Bueno to be here!
First published in Very Interesting Magazine, March-April 2021
More than meat in Buenos Aires
A literary review of ‘Bad Times in Buenos Aires’ by Miranda France called her writing “wonderful because… (it) catches colour, rhythm, smog, smell and sadness.” Add vibrancy and you have encapsulated what the sprawling city of Buenos Aires is about.
Colour your world
Not only has La Boca, a barrio (neighbourhood) built by Italian immigrants, been voted as one of the world’s most bright colourful places by CNN Travel, amongst a myriad others, but the flag of Buenos Aires Province has its fair share of bright colours too.
The flag of Buenos Aires features green that represents the fields of the province, blue symbolises its rivers, the sea and the sky and red federalism, and yellow (in the half sunflower and the sun) the abundance to be had.
Along Caminito, the main pedestrian walkway of La Boca, each house and its corrugated metal roof is painted a different colour, San Telmo, the boho artists’ quarter, teems with pastel stucco colonial buildings and delightful graffiti and even the office of the president of Argentina is baby pink and goes by the name of Casa Rosada.
Wikipedia relates how La Boca, after a long strike, seceded from Argentina in 1882. The rebels promptly raised the Genoese flag, not surprisingly as many of the early settlers of La Boca were from the Italian city of Genoa. The then president, Julio Argentino Roca, personally tore down the offensive flag.
La Boca saw an influx of Italian immigrants, starting in 1830. It is said that there were so many Genoese all along this part of the Buenos Aires waterfront at the time that the name La Boca is a spin-off of the name of a neighbourhood in Genoa called Boccadasse.
A favourite local joke around here goes: ‘An Argentine is an Italian who speaks Spanish and wants to be English’.
At Faena Hotel, voted one of the top 5 hotels in Argentina by Condé Nast Travelers Readers’ Choice Awards in 2018 and formerly known as Faena Hotel and Universe, in the Puerto Madero Waterfront in Buenos Aires, you expect to be wowed. You are.
Faena, set in a large historical wheat mill, uses red as their signature colour. Maybe because red is the colour of extremes and also of passionate love, seduction, violence, danger, anger, and adventure. Maybe not.
Perhaps Alan Faena, the owner – an Argentine hotelier and real estate developer – merely likes using red, in his houses and his hotels. He has a flair for drama after all, as the Architectural Digest reported in November 2016.
Entering Faena Hotel you walk along a red Hollywoodian carpet, a taste of things – and the theatrical design – to come. The Library Lounge Bar exudes seduction with carmine velvet drapes and vermilion cut crystal vases. Bistro Sur is an all-white in-house restaurant – the walls, floor, ceiling, curtains, tables and chairs, table cloths and crockery are crisp white – that accentuates claret-hued crystal wine goblets and cherry red rhombus-shaped carpets under each table.
The rhythm of tango
The rhythm of Buenos Aires is the rhythm of the tango.
Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986), the famed Argentine essayist and poet, once wrote, “Without the streets nor dusks of Buenos Aires, a tango cannot be written.” And, “The tango is a direct expression of something that poets have often tried to state in words: the belief that a fight may be a celebration.”
Tango originated in the 1880s along the Rio de la Plata (La Plata River), the natural border between Argentina and Uruguay. In 2009 UNESCO approved the tango in the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage Lists.
In many neighbourhoods with a history of tango such as La Boca and San Telmo you come across tango – by street artists or spontaneously by a porteño, as the inhabitants of Buenos Aires are often called, walking past – danced in the street, or in establishments from where the sounds of tango music waft onto the pavements.
Confiteria Ideal in Suipacha Avenue, that runs parallel to 9 de Julio Avenue, reputed to be the widest avenue in the world, used to be, before closing for renovation, world famous for its tango.
Confiteria Ideal was founded by a Spanish immigrant, Manuel Rosendo Fernández, and his French wife. Over the years its tables have welcomed the likes of Jorge Luis Borges, Argentine poet and author, Juan Domingo Perón, elected as president of Argentina three times, his wife Eva Perón, better known as Evita, Maurice Chevalier, Yoko Ono, Madonna and Antonio Banderas.
Until a few years ago you could walk into a milonga, a gathering of tangueros (tango dancers), at Confiteria Ideal on a week day afternoon, take a seat next to the dance floor and feel as if you were part of living history. You would come here to watch the feet of the dancers as they would seemingly move in slow motion but also to marvel at the marble columns, stained glass, grand chandeliers, wood panelling, high ceilings, stucco mouldings and to listen to tango music from the 1930s and 1940s.
Confiteria Ideal reopened at the start of 2020 after extensive restoration; here’s to hoping people will resume to come here to experience the magic of Argentine tango.
The scent of a city
Admittedly, if there was no smog in Buenos Aires, Greenpeace wouldn’t have bothered to place a respirator mask on a 23 metre high statue in front of the Argentine congress in May 2018 in order to demand clean air and to protest pollution.
Nevertheless I think UK artist Kate McLean who creates ‘smell maps’ of cities as part of her Sensory Maps project, will agree with me that Buenos Aires smells of parilla rather than emissions of various kinds.
A parilla is a typical Argentine steakhouse; it also refers to the method the meat is cooked or the metal grill that is used. The smell of a parilla is the smell of Argentine braaivleis which makes it easy for South Africans to feel right at home here.
In Buenos Aires you will eat well too. La Cabrera, a parilla with a difference in trendy Palermo, comes highly recommended. La Cabrera is not a traditional grill; its website proclaims “In the country of the cows, La Cabrera was positioned as a cult grill, one of the best in the city.” It was.
Meltingly soft duck and dainty chunks of beef were accompanied by about sixteen mini-ramekins with a selection of the most delectable condiments and side dishes, each specially made to accompany the main dishes. We were served with a complimentary glass of bubbly at the end of our sticky-fingered meal.
The meal at La Cabrera turned out to beat the multi-award-winning Cabaña Las Lilas at the Puerto Madero Waterfront. Their signature peach bubbly cocktails and complimentary music bread makes a culinary visit worth its while though. Daring eaters can enjoy starters of blood sausage, veal chitterlings (small intestines), sweetbreads and mixed offal.
Other typical foodie smells of Buenos Aires are that of dulce de leche, an Argentine caramel or ‘candy made of milk’, toasted candied peanuts or almonds called garrapiñadas, cooked in large copper frying pans at mobile street carts, and Italian-style coffee, as the city is riddled with atmospheric coffee cafés.
Pull up the couch
Psychoanalysis is an integral part of life in Argentina. No wonder then that this country has the highest number of psychologists per capita in the world, of which nearly half are in Buenos Aires.
It is said that Argentinians are obsessed with finding themselves, that they are inherently melancholic and that they like to talk more than what they like to listen.
Yet the stereotypical Argentinian is said to have a large ego. Even Pope Francis who was born in Buenos Aires, has, it is said, joked about the Argentine ego by once asking, “How does an Argentinian commit suicide?” and then providing the answer, “He climbs on top of his ego and throws himself off.”
Many porteños are in therapy that lasts for years, attending several sessions a week. Some newspapers devote a page or more to psychological matters, television shows and theatre productions that deal with therapy are routinely popular and most tango songs are ‘about people losing their mothers or their lovers’ as a psychoanalyst quipped.
The vibes of Buenos Aires
For a visitor to Buenos Aires, life can only be bueno.
Where else will you find a bookshop in a former performing arts theatre (opened in 1919), then converted into a cinema, with still-intact opulent theatre boxes, original ceiling frescoes, marble columns, elegant gilded balconies and a stage with burgundy velvet curtains that serves as a coffee shop? El Ateneo Grand Splendid was voted by National Geographic as the world’s most beautiful book shop in 2019.
In its heyday El Ateneo featured appearances by tango legend Carlos Gardel, amongst others.
Tripadvisor rates a visit to Teatro Colón, considered one of the best theatres in the world, as the number one thing-to-do out of 874, in Buenos Aires. Its architecture and its acoustics contribute to its renown as one of the best opera houses in the world, together with La Scala in Milan, the Royal Opera House in London and the Opera Garnier in Paris.
The seven-story Teatro Colón occupies a full city block and can seat close to 2500 audience members, apart from standing room for another 1000. The central chandelier boasts 700 light bulbs.
The who’s who of the classical music, opera and ballet world have performed here: Luciano Pavarotti, Margot Fonteyn, Placido Domingo, Mikhail Barishnikov, Herbert von Karajan, Maria Callas, Yehudi Menuhin, Rudolf Nureyev, Montserrat Caballé, Kiri Te Kanawa and Astor Piazzolla, the Argentine tango composer and virtuoso on the bandoneon (a type of accordion).
Teatro Colón, as we know it today (notwithstanding refurbishment that started at the end of 2006), was opened in May 1908; in 1910 in what came to be known as Tragic Week (Semana Trágica in Spanish) in Buenos Aires, the theatre was bombed by anarchists. The bomb landed in the middle of the orchestra. 20 theatre-goers were injured.
The backstage tours – including 3 floors below ground – take you into the belly of the theatre, providing an insider glimpse of the gobsmacking interior, the rehearsal rooms, costume department and dressing rooms of the ballerinas.
Teatro Colón is situated on 9 de Julio Avenue, a major thoroughfare in the CBD of Buenos Aires, and reputedly the widest avenue in the world.
It is not even necessary to cross 9 de Julio to walk just over 1 km to El Ateneo Grand Splendid (there are 2 other branches of El Ateneo too but none as gorgeous as Grand Splendid).
The Cementerio de la Recoleta is Buenos Aires’s city of the dead. It is a well-known landmark where many famous personalities including Eva Peron have been buried, and it’s a must-see. Although some of the mausoleums and graves are in a state of mild disrepair the art nouveau sculptures and the tree-lined alleyways allow for a pleasant walkabout. An interesting tradition is that death dates are engraved on the mausoleums and graves but usually a birth date is not supplied.
A stone’s throw away from Cementerio de la Recoleta, in the place of a general store dating from the 19th century, you will find a traditional café by the name of La Biela.
La Biela (it means The Connecting Rod which is a part of a piston engine) came about in the 1950s when a group of petrol heads chose to gather here, across the road from the cemetery, having been thrown out of most other coffee shops. As time went by members of the Argentine Association of Sport Automobiles chose La Biela as their ‘headquarters’.
Black and white photos of racing car champions still adorn the walls and a statue of a former Argentine racing car driver, Oscar ‘The Eaglet’ Galvez, greets patrons on the pavement. Don’t be surprised if some of the clients do not acknowledge your greeting – they are life-sized male mannequins representing famous authors that used to frequent La Biela. Look out for a gentleman with bushy eyebrows reading a book with yellowed pages and a guy with folded hands resting on a walking stick.
From La Biela it is less than a kilometre to the Floralis Genérica, a 23-meter high steel and aluminium sculpture of a daisy-like flower. Floralis Genérica is situated in a park in the middle of the city. An electrical system allows its petals to close in the evening and to open every morning.
As was once written – in National Geographic in 2013 – “Buenos Aires is a city that needs an exclamation after its name. And maybe all caps.”
Like this. BUENOS AIRES!
Plan ahead
- La Boca: secretsofbuenosaires.com/la-boca-buenos-aires-visit-guide/
- Faena Hotel: faena.com/buenos-aires/
- La Cabrera: lacabrera.com.ar/en/
- Cabaña Las Lilas: restaurantlaslilas.com.ar/
- El Ateneo Grand Splendid: turismo.buenosaires.gob.ar/en/atractivo/el-ateneo-grand-splendid
- Teatro Colón: classeturista.com/en/argentina-en/teatro-colon-buenos-aires/
- Cementerio de la Recoleta: turismo.buenosaires.gob.ar/en/otros-establecimientos/recoleta-cemetery
- La Biela: labiela.com
- Floralis Genérica: buenosaires.gob.ar/floralis-generica
ilsezietsmanblog 
Fassinerend! Jy het so ‘n wonderlike slag om feite interessant aan te bied.
Wat ‘n lieflike kompliment! Dankie Tannie Frannie.