos for my buck so it's definitely worth it. So bring a lot of cash if you plan to visit Argentina!

Oh, and by the way, they don't have a proper sign for "Pesos", they use the dollar sign ($), so don't get confused.

In terms of proper news, I am now sharing a flat with a Colombian girl, Diana (about 25-28 years old, works here in BA, a bit maniac when it comes to cleaning common rooms but otherwise very nice and extremely patient when I'm painfully trying to speak Spanish), and a French guy, Quentin, (comes from Tolosa, raised in Congo by a Polish father and a Moroccan mother, very nice and interesting 26 years old guy trying to start working in Argentina as an osteopath). The flat is on the 14th floor, opposite the zoo (I can probably throw food at the lions from my balcony, not sure I want to try though), and it only takes me 15 minutes to get to the office.

Yes, if you didn't know, I do work here, at least until mid-october. More about it in a future post.

I'll leave you with a picture of my small room:

...and one of the view from the balcony:

Un gran abrazo!

Votre fidèle riton