Which city has more psychotherapists per capita than any other city in the world?
Before coming here two weeks ago, I would never have guessed the answer was Buenos Aires. But after my first hour exploring the streets of BA, I noticed that something was really different. As strangers walked toward me, I would see them noticing me, taking me in, even...making eye contact! Strangers! (Totally freaked me out.)
As the Canadian hairdresser we met here told us, there's a reason why things don't happen on time in BA. People are taking time to connect. When he first got to BA, he said, he used to get aggravated when he showed up at the doctor's office for his 10am appointment and found himself still sitting in the waiting room at 11:30. He used to get frustrated. But now that he's older and wiser and more assimilated, he realizes that the reason the doctor is late is because she takes time to talk to her patients and learn about their lives and *hug* them when they leave.
Ladies and gentlemen, I will go on the record as saying I am not interested in being hugged by any of my doctors.
This may be why, now that I'm surrounded by 13 million connectors, I'm not feeling all that connected to Buenos Aires.
I was out running yesterday afternoon, keeping my eyes down with hopes of avoiding piropos -- and tried to meditate on the disconnect. Why do I not love Buenos Aires the way everyone else who visits seems to love Buenos Aires?
Maybe I would have loved Buenos Aires if I'd come here when I was 18.
Then the sound of guitar music drifting in through the window would have seemed romantic and bohemian. The couples dancing tango at the milonga in San Telmo with their eyes shut, listening to each other's hearts would have inspired me, at the very least, to buy a cool tango dress. The ubiquitous craft markets, murals, and even live artists sculpting nudes in the window of a gallery would have affirmed my belief that art IS a social necessity. And the massive slab of beef they plonked down on my plate at La Brigada would have thrilled the part of me that loves machismo.
Instead, I am looking down at the slick of blood on my plate and trying to have some kind of "primal" response. Instead, my mind is uncooperatively remembering how my Time Out Buenos Aires guide said that one of the first European arrivals to these shores, Juan Díaz de Solís, was captured and eaten by the indigenous tribes. I'm connecting with my inner cannibal.
Is it me? Is it Buenos Aires?
I remember four years ago when I left my marketing research job and went traveling, I thought very carefully about where to go. It was, in part, prompted by reading a blog post somewhere that pointed out that one's experience on the road depends in large part on why you are traveling.
When we travel, our experience isn't just formed by what we encounter on our journey, it's also formed by what we are seeking and by the value system against which we measure the things we find. If you are working a 60+ hour a week office job and living in the same flat you've had for the past five years, you might be traveling because you want to feel transported from the mundane-ness of day-to-day life. You'll probably seek out romantic experiences and suspend judgement of the things you encounter because you're seeking transformation, a different way of seeing things.
That's not what we're doing.
It's a very strange experience to go traveling when you don't have a home. Romance to me, right now, is like eating fois gras when all I really want is a piece of bread (more on bread later). How can I set my value system aside when I don't know if I'll ever live in a society again that operates in a way that makes sense to me? Spookier still, I am finding that my value system is warping with each place we go -- after living in Hong Kong, I will forever expect (or at least hope for) the same standard of clean, efficient public transportation. If it can be done that well in Hong Kong, why isn't it done that well here?
Which brings me back to the bread in Buenos Aires. Bread isn't romance. Bread is day-to-day life. And since we don't have a mundane home life to go back to, what we're seeking in our travels is a day-to-day life that suits us. What we're seeking is good bread on every table. When we returned from HK to SF in June, I practically dove into the bread basket at our first meal -- beautifully fresh, crusty, chewy, aromatic bread soaked in rich green olive oil at Kuleto's.
We have been eating out almost every meal for two weeks in Buenos Aires and I have not yet had a good piece of bread. Each time we sit down in a restaurant, a large basket of assorted rolls and sliced bread arrives accompanied by some sort of spread -- oftentimes eggplant-, pumpkin-, or mayonnaise-based. The rolls themselves have no crust to speak of, a wimpy crumb, and an aroma that reminds me of margarine or frozen Betty Crocker bread dough. Here, for illustration, is the bread basket from our lunch today at Sirop & Sirop Folie :-(
SF is not the world epicenter of bread baking. So why is it that a city 13 times its size, filled with descendents of Italian immigrants, does not produce bread that's 13 times better than the bread at Kuleto's? It's not a rhetorical question. If you know the answer, please email me.
Ok, so why haven't we eaten in more? Take a look at this pepper...
When I went to the market in San Telmo (granted, not a hotbed for gourmet groceries), I found myself cringing at the produce on sale. The oranges were intensely orange and shiny. The apples were bloated. The red peppers were the size of my head! When I showed this pepper to E, he said a chef friend told him these supernatural colors and sizes were the result of over-fertilization. When I remember the bounty of organic produce I saw this summer at the Union Square Farmer's Market in Somerville, Mass, I am genuinely puzzled. How is it that a country that once derived 20% of its GDP from agriculture isn't growing vegetables as beautiful as these in my friend H--'s market basket?
I will just say this about the dairy: no fresh milk to speak of (only highly pasteurized) and yogurt that tastes like milk powder. Here -- in a country famed for its cows! I think of the orgasmic blackberry yogurt in a brown glass jar I once ate in Dornach, Switzerland, and think why not make it this good? It's possible, so why not do it?
To be fair, we have had a number of dishes in BA that had real potential, like the elegant magret with sauteed apples and chestnuts, watercress, and carrot-ginger emulsion I ate at Tomo I. The flavor combination was brilliant, but my meat was slightly overcooked. Very frustrating!
I also had a chance to try Peruvian-Japanese food, a cuisine with a strong presence in the BA restaurant scene. Fresh raw fish unifies these seemingly disparate food traditions: sushi, sashimi, cevice, and tiraditos (raw fish in a tangy, spicy sauce). Here's our plate of tiraditos from a restaurant called Páru.
Also, I can't comment yet on the steak or wine yet in BA except to say I've had one nicely-cooked, tender ojo de bife at Gran Parrilla del Plata with the traditional, yummy oregano sauce. So stay tuned for more on wine and beef...
I also want to say, food aside, BA has lots of things we like:
- Wifi is everywhere.
- Taxis are everywhere (40,000 of them!).
- There's no smoking in shops or restaurants.
- It's been nice and sunny outside for at least 10 days of our two weeks.
- People in general have been warm and well-intentioned -- many have volunteered their help!
- No one we've done business with has tried to cheat us -- and when I forgot my new scarf at a restaurant, the waitress had it waiting for me when we went back.
- People are reasonably slim.
- There are large apartments here.
- While there's lots of talk about the pretty porteñas, I think it's the porteños that enhance the scenery.
- The people we've met had strong opinions about the world and were happy to talk politics (like the taxi driver who explained who Julio Lopez is or the other taxi driver who expressed his frustration with the influence of multinational businesses on the politics of the USA).
