Colonia

(Colonia-where the cars come alive)

When the alarm goes off, the rain is drumming down on the tin roof in the courtyard and I am dizzy and dehydrated. I feel that bad things are going to happen today. I have had two hours sleep. I was ill during the night and spent most of it in the bathroom. But it was my plan and we bought the fares in advance and we had to wait a ridiculous amount of time to get them in the first place so I get onto my wobbly feet, call a taxi for in half an hour and jump in the shower.

I have just started shaving when the buzzer rings. I jump out and pick up. It is the taxi waiting downstairs. Moments later, still dizzy, dehydrated and wobbly on my feet and now wet in places and with a half-shaved face, I am shouted at by the driver for taking too long. I am in no mood for discussions. It is a two-minute drive to my parents´ apartment. The rain is still slashing down. I get out, cross the road and ring the buzzer, now wet all over.

It will take a while before the day gets any better. The sea is rough, with bouts of wind hitting the catamaran from all sides and waves that are far too high for a river delta, even a big one, creating an exceptional demand for plastic bags in the duty free shop. Somehow I manage not to be sick. I suspect this is because I have nothing left in my stomach to be sick with after my night of agony on the toilet.

Eventually the plunges and twists slow down and the grey-green outline of the coast appears in the windows. We get off, are whisked through immigration and find ourselves once again cold and in the rain outside the ferry terminal. We don´t have a map or any clear idea what we are supposed to do now we are here. So we grab a taxi and ask to be taken to a café in the old town.

The journey takes around forty seconds and essentially consists of turning round two corners. Of course we are charged a chunky fare. We are embarrassed by our cluelessness and pay without grumbling. The driver senses an opportunity and offers to pick us up again in two hours to give us a guided tour of the whole town for twenty-five dollars. In the absence of any other plan and thinking it might continue raining for the rest of the day, we accept.

It is midday and I have gone without drink or food since the night before. I don´t want to eat anything for fear of spending the day on the bog as well. Thankfully Jochen talks me into ordering a glass of cognac. As I am sipping it, the rocky waves in my belly begin to subside. I start to warm up and it even stops raining.

(our lunch table from above)

After two hours of pleasantly doing nothing, the taxi returns. We get in and are treated to a leisurely drive around the town. Colonia was founded by Portuguese and Spanish settlers and in the old town the way the streets are cobbled depends on which group lived there. There are remains of a town wall complete with a draw bridge and moat. The property market for the old part of town is booming and the simple one-storey stone structures fetch six-figure prices in dollars. Quite a few of them are painted in gentle tones of yellow or pink and there are flowers and weeds growing in cracks in the walls and coming up between the cobblestones. There are even two once elegant 1930s cars with bushes growing through their open roofs.


The rest of the town, if not the most interesting place in the universe, nonetheless has a quiet, safe feel to it that is a luxury after the heat and the traffic in the summer in Buenos Aires. Our guide slows down whenever we come to a house occupied by German immigrants or their descendants. We pass a bullfighting arena that was closed down when the paper industry left a few decades ago. Every now and then our driver stops and greets someone on the street. “Everyone knows each other here”, he says.

From Colonia the only thing you can see of Buenos Aires are the tops of a handful of skyscapers in Puerto Madero. In a few days I will start working in one of them.

(Jochen at the draw bridge)

We spend the rest of the afternoon eating, ambling about, dozing on a bench in the park and drinking too much cola. Our ferry goes back quite late but this is a good thing as the sea has calmed down considerably by then.

(my mother at the draw bridge)

In the end nothing bad happened. On the contrary. We had a very relaxing time, learnt a few things about Uruguayan history and took some nice pictures. But best of all, I discovered a taste for cognac and my mother promised to buy me a bottle before she leaves to help cure any future stomach troubles I might have.

Argentinian Splendour

I cannot imagine the neighbours in our block of flats getting together like this to sing and dance in historical costumes every Friday and Saturday. Our neighbours cannot even face talking to each other about their mutual noise complaints, preferring to send handyman Pedro instead. But we live in a busy street in the anonymous centre, Congreso, and this is La Boca, a mainly working-class and much more hands-on kind of place. La Boca´s most famous son, incidentally, is Diego Maradona, whose old football team, Boca Juniors, still inspires religious fan worship across the country.

Translated, the title of the performance means something like „Argentinian Splendour“. A musical history of Argentina of the last eighty years, it is funny and moving and the enthusiasm of its hundred-strong amateur cast is awe-inspiring. It is a „people´s production“, with actors of all ages who say they are „neighbours“. Taking place in a converted warehouse the company bought with funds from shows on streets and public squares, its three hundred red plastic seats are sold out. Barbecued sausages and burgers, sandwiches, homemade cakes and salads are on sale outside.

The show starts with the iconic 1920s and 30s Tango scenes that made Buenos Aires so famous. A varied cast of local folk who meet, drink, dance and do politics in the social club of the name of the title is introduced through scenes in the club´s bar and a series of hilarious call and response choruses.

Inevitably, The Girl From The Rich Family falls in love with The Dashing Rebel, a socialist in a sharp suit and pomaded hair who soon incurs the ill will of the local establishment figures and even sooner gets his girl pregnant. It is the fate of this daring couple and their son through the next fifty years of military coups, attempts at democracy, exile and return, repression and hope, that gives structure to the patchwork of historical snapshots that characterises the performance.

The social club´s members´ divisions, of course, reflect the divisions in wider society, and so we witness rich old ladies whispering their agreement with conservative dictatorships while trade union youths fight over whether „peronism“, a doctrine that mixes nationalism and social justice, means socialism. Breathtaking is the silent arrival of the nameless destitute, the „cartoneros“, in a shopping trolley during the portrayal of the economic decline of the 1990s. Ubiquitous today, the image of youths going through rubbish in the search for paper is now as iconic as that of the Tango dancers.

The show finishes with an underdeveloped Mad-Max style vision of the future, but by then it has well won me over. The melodies are catchy, the comic potential of some of the actors huge and the issues real. But most of all, it was a passionate performance by an ensemble cast who really do appear a... wait... community.

Buenos Aires is a Safe Place

Buenos Aires is a safe place. About a month ago, a security truck loaded up with pension money got robbed in broad daylight in the city by an armed gang who did not hesitate to gun down the driver and the security officer who was with him. Only one of them survived. The security company went on strike to protest about their daily exposure to violence and death, leading to cash shortages all over the city. This had such diverse consequences as not being able to take out money from the bank to pay the rent (boo) and being able to use the Subte (underground) for free for two days (yeay).

I have only received one death threat so far. It was issued to me by a punk with a speed hangover smoking and gibbering to himself in the doorway of the illegal venue across the street just as I was leaving the flat in my pyjamas on a sunny Sunday morning to get facturas for breakfast. I successfully pulled the “I´m foreign” card on him to avoid escalation, to which his irrefutably logical reply was “don´t look at me then”.

The most dangerous thing I missed by two weeks. Before I got here, Francesca got caught in a crossfire of police and a fugitive bank robber on Cordoba (main street near where we live) and had to jump into a garage to let the being-shot-at robber run past her. Action! Yeah!

No, it really is safe here. I have witnessed three street robberies in Corrientes (main street right where we live) and Jimmy´s mum had an expensive necklace ripped of her neck as she was leaving the Subte but the good thing is that you never feel that you are going to be the victim of violence for any motivation other than money. This may sound odd but I mean it, as long as a) you don´t look rich (easy) and b) you never take really important things such as credit cards with you and c) you are fully prepared to give what little cash you have on you to the first bidder with a shiny metal friend for backup, you´re fine.

I didn´t always feel like this. In the first few weeks I made the acquaintance of a street kid of about fourteen or fifteen who was always asking for change one block from our house. While I lived in Paris I learnt to ignore people who wanted something from you because every now and then, they will either turn out to be an absolute nutcase or they will take your acknowledgement to mean you want to spend the rest of the day with and all of your money on them. The rules could not be more different in Buenos Aires. Here it is a mortal offence to ignore someone asking you for change/the time/a cigarette/your drink/the piece of paper you were about to throw away. Not parting with your pennies on the other hand is fully accepted. You just have to be nice about it.

It wasn´t until the third time I passed the kid on our street, desperately holding onto the cool I thought I had picked up so well in Paris, when he started running after me, calling me deaf and skinny (well, I suppose he´s got a valid point there) and other insults, that I realised my strategy wasn´t working. I struggled to think of a way to avoid the menace of almost daily, escalating confrontations with a scrawny little kid with nothing to lose and a lot of similarly scrawny friends just round the corner. In the end it was Francesca who suggested that the next time I passed him, I should say something to him to show I was aware of his existence.

It wasn´t long before the plan was tested in action. Once again, the kid, seeing me, came running over the street, breaking off from snorting paco (a cheap and nasty residue from cocaine production) with his mates to launch into the “have you got some change for me” routine. This time I looked at him, and, according to my instructions, politely said, “I´m really sorry mate, I haven´t got any”. To my surprise he just mumbled a few half-mocking replies and shuffled back off to his crew.

This episode was key to my conversion to the belief that Buenos Aires is one of the safest places I have lived in. Yes, every day there are people who want something you have that they don´t have, whether it´s a wallet or a bottle of grapefruit soda. But that´s pretty much where it ends. Noone wants to knife you in the kidneys and leave you to bleed to death, very simply because it doesn´t make a damn difference to their situation. I like that.

A catalogue of Sins

Things you´d never think you´d see.

Robin eating a beef steak. Notice Mickey eyeing a piece of my dinner. Greedy bastard.

Robin at McDonalds. Just about to vomit.

And here my partner in crime.

My girls

My sister Lorna. Looking up from reading the menu at the "Taller", a café that Fere´s studio designed.

And Francesca, looking up.