Tag: argentina

Memory Scrapbook

More small differences between Argentina and San Francisco:

People don’t really throw anything out. There are two “vintage” stores in our neighborhood, and pickings are slim. One of the owners told me she goes to New York to get things, because Argentines pass down their clothing or use the fabric to make something new.

Perhaps because of the above, there’s a rich sense of creativity in the way Argentines dress and the things they make. So many of the objects in shops are completely novel to me.

Especially mid-day, about a quarter of restaurants and bars have no music. It’s peaceful.

There’s dog shit everywhere on the sidewalks, presumably because the dog walkers take out six or seven dogs at a time.

The ideal ice cream cone scoop comes to a point on top, because they don’t keep ice cream as cold here. All the giant pictures of idealized ice cream in heladerias have scoops that look like gnome hats.

They open presents on Christmas Eve, and some families light candles and make wishes before blowing them out. Everyone sets off fireworks at midnight, so the city sounds like New Year’s at home with all the explosions and shouting.

Whipped cream is more the consistency of whipped butter.

Lots of shop owners have a high fear of fraud about Internet sales.

“Hypoallergenic” products are often perfumed.

There are little garbage cans next to the toilets so you can throw away your toilet paper instead of flushing it.

Thermoses are everywhere in shops because people need them to keep their matê warm.

What nutella is to much of Europe, dulce de leche is to Argentina. It’s caramelized brown sugar, milk, and sweetened evaporated milk, and they put it on bread, pancakes, ice cream, whatever. The texture is unbelievable, like liquid silk.

Matambre

http://www.db798.com/pictobrowser.swf

Bryan is adventurous about most things, and especially food. Wherever we go in the world, he tries the sausage. Good idea in Germany, but Malaysia? Anyway, lately, he’s taken to trying meat of all sorts, which is how we ended up preparing Matambre for Christmas. Turns out it’s a very typical Argentine dish, and you should know how to make it, because it’s awesome.

It all started when Bryan dragged me into the butcher shop around the corner, and then pointed to stuff while I tried to translate. The conversation with the butcher went like this:

Bryan: What is that?
Me: What is that?
Butcher: Matambre.
Me: What is matambre?
Butcher: Meat and things.
Bryan: I want one of those.
Me: Uh. OK. How do you prepare it?
Butcher: You put it in boiling water for two hours, then freeze it.
Me: In the freezer?
Butcher: No.
Me: Freeze it?
Butcher: No! You freeze it with the post in the sink.
Me: You make it cold?
Him: Yes.
Me: OK. Do you cook it in the plastic and everything?
Him: Yes, yes! Then you break it with the sink.

In answer to my utter confusion, the butcher mimed preparation of the meat, which ended with us putting the roast in the sink and whacking it hard with the bottom of the pan.

Apparently, a lot of people serve it cold as an appetizer, though they don’t put it in the freezer to get it that way. It’s crazy tasty, and a lot like corned beef, except the vegetables are already rolled up inside with a couple of boiled eggs for good measure. That’s why it looks sort of like a severed arm when you first open it up. Delicious.

Turn Out She Took a Lunch Break

We give our server a bill worth twice the cost of our meal, and she vanishes. Some time later, we ask another waitress where she has gone. The waitress asks what she looked like. In Spanish, I say, “She had a short tail.” The waitress looks confused. “Her tail was short,” I say, gesturing toward my head. The waitress nods. “Do you mean her hair?” “Ah. Yes,” I say. “Her hair.”

Memory Scrapbook

More small differences between Argentina and home:

-An entire table of men in animated conversation will go completely silent when a woman walks by, in anticipation of checking out her ass once she passes.

-You have to ask for the check. In fact, you often have to get up from your table and go find your waiter so you can get the check. (This seems to be true everywhere but the U.S.)

-Everyone we meet is an artist.

-Bars have no last call, and nearly all of the women’s restrooms in bars have condom dispensers.

-This is the only place I’ve ever seen a roll of toilet paper hung on the wall next to the sink for use in drying one’s hands.

-In the grocery store, you have your vegetables weighed in the produce section. They put a tag on them so the cashier knows how much to charge you.

-Lowfat milk? No. Decaf? No.

-In our neighborhood alone, there are four car-washes that are also restaurants.

-You pay extra to sit outside.

-The napkins at many casual restaurants are like small squares of tissue paper.

-A burger “with everything” will come with tomatoes, lettuce, cheese, ham, and boiled or fried eggs on top.

Memory Scrapebook

A few little differences between home and Argentina:

The sidewalks seem to be constantly under repair here. There’s a new construction crew every few feet.

The butter that comes with your bread is almost always flavored with something: thyme, sundried tomatoes, rosemary.

The women do more primping in the public bathrooms. You can be at a coffee shop at 11 a.m. and there’s always someone at the mirror re-applying lipstick and fluffing their hair.

Everyone thinks Hank is a girl. I know this because they’re forced to choose a sex for their adjectives, “Que hermosa! Que bonita!”

The red lights turn yellow before going back to green.

There’s lots of graffitti with messages to girlfriends. “Happy Anniversary! Manuela, I love you!”

Our bathroom has a bidet and two new brushes so we can scrub under our nails when we wash our hands.

In modern buildings, I keep shoving my hands under sinks expecting them to work automatically. They don’t.

Our cab from the airport smelled good, like tea, and they still play Milli Vanilli on the radio here.

People, completely sane strangers, stop to kiss the baby or touch his head.

Taking This show on the Road

About two years ago, Bryan and I traveled constantly, in anticipation of never, ever being able to travel again. We knew we wanted a baby, and everyone very helpfully told us our lives would suck afterward. Also, that we’d never have sex again. Or read a magazine all the way through.

As it turns out, Hank is a happy, flexible guy. He was born that way, so we can’t take much credit, though we’d clearly blame only ourselves if he convulsed with fury at any deviation from routine. Such is parenting.

Fortunately, Hank is so mellow that our largest concern is whether he’ll just hand bullies his lunch money and sigh when he’s older. He doesn’t cry much on planes, or have trouble being in new places. We’re able to put him to sleep even out in the world (thanks Happiest Baby on the Block
!), and he often seems even more content when we travel because he has constant access to both of us.

It’s true that in some ways, traveling with a baby isn’t as much fun as traveling on your own. Especially at first, it was frustrating being unable to go wherever we wanted. In Amsterdam I worried excessively about getting lost and running out of formula or diapers. Of course, Amsterdam has drugstores every three feet or so, but apparently I thought the Dutch allowed their children to crap in the streets and fed them only chocolate until they were old enough for unpasteurized cheese. Live and learn.

At any rate, even when I’m up at 3 a.m. with a wide-awake Henry who hasn’t adjusted to the time change, traveling is still so much fun for us — I can hardly complain that it used to be 10 percent easier. Also, there are so many things about travel that are better with a baby. Hank definitely notices the stuff we’d speed right past, like friendly dogs, or cigarette butts. People are incredibly kind to you, and you waste less time sleeping off hangovers or wondering where the hell you just woke up.

One of the places we visited on our whirlwind pre-baby tour was Argentina, and we fell in love with Buenos Aires. Today, we fly back to live there for a month. (Bryan’s company closes for a couple weeks in winter, and he’s tacking on a couple weeks of his remaining paternity leave.) I’m so excited my stomach is actually flipping every time I think of it. Of course, it’s possible I have some kind of flu, in which case the fifteen-hour flight is going to be even less pleasant than I anticipated.

Anyway, now’s the time to flood me with Argentina tips if you missed your chance last time. We’d like to do every fun thing available, so don’t hold back. We’re also talking about arranging a meet-up, so let us know if you’ll be around too. You can even meet Hank. He’ll be the one eating cigarette butts out of the ashtray.

Muppets XXX

A few days into our Argentina trip, we have dinner at Te Matar Ramirez, a restaurant our guidebook describes as “sensual.” The all-red interior and French slow jams suggest a swanky gay club, but for the copious murals of masturbating women. (Closeted swanky gay club?)

We find our table and order champagne, which arrives with dubious pink straws in the flutes. We remove the straws and are about to toast when Bryan notices the sperm-shaped saltshaker. He picks it up and bumps it repeatedly against the round butter dish. This is the TGI Friday’s of sensuality.

The menu has more photos of women masturbating (methinks you doth protest too much, boys), along with some alarming menu descriptions. Bryan asks whether I would prefer to start with the “I smolder with the mist of your most intimate folds” clams, or the “You watch in ecstasy, I pour out and you slowly sip me” Camembert and pastrami. We decide to skip the appetizers.

There’s a stage in front where the pornographic puppet show is set to begin. “There’s a pornographic puppet show?” I ask Bryan. He nods. I pick up the saltshaker and begin to bump it against my head.

Four actors dressed in black take the stage and begin the show. It is plushly explicit, and though my sexual-pun Spanish is somewhat rusty, the basic plots aren’t tough to follow. A a French maid services a bald puppet; two puppet schoolgirls dally together in googly-eyed rhapsody.

Bryan and I are still preoccupied with the menu descriptions. Our waitress arrives, and I order the “Thrusting my desire deep into the temple of your body” salmon. Bryan has the “She played in me with her lascivious fingers, I caressed myself” grouper. Appetites curbed.

Meanwhile, the puppet masters are really getting into the hot puppet action. My eyes water in embarrassment for them as they moan, stretch their faces into expressions of orgasmic ecstasy, and move rhythmically to the action onstage.

As the actors gyrate in the background, Wonder Woman puppet straddles Buff Guy puppet, and they perform various superhuman acrobatic feats together. I wait patiently for the “Golden Lasso” scene, which never materializes. Wonder Woman without bondage? What’s the story, people? It’s like peanut butter without jelly, Anne Margaret without her tights, Julianne Moore as a blonde.

I suggest that we would enjoy the evening much more if we skipped the cocktails and ordered an entire bottle of champagne each. Perhaps they’d bring the bottles with giant novelty penis straws? Bryan declines on the grounds that it would take an eternity to drink them, and they would almost certainly come with giant novelty penis straws.

We push our food around on our plates, pay the bill, and wait for intermission so we can run for the door. Once outside, we gaze at each other, dumbfounded.

“I-am-so-hot-right-now,” I say. “Do-me-right-here-on-the-street.” We pretend to maul each other for a few seconds, then Bryan suggests that we go somewhere for dessert. Now this is a man who knows how to get laid.

Delicacies

Every morning, the hotel brings us complimentary breakfast, which Bryan calls the “bucket of toast.” Breakfast elsewhere in the city is equally toast-centric, or made up of confusing components. We ordered breakfast at a tourist place, and they brought us toast, fruit salad, and two slices of cheesecake. The dinner menus, on the other hand, are rife with omelet options. So it’s not that Argentines have no use for breakfast; apparently they just prefer to have it the night before.

A few days into our trip, we discover the wonder of empanadas. I warn Bryan that they’re hot inside, but he forgets in the five seconds it takes to lift the empanada to his mouth. His face contorts.

Me: Oooo. Is the roof of your mouth still attached?
Him: (swallows) No, but it’s delicious cooked.