September 14 - Buenos Aires

It was just another day at school: getting up early, having 4 hours Spanish classes in the morning, one hour lunch break, which I spent with Remo and Ute in our favourite pizzeria and then 2 hours of private lessons. For Remo and Ute it was the last day at school

Ute, Remo and Katja after their last morning lessons

and after the morning classes there was a small ceremony on the 6th floor where they got their certificates and said goodbye to the teachers. I joined them because the 3 of us wanted to go to "our" restaurant one last time together.
Then I had to hurry for my private lessons which were better than the day before but it still took me an eternity to make just one sentence in Spanish.
If I ever complain about my English again I just need to remind myself of these Spanish lessons and I will be satisfied immediately:-)

me during my private lesson
the chair with the small attached table was really uncomfortable

After the classes I spent about 2hours on the 6th floor in the common room. I checked my emails quickly and then started planning Christoph's and my upcoming trip using the Southpass: how many tickets would we need to go from A to B, how long would it take us etc.
After 1 hour sitting in front of the computer a tango beginner class started in that room and I watched them with half an eye. Only really young and very good looking students took part... I felt pretty old...
Before I went back to "my home" I bought some sweets and vitamin water in a 24h shop.

now I finally understand that painting in the stairwell of our school

After dinner I continued preparing our upcoming trip and then went to bed pretty early.

September 13 - Buenos Aires

I got up at 6:30, left the house at 7:25, caught the bus at 7:45 and was lucky because I could take a seat on the bus and on the subway this morning:-)
At 8:55 I arrived at school. Remo, Ute and I felt more and more bored and were longing for the good old days:- )
However at the end of our morning class we had nice game: we got cards from our teacher with "our new identity" and we had to questioning one other classmate about his/her new identity and we were being interviewed too. Then we had to present the guy we'd just questioned. It was the first time that I really talked with Bruce, our classmate from the US, who impressed me very much because he was already 70 and still tried to learn a foreign language.
At the end of the course I asked Bruce to join us for lunch but he refused politely. For him we all must be "very young chick's" (as we would say in Germany:-)).
For lunch, Joerg, Remo, Ute, Anne, 2 other Swiss women and I went to an empanada restaurant. When Anne started to push the tables and chairs together, so that all of us could sit together, Remo just rolled his eyes and said: " Now the Germans already redecorating the restaurant!":-)
My private afternoon class didn't start easy-going either. In the morning we had just learnt the future form in Spanish. Angela, my afternoon toucher, agonzied me with questions like:
"how will the world look like in the future?"
or
"how will future cars look like/be?"

How was I supposed to know? I mean, it was my 2nd week in a Spanish ever... There was no chance to answer this in Spanish...
I begged her to change the topic and then the course got better:-)

At the end of my private class I was heading for Once Station where I wanted to meet Ute.
I had looked it up on my map briefly and thought, that I knew where to go => I was soooo wrong.
1) When I took the subway "Linea A" I thought that I had gotten on it at the terminal station and that it didn't matter which train I was taking. BUT it wasn't terminal station and so I realized that I was taking the train into the wrong direction. I stayed seated on that train which turned around and went back (now into the right direction) after waiting a while at terminal station.
2) Then I got off at the wrong station. I finally took out my map and wanted to walk to Once Station then but then I realized that my map didn't show my current position anymore => I was already too far away from downtown district...
3) I had no other choice than taking the metro back. But - stupid as I was that day - I got on the wrong train again. After taking trains into the wrong direction twice I finally realized that you had to be very careful at what side of the street you enter the subway. I was so used to enter subway stations anywhere and then decide about the direction once I was underground. But in Buenos Aires the side of the street and a sign over the entrance tells you about the direction you wanna go. Once you are underground there is no choice for changing directions anymore....
=> OK, now I got it! After paying for 2 unnecessary tickets...(ok, they were cheap, but next time I just shouldn't trust my memory only...)

When I arrived at 17:15 at Once Station I had a bad conscience. I hoped Ute hadn't had to wait for me for such a long time. Luckily she had just arrived too.
First we walked around that station and then we took a closer look to a memorial place for victims that died in a disco several years ago. It must have been a kind of "illegal" disco and when the fire broke out the kids couldn't escape (no emergency exits or locked ones).

Once Station
the yellow box was a medical station:
people could just line up and got free medical advice and care

lots of monuments in Buenos Aires are behind fences..

all the names of the disco-victims are written down on that wall
(Ute and I assumed that the disco had been behind that walls)

the memorial, located next to the street

still the memorial

old shoes were hanging everywhere:
I wasn't sure whether these were the shoes of the
victims...

Then Ute and I walked around the blocks:

nice house, isn't it?

kind of typical house, especially with that carved-out door

in my opinion: too much and too pompous....

beautiful house (but for geriatric medicine...)

I am still not sure what to think of Buenos Aires. On one hand there is potential (see the houses above) and a certain atmosphere, but on the other hand there are ugly buildings right next to the most beautiful one's:

apartment buidling

and the whole city is dirty and garbage is lying everywhere. The sidewalks are uneven, you need to pay attention not to step into dog-shit and the most of the nice houses need renovation too

one of the better sidewalks, but still uneven and
full of wholes...

Buenos Aires is a place for really old cars:-)

Ute and I had some ice cream (really good, especially that in Europe unkown flavour "dulce de leche"), went into a church

and inside the church

and finally arrived at 18:45 at the restaurant (= Parrilla = Steakhouse) where we wanted to meet Joerg and Remo. Joerg was already there and so we took a seat outside the restaurant. Remo joined us 15 minutes later. Ute assured us several times if we didn't wanna eat there she could understand it and we could go to a different place. She had seen that restaurant about one week earlier when she got lost and was walking through the streets. She told us that at night it looked much better and much more locals were inside. During daylight it didn't look that welcoming. But we decided to eat there. And the missing locals were just a "time-problem": in Argentina you never eat dinner before 21:00. So we were just too early.
All 4 of us ordered asado con papas fritas (= grill-steak with french fries) and the ordering process by itself was already funny: none of us was carrying a dictionary and 3 of us wanted to order the meat well done but none of us knew the vocabulary. So we pointed on a picture in the menu that showed a bloody piece of meat and said "no blood" but the waiter couldn't speak English at all and didn't get it at first. Finally, after pointing on the blood and shaking the head he repeated "cocida" several times, we nodded and hoped that he got it:-)

the Parrilla

my grilled steak

Jörg and Ute

During dinner Jörg told us from his 7month trip in Southamerica about 5 years ago. He had travelled with 2 friends and they had seen and done amazing stuff. One of his stories impressed me the most: when they were robbed on a beach in Brazil they tried to get their belongings back. On of his friends were facing a guy with a huge stone and he was facing a guy carrying a broken bottle. They were shouting at each other and when they guy with the broken bottle tried to hit him, Joerg could avoid being hit but fell into the sand. Then finally he realized "how stupid it was " to fight. They gave up, but his friend couldn't relax afterwards. He saw crime and robbery everywhere. And now the attitude of Joerg, that impressed me so much: He said, he wasn't scared or paranoid after the robbery. In his opinion it was just a mental thing. He told us we simply needed to record it/think of it as development aid for a poor country and not as robbery, then everything would be fine and you wouldn't have any nightmares later on".
Amazing attitude!!!!

At about 20:45 we paid and Remo and I decided to take the subway together. On the TV of the Parrilla we saw a demonstration that had just started around 19:00 and that took place mainly in front of Plaza Mayo. Remo and I wanted to take a closer look. Since my arrival there had been demonstrations almost every day. Usually "small" groups like banker or busdriver went on strike. But on that evening the middle and upper class of Argentina protested against the government. It looked incredibly croweded on TV and we wanted to join for a while. So we took the metro Linea A back to Plaza de Mayo and didn't change underground to Linea D. Instead we went out of the station and walked through the crowd.
Some impressions of the demonstration:

Remo and I on Linea A
a very old but nice subway

inside Linea A: wood!

Linea A from the outside

people demonstrating

it reminded me of our carneval :-)

For me it felt like a very peaceful demonstration. People were singing (of course I didn't understand what) and clapping pots and spoons together, it was very loud and full but as long as we stayed police wasn't needed.
When we reached Linea D we got on it (after 30 or 45 minutes struggeling through the crowd) and when I arrived at terminal station I was lucky to catch my bus immediately.
At 22:30 I was back in the house, said a short "hello" to Victoria and then I wrote down some notes for my blog before I went to bed at 23:00.
Unfortunately I woke up at 1:00 again because my stomach complained a lot and I felt nauseated. I needed to go to the bathroom, had to pour cold water over my face and wait for a while, until my stomach was feeling a little better. Maybe the meat was too fatty and I should have cut off the fat part completely...Or the ice cream... it's idle... I will both give a second chance:-)

 

September 12 - Buenos Aires

That day I got up pretty late: 6:30, but managed to left the house at 7:30. At the bus station I had to wait for the bus very long (about 30 minutes) so I already thought my bus wouldn't operate on that day... When the bus finally arrived it was crowded and so did the metro. I was late at school but they had just started. Our teacher Alfredo usually didn't show up before 9:10 and so I was just 5 minutes late:-)
No one of our "old group" from the previous week was really motivated that day. Compared to the lessons we had one week ago it wasn't the same anymore. Especially our new German classmate got us on our nerves. She had to make a comment to everything even though it wasn't important at all. Her main point was just saying something...
After classes she and another "girl" from the Netherlands joined us for lunch in our favourite restaurant. It was nice to speak in English again but for Remo, whose English wasn't that good, that lunchbreak must have been boring... I ate "creppes Capresse" again and then I had to hurry to my private class.
At 16:00, after my class, I met Ute and Remo in the common room on the 6th floor and then we walked to that shop where we could buy soccer tickets for the match "Boca Juniors vs Independiente" on upcoming Sunday. We had found out about that shop in a brochure about Argentina which we had gotten from the Southpass-travel agency. As you might read later in the blog, it was very difficult to buy soccer tickets:
Usually only members of the club can go there.
Another option was to buy our tickets at the tourist information, but there they cost 950 pesos or more (but for seats).
Ute had written an email to that shop
(check:
www. juanchofutbol.com.ar
or
tourporbaires@hotmail.com )
and had received an affirmative reply: they still had tickets (or let's say membershipcards) available (these tickets were for the standing area only, but within the real fan-block, so a lot of fun and atmosphere was guaranteed).

We walked to that place whose location was close to Ute's youth hostel. Then we had to knock on the door before a woman let us in. She could only speak Spanish so we tried hard to make ourselves understood.
It was no problem for Remo too to get a ticket (even though he wasn't mentioned in Ute's email). We had to pay 650 Arg$ in cash and got a voucher back. Then we had to choose between several picking-up places. Ute and Remo chose the one in front of that shop and I chose the "closest" one to my location: Palermo subway station.
Then I wanted to know how I would recognize the bus but the shop clerk didn't understand me. Luckily another costumer translated for me. The bus would be an orange school bus and would pick me up just in front of a McDonalds store. I was convinced that I would find it:-)
After our successful shopping we went to Ute's favourite bar that was one of the "protected one's". This means pretty much the same as declaring a historic monument in Germany.
The bar was half a library, had pretty old furniture and a very good atmosphere. We spent there some time, talking and drinking and at 18:45 Remo and I hit the road. On the way back we stopped at a church, went inside and then continued our way back home. We figured out that we had to take the same metro, but his stop was - of course - before mine:-)
Unfortunately I missed the bus by 1 minute and so I had time to enter a 24h shop and look through all the products. I finally bought something to drink, Kinderüberraschung and a deodorant that looked like a cream (never seen it before but I wanted to try it...)
At 21:15 I was back "home" and had dinner with Victoria.
I asked her about taking a taxi in Argentina and was so surprised about her reply:
At school we had learnt that we should always take a radio taxi:
These are taxis that have a sign on the top that says "Radio Taxi". We were told that the safest way was to call the company in advance but that we could also hail a taxi in the streets (as long as it had that sign on the top). We shouldn't get into an unmarked taxi or into one that was stationary at the side of the road waiting for customers.
When I asked Victoria about the exact address I could tell a taxi driver she said she didn't wanna scare me but she would never take a taxi in Argentina...
When I told her about the radio taxis she answered that for her only calling the company in advance (so someone would be responsible) would be a safe option. She also told me that her husband got robbed in a taxi once and several of her friends too. When her husband had hailed a taxi the taxidriver had worked together with some criminals. When the taxi stopped at a traffic light, people got in the taxi: one into the passenger seat and another one next to her husband in the backseat. Then they took all valuables from him and he had to get off the taxi at a place he didn't wanna go....
That story scared me a lot and I decided that I would always try to call the company first or find someone you could call a taxi for me instead....

At 23:00 I went to bed.

 

September 11 - Buenos Aires

Today it was just a normal day at school. I got up at 6:30 (pretty late), but could finish my morning procedure very quickly. I left the house at 7:20, caught the bus at 7:45 and was at school at 8:50. There was even time to buy a coke before the class started.
In the morning we learnt lots of new words (related to the house: things in a bathroom, living room, bedroom) and the prepositions describing the position (under, above, ...).
From 13:00 to 13:30 I joined a short presentation from a guy who offered weekend and one-week trips in the wild/mountains (trips on the back of a horse, hiking, rowing etc.) Actually I gave him my email address to inform me about a 3-days-trip from September 22 to 23: 1 day horsebackriding, 1 day hiking and 1 day rowing. But we are going to sleep in cabins and food is gonna be provided. He called it a trip to chill-out:-) I need to think about it....

Then our lunch-group from yesterday went to a pizza place (they were all waiting for me, really nice!) opposite the school and I ate 2 slices of pizza.
On 14:00 my private afternoon class started and Angela, my teacher, and I reviewed and practiced the stuff I had just learnt in the morning.
At 16:00 I went up to the 6th floor, checked my emails and was waiting for Ute. She joined me at around 17:00 after coming back from the train station where she had just bought her Southpass.
We went to a cafe, I ate a brownie and had some tea and we talked about our upcoming trip.
At 19:30 I took off for the long journey back and arrived "at home" at around 21:15. (no special incident on the bus or metro today:-) ).
Victoria had justed started with her dinner and I joined her.
After the dinner I translated some "Gulasch" and "Spätzle" recipes from Austrian-German into English. (Victoria has a Austrian-German cookbook but has never cooked any of the recipes because she doesn't understand most of the things. I had to look up some words too (I am not familir with the Austrian "slang" but fortunately the first pages of the cook-book contain a German-Austrian dictionary:-) ).
When I finished it was almost 23:15, I went up to my room, blogged the day and did my homework.
At 00:30 I went to bed.

September 10 - Buenos Aires

As usual I set my alarm clock for 6 a.m. and got up at 6:10. I left the house at 7:20 and was eating my breakfast on the way to the bus station. At 7:35 I arrived at the bus station and the bus I needed to catch came at 7:45. This morning I was proud of myself because the busdriver didn't ask me to repeat my final destination again:-) (Mabye my pronouncation had improved or the busdriver was used to a German accent:-)
I was in class at 9:00 and except my 3 classmates from the previous week there were 5 (!) new students in the classroom: Anne from Germany, Kirsten from The Netherlands, Bruce from the US, Fiona from Scotland and Chris from London.
The class was still ok but last week when there were only 4 of us was much better (more private or more like a coffee party:-) )
At 1 p.m. Remo, Ute, Anne and I went for the same restaurant where we had had lunch the week ago and Ute and I shared a pizza again.
My individual class started at 14:00 and Angela was my teacher again. We practiced the verb "haber" and I had to describe pictures of living rooms and bathrooms. It still took me a lot of time to answer questions about simple things and I was creating my own words sometimes but at least I spoke:-)
After class I met Ute in the common room and we were heading for the bus station.

Monumental Tower
(on the way to the train station)

We wanted to find out where we could buy the "Southpass", a ticket for travelling by bus in Argentina and the adjacent countries. First we took a closer look to the train station and then we went to the bus station.

inside the Retiro Station (= train station)

When we came in we were really surprised. Lots of small counters from different companies were on the 3rd floor of that building and they were ordered by international destinations, destinations in the center of the country and the northwest and northeast, southeast and southwest part of Argentina. It took us about 10 minutes to pass all these counters and we both thought it might be almost impossible to find the best and cheapest company just by asking about these things at every single counter.

all different counters of bus companies

But it wasn't necessary for us to buy a ticket over there because we just needed some information about the southpass. Finally we went back to the groundflour and asked at the information center about that pass. The 2 clerks worked together to explain us in English that we needed to go to an agency that was located in the train station ("Mitre Station") to buy and get the information we were looking for.
So we went back to the train station and luckily the woman could speak English very well.

The Southpass

 

The Southpass is a pass to travel around Argentina and to get to 6 other Southamerican countries by bus within 60 days. It is a travel pass for 5, 7 or 15 bus trips and it works online. Once you bought the pass you don't need to go to a bus station anymore. You just chose your trip (f.e. Buenos Aires to Corodoba) online and at least 24h before the trip you have to fill in a form telling the

- preferred date

- preferred time (night, morning or afternoon)

- and your company that should be on the same bus as yourself

- and other comments you would like to ask/add.

 

Then you will get a reply telling you if there is a bus available for your trip and if yes the date, time and bus company are provided either. Depending on your destination there are 2 options: printing out your ticket or receiving a password and receiving your ticket at the bus terminal. Depending on the length of the trip either 1 or 2 bus tickets will be deducted from your pass.

It is much cheaper than buying one single ticket after the other one but the the pass is not transmittable and only for foreigners and Argentinians residing out of Argentina.

For more information one can check:
 

www. argentinabybus.com

 

Ute and I were really satisfied with our result and on the way back we stopped at a tourist information, received a nice map of Buenos Aires and asked if we could buy soccer tickets there. The answer was "yes" but a ticket cost 950 Pesos and if you wanted to pay by credit card they would charge us 5% more. But a bus would pick us up and take us back after the game.

We wanted to think about it again and wait until the next morning because we were still hoping that Ute would have gotten an email by then.

Then Ute and I went into the first cafeteria we saw and had a cake (I ate a chocolate mousse cake:-) and some tea. We exchanged our email addresses and decided to travel the last part of our bus journeys together (meeting in Salta and travelling to Igazu, the Estancia, Montevideo and back to Buenos Aires).

At 19:15 I said goodbye to Ute and went on the long journey back home.

On the bus I had some probems with my coins because the ticket machine didn't except neither of my coins. I was kind of helpless to explain the driver that the coins weren't excpeted by the machine but a nice woman standing behind me helped me. She checked my coins, talked to the driver and tried to explain everything to me. But I only could look stupid and tell her that I hadn't understood anything. The less I understood the faster and more she explained:-) But then she paid for me using her metro/bus card and this I understood:-) I had no other idea than offering her a handful of my coins and she took the one's she just spent for me. I could just say "gracias" and was very thankful for her help.

At 21:00 I was back home, Victoria and I had dinner (Gnocchi and an orange for dessert) and I told her about our new big class and the Southpass (she hadn't heard of it before!)

At 22:30 I went upstairs, checked by email, blogged a little bit and went to bed at midnight.

 

 



September 9 - Buenos Aires

I had set my alarm clock for 7 a.m. to be in Buenos Aires downtown at 10:00 a.m. Remo, Ute and I were supposed to meet each other. We wanted to visit the famous market on Defense street and the free Tango-shows on the Plaza Dorrego.
But I was too tired, not at all in the mood for company and still grieving. So I decided to stay "at home". Unfortunately Remo, Ute and I hadn't exchanged email addresses or cellphone numbers but I had an idea. We had had one exercise at school, where I had to ask Remo some basic personal questions in Spanish, amongst others his email address. So I wrote him an email, hoping he would read it before he left the house...(the next morning at school, when I said sorry for not showing up, he told me that he hadn't checked his emails at all... They had been waiting for me for 30 minutes before they finally started. So I had a really bad conscious but they were nice and understanding...)

The rest of the day I was reading and finally finished "Fifty Shades - Darker". I enjoyed the rest of the book while I was sitting in the garden.
Shortly before dinner-time I could finish:-)

After a long talk I went to bed at midnight.

 

September 8 - Buenos Aires

I had set my alarm clock for 11:00 a.m. because Christoph and I wanted to talk via skype. But I woke up half an hour earlier and Christph was already online. We chatted briefly and then I asked him if it was ok to take a shower first. It was my spa day and after having a shower I used one of the facial masks I had bought in South Korea and was relaxing on the bed.
From 11:40 to 15:30 we were talking about the latest news, our upcoming trip and all things that had happened so far.
When we had just finished our conversation I saw that my sister got online and then the 2 of us talked about 1,5 hours too.
Actually she had pretty sad news for me: After a short small talk she revealed that they had to put down our horse Adi.
He died in the night from August 23 to 24 at 3 a.m. in the morning. After heavy problems with the change in the weather pattern he had gotten some infusions and recovered shortly. My sister and her partner stayed with him to watch his recovery but suddenly he fell over and couldn't get up anymore. He suffered from cramps and later on my sister guessed that his kidneys had failed. My sister woke up the vet again and then Adi got 5 shots: within 10 seconds he relaxed and stopped suffering and within 1 minute he was dead.
May he rest in peace!!!!!
Even though I had said goodbye to him several times (each time I took a flight to another country I had already said goodbye) it was completely different when I realized that he had gone forever.
Actually we couldn't complain at all: in May he turned 31 and by upcoming December we would have owned him for 20 years. But it still feels like loosing a member of the family!
I'll always remember him as the best horse ever!!!!
THANKS ADI FOR THE GREAT TIME WE HAD TOGETHER!!!!

The rest of the day I was grieving. After finishing the phone call with my sister I called Christoph again (17:00 to 17:40) and told him about the bad news. I also needed some company and solace.

Just sitting in my room and weeping wasn't really the best option so I decided to do something: I went down in the garden and was cleaning my shoes for over one hour (=> they looked really clean afterwards:-) ).
Then I continued reading in my book.
During dinner I wasn't really that talkative and our usual dinner-conversation was shorter than usual.
After dinner I continued reading, but the book made me cry again => that day was definitely my "crying day".
I read until I was deadbeat and so I fell asleep almost immediately without thinking too much.
But it was late (too late) again...