In Buenos Aires...

Together with Anne and David (the couple from Portugal/England) I took the night-bus from Puerto Iguacu to Buenos Aires.
My goal in Buenos Aires was to do 2 weeks of Spanish-course, eat lots of nice steaks and ice cream and drink very good wine. But of course there was a lot of time to do other activities as well. It is actually so much, that i summarised the most important ones and made some short stories out of them...

Habla espanol?
Did 2 weeks Spanish course at "el Pasaje" in Buenos Aires. It was a group-course and we had lessons for 4-5 hours/day. Met a lot of nice people from everywhere around the world. With some of them we did some activities beside Spanish-school or on the weekends. Thank you Anne, David, Ann-Christine, Maddalena, Jolien, Dom and Sam, we really had a great time, enjoyed it a lot!!

Bailar Tango?
One night David, Anne and me went to a local Tango-bar. There is some Tango-course first and afterwards you can watch the professionals dancing tango to live music. And if you like you can also try dancing tango after the show together with them.
After a little bit hesitation at the beginning I found myself dancing tango with women and men and all in my Flip-Flops... :-)
The "DJ" responsible for the Tango-music was also from Austria. Crazy guy but super friendly...
After the course we watched the professionals, showing us how dancing Tango really works...
As the show ends nobody wanted to enter the dance-floor, because there were just good Tango-dancers. But after some cervezas and a few glasses of vino tinto all embarrassment is forgotten and I also danced Tango in the crowd (...oh if you could see me now ... ) :-) in front of all other people!

"Papeles en el viento"
On Saturday David, Anne and me went to a cinema closed to the Plaza de Congresso. It is sponsored by the government and therefore it is really cheap. Payed 8 Argentinian pesos for the movie "Papeles en el viento", which is about 0,8€ !! That's so crazy!
The whole movie was in Spanish and without subtitles. After the movie Anne and me had to guess
what happened in it. And David, who speaks Spanish well, explained us afterwards what really happened in the movie... ;-)



Cemetario de Recoleta
Went to the cemetery of Recoleta (citypart of Buenos Aires). The graves where the most important Argentinians of the history are buried, like Evita Peron, look like small houses. So that is why the cemetery looks more like an own small city in Buenos Aires.
Went also to a very exclusive Hotel close to the cemetery, pretend that I am a guest of the hotel and went up to the 15th floor. From there you have an amazing view of the whole cemetery of Recoleta. -> Thanks Nat, for this advice!! :-)

La Boca city tour

Did a bike-tour to the city-part called La Boca. There is the famous blue and yellow soccer-stadium of the Boca Juniors. At the beginning the Boca Juniors didn`t know which colour they should use for their team/stadium. So they decided to take the colours of the flag from the first ship which will arrive at the harbour of Buenos Aires.
And which ship was it?
A few hints:
The ship came from Europe, from an Scandinavian county, the last letter of the country is a "n"...

 

La Boca itself is a nice part of the city with lots of colour-full houses where the working class lives. The reason for the colour-full houses is a funny story:
The people from La Boca didn't have enough money to buy colours to paint their houses. So they asked every ship which arrived in their harbour for some colour. If they get one, they start painting their houses until they run out of it. And again they asked for some colour at the harbour. But instead of e.g. red, they only got green this time. But they did not care and continue painting their houses. And that's why they look so colourful today. :-)
La Boca is Spanish and means "mouth". Why mouth? There is a story that the first people living in this area were from all over Europe. From Italy, France, Germany, England, Spain, Portugal,...
To communicate with each other they sang songs from their countries and played the typical instruments of their countries. And then they started dancing with each other and that's how the Tango was born. And when you listen close to Tango music, you will hear all the different music instruments like a piano, guitar, violin, accordion, ...

La bomba de tiempo
On Monday a few friends of mine from the Spanish-course and me went to the famous "La bomba de tiempo". It is a show where there are all kind of drums, but no other music instrument.
It was amazing what the drum-guys did with them, so cool rhythms and beats!!
The whole crowd was shaking their bodys to the beat of the drums, a really unique show...

@ Tigre: kayaking and the crazy bike-ride back to Buenos Aires
On the next day the weather was again perfect and we went for a daytrip to Tigre. This small town is loacted ~30km away from Buenos Aires close to the delta of Rio de la Plata. There are lots of big and small water-channels and it is a nice place to escape the city of Buenos Aires.
We went there by train and once we were there we rent 2 Kajaks, one for 2 and one for 3 persons and paddled for three hours through the water channels of Tigre. The landscape is really amazing there and it reminded me a little bit to the Amazon Jungle...We were also swimming in one of the smaller channels and enjoyed a really nice sunny day...
I brought the bike with me and decided to ride back to Buenos Aires by bike and not taking the train.
Well, not one of my wisest decisions, had better ones...
My bike was one of this fu**ing city-bikes with just one gear and in really bad conditions.
I had no city-map with me and i forgot my phone in the hostel in Buenos Aires.
So yes..., of course i got totally lost, asked several times for the right way ("Donde esta Buenos Aires?", Donde esta Plaza de Mayo?"), went through really run downed neighbourhoods of BA and twice i almost entered the highway to BA...
But finally after 3 hours I somehow made it back to my hostel, it was already completely dark and I had no lights on the bike. What a hell of a ride...!! ;-)

Mundolingo
On my last night in Buenos Aires I went to an event called "Mundolingo" at Oliver`s Pub. There you get a flag-sticker for each language you speak on your shirt. Then you meet people from all over the world and talk to them. Most of them are also travellers or Portenos (= inhabitants of Buenos Aires). Had a great time and could use and improve my Spanish i learned the last 2 weeks.
I totally forgot the time while i was talking with a really nice girl from Buenos Aires and got back to the Hostel very late in the morning...
But it was really a perfect last evening/night in Buenos Aires!!