We just came back home from our little trip to the town...
Living far from the center has it's advantages (like it's safer... erm... sometimes at least) but the main disadvatage is having to sit on a bus for 1,5 hour one way.
Today we took our search for flat a bit more seriously and decided that guarantee or not, we'll just start calling all the offers that suit us price-wise and see what happens.
Believe it or not, but the second ad we called was the jackpot!
Okay, it can always be better, however I don't think we are in a situation to be picky. So here is how it goes.
The flat is in the very center of the city, in a neighbourhood called Retiro, on a crossing of two major streets - Av. Santa Fe and Av. 9 de Julio (which by the way is the widest street I've seen in my life...). The main Subte intersection is just a few blocks away so we can conveniently get anywhere we want. Click here for a map of the city.
The flat itself is very small, but it has all the four walls, a ceiling and a floor and a
couple of extras like bed, table and some chairs which is always welcomed, right? It even has a balcony with a beautiful view to Buenos Aires' "backstage" (all the houses look good only from the front).
We are immensely happy right now, so probably we'll go out and get drunk somewhere tonight, which always carries some side effects, like meeting interesting people and ending up early in the morning talking jibberish, that we profoundly believe to be the most genuine thing produced by our brains in a long long time...
Since it's Thursday I believe that most of you are delivering a similiar performance, so remember to rise your glasses once or twice thinking of us!
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Looking for a flat...
Yesterday - as I already mentioned - we went to check out our first apartment (at least potentially ours, right?). The flat belongs to Ale's mother's lawyer, at least in theory...
We met ith him in his office in the center and he explained us that the flat has one room, plus a separate kitchen and bathroom and is under renovation at the moment. There is no furniture and no fridge, so provisionally we bargained the deal down to 500 pesos plus the expenses (as we must buy the fridge, and we are poor etc. etc.), which is incredibly good. Constantino (the lawyer) called the guy who is renovating the place (Alex - Ukrainian) that we'd show up shortly and off we went.
The flat is situated in center, next to faculty of medicine (cool - lots of young people), and - as Constantino explained - next to one beutiful building that was transported there from Italy, piece by piece. Nevermind that for now (yes, it's beautiful allright...).
We got there, Alex met us downstairs and led the way. The flat is a bit dark and with no particular view (we don't consider a brick wall a view...) but since it will be painted and all it definitely has a potential, and - of course - the price makes it quite beautiful for us hehehe...
We merely managed to see everything when in one moment 3 old "senoras" barged inside, opened the eyes (and mouths) wide in surprised, took a deep breath and started shouting something that after a while managed to resemble "what are you doing here and who are you and where have you got the keys from?". So we started explaining that we just came here to have a look at the place, in case we want to rent it and that we were sent by the owner. Bad move. One of the "senoras" explained - in quite undiplomatic way - that she was the owner of the place and it is her heritage. Whatever. We wanted to say goodbye and leave as soon as possible, but other of the "senoras" accused us of various things (like stealing argentinian land, jobs, properties etc etc.) and ordered us to stay as she intended to call the police, due to "violencia de domicilio". So all of a sudden we were intruders... Wonderful. Me, Niki and poor Alex told her that we were leaving at the very moment and she should stop talking nonsense - after all we didn't rent the flat just yet, we merely came to see it, but in this case we were not quite likely to come back. And off we went...
All in all the flat is okay, but if the situation is not clear we'd better steer away from it. At least for now.
We met ith him in his office in the center and he explained us that the flat has one room, plus a separate kitchen and bathroom and is under renovation at the moment. There is no furniture and no fridge, so provisionally we bargained the deal down to 500 pesos plus the expenses (as we must buy the fridge, and we are poor etc. etc.), which is incredibly good. Constantino (the lawyer) called the guy who is renovating the place (Alex - Ukrainian) that we'd show up shortly and off we went.
The flat is situated in center, next to faculty of medicine (cool - lots of young people), and - as Constantino explained - next to one beutiful building that was transported there from Italy, piece by piece. Nevermind that for now (yes, it's beautiful allright...).
We got there, Alex met us downstairs and led the way. The flat is a bit dark and with no particular view (we don't consider a brick wall a view...) but since it will be painted and all it definitely has a potential, and - of course - the price makes it quite beautiful for us hehehe...
We merely managed to see everything when in one moment 3 old "senoras" barged inside, opened the eyes (and mouths) wide in surprised, took a deep breath and started shouting something that after a while managed to resemble "what are you doing here and who are you and where have you got the keys from?". So we started explaining that we just came here to have a look at the place, in case we want to rent it and that we were sent by the owner. Bad move. One of the "senoras" explained - in quite undiplomatic way - that she was the owner of the place and it is her heritage. Whatever. We wanted to say goodbye and leave as soon as possible, but other of the "senoras" accused us of various things (like stealing argentinian land, jobs, properties etc etc.) and ordered us to stay as she intended to call the police, due to "violencia de domicilio". So all of a sudden we were intruders... Wonderful. Me, Niki and poor Alex told her that we were leaving at the very moment and she should stop talking nonsense - after all we didn't rent the flat just yet, we merely came to see it, but in this case we were not quite likely to come back. And off we went...
All in all the flat is okay, but if the situation is not clear we'd better steer away from it. At least for now.
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
News From World's End
Hi Everyone!
Anyway we have internet now. Woohoooo! :))
So, let's see what's been happening with us for those couple of days we were offlline.
In my last post I said we were off to look for a flat right? ...Wrong. We didn't see any flats, but we read a lot about them haha... Basically getting a flat here is not so easy and this is to a couple of reasons.
First of all the property law here is full of holes so the people need to take some precautions in order not to get conned. Almost every landlord renting a flat asks for a guarantee, which means that we must find a person who will guarantee for us that we will pay and if we don't that person will pay for us. The guarantee has to be an Argentinian and has to have a job, so we have a small problem here as no one will guarantee for us, since no one knows us that well. It is still possible to rent a flat without the guarantee but in such case te landlors will ask for rent many months in advance which - of course - we are not able to provide. What we are left with is looking for a flat through Ale's family and friends. In fact we are going to see a flat today around 3 o'clock (now.. really we are!). There is this lawyer of Ale's mother who is looking to rent a flat and he's willing to rent it to us. He actually has two flats in the center - one of 3 rooms for around a 1000 pesos and one of 1 room for not much cheaper so we still don't know what it's gonna be. We'll find out today.
Last week on Thursday we went out with some friends of Ale to a "punchi"... Punchi is a disco. It was a huge club in the middle of nowhere (at least for us) with all sorts of music, starting with some quasi reggae one-man-live-act and ending with tekkno and all. There were a couple of reasons we didn't like it that much: first of all there is too much people and one can hardly enjoy any dancing while others are dancing on one's feet; secondly the prices are very high (one small beer is 8 peso, while in a supermarket you pay 2 peso for a 1 liter) and last but not least it's hard to focus on the music when you have a gogo dancer's ass stuck right into your nose... Well, perhaps for some it is enjoyable, but I had to avoid looking in those directions as Niki was there with me :P. Either way we escaped pretty early which in the end was good, because we were not "dead" the next day and we went into the town on our own to explore a bit.
We went to a district called Palermo which is quite nice as there is lots of life there and it's very close to the center. Niki wanted to visit Telemedia to see if she can get a job over there. We managed to find the place, which was kind of a personal success for us - there is no sign indicating that we're at the right place. You just ring and then have to answer all sorts of stupid questions before you are allowed to get inside. Niki talked to someone and he told her that he'd get in touch next week as they always look for editors, so at the moment it looks good. I, personally, haven't started to look for jobs yet, but I have a couple of people looking them up for me
hehehe.
On saturday we went out again, but only in the neighbourhood. We just wanted to go for a quick beer, but since people here go out earliest at midnight it turned into an all-nighter. And we visited only two bars... Anyhow again we met some new people which produced a couple of interesting perspectives for me. Fernando (the one who explained me some of the political situation) and his pal Ernesto invited me to play football with them and their friends next week on Monday and made it specifically clear that no females are allowed on the field and that I would probably get home after 3 days, so I am looking forward to this. By the way, I already chose my colors (meaning football) and my team is RIVER, who subsequently reacted to my decision by loosing to Tigre (1-4) on Sunday, even though Fernando assured me that RIVER would win. Oh well... I hope they get their shit together!
I also met a guy called Santiago who is in need of a bass player for his reggae band, so it looks like I'd be back in the business soon. The only problem is that my bass is in Budapest...
Also on saturday, but before the evening banzai, Ale took us to La Boca (La Boca football team is the main rival of River, by the way). It's the old portside district of Buenos Aires, and one of the main turistic attractions with it's three streets where you can feel safe. The rest, especially during the night, is extremely dangerous so it's not advised to hang around there after dusk. Still, during the day there were lot's of people dancing tango in the streets and the houses are painted in bright colours, creating overall a pretty cool atmosphere.
We haven't posted any news for a couple of days because the access to internet is really a pain in the ass. However, yesterday two "half brains" came to hook up internet at Ale's house, so now we'll be available more often. I write "half brains" because the two individuals who - in theory - should be network technicians have virtually no knowledge whatsoever so in the end me and Niki had to explain them why this whole business is not working ("do you know what is a fixed IP?" , "Si, si" - and he's going on looking helplessly on the screen... pff...). Either way now I know hy they walk around in pairs... :D.
Anyway we have internet now. Woohoooo! :))
So, let's see what's been happening with us for those couple of days we were offlline.
In my last post I said we were off to look for a flat right? ...Wrong. We didn't see any flats, but we read a lot about them haha... Basically getting a flat here is not so easy and this is to a couple of reasons.
First of all the property law here is full of holes so the people need to take some precautions in order not to get conned. Almost every landlord renting a flat asks for a guarantee, which means that we must find a person who will guarantee for us that we will pay and if we don't that person will pay for us. The guarantee has to be an Argentinian and has to have a job, so we have a small problem here as no one will guarantee for us, since no one knows us that well. It is still possible to rent a flat without the guarantee but in such case te landlors will ask for rent many months in advance which - of course - we are not able to provide. What we are left with is looking for a flat through Ale's family and friends. In fact we are going to see a flat today around 3 o'clock (now.. really we are!). There is this lawyer of Ale's mother who is looking to rent a flat and he's willing to rent it to us. He actually has two flats in the center - one of 3 rooms for around a 1000 pesos and one of 1 room for not much cheaper so we still don't know what it's gonna be. We'll find out today.
Last week on Thursday we went out with some friends of Ale to a "punchi"... Punchi is a disco. It was a huge club in the middle of nowhere (at least for us) with all sorts of music, starting with some quasi reggae one-man-live-act and ending with tekkno and all. There were a couple of reasons we didn't like it that much: first of all there is too much people and one can hardly enjoy any dancing while others are dancing on one's feet; secondly the prices are very high (one small beer is 8 peso, while in a supermarket you pay 2 peso for a 1 liter) and last but not least it's hard to focus on the music when you have a gogo dancer's ass stuck right into your nose... Well, perhaps for some it is enjoyable, but I had to avoid looking in those directions as Niki was there with me :P. Either way we escaped pretty early which in the end was good, because we were not "dead" the next day and we went into the town on our own to explore a bit.
We went to a district called Palermo which is quite nice as there is lots of life there and it's very close to the center. Niki wanted to visit Telemedia to see if she can get a job over there. We managed to find the place, which was kind of a personal success for us - there is no sign indicating that we're at the right place. You just ring and then have to answer all sorts of stupid questions before you are allowed to get inside. Niki talked to someone and he told her that he'd get in touch next week as they always look for editors, so at the moment it looks good. I, personally, haven't started to look for jobs yet, but I have a couple of people looking them up for me
hehehe.
On saturday we went out again, but only in the neighbourhood. We just wanted to go for a quick beer, but since people here go out earliest at midnight it turned into an all-nighter. And we visited only two bars... Anyhow again we met some new people which produced a couple of interesting perspectives for me. Fernando (the one who explained me some of the political situation) and his pal Ernesto invited me to play football with them and their friends next week on Monday and made it specifically clear that no females are allowed on the field and that I would probably get home after 3 days, so I am looking forward to this. By the way, I already chose my colors (meaning football) and my team is RIVER, who subsequently reacted to my decision by loosing to Tigre (1-4) on Sunday, even though Fernando assured me that RIVER would win. Oh well... I hope they get their shit together!
I also met a guy called Santiago who is in need of a bass player for his reggae band, so it looks like I'd be back in the business soon. The only problem is that my bass is in Budapest...
Also on saturday, but before the evening banzai, Ale took us to La Boca (La Boca football team is the main rival of River, by the way). It's the old portside district of Buenos Aires, and one of the main turistic attractions with it's three streets where you can feel safe. The rest, especially during the night, is extremely dangerous so it's not advised to hang around there after dusk. Still, during the day there were lot's of people dancing tango in the streets and the houses are painted in bright colours, creating overall a pretty cool atmosphere.
After that we went over to San Telmo, which is close to La Boca. It's also a very nice district. We would actually like to live there but there are hardly any flats to rent there, and if there are any they are very expensive. San Telmo is an artist neighbourhood with narrow streets, small houses in colonial style and cool bars that are kept in their old form.
From San Telmo we moved to a nearby park to drink some mate.
When you come to Argentina, you'll notice people with these "bulbs" and thermoses, where they keep hot water. Lots of Argentinians drink mate all day and that's why they carry all this equipment with them all the time. How to prepare mate: put the mate herbs in the "bulb", but ther has to be lots of them like on the picture - the "bulb" actually contains more mate than water. Then slowly add hot water (not boiled). If you prefer to have mate a bit sweet, add some sugar but remember to do it before adding water. The first sips will be dusty - some people even spit it out, but later it will get better. Remember not to move the pipe (called "bombilla") around as it will get stuck. That's it!
On our way back we again had the problem of running out of change. That mean's that even if we have money (but no coins) we cannot get home by bus. It took us about an hour to change two pesos into two coins... Here's the fuller background on why this is happening:
There are simply not enough coins in Argentina. Most of the shops and Kiosks have a notice saying "no change". This may look funny but it isn't funny at all, when you cannot get home, you cannot take a bus, not because you don't have money, but because you cannot buy the stupid ticket because of the stupid coins. Newspapers already say that there is a black market in coin trade, meaning that some people sell coins on interest (100 pesos = 97 pesos in coins). So everyone is saving change like mad, on the contrary to Europe where everyone is trying to get rid of it. According to the government the situation will improve in the first months of next year when more coins will be released. One question remains: what the hell are we supposed to do until then??
All right, gotta go!
Cheers to y'all!
From San Telmo we moved to a nearby park to drink some mate.
When you come to Argentina, you'll notice people with these "bulbs" and thermoses, where they keep hot water. Lots of Argentinians drink mate all day and that's why they carry all this equipment with them all the time. How to prepare mate: put the mate herbs in the "bulb", but ther has to be lots of them like on the picture - the "bulb" actually contains more mate than water. Then slowly add hot water (not boiled). If you prefer to have mate a bit sweet, add some sugar but remember to do it before adding water. The first sips will be dusty - some people even spit it out, but later it will get better. Remember not to move the pipe (called "bombilla") around as it will get stuck. That's it!
On our way back we again had the problem of running out of change. That mean's that even if we have money (but no coins) we cannot get home by bus. It took us about an hour to change two pesos into two coins... Here's the fuller background on why this is happening:
There are simply not enough coins in Argentina. Most of the shops and Kiosks have a notice saying "no change". This may look funny but it isn't funny at all, when you cannot get home, you cannot take a bus, not because you don't have money, but because you cannot buy the stupid ticket because of the stupid coins. Newspapers already say that there is a black market in coin trade, meaning that some people sell coins on interest (100 pesos = 97 pesos in coins). So everyone is saving change like mad, on the contrary to Europe where everyone is trying to get rid of it. According to the government the situation will improve in the first months of next year when more coins will be released. One question remains: what the hell are we supposed to do until then??
All right, gotta go!
Cheers to y'all!
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Politics
Couple of words about the political situation.
It's not much different than anywhere else, meaning that the politicians don't give a jackshit about the people who brought them to power and are always occupied with stealing as much as they can. So nothing new here.
Ale's friend Fernando threw some light on the peculiarities of Argentinian politics last night. The funny thing is that effectively there is only one party here that counts, or - to be more specific - has any chance of getting into the congress. It's called JUSTICIANISMO or PERONISM
More about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justicialismo .
and here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justicialist_Party
Of course there are some other parties but they have virtually no chance to get their share of this country as Justicianistas have been having a firm grip on everything here for much too long. Curious thing about the party is that it consists of 3 fractions, namely left wing, center and right wing. This results in a mess that is particularily visible whenever there is any debate between the politicians, as left wing Justicianista is throwing shit on right wing Justicianista and vice versa. The president of Argentina is from the left wing. His name is Nestor Kirchner.
The above information is merely what I managed to understand last night from Fernando so it might be less acurate than the present situation really is.
That's about it for today. We're going to look for a flat later on and it's not an easy task. I will get back to this topic another day.
Cheers,
Marcinito and Nikita
It's not much different than anywhere else, meaning that the politicians don't give a jackshit about the people who brought them to power and are always occupied with stealing as much as they can. So nothing new here.
Ale's friend Fernando threw some light on the peculiarities of Argentinian politics last night. The funny thing is that effectively there is only one party here that counts, or - to be more specific - has any chance of getting into the congress. It's called JUSTICIANISMO or PERONISM
More about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justicialismo .
and here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justicialist_Party
Of course there are some other parties but they have virtually no chance to get their share of this country as Justicianistas have been having a firm grip on everything here for much too long. Curious thing about the party is that it consists of 3 fractions, namely left wing, center and right wing. This results in a mess that is particularily visible whenever there is any debate between the politicians, as left wing Justicianista is throwing shit on right wing Justicianista and vice versa. The president of Argentina is from the left wing. His name is Nestor Kirchner.
The above information is merely what I managed to understand last night from Fernando so it might be less acurate than the present situation really is.
That's about it for today. We're going to look for a flat later on and it's not an easy task. I will get back to this topic another day.
Cheers,
Marcinito and Nikita
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
News From World's End
Yo kids!
We arrived! :D
Damn, all of a sudden I have no idea what to write and where to start, so the best I came up with is to start at the beginning (duh...)
As most of you know we flew from Vienna, and Niki's father took us there with his girlfriend Eva. The trip was okay and the check-in clerk from Iberia could not understand how come we speak spanish... Well, not all the world speaks english just yet (this is particularily valid for Spanish as they speak their own language only).
After three hours we arrived to Madrid where - after minor communications break down - Elisa and Jorge picked us up and transfered us securily to their sweet nest in hmmm... what was it? "Tres Campos" I believe... So many thanks to them for taking us in :D
The next day in the morning they took us back to the airport. Man.. This airport is huge. They actually have a small underground train that takes the passengers to the terminal and then you still have to walk for another 20 minutes to find the right gate. Middle finger in the air to the authors of the magnificent idea of offering wireless internet for like 5 euros / 30 minutes. WE ARE POOR PEOPLE FROM EX-COMMUNIST COUNTRIES!!! Now is it our fault we were born on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain and our governments dedicade most of their efforts to stuffing their own pockets instead of making our lives easier?!
Nevermind.
The next chapter consisted of 12 hours on the plane to Buenos Aires. The pilots had good sense of humour to show us live feed from the plane's tail as we approach the drakest clouds I ever seen in my life. The good thing about it was that when it started shaking we could make sure that the plane is actually still in one piece.
We even got food and drinks on the plane. I took a good use of free bevies (as usual) as the only way I can sit on my ass with the knees up my throat is when I am promptly drunk.
When we arrived in Buenos Aires we got a free sample of Argentinian beaurocracy, specifically how they make everything much more complicated than it should be. We spent half an hour in a queue to the passport control, because it works on a variation of "draw-a-number-and-wait-for-your-turn" scheme. We survived. And we even discovered that no one had lost our luggage and nothing is missing.
Alejandra (shortly "Ale") was waiting for us with her sister Gabi and a little fella Feliks. We jumped in the car and headed off from the airport. It was raining as hell (it's the end of the winter here). Buenos Aires is so big that even those who live here (like Ale) loose their way, but two nice policemen helped us out. So after all these adventures we arrived to Ale's place where we spent the next couple of hours drinking beer and entartaining Feliks.
Today we went into the city for the first time. Unfortunately I cannot upload any pictures just yet, so sorry about that. Either way this really is a different world. Ale lives in the so called "provincia", an outskirt of Buenos Aires, so we planned to use a train to get to the center but it burned down somewhere on the way to our station (sic!), so we jumped on the bus instead. The tricky thing is that you need change to get on the bus and we had only notes. Now, no one will break your money unless you buy something... But Ale managed to solve this minor difficulty.
The bus took us from the provincia called "Olivos" to the center in about 45 minutes which according to Ale is really fast. On the way I learned that to make a driving licence in Argentina one doesn't have to learn how to drive as it will all come out during the exam, and the exam itself costs circa 50 pesos, which is less than 20 bucks. So what we're looking at is that Marcinito will be a happy owner of an argentinian driving licence if need be. At the moment I just don't have what to drive and maybe it's better, because it really shows in the traffic that the people here just know HOW to drive, but never heard of any traffic rules.
The center of Buenos Aires is really huge and full of people. We only walked on two streets and still it took us some 2 hours. On the way we bought sim cards for our phones, but we were also informed that there is no way we can text home... well.. unless it's Spain. Sms use is restricted to within Argentina (plus Spain) - don't ask me why. So we called home which probably didn't leave much credit on our phones and it took me some 5 tries to finally reach my parents... and they still couldn't hear me right.
It's really a pity that I cannot show you any photos we took today - it would show much more than my dodgy writings. Particularily the metro (called "Subte") looks quite impressive as it most probably remembers times from before my birth and the Subte workers are on strike today (and every now and then). It doesn't mean that they don't work... They work and they let all the people in for free so we really support the strike of the Subtle workers now :D I wish they could be on strike more often. We also saw something about 4 different demonstrations today, all of which consisting of not more than 50 people, and we still don't know what is it they are demonstrating against. There will be elections here soon, so I figure this kind of activity is about to escalate. Anyhow the demonstrants don't seem to have any permissions to demonstarte and they do so in the middle of the traffic, stopping it effectively for the time being.
Now we are back to Olivos, drinking mate at the house of Ale's parents who try to throw some light on the situation here. We need to find a place to live (more importantly in a neighbourhood were we won't get killed and robbed after dark) and some jobs, but the moods are good so there's nothing to worry about just yet.
Kisses and hugs from marcinito and nikita!!!
P.S. For my parents (and anyone who's rich enough to call me here...) my phone number is 0054 11 15 586 702 21. Now, no one here is sure if this is correct... Another version suggests to skip the "11". For the time being this is all I've got but I'll try to work on it a bit more.
Saturday, September 15, 2007
Intro
Yo pipol!!!! :D
So this is it.
We are officially gone to the end of the world...
However, we decided that we'll still invade your lives from time to time and let you know what's up with us. We hope to have regular access to internet, but if you notice that there are no news from us for a long time, please organize a rescue mission...
Make sure to comment on all the post so that we know what's up with you.
Cheers and wish us luck. We'll need it!
marcinito and nikita
So this is it.
We are officially gone to the end of the world...
However, we decided that we'll still invade your lives from time to time and let you know what's up with us. We hope to have regular access to internet, but if you notice that there are no news from us for a long time, please organize a rescue mission...
Make sure to comment on all the post so that we know what's up with you.
Cheers and wish us luck. We'll need it!
marcinito and nikita
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