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