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.