Seven months on the road and suddenly I was done with ancient ruins, idyllic natural beauty, the college dorm-like hostel lifestyle and never sleeping in the same bed for more than three nights in a row.  Sure, I missed my family and friends, but not in the homesick “I wanna go home” sense.  No, what I missed was a sense of normalcy.  Unshifting surroundings.  A home, even if said place wasn’t anywhere I’d ever been before.

I chose Buenos  Aires.

The college couple in the room next to mine. She's Brazillian, he's Argentinian.

With a little over a month’s time to spend integrating myself into the heart and soul of the city, I used my first few days apartment-hunting on craigslist (it’s as big down there as anywhere I’ve seen in the States) and meeting an assortment of landlords.  Prices ranged from 220-500 for the month for single rooms in shared housing, and eventually I settled on 290 for one of four rooms offered by an Argentinian music producer named Guido who lived in the downstairs basement.  To the left of my sparse (but wifi-included) room, a young Argentinian/Brazilian couple in college; To the right, an Israeli magician named Dimago.

Dimago was friendly and enterprising, and while he still relentlessly haggled and made deals all around the city so much that no one would confuse him for anything but an Israeli (at one point he pushed a sushi restaurant on us really hard, then ate for free as he’d worked a deal out in advance with the owner that he could do so any time he brought three or more people along), he was far friendlier than his younger compatriots that were fresh out of the army.  His magic focused on sleight of hand, card tricks and mentalism and were almost unanimously phenomenal, and he’d actually convinced two clubs to pay him to wander about performing.  It was interesting to watch him at work the one time that I did, though dimness and excessive noise from the music probably caught his nightclub act from ever really taking off while I was in town.

His one great weakness, though, was a monotone Borat-like delivery that make the strange, one-liner attempts at humor he attempted to throw into his act tend to fail confusingly.  For example:

Dimago, in the midst of a trick:  ”So it’s a good thing… that I am good at magic… you know?  Because it is better than my old job…”

My friend Nicole and I wait out the pause and then look at each other.  Does he want us to probe further on this one?  Ok.

“Uh…  So what was your old job?”

“Well… I sold drugs… to kids.”

Nicole and I look at each other, perplexed.  It’s a joke, right?  I mean, even in Israel it’s probably not cool to sell drugs to small children…

“Oh,” we say. “Ok.”

To his credit, the trick is outstanding.

Couchsurfing

There’s little more to say that wasn’t covered by my first visit here.  Avoiding clubs entirely, I opted to semi-successfully figure ways to meet and bond with the local populace.  The most fruitful of these attempts involved the website couchsurfing.com.  Ostensibly a way for people to travel on the cheap while meeting fun and exciting new foreign strangers, its users in Buenos Aires pride themselves on being the most social couchsurfing community on the Internet.

One of the cooking lessons: An Irishman and an Argentinian making empanadas. Said meat pockets are ubiquitous throughout the country, cheap and generally always pretty good.

“Events” take place on a nightly basis: cooking lessons, concerts, English/Spanish practice groups, parillas (Argentinian barbecues) and, ostensibly, orgies.  I’m not sure if the last one ever happened or not.  Most of us were sure it started as a joke, but as many as twenty people of both sexes put their names down as potential orgy-goers, and Dimago was one of them.  Utterly fascinated, I regularly asked him how the plans were progressing, though participants had hit a roadblock upon realizing that none of them lived in a large enough (or possibly squalid enough) house to accomodate twenty people simultaneously copulating.

What’s more, the “sexually liberated” women that had initially put their names down with the intention of experiencing a mature, respectful, carnal romp, suddenly came to realize that such a thing is nearly impossible from nearly 97% of the male population on the Internet.  I’m not sure whether it was the guy excited about bringing his camera or the slew of users publically expressing their aversion to “fat chicks” (the message board was equally made up of English and Spanish writers), but as of my departure from Buenos Aires the list was down to two girls.

In general, the couchsurfing boards focused more on traditionally wholesome fare, though.  Monday night in Buenos Aires hosts a weekly show of heavily choreographed drumming called La Bomba del Tiempo.  Rain or shine, the large outdoor venue (comfortably located only two blocks from my apartment) fills up with drummers, young Argentinians and a dense cloud of marijuana smoke.  A conductor maintains a steady rhythm, keeping the 20+ member percussion orchestra playing in unison while throngs of concert goers vibrate to the Latin-influenced beat.

For a month, I did nothing but live in Buenos Aires.  Why not?

My final night in BA, I purchased this tenderloin for under four US dollars. In terms of both quality and price, Argentinian steaks are the best on Earth.