Buenos Aires

After a 14 hour flight from Frankfurt we arrived in Buenos Aires airport very much excited about arriving so far away from our home lands. From Thailand you can always make it overland to Europe - with South America there is an ocean to cross.

Buenos Aires international airport felt a bit like landing in Moscow at the Sheremietievo airport, or perhaps arraiving to Warsaw to the main railway station - anybody who has been to those places will know what I mean. Usually it does not bode well.

Anyway we decided to take the local bus to the hotel we booked through the internet - all went well since people in the capital of Argentina are extremely helpful. A guy on the bus helped us change to the metro line (95 years old metro line that does feel like it WOULD be 95 years old). It definitely feels that no special attention has been paid to keeping it in good shape. It is however a highly atmospheric ride hardly comparable to anything in Europe (except perhaps the old metro line in Budapest which is much better taken care of).

So we arrived in our hotel - it was the worst we have ever been to in our lives - it was kind of disgusting especially that we were paying 20 USD instead of the usual 5 USD which we paid in South East Asia for our hotels. For the price one would expect some kind of decency in the offer. This place was so bad that we decided to check in (it was already midnight when we arrived) and at once go out to eat to think of a strategy for the next days. The street in front of our hotel did not look much better - there was something in the air telling us that we might get into trouble any minute. So not too stretch our luck we went it to McDonald’s. The first one during our whole trip this year. Kind of safe bet at midnight. Obviously we decided to look for an alternative place to spend the next nights…

Since for the first time during our trip we arrived to a city without a guidebook, the next day we bought ourselves a TimeOut magazine…below the description of the street we have managed to book our hotel (Lavalle street) “It is every claustrophobe’s sweat-soaked nightmare…the mother lode of the mayhem is called Florida, the only completely pedestrian street in BA…However, amid the human statues, money changers you can still find traces of its refined past. Lavalle on the other hand makes Florida look chic and classy. It’s packed with blockbuster and B-movie cinemas, advertising hoardings and enough neon to power a nuclear sub”

As you can imagine when we arrived to such place the only thing in our mind was - why was my brother saying that Buenos Aires is so nice? Have we arrived to a different place? TimeOut quickly made it clear to us that we have managed to choose the worst place in Buenos Aires (perhaps apart from Boca district)…

From there on things started picking up. We have managed to find a very nice hostel and decided to enrol for a four day Spanish language crash course combined with induction to Buenos Aires…a very good choice…

We have also managed to find the charm of Buenos Aires - beautiful districts like San Telmo with its weekend markets, Palermo with its bohemian atmosphere and beautiful parks and plaza’s…and everywhere Tango and great places to eat or chill…after 6 months of rice diet, I have decided to change to jamon and Argentinian beef. …

All in all there is no question that Buenos Aires is a great city - where is perhaps a bit too much of pick pocketing and general feeling of insecurity but otherwise it lives up to its expectation…We have just managed to choose another place with demonstrations against the government and street fights with the police. :)