Tango Trails

Feelings

2009-05-05T06:16:00.003-03:00

Back in Melbourne.

I feel so homesick (for BsAs)
I feel heartbroken
the next couple of weeks will be hard.

Final Weekly Roundup

2009-05-05T05:43:00.001-03:00

The last week was definitely a rollercoaster of emotions. It started to hit home as we went from milonga to milonga every time realizing that tonight was going to be the last time we went there. It really started on Wednesday at El Beso, then Thursday at Cochabamba, Friday at Gordo’s, Saturday at Cachirulo, Sunday El Beso and then later at Porteño y Bailarin where we said goodbye to our English friends D. and A., then Monday night at Mi Refugio. For me personally it hit me on Saturday when I started to feel a little sad about leaving the place I had called home for the past 11 months.

We did make an effort to cross some of the must-do touristy things off our list. On Monday 20th we went on a guided tour of the Congreso building where I managed to impress our guide with my knowledge of Argentinean politics. Then on Tuesday we decided to go to the Leather district (calle Murillo) to purchase leather coats (Argentina has great leather products, and much more affordable than Australia). I managed to find a really nice one, but Niki wasn’t quite as impressed, and eventually purchased a beautiful purple leather coat later in the week from a shop on Defensa. Later on Tuesday we also had our final class with Natacha Poberaj before she headed off to Russia to do some workshops.

Friday night, after a quick visit to Ideal to see our friends Cherie and Ruben perform a playful little milonga, we were invited to an asado with our porteño friend F. and met a whole heap of his friends, forcing us to speak Spanish the majority of the night. One of his more outlandish friends had the unusual habit of announcing his presence at the door with fireworks rather than the conventional way of knocking or ringing the doorbell.

On Saturday the landlady put on one of her famous multicultural brunches. It was a lovely brunch with scrambled eggs, media lunas, facturas, and lots of conversation in Spanish. We also got a chance to say goodbye to our friend G.

On Sunday we decided to have some friends around for our own brunch of French toast and Chocolate Mouse, and Champage. It was partly an excuse to use up the last of our maple syrup, partly an attempt to see certain of these people one last time before we left.

It was excessively indulgent, and Niki’s caramelized walnut and banana topping was an instant hit, and R.’s Chocolate Mouse was delicious. Later that night we went to our English friends farewell at Porteño y Bailarin.

Monday we started packing, although Niki did manage to squeeze in a last minute trip to Greta Flora to buy 2 more pairs of tango shoes. Monday night, after Mi Refugio, we had our official going away party at an alternative milonga, Otros Buenos Aires, at Independencia 572.

We had about 30 close friends turn up throughout the night. I managed to get one final dance with almost all the women that turned up.

Tuesday we continued our packing, although Niki did manage to get in a last minute trip to Flabella’s to buy a final pair of tango shoes. Then it was finally time for our last supper. Our friends E., R., A. and U. joined us for a meal at one of our favourite parrilla’s “Gran Parrilla Del Plata”. By the time the meal was almost over, and two bottles of wine had almost been polished off, we started to get a little emotional as we realised the end was nigh. I must confess, it was me who started it. As I leaned over to give my friend E. a hug, suddenly I burst into tears. Not to be out done, Niki quickly followed suit and hugged her friend A. and R. After the meal was over, the group of us walked slowly down to our house to collect our luggage, still brushing away tears and hugging our friends.

As the taxi driver loaded our luggage, we said our final goodbyes to our friends, and set off. As the silence descended in the cab our hearts started to rip apart. The tears flowed like a river as we held each other’s hands and asked ourselves “what the hell were we doing leaving Buenos Aires”? The majority of the 45 minute cab ride was spent crying, and it wasn’t until we were forced to get out of the cab and start to think about catching our flight that the tears subsided.

I think it is safe to say we made some very close friends in Buenos Aires, and they will be missed very dearly… until the next time we return, or until they come to visit us in Melbourne.

Our flight took off at around 2am, and 24 hours later (20 hour flight, then 1 hour to get through customs, and a 3 hour train ride) we finally made it to my parents place here in Newcastle.

Honoured at Cachirulo

2009-04-26T23:33:00.004-03:00

For those of you who read our blog even semi-regularly, you would know that Cachirulo is our favourite milonga. We have been there every Saturday night that we have been in Buenos Aires for the past 6 months. Last night was our last night at Cachirulo, and as a special honour we had been asked to do a farewell dance. We chose a fast milonga (Campo Afuera – Biagi), and even though Niki got a little nervous and froze up at one point, generally we managed to do pretty well when all is said and done.

We nearly had a proof of Murphy’s Law on our hands when our camcorder hard drive finally filled up 30 seconds after this had been filmed.

weekly roundup 19-Apr-2009

2009-04-21T10:32:00.007-03:00

It is finally sinking in that we don't have that much time left here, so the mad rush to get everything done has begun.

Working with Pedro is going well. I am learning a lot (including how to be patient with Argentine Old Men). The students that we have been working with over the past couple of weeks have been fantastic.

On Tuesday night I went to the opening night of Melina Brufman and Claudio Gonzalez's new show 'Episodios, cifrados en tango' with A. and R. They are marvelous dancers, taking the audinence on a journey through a range of emotions. The show is on till the end of May, so if you're in town, give it a try.

Scott and I went to see Sexteto Milonguero one last time - he had gone to Practica 8 with E. and A. on Tuesday night, whereas I went to Canning with A. on Thursday. They have definitely been our favourite live orchesta during our stay here. I will definitely miss the voice (and looks) of 'he who hath been hewn from stone'.

On Friday we had a going away party to go to - OUR going away party. One of many, actually, The writers group that Scott heads every Wednesday wanted to have a goodbye get-together for us. I already knew a few people, but it was great to meet some of the rest of the group - to put faces to the names - that Scott has been working with throughout the year.

This Saturday we finally made it to MALBA - the museum of Latinamerican art. Some great art and innteresting installations on display. Highly recommended. In the evening we went to Milonga de los Consagrados to catch up with Cherie and Ruben. We used to go to this milonga every Saturday before we switched to Cachirulo. I must admit, even though I love the homey feel, the friendliness, the venue, and it was great to catch up , I do enjoy the dancing better at Cachirulo.

On Suday Scott and I went on a mission. Armed with our video camera and copious 2 peso notes, we tried to film every single busker along the San Telmo Market - lots of fun. Another 'last' on Sunday, as we had our final Food Group get-together. No cooking this time - just lots of empanadas, delivered to our door, and lots of wine.

The weather here is starting to change, and so is the feel of the milongas. The proteños seem to let the slightest change in weather affect them. So with the first sign of a drop of rain, they stay huddled up at home. Milongas are more quiet this week.

It’s official, I hate Buenos Aires

2009-04-19T19:13:00.003-03:00

I don’t really, in fact there are many things I love about Buenos Aires. This was an SMS I sent to Niki after I was scammed today. I guess I am just sick and tired of being (or attempted to be) scammed. I feel like a lot of vendors here treat tourists like a money-filled piñata - you hit it hard enough, and money just spills out. Niki and I have generally been very aware of the scams around, and have even written about some of the more prevalent ones, but I am sure that we have, in the year we’ve been here, unwittingly fallen victim to a few scams. So why did this one infuriate me so much.

Let me detail the scam. One of the very first things we did when we arrived here in Buenos Aires was to purchase local pre-paid SIM cards for our phones from a local provider Claro. We would highly recommend doing this to any one who is planning to stay in Buenos Aires for more than a few weeks. We have been buying recharge cards at local kioskos and Claro stores all over Buenos Aires without any problems. Over the past month and a half I have purchase 3 recharge cards from a certain little news stand on Corrientes, and until today, I haven’t had any problems, and the news stand owner had always seemed jovial and friendly. Today I needed some more credit, and I was nearby, so I went and purchased a $20 peso card from him. I looked at it briefly, and then stuck it in my back pocket thinking I’d find a cafe where I could sit down and enjoy a sandwich and a coffee, and then scratch the number off and enter it into my phone. Two blocks later, I pulled it out of my pocket and had a closer look. it was then I noticed there was a problem with the scratch section.

The section that says “RASPE AQUI” (scratch here), looked a little odd, and I could see that there was something beneath it, which looked like an already scratched out number. I could also see that someone had very carefully slit the packet open so as not to damage it, and so as to fool someone into thinking they want that all was OK. As soon as I noticed it I went back to the news stand and tried in my broken Spanish to tell him that I wasn’t happy with being sold a used card, but he didn’t want to have anything to do with me. He was no longer the jovial, friendly fellow I had been used to dealing with, in fact he was quite dismissive, even a little aggressive. My lack of Spanish (especially when angry) made it easy for him to ignore me.

Of course this just proved to me that he was behind the scam himself, and it was after that, I sent the SMS to Niki. On closer inspection of the card I noticed that all the important identification numbers, and the bar code had even been scratched out to a point where they were not recognisable, so the numbers can’t be traced by Claro back to the person who actually did use it to charge their mobile phone (probably the news stand attendant or someone in his family). By the way for anyone interested in avoiding this scammer, it is the news stand on the corner of Corriented and Maipu, on the even side of the road in front of the “Open 25 hours” kiosk at 712 Corrientes. Better still if any of our readership has a decent command of Spanish, please find some time to go up to my jovial, friendly news stand owner and tell him that he shouldn’t be selling used Claro re-charge cards.

Niki has been trying to placate me by saying that this is a “buyer beware” kind of culture and we just aren’t used to that, but I think “buyer beware” is just not strong enough, it is more “buyer be really really skeptical”, or better still, “buyer keep your money in your pocket”. I have been missing Melbourne quite a lot, and it just brings home to me some of the reasons I love living in Melbourne.

It appears as though this style of re-charging your mobile phone is on the way out anyway, (maybe because of such scams). The new way, which is available at most Open 25 Hours kioskos, is to recharge virtually. You tell them your phone number, they type it into a machine that prints out a receipt with all the transaction details, pay them the money, and a few minutes later you get an SMS telling you that the new credit has been added to your SIM card. This way seems more fool proof, the only thing is you have to make sure you communicate your number clearly.

Weekly Roundup 12-April-2009

2009-04-15T19:00:00.004-03:00

The past week started off with us going to R.'s birthday party. It was a great environment, and it was interesting to see how many of the invitees where long term ex-pat tango tourists like ourselves, as well as a fair few amazing local dancers, and one of Niki's favourite tango DJs. The party started in traditional Argentine fashion with a parilla, and some Mendocino wines. Then we all went downstairs where the baldosa (tiled) hallway entrance doubled as a dance floor for an informal milonga.

We had been planning a trip to Iguazu falls with some friends for a few months, and despite one of the party pulling out at the last minute through fear of dengue fever and yellow fever, three of us set off on Tuesday evening. We thought we’d be really organised and turn up to the bus terminal a good 40 minutes before the bus left, but alas, the best laid plans of mice and travellers…. We caught the taxi from San Telmo with plenty of time to spare, and found to our shock that the traffic was jammed all the way from here to the bus terminal. it took us over 45 minutes to get to the bus terminal, a trip that never takes more than 15 minutes in normal conditions. We arrived just in time to see the bus we were supposed to be on pulling out of the bay. DOH!

One of the bus terminal officials recommended a remis (private taxi) driver who was there waiting. Turns out this is quite a common thing. A coach chaser. People who arrive a few minutes late to the terminal can pay an exaggerated price for the remis driver who has conveniently parked just outside the bus terminal, to quickly pack everyone into the remis and drive to the next bus terminal faster than the coach can. we already knew that there were no seats on any other coaches that night, and so we accepted this offer.

We managed to catch up to and overtake our designated coach with a combination of fast and creative driving, and arrived at the next terminal 10 minutes ahead of the coach and 180 pesos poorer. Niki thought it was a bit of a scam. I tried to placate her by explaining that it was in fact a legitimate, although niche service, and as such justified the inflated cost. We arrived safely in Iguazu 17 hours later.

That afternoon we checked in to our hostel, and booked some tours for the next day. With nothing much else to do we jumped on a bus and headed into the township mainly for purposes of being caffeinated as the hostel had run out of coffee. After we had adequately dealt with the caffeine withdrawal symptoms, we wandered around town and purchased supplies for the next day.

That night at the hostel, being on the border of Argentina and Brazil, they decided to have a Brazilian themed night (I wonder if there was a hostel on the Brazilian side having an Argentine themed night?). So we had some food and a Brazilian cocktail, followed by an display of Brazilian Samba from a guy and two scantily clad female dancers. I thought it was interesting that the female dancers were wearing peacock feathers in their hair. With peacocks it’s the males with the fancy attire, with us humans the women are the ones that are expected to display their bodies off. I think it says something very interesting about human sexuality.

The next day we went to the falls. We had booked in for the “Gran Aventura” which included a 4 wheel truck drive through the rain forest, followed by a cruise up the river towards the falls, and then finally a dunking in the spray from the falls.

After the boat ride we caught a ferry out to an island (Isla de San Martin) in the middle of the river, and had a swim and some lunch. We then explored the island which had fantastic views of much of the falls.

We then walked around some of the other parts of the falls getting up close and personal to the awsome power of the rushing water.

Later that night we returned for a Full Moon Tour of the most spectacular part of the falls, Garganta Del Diablo (The Devils Throat). Firstly however, we had a very nice, all you can eat meal at the restaurant located at the falls. We then made our way solely by the light of the full moon to the Garganta Del Diablo. The sight we saw defies words. Just watching the sheer volume of water continuously plunging over the 80 meter drop, makes everything in your life seem so small and insignificant. Our cameras unfortunately were not up to the task of capturing this sight; however, there was a very enterprising man stationed at the falls who had a camera set up using a combination of flash and slow exposure who, for a minimal fee, would take your photo next to the falls and then give you an SD card with said photos. The only thing I regret is that we didn't get to see Garganta Del Diablo by day for comparison purposes.

For a complete set of our Iguazu Falls photos, check out our Iguazu flickr feed.

We returned from Iguazu on Saturday. From the bus terminal we caught a taxi and asked to be taken to San Telmo. I noticed very soon after he left the terminal that he hadn’t switched on the meter, and when we questioned him, he just said don’t worry, 20 pesos. All three of us shouted “No, stop the taxi”. This is a typical scam, and we knew that the fare should only be around 12 pesos. he stopped let us out, and we grabbed the next taxi who happily turned his meter on, and sure enough when we got to San Telmo, the fare was 12 pesos.

Sunday Niki decided to go with two friends R. and A. to Chacarita cemetery where many of the famous tango musicians are burried. Musicians such as Carlos Garde, Osvaldo Pugliesel, Carlos Di’Sarli, Anibal Troilo, etc….

While I on the other hand went for a walk with a friend E. around Puerto Madero Nature Reserve.

Fortnightly roundup ending 5-Apr-2009

2009-04-04T09:52:00.012-03:00

OK, Its my turn to be slack this time, so here's the fortnightly roundup:

Week ending 29th March 2009
I think we are starting to hold back as far as social dancing goes, sticking to a few favourite milongas on specific nights of the week. We did manage to fit in one more of Gustavo Naveira's classes. On Wednesday I even managed to fit in a kids party before heading out for a night of dancing:) I also tried a new class this week, getting myself to one of Oscar Montenegro and Mia Jensen's classes(more details in a future post).

On Friday I had a fun day out with B. And A, Shoe shopping , CD shopping, browsing, and in general, making our financial contribution to the local economy :) . B. treated A. And I to an exceptionally indulgent late afternoon champagne lunch in the garden setting of the Park Hyatt.

Later that night we went to Tina's farewell party.

Tina was given a farewell by Cachirulo (her favourite milonga), being asked to dance by the organisers, Hector an Norma- a show of appreciation - especially given the fact that she is a foreigner makes it double the honor.

That very night, Pedro came and sat next to me in the milonga and started chatting . He wanted to know if I wanted to work with him - essentially taking over from T. How exciting!
Scott left Cachirulo early, as he had agreed to take A. and C. to Sunderland, but I stayed on at Cachirulo for a bit longer before heading home - I was too tired and excited to make it a long light.

On Sunday we woke up ridiculously early (10 ) in order to meet up with an old friend from S. and his partner. S. has been living in the UK for the past 3 years now, but is originally from Melbourne. It was great catching up and sharing info re our experiences. In the afternoon, we caught up with A. D. T, R A for a late lunch, which ended with coffee and a couple of two litre tubs of ice cream at our place.

Well it wouldn't be a normal Sunday, unless we ate all the way till bed time, so, even though there was no 'pot luck dinner group' meeting, we managed to stay true to from, going out to dinner at El Establo :) , and then finishing off the nigt with a bit of tango at La Capilla.

Week ending 5th April 2009
On Monday I went to the studio where Pedro and Tina teach, to observe/help while they taught a class. I am looking forward to working with Pedro till the end of our stay here. It will add an extra level of fun, intensity and learning to my BsAs experience.

Well, with our trip nearing its end, we thought we'd better do some of the things on our 'will have plenty of time for this later' list. So on Tuesday, we, together with S and C, spent the day at an Estancia in the provincia. Lots of food and folk music - a fun thing to do if you want to get out of the Big Smoke. This took up most of the day. On our return I went straight to the studio again, observing and helping. What a great sense of 'passing on the baton' :) . It was good to see Tina one last time before she headed off to Seattle. We reckon we'll all meet up with Tina again, together with M. and his wife, in Italy, in a couple of years. Can hardly wait!

On Thursday we were treated to a sneak peek of Jan Rae's Art exhibition. Jan is and artist and tango dancer from Byron Bay, Australia, and some of her work is currently on exhibition at the Borges Centre in Galeria Pacifico.

On Friday we went over to J.'s place for drinks and nibblies, Followed by a late night visit to Esquina Homero Manzi for Transnochando, Where Roxana Fontan would be singing, with a special appearance by Alberto Podestá. We walked into the venue - a place that we had never been to before - only to be swarmed by people we know coning up to greet us (another one of those 'you know you've been tangoing in BsAs too long' moments).

The weekend ended with out typical Saturday night at Cachirulo, and another pot luck dinner on Sunday where we were treated to L.'s deadly Chocolate Mouse :).

Fortnightly Roundup

2009-03-26T14:43:00.006-03:00

Yet again I have been derelict in my duties and am having to do a fortnightly roundup instead of a weekly.

Week ending 15th March 2009

This week was very exciting for us as a number of our friends from Melbourne arrived. Some such as A. and C. we had been expecting for some time, others such as B. and A. were a pleasant surprise.

We knew A. and C. were arriving around midday Monday, so planned to surprise them by turning up at their door with some yummy facturas as a 'welcome to Buenos Aires' treat. We didn’t quite make it to their door, but rather bumped into them both as they were walking up Calle Independencia half jet-lagged and looking for a supermarket. We were able to point them in the right direction, and ended up having lunch with them at one of our favourite local haunts.

Monday was also my brush with the darker side of Buenos Aires, but I don’t think I really need to say any more about that.

On Tuesday I decided to take A. (C. wasn’t feeling the best) out for her first milonga. I choose La Catedral, because even though I don’t go there regularly, it has a much more informal atmosphere, and is in my opinion one of the places you should make an effort to see if you are in Buenos Aires for the first time. Occasionally you are also treated to some live music, but I have to admit, in this case, it wasn’t really that much of a treat. The orchestra, while being technically proficient, had so little emotion that I called it tango elevator music. It was like drinking alcohol-free Scotch, sure your getting a familiar flavour, but the experience is just not the same.

On Wednesday Niki had organised a dinner with some friends that were in town in the Armenian quarter, at a really nice restaurant just down from La Viruta. It is always great to have such flavoursome food, the staple Argentinean food gets a bit boring after a while.

Later that night, I came good on a promise to have a dance with my German house mate at “Buenos Tangos” on Independencia. I hadn't been there before, and I can see that they are struggling to attract many people there on Wednesdays. Most of the people there weren’t even dancing, they were just taking photos of the 2 or 3 couples that were. After that a group of us went to La Viruta and Niki joined us there after she had had her fill of El Beso.

On Thursday we had a quiet lunch with one of our friends, (and one of my personal favourite dance partners) T. who was returning to Portland in a few days time.

On Sunday we had a second 'Aussies in Buenos Aires' lunch which was when we encountered B. and A. fresh off the plane. The lunch was yet another success. After that we went to our traditional Sunday night Pot Luck dinner, this time themed Chocolate, Cheese and Wine. Niki made her special pear poached in red wine with blue cheese for desert. It went down very well.

Niki also spent a large portion of time this week escorting visitors around the tango shoe shops. A task she took on with much fervour.

Week ending 22nd March 2009

On Monday I took A. and C. to the guided practica before Mi Refugio. This was the first time I’d been to it since Oscar Casas had handed over the reigns to Ricardo Viqueira. Ricardo specializes in milonga con traspier, and the practica was really good. We all stayed for the milonga, and A. and C. really enjoyed it. It was also a sad occasion as it was T.’s last milonga, so I ensured I got one last amazing tanda of Vals with her.

Tuesday I went to the Waterworks building with A. She was interested in the architecture of the building, originally designed by a Norwegian (A. is also Norwegian), and the toilet museum inside the building. I have to say, as far as museums go it was a short visit.

On Friday B. and A. invited us out to a really nice restaurant in Retiro. The food was great, and it was the first time in a while I’d seen lamb on the menu, so I made the most of the opportunity.

On Saturday we were torn between our favourite milonga “Cachirulo”, and a special end-of-seminar milonga hosted by Gustavo Naveira where a friend of ours (P.) was performing alongside of Gustavo and Giselle. I took the early shift at Cachirulo, turning up at 8pm, then Niki and I met at the Papelera, had a few dances, and watched the performance. It was actually a rare occasion for Niki and I. We danced open embrace Nuevo style together… and it didn’t completely suck. Niki then went on to do the late shift at Cachirulo while I went home.

It was, however, another sad night for me at Cachirulo as I bid farewell to another one of my favourite dance partners, V. from Brazil (Quality Assurance girl for those who have read previous posts).

Sunday will go down in history as the day we ate and drank our way around Buenos Aires. We started the day at our friend R’s place in San Telmo where we had asado (ribs) and salads, and a bit of wine… ok a lot of wine. Then we moved on to our friend J’s place in Palermo where we had been invited for mojitos (a Cuban cocktail) and meatballs, although there were also lots of other yummy things there as well such bok choy with shredded apple and blue cheese. We then rolled our way out to our traditional Pot Luck dinner in Belgrano where it was an Italian themed night. By the time we got there, we were already full, but made an extra special effort to fit more in, just so we wouldn't offend anyone. Although, by this stage the wine and mojitos had already taken effect and I decided not to have any of the wine on offer at dinner.

After dinner we then ventured out to La Capilla. We had been meaning to go for a while now, and finally we made it. The venue is amazing, with the old gothic style convent as the setting, and an open air courtyard where the dancing is done. There were lots of really good dancers there, Niki was lucky enough to have 2 tandas with a guy O. she’d been wanting to dance with for some time now. All in all, a great night.

The Darker side of Buenos Aires

2009-03-13T12:59:00.001-02:00

To all those friends following my facebook status recently, first of all, seriously, get a life…. ;) Secondly, with status updates such as “Scott is home with a sore nose”, and “Scott is taking it easy today” and “Scott is nursing war wounds”, some people have started to be a bit concerned. So here is the story.

While walking the backstreets of Constitution the other day, after going out to one of my favourite milongas, and then having a few quite ones at a local bar, by chance I happened to meet a plastic surgeon, and his two assistants. The plastic surgeon expressed the professional opinion that he didn’t like my facial arrangement, and offered, free of charge, mind you, to do a little reconstructive surgery. I was very grateful, and I think everyone will agree it is a distinct improvement.

OK, so a free nose job is a bit far-fetched, so what really happened?

Those who know Buenos Aires well would know that Constitution isn’t the safest place to be walking around at 12:30 at night, and on one particularly quiet street I see three youths round the corner and cross to my side of the street. The one in the middle said something about 2 pesos and held up 2 fingers. I shook my head and kept walking. When they were about 3 meters from me, the middle guy pulled out a pistol… I immediately noticed that it was plastic and consequently I was in no real danger from this toy, even though he was waving at me quite threateningly. Meanwhile one of the other guys had made his way behind me where he grabbed hold of my shoe bag. My best pair of tango shoes, a $430 peso pair of 2 X 4’s were inside, and the bag that you get with a pair of 2 X 4’s is probably the most sturdy bag of any of the tango shoe shops here in Buenos Aires. This was demonstrated when I quickly spun around and managed to yank it out of his hands. With the adrenalin pumping, I couldn’t think of the right Spanish to say, so I yelled at the top of my voice in English indicating something to the effect that they should “get far away”. At this point, the toy soldier had realised that his bluff had been called, so the next thing I knew, his fist was planted firmly between my nose and my left eye.

Fortunately for me, this was their cue to start running. I also used this as my cue to run in the opposite direction. They didn’t get my shoes, or the $60 pesos I had in my wallet, but they did make a mess of my face.

Weekly roundup, 08-03-2009

2009-03-10T20:10:00.009-02:00

This has been a very hectic week, more so than other weeks. More dancing than other weeks, Less sleep than other weeks.
This week marked a record for me in terms of my attendance at Milongas at Salon Canning. I was there on three separate nights! But I have valid reasons/excuses. On Monday after already having had a full night of dancing at Mi Refugio, I continued on to Canning with a group of friends to farewell A. There I hapeened to meet J. who had just arrived from the States.

Tuesday was J.'s (different one) last night out, so we had to go to say 'see you soon' to her (she is a Melbourne girl) Sexteto Milonguero were playing - an extra treat. I never get tired of listening to them perform. They have such an amazing energy.

We had to go through a final visa renewing trip on Wednesday. This time instead of going to Montevideo, or Colonia, we went to Carmelo, Via Tigre, along the Delta. this involved a 5:30 am wake up call after having only just returned home from Canning at 2:30. It would have been a lovely day out, had it not been for the torrential rain. We came back to a flooded Buenos Aires, in time for a quick rest before heading off to El Beso.

Saturday was another busy dancing day. We started out at Cachirulo for our normal dose of dancing goodness. it was J.'s (different J. , yet again) last night and he was trying to have a dance with all his favourites. I felt extremely luck to get not one, but two tandas. We later head off to Sunderland in two taxis and two hours apart :) . Chicho and Juana were billed to perform. The place was packed. The nuevo crowd had taken over the bleachers, not to mention the dance floor (needless to say, there were legs flying all over the place). The performance was lovely - sublte, musical, connected (i'll say it again I don't have a problem with nuevo as such, When it is done well it is just as intense and connected as traditional tango. However the majority of people who dance nuevo do so BADLY , giving the entire genre a bad reputation). Well, within half an hour of the performance the majority of the Nuevo crowd had dissappeared (probably headed off to La Viruta :)) , leaving Sunderland in peace. It ended up being an extra long, extra fun night out dancing. It was great to end J.'s trip on a high note.

This Sunday ended on another foodie high note, as R. had invited a bunch of people over to her place for a pancake breakfast, and by breakfast I mean 1 pm. there were people coming out of the rafters!

for dinner we had another one of our pot luck dinners , this time with the theme 'Finger Food'. the night turned out to be quite a surprise, since B had brought someone along. Someone that , unbeknown to her, we had met a year and a half ago in Cyprus at a salsa club.
...and yet another week ended (or started) with El Beso...

Chamuyera

2009-03-08T16:24:00.002-02:00

Niki has posted before about some of the different chamuyo she has received from many of the men here in Argentina. It is not all that common for women to chamuyo a man. Not that they won’t say that they enjoy dancing with you, or that it was a really good tanda etc…, but they generally don’t go over the top like the men do. So when a woman does say more than just that it was a good dance, it is a bit more believable.

Last night I was at my favourite milonga, and I was dancing with a woman who I had danced with once before, two weeks ago. The first time we really connected well, and she had said as much. This time we also were having an amazing dance, and she decided to express this in between the second and third tango. What she said has to go down as the best and most sincere compliment I have received to date.

She started by saying “I feel I can do steps with you that I can only do with my teacher”. That in itself was fairly high praise. Putting me on the same level as someone this woman, who is already a very accomplished tango dancer, is currently learning tango from was enough to give my ego a real boost. She continued “I find that I just can’t do that with any of the other milongueros”. (For a definition of milonguero, see our tango glossary post). The way in which she so innocently said “other milongueros” putting me in a category of dancer that I have always looked up to, and had never assumed that I’d made it into, was just so heart warming.

I guess this is another one for the “You know you’ve been dancing too long in Buenos Aires when…. people start referring to you as a milonguero”.

Weekly (Fortnightly) Roundup 01-Mar-2009

2009-03-02T19:00:00.001-02:00

16th – 22nd FEB

OK, so I’ve been slack, so here is a fortnightly roundup instead of a weekly one.

My biggest success from last week was getting our friend Layne, out to a milonga. Layne has been living here in Buenos Aires for 3 years, and amongst many other things, she is a beautiful tango dancer. For whatever reasons, she has had a few bad experiences with the tango scene and had stopped dancing for a long time. This made me quite sad because I know enough about Layne, and have danced with her a few times, to see that she has the heart and soul of tango inside her. So on Monday the 16th of February, I finally (after a few false starts on previous weeks) managed to coax her out to one of my favourite milongas, Mi Refugio. The great thing was that this milonga has a practica run by Oscar Casas at 6pm, before the real milonga gets started at around 7:30. This meant that I could turn up early and dance a while with Layne, and help her dust some of the cob-webs off, and more importantly, help restore her confidence. The bad thing was that the night she picked to finally turn up was Mi Refugio’s first year anniversary. They made a really big deal of it, with a live orchestra and everything. Sounds great right? Wrong. The dance floor was absolutely packed, the organisers weren’t used to dealing with the masses of people that their huge publicity push had attracted, and the orchestra didn’t actually get started til 1am, well and truly after Layne, Niki and I got sick of playing dodgem cars on the dance floor, and went home. The next week, Mi Refugio returned to it’s normal beautiful self, and I had a great time, unfortunately Layne hasn’t been seen at a milonga since. Hopefully that’s just because she’s busy, and not because she has been frightened off.

The next day was our friend A.’s last night in Buenos Aires. We decided out of frustration with (and a sense of self preservation) Practica X, that we’d try somewhere new. So we decided to go to Praktika 8. When we showed up at A.’s hostel, we discovered another Aussie friend S. had just landed in BA, and convinced her to come along too. We went with a fairly large group that included about 5 or 6 women, and about 4 men. We had a really good time there, and even though at about 1am, I started to tire, the girls were still wanting to party on, just to give A. a really good send-off. So while I jumped in a cab and went home, the girls headed off to Canning. After Canning had closed for the night, Niki S., A. and a couple of others ended up at an all night cafe chatting, drinking Tia Maria and eating media luna’s until 6:30am.

On Wednesday I decided to try a new milonga. The organiser of Entre Tango y Tango had been at me for ages, and on Monday at Mi Refugio had thrust a signed invitation into my hands (means you get in free), and demanded (at gunpoint) that I come this Wednesday. How could I refuse an offer like that? So I turned up, and apart from a few people, it was all new faces. it felt very much like Mi Refugio normally does. A decent amount of space, a good DJ (Carlos Rey), and good dancers. What more can you want from a milonga?

On Friday, again I decided to try a new Milonga. E. had some friends visiting from France, and one of our favourite orchestras, “Sexteto Milonguero” was playing at “El Gardel de Medellin”. Niki wasn’t feeling up to dancing, so she stayed home, very unusual for her. We went out for dinner at one of our favourite pubs El Federal, and then arrived at the milonga fairly early. When we arrived, there were 2 couples dancing, and neither looked very inspiring. E. and I danced together, as did E.’s friends, and slowly people started to arrive. Still not many really good dancers, but I managed to pick out one couple that looked fairly good. For whatever reason, the guy of the couple wouldn’t dance with anyone except her, but she would happily dance with anyone. Eventually I managed to catch her eye and ask her for a dance, and she was an absolutely amazing dancer. As the night went on, more and more really good dancers turned up, and by the time Sexteto Milonguero had finished their set, I had had enough good dances and decided to catch a lift home with a friend.

On Sunday night we had another Pot Luck dinner with Mediterranean cuisine as the theme. Everyone made such lovely dishes, that I couldn’t stop eating, I just had to have a little bit more of everything, until I got to the point where I was so full, I could not face dancing and decided to go home instead going on to El Beso.

23-Feb-2009 – 01-Mar-2009

This week we decided to do some nuevo classes with Chicho. Monday I went on my own,(Niki wasn’t feeling up to it). Big mistake, everyone goes in couples, and there is absolutely no swapping of partners. I managed to get a few dances, but spent a good half of the class just watching. As far as the lesson goes, I wasn’t that impressed. He had some really nice elements that he started working on at the very start of the class, but then insisted on stringing these elements together into a very strict figure with a whole heap of other elements that I felt he really didn’t explain properly, and focused on this figure for the rest of the class. For the last song or two of the class, he even got us all to execute the step together to his exact timing, sort of like a chorus line choreography, or maybe tango line dancing. As far as the level goes, I am convinced that Chicho intermediate level is right for me, I think the advanced class would have been way too difficult.

On Friday Niki came with me to the Chicho class. This time I found the class a lot better. He focussed the majority of the class on some really nice elements, and then only at the very end did he string them together into a figure.

This week also marks an unusual event in our stay here in Buenos Aires. This has to be one of the few weeks where Niki danced significantly less than I did. She had 3 nights off this week, I only had 1. I did 3 classes, she only did 1.

On Saturday Niki went to a flamenco festival that happens once every two years. She enjoyed it, but was too far from the action to get any decent video footage. She was amazed at how seriously some of the spectators took the event, to the point of shushing other people in the crowd who were talking during the performance. I on the other hand was already primed to go to Cachirulo where I had a lot of great dances. Niki turned up to Cachirulo late, missing out on her usual seat, but having a great night with lots of dances anyway.

This Sundays Pot Luck dinner was supposed to be a traditional parrilla style theme. Unfortunately the weather man decided otherwise, and the romantic parrilla was cancelled in favour of cooking the meat in the oven. The food was still fantastic, and for desert, Niki managed to educate the Argentineans there on what one could do with pure Mayple Syrup.

I Have Found a New Dealer

2009-02-28T13:39:00.003-02:00

Ever since the changes in Comme il faut (quality going downhill and prices going uphill) I have been on the hunt for a new source of shoe goodness. Lolo Gerard shoes fit my feet perfectly, but I don't really like their styles. Neotango, on the other hand, has some lovely styles, but they never seem to fit my feet quite right. Tango-wear has some nice designs but I am not willing to buy shoes over the net. There has to be something out there...

I decided to pop into Gretaflora with a friend about a month ago. One of the pairs instantly grabbed my attention. A strappy number in graduating shades of blue. I tried it on and it fit like a glove - comfortable? Check. Well made? Check. Looks good? Check. No toes sticking out through the straps? Check. But I really couldn't justify buying another blue pair of shoes 'If only I could get it in shades of pink and purple...' , I said, thinking out loud. Greta, one of the two shop owners went out the back, and before I knew it, she had come back with over a dozen rolls of leather under her arm - all different shades of pink and purple. Perfect! I got to choose my own colours.

I was so excited when I went to pick them up a few weeks later. Unfortunately when she presented them to me they were not quite right. The colour sequence of the 5 straps was meant to be pink, pink, purple, purple, dark purple. unfortunately they had placed the dark purple strap between the two purple ones. Now I don't mean to nit-pick , but it made the shoe look 'wrong'. The girl was apologetic, and said that I didn't have to take them if i didn't want them, and that they would refund my deposit. I didn't want the deposit back. What I did want was the shoes to be 'right'. 'OK , don't worry about it. We'll make another pair, she said, which put a smile back on my face. Now all I had to do was wait another two weeks.

Well, I finally went in to pick them up on Tuesday, and this time they were perfect.

But wait - there's more. As I was about to leave, I spotted a pair in the same style in a deep brown/coppery satin, with the signature gretaflora leather flower on the side of the heel cage sitting on the discount shelf. I picked it up and saw that it was in my size. I looked it over, to make sure that the quality was OK. I tried it on, just to make sure it fit well . Beautiful, comfortable, well made shoes are hard to turn down. Beautiful, comfortable, well made shoes at a discount are IRRESISTABLE. And I really was thinking of a brown colour for my next pair...

So naturally, I ended up walking out of the shop with exactly what I wanted - and more!

p.s. Gretaflora does have a website, but the photos do not do them justice. The shoes are much more pretty 'in person' :).

Breaking the Camel's Back

2009-02-22T18:42:00.007-02:00

Last Sunday was a huge day that revolved around friends and food. After a big lunch with the 'Australian Bunch' that went on till 4:30pm, followed by an even bigger 'Pot luck' dinner with a different group of friends. I left there feeling extremely full. I decide to pop in to El Beso to burn off some of that delicious, yet excess, food I had consumed throughout the day. I get there around half past midnight, greet the girl at the door and walk up the stairs. The room is packed. I can't even see Susana, the organiser. There is an empty barstool near the entrance, so I decide to claim it. I go to the bathroom to change into my dance shoes. El Beso is normally quite busy on a Sunday night, but tonight it feels manic. I resign myself to just watching (you really don't want to be on a dancefloor when it is that manic). My stomache is so full. I really shouldn't have had that second helping of chocolate mousse for dessert. I managed to get a glimpse of Susana. She is busily running from here to there. I decide not to bother her. I will go up to her and greet her when things look a bit more calm. A few friends come over to greet me and chat. A. comes over to say hello. It is great to have reconnected with him since his return from Seattle. He asks me for a dance. Definitely. No matter how manic the dancefloor is I know that it will be a lovely dance. I know I will be protected. Lovely. I reclaim my spot at the bar. I watch or chat to friends as a few more tandas roll by. Then the floor is cleared. Announcements. Usually I don' like this part o the proceedings, as it cuts into my precious tango time, but tonight I don't mind at all. both the dancefloor and my belly are too full to allow for comfortable dancing. A cake is brought out and everyone starts singing. Its Susanas birthday (no wonder the place is packed). She blows out the candle and has a Birthday dance, which ends with roaring applause. The music starts again and the dacne floor fills up once more. Susana starts sharing out the cake. My stomach does an extra vigorous somersault. I move my barstool slightly to the left so that the espresso machine blocks my view of the cake. More chatting with friends. People start to leave. I have managed to avoid the cake. Things start to calm down. A few more tandas. I like my spot at the bar. I see Susana coming my way. I greet her with a big smile
'Feliz Cumple, preciosa!' (happy birthday , precious)
She gives me a big hug
It's been busy But I can relax now. Did you like the cake? she asks
I didn't have any , I answer
Why? Don't you like cake?
'I love cake , but I didn't get offered any', I replied, thinking I was safe
'Oh, no... wait a minute', she says as she runs off to the kitchen, only to come back a minute later with a piece of cake on a plate.
'Para vos', (for you) she says, beaming
I can't help smiling at her lovely gesture. I thank her and give her a big hug. (Oh no, now I have to eat it). I start eating as she and I chat some more. then she wanders to another part of the room. I eventually managed to get through what felt like the largest piece of cake imaginable. But now I really did feel unwell. That last mouthfull tipped me over the edge. I change my shoes and say goodbye to some friends. I spot Susana. 'I'm going. I am a bit tired tonight', I say. 'Thanks for the cake', I smile. I give my belly a gentle rub as I walk (waddle) down the stairs.
Another unforgettable night in BsAs.

You know you've been tangoing in Buenos Aires too long when....

2009-02-20T17:26:00.002-02:00

After dancing tango in Buenos Aires for almost 9 months straight, you start to view the world a little bit differently, and have problems knowing when you've been dancing just that little bit too much. Here is a helpful guide to be able to spot some of the key signs early.

You cabaceo the waitress
You order an Ocho cortado instead of a Cafe Cortado
You try to Chamuyo your own girlfriend... and it works.
You won't make eye contact with a person until you've seen them dance.
You always walk around squares and parks in an anti-clockwise direction, and complain about the silly tourists walking in the opposite direction.
Your Spanish is good enough to ask where someone is from, how long they've been dancing tango, how long they've been in Buenos Aires, whether they prefer a close, open or fluid embrace, and to discuss the finer points of a Di Sarli or a late Pugliese... But not good enough to order a pizza over the phone.
You consider becoming a Tango Taxi dancer just to support your lifestyle.
You can proficiently read the Guia"T", and work out in less than half an hour, which bus route/s you need to use to get to any milonga, practica or class. (People with degrees in cartography and cryptography may safely ignore this one).
You think that any Baldosa (tile) floor is a dance floor.
The only thing that is allowed to get in the way of dancing tango is tango shoe shopping.
You believe that looking at people’s shoes can tell you a lot about them.
You've spent more time dancing than walking.
You no longer have the ability to ask someone to dance verbally.
You get the same seat at the milonga every time you go, and people start referring to it as ‘your seat’.
You think that the only acceptable time to talk to a member of the opposite sex is the first 16 bars of a tango.
You get frustrated that La Viruta closes at 5am.
You firmly believe 1pm is too early for breakfast.
Your staple diet consists of empanadas and tostados con jamon y queso, (because that's what they serve at milongas).
Taking a night off means going to a matinee milonga.
Your mobile phone contacts list has more milonga reservation numbers than friends.

Please feel free to add more in the comments.

Weekly roundup, 15-Feb-2009

2009-02-18T20:19:00.010-02:00

In keeping with our mission of adding some nuevo to our (my) body of knowledge, we decided to take a class by Pablo Inza/Eugenia Parilla. Hard. (those sacada/parrida/colgada/gancho/volcada combintion whatchamacallits can be quite tricky).

Wednesday was more of the usual (a night at El Beso), but with a few added benefits - A. had returned from Seattle - J. has finally arrived from Melbourne (people from Australia seem to constantly be comming and going - we love it)

On Friday night we were invited to a private practica. It was meant to run from 6 till 9 , with the intention of leaving people with plenty of time to go home/shower/rest before a night out at a milonga. we were there till well after midnight all danced out and happy, despite the ridiculous heat

On Sunday we had a bit of a gathering of all the Australians (yes, there is a whole bunch of us here at the moment, with more due to arrive over the next two weeks) at one of our favourite parillas. Lots of catching up. Lots of laughter. Lots of photos. Lots of food...

later in the evening Scott and I were invited to a 'Pot Luck' dinner (everyone brings something to share) with the theme of 'things we love'. Well, what do you get when you get a bunch of foodies to bring something to share? A table full of amazingly good food, of course. the previous day I had managed to get my hands on 2 stalks of lemongrass (had been searching for this for AGES), so Scott and I were able to make one of our favourite dishes for this event a Spicy Thai chicken salad. Too much food....

... and then out came dessert - a ridiculously rich chocolate mousse, accompanied by 'Americana' ice-cream, mango coulis and Scottish shortbread that melted in your mouth. Waaaay too much food...

Weekly Roundup 8-Feb-2009

2009-02-12T00:49:00.007-02:00

Our teacher, Natacha Poberaj, has been performing in a show at a typical dinner and show venue called “El Querandi”. Niki and I saw the show back in June, before Natacha was performing in it. It is one of the only shows I would recommend people seeing because it is fairly authentic, it has some great choreography by Carlos Rivarola, it is a really intimate space, it has a 5 piece live tango orchestra, 3 singers and 6 dancers (two couples), and it is not over the top showy like some of the bigger venues. Natacha invited us to come and see the show and got us a discount, and we managed to get our friend A. invited as well. It was great to see Natacha in a performance capacity. Apart from the youtube videos of her, we really only know her in a social dance capacity. The show was great, and made me think about the differences between show and social tango, and the qualities that make someone good at both. I think the first and most important thing is that you need to know the difference and dance accordingly.

After the show we all went to the new Practica X venue for the first time. The venue itself was really good, a definite improvement on the previous venue. Better floor, more space, better air conditionning, except for one major factor, it is a lot harder to get to from San Telmo. Aside from that, it was still Practica X. Still legs flying everywhere with no regard to who they might hit. Still couples running into each other because they are too focussed on their triple backward sacada giro with high voleo, double twist and pike, to actually think about who else might also be trying to dance on the same floor as them. We even saw one woman get kicked in the ribs by a misguided super high voleo as she was walking along the side of the dance floor back to her seat. Still one of the most dangerous places to dance in Buenos Aires. Little hint people, tango dancing is NOT an extreme sport. We watched the performance at Practica X and it immediately dawned on me what was going on. 70% of the people there at Practica X wanted to be that couple doing the performance. They wanted to show off these amazing and grandiose steps to everyone around, and hopefully the organizers would see how good they were and approach them about doing the performance. Ironically, there were amazing dancers there. like Chicho (one of the fathers of the nuevo scene) who were doing some fantastic moves, but keeping it contained enough and connected enough that he was able to protect himself and his partner from all the madness going on around them, and really enjoy what they were creating. Like I said, you need to know the difference and dance accordingly.

On Thursday I decided to go with a friend E. to a practica run by Analia Vega and Marcelo Varela called Estilo Tango. It was a good chance for E. and I to practice together, and I noticed something that continues to frustrate me with every partner I dance with regularly. We are beginning to know each others vocabulary, and consequently we start to anticipate each other, and to expect certain things from each other. This then starts to limit what we can achieve. I notice this a lot with Niki. I am really struggling to become more creative to be able to surprise the people I dance with and thereby force them out of this kind of comfort, into a place where we can continue to be challenged.

While I was off with E. Niki went out for dinner with some friends to a little cafe not far from where we live, and there just so happened to be a three piece tango trio playing. Apparently this trio plays there every Thursday night. It suddenly dawned on Niki that there is more to Buenos Aires than just dancing tango. There’s also great, live music… OK, tango music, (small steps). She enjoyed the performance so much that she bought the CD.

On Friday night we caught up with a couple of friends we were living with at our previous accommodation. We had dinner at one of our favourite restaurants and they told us all about their experiences on the two farms they had stayed on in Bariloche.

After this Niki decided to go to La Capilla as friends had told her about the folklore performances. Turned out to be a huge night at this tiny venue full of live folklore and tango music and performances. Ok so now there’s tango dancing, tango music, folklore dancing and music, can Buenos Aires possibly contain anything more?

On Saturday I decided to organise a group of friends to make the pilgrimage out to Sunderland to see our teacher Natacha Proberaj perform there. Not wanting to miss our favourite milonga Cachirulo, 10 of us met up there first, and I decided that to cut down on cost, and also to give everyone a fuller experience of Buenos Aires, that we would catch the collectivo (bus) out to Sunderland. So at 11:30pm, I lead 10 people down to Cordoba where we caught a 140 bus that took almost an hour to get to Villa Urqiza and drop us off 4 blocks from Sunderland. I must say it was like trying to herd cats. We eventually got there, and all had a great time, even L. who had convinced himself he wasn’t going to enjoy it. Natacha danced tango and folklore with 2 different men, including Fabian Peralta. The Zamba was particularly amazing, as shown below.

On Sunday we were invited over to our friend Layne’s house for a family dinner. In Argentina Sundays are considered family day, and as Layne has no blood family here in Buenos Aires, she decided that her close friends are her family. It was a real honour to be included in this, not only because we both feel very strongly for this wonderful woman, but also because she made some amazing food. We met some of her other friends, and had a great time chatting about food, wine, life in Buenos Aires, our future plans etc….

After dinner Niki and I were going to head off to La Viruta to farewell a friend M. who was heading back to France. We got to La Viruta and were shocked to find that because of a festival, the price of entry at La Viruta had sky rocketed to $30 pesos. We really couldn’t afford it, so we ended up going to El Beso where entry is half the price. Fortunately I was able to dance with that friend one last time the previous night at Sunderland.

Frustrated in Buenos Aires

2009-02-03T19:53:00.001-02:00

Buenos Aires is a city of contradictions. Like the amazingly beautiful architecture from all different periods, juxtaposed against the fact that everything inside these buildings is in a tragic state of disrepair. Like the fact that the streets are in grid formation, with each new block the start of a new set of hundreds, (ie the block we live on calle Balcarce is 600 to 700), and every parallel block is the same block of hundreds, (so that Defensa which is parallel to us, is also 600 – 700 between the same two streets), it makes getting around very easy. Contrast this with the attitude that many Porteño’s love their dogs, but never bother to pick up after them, and the litter is just thrown onto the streets in plastic bags, and the pavements themselves are in disrepair, so the footpath is a mess of dog crap, garbage, pot holes and missing/broken tiles etc….

Of course there’s the amazing tango dancing (which is why we are here), the great music (tango and other) the street markets, theatre, great art, and you start to believe that this is a great world class city.

Then it seems at times the city actively works against you. Like when waiters will ignore you for long periods of time, (not that they’re busy), and the bill takes a good fifteen minutes and 3 reminders before it comes. At times I feel like we are inconveniencing them by actually choosing to eat at their restaurant. Or when the traffic gets so bad that buses are diverted down even more crowded streets and you spend 30 minutes to get through 3 city blocks, or if you have to let 4 trains go by in the Subte (subway) because they are overcrowded, and eventually give up and try to catch a taxi, but there are none free, and so you briskly walk the 18 blocks to your tango class, and arrive sweating and out of energy.

Argentine beaurocracy is also infamous. A friend of ours, Tango Cherie, is trying to get permanent residency here, and is having “The Paper Chase from Hell”, and reading this makes me think that the Argentine beaurocracy is crumbling under its own weight. Niki and I have had very few brushes with this kind of beaurocracy, but today, I experienced a taste of it.

I wanted to post off some gifts over to my family in Australia. Nothing expensive or fragile, (we have it on good advice that the Argentine postal system is not to be trusted with such items), just some small gifts. So a few days ago I was at a class, and I knew there was a post office (correo) nearby, so I popped in with all of the things I wanted to post off. They looked like they would be able to do this for me because they had a display window with mailing boxes about the right size for what I wanted. I walk up to the counter where there was no queue, (this surprised me because I’d heard of stories of how long you have to wait in these places), and asked how much it would cost to send this to Australia. She weighed the items and said, “Sorry but we can’t send it unless it is over 2kg”, and then told me where to go where I would be able to send them. It had started raining at this point, so I gave up and just caught the bus home.

Today I tried again, this time I went to a correo that was close by, and they said they didn’t have any boxes, and couldn’t send it anyway. So I went to another one that was about 5 blocks away, and was told, '”sure we can sell you a box, but we can’t send it”. The guy at the counter then told me of another correo about 8 blocks away that would be able to do both. So I walk up there and sure enough, there is a queue and a ticket machine, I take a number, -14, and then look up at the board to see who was currently being served… number 1, and there are 2 counters. So I sit there for close to an hour waiting patiently, and when I finally get to the counter, and ask if I can send these things to Australia, he says “sure, do you have your passport?”. What? I need my passport to send this to Australia? Yes, if it’s less than 2kg it’s the law. What an insane law. Of course I don’t have my passport on me - it’s 8 blocks away in my room. I walked home extremely frustrated. Maybe I’ll try again tomorrow.

Weekly roundup 01-Feb-2009

2009-02-02T19:52:00.005-02:00

I am really enjoying the rock and roll classes. I started to get bored of the beginner level half way through my second class, though, so for my third class I started learning the lead.

This week we caught up with A. from Melbourne, and we are having fun taking her out and making sure she gets the most out of her tango trip. On her first day here we took her to a class with Analia Vega and Marcelo Varela (nuevo), and later on to El Beso for her first BsAs milonga expeerience. I also had to take her out on the obligatory shoeshopping expedition, and we plan to do the markets next weekend.

Our regular pilates instructor is currently touring Europe (she is a tango dancer/teacher/performer). While she is away she has Paola covering her sessions. We Don't Like Paola! She is a drill-sergeant! (I actually love every nimute of it, but I 'll keep it to myself - hehehe)

On Sunday we caught up with Layne with the intention of taking her out to one of our favourite restaurants. The restaurant wasn't open on the Sunday night (Scott needs to do his research a bit better next time), but the fact that Layne is a food critic meant she had a few good restaurants up her sleeve. We ended up at a little italian gem that makes its own pasta. We will definitely go back there, as I have set myself the challenge of getting through their entire dessert menu.

Weekly Roundup, 25-JAN-2008

2009-01-28T17:51:00.002-02:00

Sunday the 25th of January is 8 Months to the day of when we arrived in Buenos Aires, Wow, it goes so quick.

This past week we did a lot of classes. Niki and I both went to all 3 of Osca Casas Classes at El Beso. I had a private with our teacher Natacha Poberaj, and Niki and I both did a class with Analia and Marcelo. This on top of dancing every night of the week except Tuesday.

On Monday we also met up to say goodbye to some friends R. T. and M. at Cafe Tortoni. They were heading back to Melbourne, and I made the observation that it was good to be able to say to someone “Goodbye and see you again soon” instead of “Goodbye, oh and have a good life”. We have met so many people over here who we will most likely never see again in our lives.

While I was having my private lesson with Natacha, Niki was off with 2 other friends in Villa Urquiza shopping for … you guessed it … tango shoes. She took very little money, but ended up putting a pair of shoes on order.

On Saturday we were invited through friends of ours to a going away party for Korey and Mila, a couple who have been taking a tango tour through Buenos Aires. I actually had the pleasure of dancing with Mila a few weeks ago at Mi Refugio, and it was divine. The party was fun, and there were a lot of very very good dancers there, and lots of space to dance. We were even privileged to hear a budding tango orchestra perform with Korey on Bandoneon and Mila singing.

The Journey

2009-01-22T15:43:00.001-02:00

Niki and I have been taking some group classes with Oscar Casas for some time now, and yesterday during his summary he mentioned something that I really think a lot more teachers need to tell their students. He had just finished teaching a 2 hour class focusing on gancho’s, we’d worked on a few different elements during the class including sacada’s, parrada’s etc… but the main focus had been the gancho’s. He then said in the summary that he wasn’t concerned if all of us were actually able to do the gancho’s, and made the statement that “It is all about the journey, not the destination”.

To be honest, at most out of any single class you take in tango you would be lucky to remember more than say about 10% of it afterwards, and even that 10% will die unless you actively put it into your dancing and commit it to your muscle memory. So to me this is an obvious axiom of tango. The journey is quite long, and to be perfectly honest, I am at a point now where I have forgotten if there ever was a destination. However, I see so many people in classes and practicas trying to learn tango by numbers. Attempting to imitate the figures and steps exactly as the instructor had taught them, and only being able to connect patterns in their entirety having to return to the neutral position before embarking on the next pattern. I think this is a product of how a lot of well meaning teachers teach tango with a constant focus on a complex figure. I know this is partly in response to what a lot of students think they want, but I think this creates good “steppers” not good “dancers”, and given the nature of milongas, makes for some havoc on a crowded dance floor as people try to step out in its entirety, the latest figure they just learnt in a class.

Another thing that he said, although I think I would have expressed it differently, was “do as much as your dignity will allow”. The idea being that if you can’t do the entire combination with the sacada, jiro and two gancho’s, then take the gancho’s out and concentrate on the other elements, or do what you can do gracefully. This is extremely important on the dance floor. I have seen many men attempting steps they can’t quite get right. Often it is just because they just can’t lead it properly (or can only lead it with a woman who had just finished doing the same class), sometimes it is because the follower isn’t at that level, either way, they don’t realise that it makes both of them look bad. On the flip side, I have seen many an average follower look pretty good just because the experienced leader she is dancing with is aware of her limitations and works with them and doesn’t try to do anything that will fail and make them both look bad.

I seem to be able to retain quite a lot from Oscar’s Classes, more than from any other teacher I have taken group classes with. Having thought about it, I have concluded that the reasons for this are as follows.

The classes are at the right level for where I’m at in my dancing. He is working on elements that I am already starting to employ in my dancing, and as such these classes serve to polish them up, and add new ideas to existing concepts. I think if you take classes that are too advanced for you, then not only do you frustrate the teacher, but you also waste your money as you won’t really retain that much, and what you do retain will be done with poor technique and will take more effort to correcting later on. On the flip side if you take classes that are too easy for you, you just get bored and everyone thinks you’re a show off.
His focus on elements rather than figures, the journey rather than the destination.
The fact that after the class I see him out at milongas using those exact same elements, walk the walk so to speak.

The Highs and Lows of Tango

2009-01-20T21:27:00.001-02:00

Many women have mixed experiences of the Buenos Aires tango scene, the word “wall-flowering” strikes fear and dread into the hearts of every woman who knows it’s meaning. Men can generally escape this problem because of 2 immutable facts.

There are always more women than men at any given milonga.
Only the men have the power to initiate the invitation to dance (thanks to the misogynistic roots of tango). Women only have the power to refuse or accept an invitation.

Having said this, I still occasionally see men (mainly foreigners) sitting out for a vast majority of the milonga, either through lack of confidence or lack of experience with the cabaceo.

I certainly don’t have either of the problems mentioned above, that still doesn’t mean that I can’t have a frustrating night.

Last night I was at one of my favourite Milongas Mi Refugio. I started the night with a lovely vals with one of my favourite dancers T. I then spied a woman in the front row who I have seen around, and always admired her dancing, and I decided that tonight I was going to dance with her. I have been trying for about a month now, but she just doesn’t seem to want to look at me. I tried for about 4 or 5 tandas, each time she would eventually end up accepting a dance invitation from someone else, and so I would move on to another woman. I eventually decided to give up on her for the moment, and saw a group of foreign women obviously on a tango tour, and noticed that 2 of them danced very nicely. So I decided to concentrate my efforts on one of them. I spent the entire first half of a beautiful tanda of valses trying to get her to look at me and accept my invitation, and in disgust thinking that she was purposely ignoring me, returned to my table frustrated, and decided to sit out the tanda of vals. Next tanda I decided to try for the other girl from that same group that looked like a good dancer, with the same result. I then tried another woman not from that group, then another, and another. Five women in a row had refused me. My confidence was shaken to it’s core, and I was starting to get depressed. I knew this was not a good time to dance so I sat down next to Oscar Casas and told him that I wasn’t having much luck.

“Why not, you’re a good dancer”. He says to me.

“Dunno, tonight it just seems like no-one wants to dance with me”. Ok I guess I was being a little over dramatic there, but 5 rejections in a row is pretty hard to handle.

Oscar dragged me outside and gave me a lecture which basically amounted to “So you’ve fallen off the horse, well, have the balls to get back in there and ride it again”.

I went back in, ordered some empanadas and by the time I had finished a friend M. from Melbourne had turned up, so I danced with her which started to restore some of my self esteem. I had a few more tandas with other friends, and then I tried again with the women from the tour group again. Same result.

It was at this point another woman turned up at the milonga whose dancing I had been admiring for some time now, and I tried to cabaceo her. She made a hand signal to me which I interpreted as “next tanda”, but the next tanda she was up dancing with someone else. My confidence was really taking a beating. I danced a few more tandas with other women I knew, and after another 2 or 3 rejections from this same woman, my confidence was at an all time low, and I was starting to really hate the night.

I decided to give it one last shot, and to my surprise I actually got a yes. She danced beautifully, and my spirits were slowly starting to be restored. During the Chamuyo, I told her that I’d been trying to dance with her for a while. She replied that she wanted to see me dance first (a common thing to do, it’s the tango equivalent of Quality Control), to which I replied that I’d been watching her for about a month or more, and had been seeing her around at various milongas, so I already knew how she danced. Obviously she hadn’t been watching me, my ego now in tatters, but thanks to her compliments on my dancing, my confidence was starting to regain some of the ground lost that night.

After that tanda, Niki finally turned up, and we had a really nice tanda of milonga together, probably one of the best we’ve ever had. A few tandas later I see the quality control woman looking at me expectantly, so I ask her for a dance. My confidence now soaring with the eagles, we have a lovely tanda. This time during the Chamuyo, she asks me if we can practice milonga together. Obviously she’d seen Niki and I dancing together and liked what she saw. I told her that the next milonga we’re together at, I’ll dance milonga with her, and she says, “No, I want to hire a studio and practice milonga with you for an hour”.

“OK” I say, and we continue to dance.

The last tanda of the night, we dance together yet again, and I give her my email address. I left the milonga on top of the world.

Weekly roundup, 18-Jan-2009

2009-01-19T18:10:00.015-02:00

OK, I've been really slack so this post will actually contain info for the past 2 weeks

Week Ending 11th Jan
On Tuesday I did something that I hadn't done in quite a while - I had a look at the Escuela Argentina de Tango, class schedule, and to my surprise I saw that one of the people that I had DESPERATELY wanted to take classes from (Jorge 'the King of the Walk' Dispari, together with his wife, Marita 'La Turka') was actually billed to teach there for the next month or so. The class was scheduled at a time which clashed with our regular private class. Well, I had been trying to hunt this man down for moths, so I had no qualms about telling Scott that I wanted to skip my private session in order attend this group class, and it was well worth it.

Thursday night was a big Aussie catch-up night, with C., R., T. and M. in town, we caught up for a tango/contemporary fusion show, followed by dinner and some dancing.

This weekend we actually managed to get out of the city. We had been trying to plan a weekend getaway, a holiday form our holiday. The more we tried to plan it, the harder it became to organise, at around 4 pm on Friday, with tensions beginning to rise, we just looked at each other, and decided to throw some clothes in a backpack and just jump on a train and get the hell out of the city. We ended up spending one night in La Plata .This followed by a day of exploring the science, anthropology and archaeology museum (I even got photos of dinosaur skeletons - the kids at the child care/Kindergarten centre where I work back in Melourne will be impressed). We then took a bus to Pinamar, where the most strenuous activity that we had to undertake was walking to the beach. It was great to spend a few days away from polluted BsAs.

Week Ending 18th
Well, we have rescheduled our regular privates, so now I can attend Jorge and Maritas classes without missing out on my private sessions. i am a happy girl :)

On Thursaday R. Invited me to join her for salsa and rock classes. I went staight from my tango private to Club Azucar, and jumped straight into the second half of what I thought was the intermediate Salsa class. I used to do salsa, about 3-4 years ago, so I thought that the intermediate level would be fine for me, but I found that I was really struggling with everything. I felt really clumsy, and kept apologising for stumbling every couple of steps. When the class came to an end, R. comes up to me saying 'woah, you were brave, juming into the advanced section!' Advanced section???!? No wonder I was struggling! Oh well, you live and learn.... The rock class started soon after, and this time I made sure that I was in the appropriate section - Beginners :)
It was so much fun, learning the basics, to be new at something, to not have any expectations of myself, or others. It was a fun evening, and I think I'll go back for more.

This week H. managed to commandeer a couple of bottles of pure Canadian maple syrup from Melbourne. So as a show of appreciation, we had her over for a Sunday breakfast of pancakes with toppings spicy strewed apples, fresh figs, and caramelised walnuts and bananas with maple syrup. it was a lovely long, relaxed decadent breakfast. Her parting words were 'I never realised how much joy maple syrup would bring...'. Sometimes its the simple things in life that make us happy.

Later in the afternoon R. and I decided to go to the Palermo markets. Lots of fun was had. Lots of money was spent Must go back there with more money, you know, make my contribution to the local economy. The day ended like just about every Sunday night - El Beso.

Making Change

2009-01-17T16:06:00.005-02:00

The most irritating thing about being over here is not the pollution in the air. Its not the pet owners who don't pick up after their dog. Its people at milongas, tourists, who upon paying for their drinks, will empty their purse of coins and leave them as a tip . Don't they realise how precious those coins are?

The transport companies have just put up fares by 20 centavos. 'Twenty Centavos? That's nothing ', you may think. Not so. As if it weren't hard enough to come by coinage as it is (see post on Monedas).

On Thursday I decided to go on a field trip. The purpose? To 'make change'. My plan was to walk into the city, popping in to every bank that I passed on the way, and exchange bills for coinage. I even made a list of the bank location, the waiting time (queues are fun!) and the maximum amount of coins they would give me. waiting times varied between 2 minutes and 25 minutes (I am glad that I had brought supplies with me - a copy of Samuel Shem's 'Mount Misery' and a bottle of water), and the amount that I could get ranged from $3 to $10. After two and a half hours of walking and waiting in queues, and I had amassed a bounty of 40 pesos in coinage.
Traveling by public transport shouldn't be a problem - at least for the next week and a half :)

Holiday Roundup

2009-01-05T12:04:00.006-02:00

The silly season has been full of events, looking for accommodation, and eventually moving, as well as all the usual dancing and lessons that make up our average week in Buenos Aires. As such we've fallen a bit behind on our weekly Roundup, so here is a fortnightly one.

Here in Argentina, the big celebration for Christmas is held on Christmas Eve. Families and friends get together, eat, drink and get very merry. Niki and I were privileged to be invited to join in the Christmas Eve celebrations with one of our teachers, Oscar Casas, and his family. All up there were about 20 or so people. We all sat around and talked, the conversation often getting back to tango in one form or another, and then we ended the night by telling some jokes, mine were so much cleaner than Oscar's.

On Christmas day we had lunch at a friends house with a few other Ex-pats. They had a small traditional Argentinean Grill, and because it looked vaguely like a BBQ, they decided it was a mans job to cook on it (quite convenient, if you ask me). Being the only one there with a Y-Chromosome the duty fell to me. I had never used one of these grills before, but I think I managed to cook everything fairly well. We had Asado (ribs), T-Bone steak, Chorizo, and some Chicken. Niki had also made a batch of her famous Sangia, so we sipped on that throughout the day.

Later that afternoon we went to Parque Lezama to join another group of friends who had decided to spend Christmas day picnicing in the shade. More Sangia was supplied, and we all had a great time.

After a short siesta, I decided to go out dancing... yes on Christmas day, in Buenos Aires you can go out to Milongas. So I joined a group of friends at Tango Soho (Villa Malcolm) for a few Christmas dances.

The days between Christmas and New Years were spent looking for more permanent accommodation, visiting cafes with wi-fi access, going out to milongas, and having a few classes. As a Christmas present Niki booked me in for a private milonga lesson with "El Flaco". He was very abrupt in his manner, but I felt I learnt a lot, and he corrected a lot of my bad habbits in Milonga.

For New Years Eve we were lucky enough to be invited along to a restaurant in Puerto Madero with an Argentinean friend of ours and her extended family. The meal was nice, (although a little over priced at $120 pesos each, and that was the discount rate, other people were paying $200 pesos each). At midnight, everyone rushed out to watch the fireworks that were happening all around Puerto Madero, and the rest of the city. When we came back inside, a DJ had started playing some cool Latin rhythms, and everyone was up dancing, even our friend's two elderly aunts aged 84 and 89. Eventually the 89 year old aunt had to sit down, but the 84 year old aunt was still shaking her stuff on the dance floor throughout the night. Although we could have gone out tangoing after that, Niki and I decided not to, and just walked home at 3am.

New years day was spent moving into our new accommodation which hopefully will be the last time we need to move. Our new place is a share house, currently 2 other people are living here, but best of all it has wi-fi.

Later that evening we went out to El Beso where we met up with some old friends from the Melbourne tango scene. It was great to see some familiar faces.

On Friday night we decided to try out a milonga we hadn't been to before "Entre Tango y Tango" which is on Humberto Primo (the same venue as Niño Bien). There were lots of people there, and because we're not really familiar with the organisers, we didn't get good seats. The level of dancing was OK, but not as good as we've become accustomed to.

On Saturday night Niki went off to her usual Cachirulo, and I went to a friend's birthday party. At the birthday party I met up with a friend from the US who is living here in Buenos Aires with his wife, and his wife and I got talking about tango. I knew she had danced a while back, and someone suggested that we dance for them at the party. We found La Cumparsita on one of the hosts' iPods, and danced in their living room. She was a pretty good follower, although I could sense she was a little rusty. Everyone was amazed, and found it hard to believe that we had never danced together before. They even said that it looked as though it was choreographed. I think we both really enjoyed giving a bunch of non-tango people an insight into what stirs people to take up tango with such a passion. Just after midnight I left the party and joined Niki at Cachurulo where we danced til they played La Cumpasita there as well (For non-tango people, La Cumparsita is always the last tango of a milonga).

Least Favourite Places

2009-01-03T17:26:00.010-02:00

Over the months Scott and I have developed a routine. We have a set venue for each day of the week. Sometimes our chosen venue for a particular evening coincides, for example, Saturday night is always Cachirulo night for both of us, whereas on other nights we might head off in different directions, him going to one venue and me going to another. All in all, we are happy with our choices.

Every now and then, however, I will stray from this pattern, with varied results. Two weeks ago I decided to go to 'Practica X', a nuevo venue where it is not uncommon to see legs flying in the air. Oddly enough, I had a good time though, with the evening ending in a lovely performance by Gustavo and Gizelle. I wouldn't mind going again in the near future, especially since my new year's resolution is to learn a bit of Tango Nuevo, just to challenge my body and my own perceptions of tango.

Similarly, every now and then I will turn up to a 'Paracultural' event (Salon Canning on a Monday, Tuesday, Friday,)and on a Thursday. I go through this process of staying away for 5 or so weeks, then turning up and thinking 'Oh, my goodness - this is a zoo!', and then not going back for another 5 or so weeks, whereby the cycle will repeat itself. Damn my goldfish memory!*

Well, if Paracultural/Niño Bien is the 'Zoo' of all milongas, then 'La Viruta' is definitely 'The Circus'. I went to La Viruta last night, with a group of friends, though I am still not sure what possessed me to agree to going... The only highlight of the outing was watching Cecilia Garcia y Santiago Dorkas dancing the most beautiful Zamba I've ever seen, during a tanda of Chacarera/Zamba

This venue is essentially, a night club - a pick up joint - that just happens to play tango music, and comes complete with people groping each other, bumping and grinding and sucking each other's faces off - both off and on the dance floor. As for line of dance, well its more of a manic scribble than a line, really, giving the dance floor the look (and feel) of a ride on 'Dodg'em Cars'.

Having said all this, I'm sure there are people out there that feel that La Viruta is amazing. I do realise that all of the above is my subjective opinion, but I guess that is what a personal blog is all about, no?

*I don't think it is so much a fact that I have the memory of a goldfish, but rather the fact that I seem to have this filter process 'thing' happening, allowing just positive experiences to occupy space in my long term memory bank :). This is another reason why blogging some of this stuff (especially the not-so-positive stuff) is important.

Storming off

2008-12-23T13:20:00.008-02:00

On Saturday night , for the first time EVER, I walked off in the middle of the tanda.

It was late in the night, at Cachirulo. A man I did not know invited me to dance. Up to this point I had already had a great night of beautiful dancing, so I was not too worried about dancing with someone new, whose dancing I hadn't observed throughout the night. We get onto thhe dancefloor and he starts to dance (I am using the term dance very loosely). He proceeds to step on my toes (ouch) and to bump into every other couple around us (I now know what being the little silver ball in a pinball machine would feel like), but still I continue dancing. I would never leave the dance floor just because the leader was a bad dancer. I firmly believe that if the follower is silly or not observant enough to accept a dance from a poor leader, then that is the followers fault, and she should therefore put up with it. At one point, I felt him trying to lead me into a backstep (which would have resulted in crashing into the couple behind us). I gently pulsed my left hand on his back (in an attempt to alert him of the danger of colliding), which he ignored, stepping back, bumping into the couple behind us. Not only that, but he gives me a look He continues dancing, taking 3 more steps, bumping into three more couples. Then he tried to lead me into another backstep. Again I gently pulsed my hand on his back. Again, he ignored it and stepped back into the couple behind us, but then he stopped and released his embrace. He looked at me sternly and said

- ´Yo no bailo asi´ (I don´t dance this way)

to which I responded

- ´Si, pero yo no quiero chocar con cada otra pareja en la pista´

(yes, but I don´t want to crash into every other couple on the dance floor)

- ´Entonces, Gracias´ he snorted (Then, thank you) * for the uninitiated, in tango you would only say the words ´thank you´ in the context of ´thank you, but I´ve had enough´

- ´Gracias´, I said, with a cold smile, and I walked off, leaving him on the dancefloor.

Oh, well. I guess there is a 'first time' for everything....

Weekly Roundup 22-Dec-2008

2008-12-23T13:06:00.005-02:00

This week has been quite a stressful week for both of us. On Monday we found out we had 2 days to find new accommodation (its a long story). We quickly rang around some friends, and started to look up places on the Internet. We managed to secure the use of a really nice one bedroom apartment until the end of December, so we moved in on Wednesday, but are still frantically looking for another place. This is made a little bit more difficult by the fact that we don't have Internet access at this place.

With all this stress one might think that we'd stop our normally hectic dance agenda, but no. We went to Mi Refugio on Monday with some friends of friends from Melbourne. I was surprised at getting so many good dances, that I was convinced I was burning up some kind of cosmic Karma, and I'd have to pay for the rest of my life with bad dances. Niki also had a few good dances, I always say that it's a good night when her worst dance is me, but when I'm up against the likes of O.C. and P.S., I gracefully concede. After the milonga we decided to take our Australian friends out for dinner, and after meeting up with Oscar Casas in the foyer suddenly we had another 3 guests for dinner. We went to one of our favourite parillas in San Telmo, and Oscar did the classic Argentinean thing of regaling everyone with jokes after the meal. Most of them were tango related, and most of which he made me promise not to print here due to their somewhat rude nature, but I'm sure I can re-tell the one about the patent leather shoes... then again maybe not.

On Saturday we were at our regular Saturday night milonga Cachirulo, and during the night the organiser invited us and our friend R. to an end of year party the next day. We met up near the organisers house, and were given a lift out to the province to a place called Lanus. The party was hosted at a private reception hall, and there would have easily been about 90 people, all of them regulars from Cachirulo. It was a true honour to have been invited to such an event.

The DJ put on some tango, and everyone got up and danced, it was definitely a more relaxed atmosphere than in Cachirulo, especially as the wine was flowing fairly freely. Not so the food, Niki and I were a little disappointed with the amount of food. We're used to parrillas were they just keep bringing out grilled meat until we can't eat any more, but at this place we were left hungry. We also were treated to a live performance from the singer of Sexteto Milonguero (even though he tried to claim he was on holidays), and then the DJ started playing other music such as combia, salsa, mirengue, rock, disco etc.... It was great to see everyone up and dancing to whatever came on, just enjoying life, and the music. The Argentineans certainly know how to party. It was definitely worth it for us for the cultural experience.

Purely Accidental

2008-12-21T21:15:00.003-02:00

Our new temporary accommodation doesn't have an internet connection, so last night i was walking around San Telmo trying to find an internet cafe. While wandering, I bumped into a friend, R. We greeted each other and started walking and talking, and before I knew it we were at the entrance of Club Belgrano. I looked through the open door, and instantly spotted someone I know - O.. He saw me, so I though I´d better go inside to say hello. We chatted, as we had not seen each other for a while, and then he asks me for a dance. Well I was not prepared for dancing - I was in zapatillas (sneakers), but I thought ´what the h...´. After we finished the tanda we sat back down.OK, now is a good time to continue my search for an internet cafe, I thought. Just then, I spotted A. and S. and waved to them . Before I knew it, A. was by my side and we were chatting away, talking about plans for Christmas day. Then I notice R. trying to catch my eye. Oh, well, I thought. In for a penny, in for a pound . I had a lovely tanda with R. and then I sat back down. Then I see someone who looked familiar. Tall, hansom, greying hair. Ah yes, I know him - its W. from Melbourne. I had no idea he was in BsAs. He comes up to me and we chat for a while. Our chat is interrupted, Maria, the organiser turns down the music and demands silence, she wants to say a few words. The Naveira´s are present and she wants to acknowledge them. After the speeches are over W. and I finish chatting, after exchanging contact details. Again, I thought ´this would be a great time for me to go´. Just then, W. stops a friend of his who is walking past, and intruduced me to him. The friend asks me where I am from. ´Cyprus´, I respond. ´¿Verdad?´ he asks, with a really surprised look on his face. ´There´s another girl here, who is from Cyprus´, he explains, still looking extremely surprised that there are two people from the same tiny pocket of the earth in the same room at the same time (I was a bit surprised too, to be honest). ´Come, I´ll introduce you´ . We walk up to his table, and he introduces me to a thin, tall brunette - J. . ´J.?´ I ask. ´J. G.?´. all of a sudden we both realise who each other is. JG teaches and runs a milonga in Cyprus. She was the first person to start up a tango scene on the island, 3 years ago, and we met her the last time we were there, in 2007. More exchanges of contact details. Another familiar face walks in the door - its J.L.. OK. I can´t possibly leave without having a dance with him. We dance and then sit back down. O.K., good time to go, but Oh no - they have quickly cleared the dance floor and set up some chairs and a table for a little theatre act. It would be totally rude to walk out the door now. I relax and try to follow the play, but the two actors are talking way too fast for me, and I miss the meaning. Oh, well.... The play is over. R. is trying to catch my eye. A beautiful tanda of DiSarli - how can I possibly say ´no´ to that? Then a tanda of milongas comes on. W. asks me for a dance. I normally won´t dance milonga with someone unless I know them (their dancing) really well, but I know that W. is an extremely lovely dancer, so I say yes. When the tanda is over and we sit down, I look around and notice that the crowd has thinned out - a lot. I look at the time. Its 2:25. the milonga finishes at 2:30. Oh well, no internet tonight, just a fun night of dancing and catching up with friends - and it was all purely accidental.

Over Half-way, Time to Reflect

2008-12-18T16:22:00.001-02:00

We arrived here in Buenos Aires on the 25th of May and I have booked my return flight for the 29th of April 2009. As such I have a little over 4 months left here In Buenos Aires, and have been here almost 7. Niki has also booked the same flight home, although she is not committing to not changing this date. Back in April I set out a list of things I wanted to do while here in Buenos Aires, and I think it's time for me to go back to that list and see how well I'm faring, and what I really need to concentrate on over the next 4 months.

OK, so the obvious things first

Learn Spanish to a point where I consider myself bi-lingual

Well, after 6 months of Spanish lessons, I feel that I haven't really progressed that much at all. My biggest problem has been that both Niki and I speak English together, and we've both been way too successful at surrounding ourselves with English speaking friends. I have also changed the goal somewhat slightly. My new goal is that by the end of my stay here I should be able to read Borges in the original Spanish. My Spanish teacher laughs at me every time I tell her this, telling me that even Argentineans need to take classes in reading Borges to truly understand him. OK, so I need to seek out more non-English speaking Argentinean people.

Learn tango from some of the greatest tango dancers in the world

I can definitely say that I have given this my best shot. We have been having private lessons from Natacha Poberaj for about 5 months now, but have also had lessons from other amazing dancers such as Jorge Firpo, Damian Garcia, Eduardo Socedo, Pablo Veron, Fabian Peralta, Oscar Casas, Gustabo Naveira to name a few.

Social tango dancing

I can quite safely say that I've done an insane amount of social tango dancing. When I first arrived I was thinking that 4 or 5 milonga's a week would probably be all that I could handle, but I am averaging around 6 or 7 a week.

OK, now for the non-obvious goals

Learn more about tango music

I have definitely learnt more about tango music, but perhaps not as much as I would have liked. This requires a lot of time sitting down listening to different orchestras, and studying the music in more depth. Time I have yet to dedicate to this goal.

Software projects

I have spent considerable time on various software projects, and I have come to a very important conclusion. I actually do enjoy software development, but I hate things like unrealistic deadlines, middle management who call meetings and waste peoples time just to justify their own existence, and poorly organised software development life-cycles. So if I can just find a job where none of these things exist I'll be in heaven... watching pigs fly.

Do a lot of reading

Within the first week of arriving here I had read Slaughter house 5, and then decided to start on a book that has been my nemesis for over a decade now. Dosteyevsky's "The Brothers Karamazov". I am still going, but am in the final few chapters. I have also done a little bit of reading in Spanish. We have a couple of parallel text books (Spanish on one page English on the other), of short stories written by Authors around the Spanish speaking world. It is very slow going, but hopefully it is improving my Spanish as well.

Creative Writing

I have managed to do a significant amount of creative writing. This also overlaps with one of my personal software projects, and hopefully in the New Year, I will be able to make an announcement about this project, and maybe even send a link around. I have also been active in a writers' group here in Buenos Aires, and now I'm even helping run it.

Blog more

Yeah, done a little of this, maybe not as much as I was hoping to, but still more than I was doing in Australia.

Travel

Done some of this, although not much outside of Buenos Aires. We have visited Uruguay, and Chile. Within Argentina, we've been to Tigre and Mendoza. I still want to see Iguazu falls, stay on an Estancia somewhere in the country, go to Patagonia, and maybe even go back to Mendoza

Get Healthier

Hrmmmm..... too much dulce de leche and alfajores, too much Quilmes, too much Bife de Lomo and Choripan, too much ice cream, almost no swimming. OK, so I have had some issues with this one. I am hoping that the insane amount of dancing I've been doing is at least compensating, but I haven't been game enough to set foot on a set of scales.

Volunteering

Nope, haven't done that yet.

Relax and enjoy a slower pace of life.

Yeah, have been doing that, although it is amazing how even when you feel like you are doing almost nothing, you manage to fill your life up to the point where you're extremely busy. There are days where I seriously wonder how people manage to find 40 hours a week to actually work.

A New Challenge

2008-12-18T14:49:00.001-02:00

Today we had to move houses. We were given 2 days notice (long story), and so found, through some friends, a suitable apartment. The apartment is everything we want, in pretty much the same neighbourhood except for one minor fault. No Internet. If going without my laptop for 2 weeks in Chile wasn't enough, now we're back, I have my laptop, but no Internet. It's the equivalent of having a car but no roads, or as the classic Australian song goes, having a pub with no beer. It's almost but not quite useless.

Having said this, I think it will affect Niki more than me, because Niki isn't used to using offline clients for her computer activities. She was a bit of a late comer to the Internet age, and hasn't experienced the joys of slow and sporadic Internet connections which force you into exploring offline mode options for your email, blogging etc.... I have, and so will just do all that I can offline, and then go out for a coffee at a cafe with wi-fi.

Weekly roundup 14-Dec-2008

2008-12-15T13:24:00.006-02:00

We got back on Wednesday morning, jumping straight back on that roller coaster that is life (and chaos) in BsAs, and got back into routine (El Beso) that very night.

This friday we did something totally out of character (for me, at least) - a class by Gustavo Naveira.I found it very challenging, as I am definitely not a 'nuevo' person. I must admit, however, that I did have fun. The Naveiras will be here for another week or so, and I'm happy to take some more of their classes - hey, if I'm gonna be doing 'nuevo', it might as well be with them, right?

On Sunday, as a 'spur of the moment' thing, we, together with T., decided to visit the zoo in Palermo. We had a good time, but I have to say, some of the enclosures made me want to cry - especially the elephant and polar bear ones. I guess I am used to the Melbourne Zoo, where the grounds are extensive, and a lot of effort is put into creating as natural an environment for the animals as possible.

I cannot believe that we are more than half way through our year long adventure. I have only just registered the fact that we are 11 days away from Christmas!

Mendoza

2008-12-14T22:59:00.001-02:00

We arrived in Mendoza on Saturday afternoon after another stunning trip through the Andes, with a little bit of excitement at the border. As we were having our bags checked by customs officials, a number of bags were set aside for further investigation. One of the bags was simply a large black garbage bag, with lots of masking tape around it. When the officials opened the bag they found lots of small white cardboard boxes, about half the size of your average shoe box. I was getting my hopes up for a big drug bust, but alas it turned out to be sun glasses - hundreds of them. Apparently someone on our bus was trying to smuggle large quantities of sun glasses from Chile into Argentina, and thereby avoid import duties. No one claimed the sun glasses, and as the bus left we saw some of the customs officials trying them on for size.

We looked up our trusty Lonely Planet guide in the Mendoza section for a cheap hostel, picked one that looked reasonable, and proceeded to take a taxi there. On the way the taxi driver told us that there was a beer festival happening the next day, and although it may be a little odd to go to a beer festival in the heart of wine country we decided we'd give it a try.

After dropping us off near the address of the hostel we had found in the guide we learnt a valuable lesson about guides. Never trust them. The information was obviously out of date as the hostel had been torn down, and there was instead a boarded up construction site where the hostel should have been. We quickly walked around and asked about 5 or 6 hotels and eventually found one that we could afford.

The next day we decided to check out the beer festival. We had a good time enjoying different soothing ales, and listening to the live music. We left early and headed to a milonga. The level of dancing in Mendoza was fairly low, but certainly better than in Chile, and there was even a live orchestra.

Monday we decided to visit a bodega, and chose from the 2 that were actually open (the majority were closed due to a public holiday), the only one that had a restaurant. It was also the furthest away with no public transport there, so we had to spend 70 pesos each way on a taxi. It was worth it though. The winery was Familia Zuccardi, who make some really good wines including a fortified wine that a friend of ours (who is a food critic and fellow blogger) told us about ages ago, called Malamado. We finally got to try this wine, and lets just say that we left with 3 bottles of it (2 red and 1 white), as well as a bottle of rose, and a bottle of white. I think this should stand us in good stead for Christmas. After the wine tour and tastings, we finally got to the restaurant where they had a set menu which included various different wines at various different stages of the meal. The meal itself was an entree of empanadas followed by salad and grilled vegetables, then the traditional Argentinean Parrilla, and finally flan con dulce de leche for desert. The quality was really high, and even though it was a little expensive, definitely worth it.

On our final day in Mendoza, we decided to take in one more winery "La Rural" which has a museum. We caught the bus out and walked the kilometre and a half to the Bodega after attempts to persuade us that we needed to hire a bicycle failed to convince us that we needed the bikes. After the tour of the museum and winery, we headed back to a restaurant on the main street where Niki found stewed rabbit, and I found a nice bottle of Malbec for us to share.

We then made our way back to Mendoza where we boarded a coach and headed back to Buenos Aires. The trip back to Buenos Aires was the first time we'd managed to get first class seats, and I have to say that if ever I am travelling over night again, I will spend the extra money for first class, it's the only way I can get a good night's sleep.

La Tercera Region

2008-12-10T18:24:00.013-02:00

We made our way north to Copiapó , where we spent the next few days being extremely unwell (someone should have warned us that the tapwater wasn't fit for human consumption), with the majority of our time here spent either in bed or in the bathroom :(

When we eventually felt welll enough, we did manage to achieve one of our goals - to visit Laguna Verde. We Four-wheel-drived through the rugged, bone dry Andes (the DAKAR rally will be following the same course in a few month's time). It was such a bizarre experience to be that high above sea level (4200 metres) with hardly any green to be seen. The first stop was an old mining town . I had lots of fun roaming around the old ruins - like a child exploring a new playground.

The next stop was at Laguna Santa Rosa, where we stopped to have lunch . It was pretty cold, but I coulddn't keep myself within the confines (and warmth) of the refuge cabin. Instead I chose to have my lunch outtside, watching pink flamingos at play in the lagoon.

Our final stop, Laguna Verde, was worth all the bumping around in the 4WD. The lagoon was beautiful. It gets its name from the colour of the water - it appears to be green due to it's rich mineral content. To top it all off, there were a couple of hot water springs nearby. Scott couldn't resist, and was quick to jump in, althought I needed a bit of convincing to join him. Once in, however, it was almost impossible to convince me to come out - why would I possibly want to get out of 30 something degree water, only to be exposed to near zero degree windy climes?

We then drove to the west coast, heading to Bahia Inglesa for a day of relaxing, and for the unique opportunity to see the sun set over the ocean. That night we had dinner at 'the Dome' a restaurant made from fiberglass and shaped like (you guessed it!) a dome. We were once again pleasantly surprised by the lovely flavours that food in Chile had to offer.

Surprised by Santiago

2008-12-10T14:57:00.001-02:00

Considering all we had heard about Santiago de Chile, our expectations were fairly low. We had read various web sites, talked to people who had visited Santiago, and the most positive thing we´d heard was "it´s just another big city", and we´d heard lots of negative things. I guess it´s always the way in life, when your expectations are low, you often leave yourself open for pleasant surprises.

We caught the overnight bus from Buenos Aires all the way through to Santiago which is a 22 hour ride. The theory is that the next morning after a restful night's sleep, you awake to the awsome sights as you cross the Andes from Argentina into Chile. The second part of the theory was correct, but as far as the restful sleep goes, I always find it near impossible to sleep on a bus, even if it is a "Coche Cama" (bed coach), which means the seat reclines almost (but not quite) to horizontal.

After we got off the bus, the desperate need to be caffinated lead us to break one of our golden rules "never buy coffee from an airport or coach terminal". Surprisingly the coffee was actually decent, and we discussed our battle plan from there. We had arrived in Santiago with absolutely no accomodation plans, or any other plans for that matter. So we quickly sat down and planned our stay. 2 nights in Santiago, followed by an overnight bus trip to Copiapó, (overnight because we are too tight to spring for a nights accomodation), 4 days in Copiapo / Bahia Inglesa, an overnight return to Santiago (again saving on accomodation), and then a final day in Santiago before we headed for Mendoza. We then went and booked our coaches, and then decided we should check ourselves into a Hostel.

We were told where the tourist information centre was, and we quickly found the metro (subway) that took us right to it. The man at the tourist information centre was very helpful, and gave us a list of hostels and circled the ones that were close by and even showed us on the map where they were.

We went to the first hostel only to find they were booked out, but the girl there didn´t want to send us away empty handed so she rang around 3 other hostels in the area, and she eventually found one that had a room available. We couldn´t believe she was so helpful, and it was really appreciated as we had walked a fair way already with our heavy backpacks, and were starting to worry that the trek around Santiago would never end.

The guy at the hostel where we stayed was extremely helpful, even recomended a really nice restaurant for dinner, Junta Nacional (Ramón Carciner 87 Providencia). While having dinner, Niki decided she wanted some Sangria, and asked if they had some, the waitress told her "no, but we have Borgoña". We had no idea what Borgoña was, but after she explained that it was red wine with sugar, ice and strawberries (and obviously some special ingredients they weren´t willing to share with us), we decided to give it a try. Niki fell in love immediately, and now that she has perfected Sangria, has decided to embark on the noble goal of perfecting Borgaña as well. By the way the food was really nice too, so full of flavours compared to the food in Buenos Aires.

The next day after some failed attempts to book some tours and accomodation in Copiapo, we decided to pay a visit to Barrio Bellavista. We admired the arts and crafts markets, and then headed down for a Coffee at Pablo Neruda´s house. The last house that Pablo Neruda lived in has been turned into a museum, and a cafe, so after the coffee we did a guided tour of the house.

That evening we ate at another Restaurant our friend from the hostel had recommended, called Patagonia. It was great to have lamb again, Buenos Aires is so hung up on how good there beef is, that they forget there are other forms of red meat.

After dinner we decided to go to the only milonga in Santiago we could actually find any information on from the web. It turned out to be a group of (shall we say) older people who were getting together to learn tango, and were at a fairly beginner level. Also they danced Chilean folklore, which looked to us like a mixture of zamba and Chacarera, but we were assured by one generous person who felt it her duty to assist us, that it was nothing alike, and she proceeded to explain to us the different elements of the dance.

That night we went home early, and Niki decided that she wanted more Borgoña, so we decided to go back to Junta Nacional. We were told that they´d run out, so we headed home, and told our friend at the hostel our sad story of yearning for Borgoña, at which point he decided to take it upon himself to instruct us in this sacred art. Two bottles of wine, a cup of sugar, 20 strawberries and a bag of ice later and we had our first attempt at Borgoña. Not bad, but definitely room for improvement.

The next day we decided to take in some more of the sights of Santiago. First we visited the national history museum. There were some great exhibits ranging from the indigenous history right through to the military coup in 1973. It struck me as odd though that there was nothing more recent than this. I was very interested in the events leading up to the coup, but I was also interested in what happened after it. Maybe there are too many scars or maybe too many disagreements about the more recent events.

On the way to lunch Niki spied an advertisement for an exhibition of the work of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, and suddenly we had the rest of our day planned. The exhibition was really enjoyable, and we even got to see a painting of Pablo Neruda´s mistress that we had been told about by the guide at Pable Neruda´s house.

We then headed out of Santiago later that night.

Shaken

2008-12-05T19:37:00.005-02:00

This is extremely off topic, I know. It has nothing to do with travel. It has nothing to do with tango.
Today I received an email from an old friend - a guy I went to university with. It was a group email, letting everyone know that he had finally beaten a 5 year battle with cancer. I am so glad he is well, but I was so shaken by the fact that he had been battling with this for so long - I had no idea...

Just taking time out to wish everyone happiness and good health.

I hate 'Goodbyes'

2008-11-26T14:03:00.003-02:00

I hate saying goodbye, so this post won't be a 'goodbye'. It will be a 'thank you' .
Dearest M.
thank you for the countless lovely dances
thank you for dinner
thank you for your friendship
I will miss being in your company - both on and off the dance floor.
'Til we meet again,
thank you
:)

Brave step

2008-11-26T13:41:00.001-02:00

Like all geeks, I generally keep my laptop close to me at all times, it is my security blanket. It is either on my person, or at the place where I will go to sleep that night, which is usually no more than an hours travel away.

As Niki and were planning our trip to Chile, I made the decision not to take it, and so this will be the first time in many years I will be without it for more than a day.

So don't expect too many blog posts while we're away, we will get to an internet cafe from time to time, but some of the places we are going are so remote that they won't have such luxuries. I can feel the withdrawal symptoms already.

Just as a heads up, we intend to travel first to Santiago, then Up to Copiapó, then we would like to trek through the Andes and maybe climb Ojos Del Salado, the highest active volcano in the world, and then maybe spend some time on the beach in Bahia Inglesa. We will then return to Argentina stopping off in Medoza (the main wine region of Argentina) for four days, before comming back to Buenos Aires on the 10th of December. None of this is booked yet (aside from the bus trip to Santiago), so things may change.

It's Always the Man's Fault

2008-11-25T13:53:00.001-02:00

The old milonguero codigo (code) says that if there is a mistake on the dance floor, then it is the fault of the man (or the Leader more specifically), and it is also the leaders responsibility to fix the mistake. This code was born in a very different time to now, and although it is not entirely correct for today's tango, there is a lot of wisdom hidden in the ethos of this old code.

It never ceases to surprise me in classes how if I am struggling with a step and thinking that the follower I'm dancing with just isn't at my level, or is just having a bad day, the teacher will often come up to me, correct what I'm doing wrong, and then the step will be go so much better. It takes a certain amount of humility to be able to accept this, especially when you're dancing with followers that don't have much experience, and it always amazes me that any man who has gone through this to become a good dancer can have the enormous egos that I see in some of the milongueros.

Last Thursday I was in a class run by Ernesto Balmaceda and Stella Baez and Niki and I were struggling with a particular step. I was convinced that Niki's balance was off, and Niki herself was also claiming the fault saying that she was having a bad day with her balance. Stella came over to us, and watched us do the step once, and then proceeded to tear shreds off me (in Spanish), to the point where I was almost in tears, about to walk out of the class. Niki tried to interject saying that she thought it was her, but this was met with an instant "No it's him". She proceeded to correct me in a fairly harsh and brutal way, and finally called Ernesto over to finish the job of crushing what remained of my self-worth as a tango dancer. After they had finished with me I spent the next 10 minutes saying things like, "I'm useless, I may as well give up now", and "I'm sick of it always being my fault". Of course she was right, and after she had fixed my mistaken attempts to copy the step they were trying to teach, things worked a lot better, even though Niki did still have some minor balance issues that night.

Although I am not a big fan of the style of teaching they employed, and I can see how people are turned away by their harsh approach, I still think I have something to learn from them, and will probably subject myself to more of their classes in the future.

Weekly roundup 23-Nov-2008

2008-11-25T01:48:00.013-02:00

This has been a busy week for us, with lots of time spent making travel arrangements. We changed the date of flight back to Australia (airline only book 9 months ahead, so when we initially booked our tickets, we chose a random date 9 months into the future, making sure that we would be able to change this date with ease and minimal cost).. We also made travel arrangements with regards to our next venture out of Argentina (Chile, this time).

We did lots of dancing throughout the week (I'm still astonished by how, after 6 months here, I seem to get 'withdrawal symptoms' if I have a day off). I tried out a new milonga on Friday (Entre Tango Y tango). That same night I got in touch with M. who is here from the U.S. and we agreed to meet up at Canning, followed by La Viruta. I normally wouldn't go to these places,
and this past Friday there was even greater reason to avoid them. Cannning, which I refer to as 'the circus' was listed as the recommended milonga a for the 'Pulpo's Tango Week' crowd, and La Viruta , referred to s 'the pick-up joint' was celebrating its 14th birthday. However, I had a great time in M.'s company, which was the whole point of the late night expedition.

Scott and I went to Sunderland with a group of friends this Saturday - something that we haven't done for ages. Sunderland is a traditional milonga, but it differs to other traditional milongas in terms of seating arrangements. As opposed to the normal 'women on one side, men on the other' arrangement, at Sunderland the focus is on groups - tables of friends/families. I must admit, it was nice to go to a milonga where I could sit next to Scott. Scott actually got approached by a couple of locals and was asked if he teaches. Now wouldn't that be like selling ice to eskimos?

Sunday we caught a microbus out to the province. C., a friend who trains horses and breeds dogs, invited us over to her property for an asado. We spent the whole day eating, drinking, swimming, playing with her 6 dogs, and lazing in hammocks - hard work. I had lots of fun playing with the dogs. The one male dog in the group took an instant dislike to Scott, and there was a bit of an alphamale stand-off to start with, but once that was over, everyone had a lovely, relaxed time.

Culture Clash?

2008-11-21T20:46:00.005-02:00

I've been craving Cypriot sweets lately, specially 'daktila' (fingers) - rolled up pastry with a centre of crushed almonds, sugar, cinamon and rosewater, fried, and then dipped into a honey and clove syrup. On Saturday I got myself organised and tried to make some. I was too lazy to make the pastry myself, so I ended up using ready-made empanada pastry sheets. The end result:

they were consumed within 2 days, so my guess is that they weren't that bad, even though I did cheat by not actually making the pastry myself:)

Weekly roundup 17-Nov-2008

2008-11-17T20:52:00.012-02:00

This week we decided to check out a new milonga, Mi Refugio (My Refuge), which is at Region eonessa (the same venue that Niño Bien is at). Although the level of dancing wasn't quite as high as say El Beso or Cachirulo, it was still pretty good, and there was plenty of room on the dance floor. Niki was in a bit of a clingy mood that night, and so didn't want to do the expected thing of sitting on opposite sides of the milonga, so we sat together which meant she got fewer dances than normal, but didn't impact my success rate.

On Tuesday night after tango queer, I decided to tag along with Niki to Porteño y Bailarin for the first time. In one sense it was a really good night to go. Alberto Podestá was singing there yet again, so this gave me the opportunity to see this amazing legend of tango sing live. On the other hand because Alberto Podestá was singing there, it had attracted a huge amount of people, and the tiny dance floor was over-crowded, and the floor-craft was among the worst I'd ever actually seen, which hasn't exactly made me want to go back there.

On Wednesday night, we decided to take a night off, so we went over to a friends house for a video night. Buenos Aires is starting to really heat up and the moment, and I think that a combination of our full on lifestyle, Niki's poor diet, and the heat finally caught up with her, and we had to leave early and put Niki to bed. I have since been trying to insist that she has a better diet, and encourage her to not burn both ends of the candle quite as much, but of course, I'm not really thanked for it ;).

On Thursday Niki went to her usual El Beso Matinee, (A matinee is any milonga that starts before 11pm, or finshes before 2am). She was quite annoyed that she only got 1 tanda the whole night. Admitedly that Tanda was with Oscar Casas, so she shouldn't really complain too much. Wanting more, her and our friend R. made their way to Niño Bien, where they were able to have some really nice dances. In Niki's own words, Niño Bien is still a bit of a zoo, but you can get some lovely dances provided you know who to avoid.

On Friday night I had been invited by a friend to a special event by a group called "Tango Protesta" at a venue called "El Social". Tango Protesta are a group of performers that put together tango skits to bring attention to social issues such as violence against women etc.... The event was a milonga with the skits happening at various points during the night. When I arrived at the milonga there were 10 men, and only 1 woman (the girl who had invited me). I waited patiently and eventually the tables turned in my favour. By the end of the night there were a lot of really good Nuevo dancers for me to choose from, and I had a really good night. This event seemed to attract a lot of people that I hadn't seen at any of the other milongas or practicas.

Meanwhile Niki had actually decided to have another night off dancing. She was sitting at home watching tango videos on You Tube, and asked our house mates what it was normal people did on such nights. They proceeded to show her, at least what they do, by getting very drunk. By the time I got home, my house mates were quite animated, although Niki had been her normal cautious self, and had only a little to drink.

On Saturday, after yet another failed attempt to organise a group to go out to Sunderland, Niki and I ended up at our regular Cachirulo. I decided to head home not long after midnight,and stupidly caught the wrong bus and having to walk about 15 blocks back home. This week it was Niki's turn to be upgraded to a better seat. Part way through the night, the organiser of Cachirulo invited her into the middle of the wall of women where she could see all of the really good milongueros. Then the organiser proceeded to go up to all of his friends and encourage them to dance with Niki, which meant she danced pretty much the entire night after being moved, and had some absolutely wonderful dances.

On Sunday we decided to join our house mates on an adventure to barrio chino (China Town). First thing we did on arrival was to find a restaurant where the proportion Asian people was greater than the proportion of non-Asian people, and proceeded to order some authentic Chinese cuisine. One of our house mates, A. has just come back from a year in China and so not only was she able to recommend some really good dishes, she was also able to order them in Chinese. We all really enjoyed having some food with sooo much flavour. After a while the standard Argentinean diet of Parrilla or Pizza gets a bit boring.

Precious Monedas

2008-11-16T19:13:00.006-02:00

Today's outing proved fruitful in more ways than one - I came back home with more monedas than I left with - a rare occasion , indeed. Shopkeepers didn't give me the standard '¿Tienes las monedas?' when it came time to pay. The result? A handfull of coinage at the end of the day.
There is a real shortage of coinage (monedas) in Bs.As. Nobody wants to part with it. Nobody wants to admit they have any. Monedas are precious here because they are the only way you can buy yourself a bus ticket from the onboard ticket machines. What do the bus companies do with all the monedas the machines collect, day in , day out, you may ask? They sell them at a premium. Yes, that's right - a black market for monedas! So, If you are at the end of your trip to BsAs, and have some (any) monedas at hand, I'd be happy to meet up with you in a milonga/cafe/dark alley somewhere, to arrange a fair exchange :)

Weekly Roundup 09-Nov-2008

2008-11-09T18:25:00.008-02:00

This was a rare week for us - three whole days without dancing!

On Tuesday, R. And I were invited to a party at the Top floor of Palacio Barolo. This beautiful building was completed in 1923, and was, in its time, the tallest building in South America (it was visible from Uruguay). The architect was inspired by Dante's Divine Comedy, with the design having representations of Hell, Pergatory and Heaven. The structure is 100 metres tall - one metre for each of the 100 verses of Dante's work, and each floor has 22 offices, representing the 22 stanzas of each verse. Being the forgetful person that I am, I had forgotten to take my camera with me, but have a look on flickr.com for some beautiful images.

Later on we went to salon Canning. We haven't been to this venue for ages, as it tends to be a bit of a circus, especially on nights when the milonga is run by Parakultural. We went to see Sexteto Milonguero. We love the music and we love the singer, Javier Di Ciriaco (also refered to as 'he who hath been hewn from stone') - a tall, dark, statuesque man, with the widest, brightest smile I've ever seen.

Mid week we made our way to the Armenian quarter to catch up with Tina. It was great to meet up outside of a milonga setting, and actually be able to talk for more than 2 minutes at a time :)
We enjoyed a delicious meal packed with herbs and spices - our taste buds didn't know what hit them! Note to self: must explore BsAs' ethnic corners (coz that's where all the flavour seems to be hiding).

Friday evening brought another foodie treat. Layne (from 'Go Where the Taxista Takes you') had invited us over for an Ice Cream party. Each guest had to bring an ice cream flavour that represented some aspect of their personality. With just under 20 flavours to try, and some really interesting descriptions to go with them, everyone had a ball. I don't think I've ever eaten as much ice cream in one day as I did on this occasion. YUM

Floor Craft and Cachirulo

2008-11-09T16:59:00.001-02:00

Cachirulo is probably the most traditional milonga I go to. Last night I was dancing there, and at around midnight, the dance floor became very crowded, as often happens, however, I have seen it worse. I was dancing with a woman I had never danced with before, but had been watching her dance most of the night, and I liked what I saw. It was bumper to bumper on the dance floor, but I was still enjoying the dance, even though the old couple in front of us repeatedly kept stepping backwards against the line of dance and bumping into us. Not that he was stepping back all that far, but because I had a couple immediately behind me, I had no alternative but to occupy immediately whatever space he yielded so as to not block the traffic behind me. He had collided with me on at least three occasions, and I was just trying to be patient with him as I do realise that floor craft is one of the more difficult things for a leader to learn.

Towards the end of the third piece of the tanda, he stepped backwards and collided with me again as I was dancing into the space in front of me that I believed was mine to dance into. What happened next was completely unexpected. Suddenly, he stopped dancing, broke his embrace, turned around to me, and told me off in Spanish. As my Spanish isn't good, I couldn't quite make out all of what he said, but I think he said something about me needing to keep my dancing smaller. I was shocked, and couldn't think of the the Spanish to say to him, "well, don't step backwards against the line of dance", and instead, just gave him a shocked look as if to say, "what the", which really didn't get the message across at all. At the end of the piece the woman I was dancing with went up to him and said something in Spanish. Unfortunately I don't know wether she was correcting him about stepping backwards against the line of dance or apologizing trying to smooth the matter over. When she returned to me I asked her (in my broken Spanish) if she thought the problem was with me, and she reassured me that it was all OK, and that she was really enjoying dancing with me. Nevertheless, I was still shaken up, which I am sure affected my ability to dance the final piece of the tanda. It also happened in front of a table of women some of whom I really wanted to dance with, but couldn't bring myself to look at them later in the night.

After that incident I needed some reassurance, so firstly I invited Niki for a dance, followed closely by the woman sitting next to Niki, Mariana Casas, (Oscar Casas' wife), who I had danced with before, and who in the past has complemented me on my floor craft at El Beso. After that I decided to sit out for a few tandas, and just watch.

About 3 tandas later, I was sitting down enjoying a coffee when all of a sudden there was some commotion, some raised voices, people standing up to look, and people on the dance floor stopped dancing even though the music was still playing. I knew Niki was on the dance floor, at the time dancing with one of her favourite milongueros, Ricardo. I couldn't make out what was going on, but later when I asked Niki about it, it turns out that the two couples directly behind Niki and Ricardo had collided, and then one of the men had turned around and punched the other man for the offence. People observing this had then run in and separated the two before a full on brawl had ensued.

Later that night I received a number of compliments on my dancing. Firstly, towards the end of the night, the organizer of Cachirulo had invited me to move right into the middle of the men's wall, right next to some of the old milongeuros, a very honoured spot indeed. While sitting in this prestigious seat, one of the men sitting next to me turned to me and said how everyone was saying really good things about my dancing. On the whole, I had a really good night at Cachirulo, with lots of really good dances, I even found someone else (apart from Niki) who I really connect well with for milonga, but the incident earlier on in the night really shook up.

Home

2008-11-06T19:40:00.002-02:00

Scott and I were waiting for the bus last night on our way out. On our way to El Beso, actually. We were telling each other that we were feeling a bit tired. 'I'll be OK,' I said. 'I'll have a cup of coffee as soon as I get home.' Home. I referred to El Beso as home.

You know you've been in BsAs too long when.....

Weekly Roundup 3-Nov-2008

2008-11-03T23:31:00.001-02:00

On Friday we went to a new milonga called "La Milonguita". The main reason for going was to see one of our favourite orchestras "Sexteto Milonguero". The orchestra was good as always, although the acoustics of the venue were pretty bad. The atmosphere of the milonga was one of a gathering of friends and family, not too dissimilar to a wedding reception. Everyone was a little bit disappointed with the level of dancing, although I did manage to spot at least 6 women that could dance really well... and proceeded to dance with 5 of them.

After the success of the Mojito's on E's balcony last Sunday, Niki and I decided to make this sunday "Sangria Sunday". Niki made a big batch of sangria, we had some fruit, cheese and cake, and we invited a whole bunch of friends around. Everyone had plenty of Sangria and Niki and I finished off the rest today with some help from our house mates.

The Australian dollar has dropped significantly since we arrived, and as such we've had to scale back on some of the things we were doing. We have cut backed to 1 private spanish lesson per week, and 1 private tango lesson per week. We have replaced our private tango lesson with a group class with Oscar Casas. We are really enjoying these classes, and we really feel they compliment our privates with Natacha very well.

I miss...

2008-11-02T01:12:00.008-02:00

After 5 months of being here, there are 4 things that I miss:

- Scotch, my cat (who we also refer to as 'Asian stir-fry' when he is being annoying)
- C. (one of my close male friends)
- B. (another one of my close male friends)
- the 'Plum duck' from my favourite restaurant

(not necessarily in that order)

The reason that 'Family' does not appear on this list is simple - I ALWAYS miss them (even when we are in Australia). Scott's family live in another state (about 13 hours of driving), and we get to see them 2-3 times a year. My family lives in Cyprus, so whether we are in Australia or Argentina makes no difference - we are still hemispheres apart.

Weekly Roundup 26-Oct-2008

2008-10-27T18:15:00.012-02:00

This weekend marked the completion of 5 month in BsAs. Time is going by just a wee bit too fast for my liking. I don't know how people can be satisfied with coming over here for just three weeks. This week Scott and I got meet J and K, from Movement Invites Movement, in person. These guys got in touch after I left a message for them on our blog (hence strengthening my belief that I do not need to give in to the Facebook craze). They are here for 6 months, and Scott and I look forward to catching up again, soon.

Buenos Aires has not been kind to Scott, in terms of his health. After a couple of bouts of flu that he seemed unable to shake off in previous months, this week he succumbed to food poisoning. with 6 hours of him constantly emptying the contents of his stomach, a visit to the hospital was inevitable. A couple of IV drips and some antiemetic drugs later, he was fine.

O.K. Back to good things. This week we managed to catch some live music. With both events on the same night, Scott and I decided to split up and go our separate ways. Scott went to Viviana Scarlassa's CD launch. I went to Porteño y Bailarin where Alberto Podestá sang as part of the venue's birthday celebration. It was amazing to see this man, who sang with DiSarli's orchesta back in the '40s, standing in the middle of the dance floor, in between two guitarists, singing one of my favourite songs.

(this was definitely not the best song of the night, but because 'Nada' is one of my favourites, I could not resist uploading it. We will put up the rest when we get the chance).

I finally seem to have made the switch to Cachirulo as my Saturday milonga. I have been meaning to do so this for a while, but inertia seemed to get in the way. There are a few people, regulars at the milonga that I used to go to, that I will miss catching up with, though (R & C - we'll have you over for dinner to make up for it).

Sunday was very relaxed. We started the day with an indulgent breakfast consisting of coffee, french toast, strawberries, ice-cream, and champagne and orange juice.

This was followed by a lunch of mojitos, guacamole, crackers and cheese over at E's house. I even got to play with her gorgeous little kitten (I know, I know - it's such a hard life...).

Later in the day, Scott and R. were thrilled to attend a modern ballet concert of Carl Orff's Carmina Burana (yes, we do occasionally do stuff that doesn't involve tango - well, Scott does, anyway).

Best Dance so far...

2008-10-22T15:00:00.008-02:00

After being here for just under five months, as you'd expect, I've had lots of absolutely amazing dances (as well as one or two shockers). A couple of nights ago I had what I can honestly say was the best dance so far.

I see this man twice, sometimes three times a week, at a certain milonga that I go to. For the last three weeks, whenever I walked by his table, or whenever he walked past mine, he would sing to me. He'd sing a couple of bars of whatever song happened to be playing, we'd smile at each other and he'd go on his way or I'd go on mine. I found this both sweet (like being serenaded) and annoying (you'll sing to me but you won't dance with me, damn it!) at the same time.

Well, this Sunday we went throught the same routine. 'O.K. Here we go again', I thought. At one point during the evening, while I was watching the dance floor start to fill as a tanda of early Pugliese came on. I sensed someone appraching the table from behind. 'Oh no, not another verbal invitation', I thought (I had already rejected the previous verbal invitations that had come my way - it's just not the done thing). I reluctantly looked up. It was him. Pedro 'Tete' Rusconi was standing there. ¿Que hacemos? he said. I smiled. This was the first time he had spoken to me (other than singing). ¿Bailamos? he asked. I smiled and nodded, and we walked to the dance floor. We connect - his big belly being the perfect shape for an apillado embrace, and off we go. Magic.

Thank you Tete.

Weekly (fortnightly) roundup 19-OCT-2008

2008-10-21T20:57:00.002-02:00

OK, so we've finally slipped on our weekly round up for the first time, not bad considering we've been here almost 5 months. Wow, 5 months, sounds scary when you say it quickly. That's almost half way through our stay here in Buenos Aires.

The past two weeks, have been pretty much the same old same old. Lot's of dancing, Spanish lessons and Tango lessons. We made the decision early on not to bore our reader/s (and ourselves) by blogging about every milonga we went to or every restaurant we ate at, or everything we do. We really only blog about new milongas/restaurants/things, or if there is really something noteworthy. As we have explored many milongas restaurants etc... we have settled into a pattern where we don't do that much new anymore. Maybe it's time to challenge those boundaries again and start doing new things, and going to new places, at least once a week. So what was noteworthy from the past two weeks?

Friend from Melbourne

It was good to catch up with an old friend from the Melbourne tango scene R. who is over here for 10 weeks. We met up last Sunday and went to Confiteria Ideal with him. Niki was especially excited to see him as he had volunteered to be a drug mule for her, bringing over 2 bottles of her favourite booze, Comandaria (a fortified wine used in the Greek Orthodox communion service) which we can't seem to find here.

Tango Queer

On Tuesday the 7th of October, Niki and I both went along to tango queer for the lesson, and at the practica afterwards I actually plucked up enough courage to ask the teacher for a dance. The first few two we danced normally with myself leading and her following. She is a really good follower (as you'd generally expect for a female teacher). While we were waiting to start the third tango, I told her that I really loved watching her dance with partners were they would change roles (lead/follow) mid-way through the piece. I told her I would love to learn that some day. She told me we could try it now if I liked, to which I agreed. I started out leading her, nervously attempting to predict when she might change the embrace and start leading. I lead her into what I thought would be a gancho, but instead she simply swept my leg out of the way and began to lead me into a giro. This she did without changing the embrace. I followed (poorly), and a few seconds later she invited me to change the embrace, more for show than anything else, and continued leading me for a while. Eventually she invited me to change the embrace back and reclaim the lead, which I gladly did as my following skills are still somewhat limited. We continued like this for a few more bars, and then again without changing he embrace, she found an opportunity to take the lead back from me. We continued the dance like this, exchanging lead and follow roles, with and without changing the embrace. At the end of the dance, I apologized for my following skills, and exclaimed that it was interesting, but quite difficult, to which she simply replied, "Yes, you really need a high level in both leading and following for it to work properly". I agreed, but this didn't stop her dancing the final piece of the tanda doing the role changes with me, which I really appreciated. I can see how two people skilled at both leading and following would find this dynamic amazingly beautiful, and I'd really love to be able to get myself to a level where I can do this effectively.

The next week at tango queer, the lesson was focused on the very things the teacher was doing with me the previous week. Leading from the follower embrace, and finding the right opportunities to switch between lead and follow.

Feria De Los Mataderos

We've been very slack on our aim to do on e touristy thing a week, so on Sunday we went with a friend R. to Feria De Los Mataderos. It's about an hours bus ride from San Telmo. We got there around 2pm, and walked along all the street markets. I have to admit, that after having been to soooo many street markets around Buenos Aires, they all start to seem a bit the same. The one difference at Fera De Los Mataderos is that there was constantly live folkloric music in the centre square. Niki went a little bit insane with the skewed strawberries coated with toffee and pop corn, but that was to be expected. We had a lovely lunch at a nice restaurant nearby. After lunch we strolled along the agricultural section of the markets, buying things like chocolate ducle de leche, pickled garlic, cured meats etc.... It was a really sunny day, probably the first day where we can actually say that it was quite hot, but we enjoyed soaking in the rays.

Message to 'Movement invites Movement'

2008-10-15T21:25:00.002-03:00

Hola MIM. Welcome to BsAs. I am enjoying reading about your experiences in BsAs. Thank you for the track-back. Feel free to get in touch (click onto my profile for email address). I would love to get together with you guys.

Short changed

2008-10-08T20:44:00.000-03:00

A little piece of advice for those of you who plan to visit Buenos Aires, although I guess it's fairly good travel advice for a lot of countries. It has happened to Niki and I so many times that we know it is not an accident, It's part of the culture.

We have often been short changed when paying for things. A meal, a subte pass, groceries etc... it is absolutely essential that you check your change. Many of the Argentineans see it as being your responsibility to make sure you get the correct change, and if you aren't that concerned, and don't bother checking, then they get lucky.

Also when dining out, keep a track of what you purchased, and how much each item cost. You will often find an extraneous glass of coke added to your bill, or if you're in a large group and the wine is flowing, an extra bottle of wine might mysteriously appear. Also, occasionally the price on the itemized bill may be different (always more) than the price on the menu. They will readily admit their "mistake", and are usually very apologetic when pulled up on it.

Normally Niki and I are happy to tip generously when dining out, but when this happens, we are reluctant to leave a tip at all.

Weekly roundup 5-Oct-2008

2008-10-08T20:15:00.002-03:00

OK, so I'm running a bit late with our weekly roundup, but I have an excuse which I will talk about later.

So what did we get up to this past week?

This week saw me return to a fairly normal dancing, dance class and Spanish class routine after being essentially out of it for over 2 weeks with a special mutated version of the Flu they have here in Argentina. I still haven't fully shaken the cough and the sore throat, but at least I am able to continue on with my life as normal.

Niki continued her energetic dance schedule this week going out every night except Wednesday. I started back on Tuesday at tango queer where I was hit on by a guy (serves me right for dancing with him I guess), fortunately one of the female friends I was there with was able to let him down gently by telling him that not only was I not gay, but I was actually here in Buenos Aires with my girlfriend. I think he took it pretty well.

On Thursday afternoon Niki and I decided to try a class with Ernesto Balmaceda and Stella Paez. We were both really impressed with the way they taught, and the individual attention they us as we tried the figures and techniques they were teaching.

On Saturday night we were invited to a party by a friend I met through the writers' group. There were a lot of other ex-pats, but also some locals who we were able to practice our Spanish with.

The weather has slowly been getting warmer over here as we head into summer. Sunday was a really beautiful day, and our friend R. suggested a group of us go for lunch over near the reserve next to Puerto Madero. It was great to sit outside and soak in the sun on a lazy Sunday afternoon, eating parrilla (grilled meat) and drinking beer. After, we wandered around the port and found our way to an heladeria (ice cream shop) where we indulged a little. That night Niki and I decided that the weather was now warm enough for us to give the outdoor milonga in Plaza Dorrego a serious try.

Being sick and house bound the previous week had given me a really good opportunity to make a start on one of my software development projects I had been wanting to work on while over here, and I actually made a decision to impose a deadline on myself to release a private beta version of the project. This deadline has made me extremely focused, and I'm spending anywhere between 5 and 12 hours every day coding. It has been an amazing learning experience for me as I play with new technologies and learn others in more depth. This is my excuse for being late with the weekly roundup, as every time I sit down at my computer, all I really want to do is make some more progress on this project. I will probably post more details about the project, and about the things I've been learning on my geek blog as I get closer to my beta release.

I thought...

2008-10-04T14:09:00.006-03:00

After 4 months of being here ....

... I thought I'd make myself sick from eating too many alfajores Havana
(I haven't. I eat maybe one a week, as opposed to the six-pack a day I thought I would be eating)
... I thought I'd gain so much weight (see above)
(I haven't. On the contrary, I've been losing weight, not that I really wanted to)
... I thought I'd be over the need to dance every night
(I'm not. In a city where tango is everywhere - the overcrowded subway, the dilapidated buildings, the cartoneros* - and not just the milongas, if anything, the need is greater now
... I thought I'd go on mad shoe shopping sprees
(I haven't. Only 3 pairs so far. Maybe its because they are so easily accessible that I don't feel the need to part with my pesos in a hurry)
... I thought I'd be making headway into learning to play the bandoneon
(I haven't even begun. Partly due to inertia, partly due to the cost of acquiring a bandoneon.)

expectations met...
expectations exceeded...
expectations neglected...

*Cartoneros is the term used to refer to the people who scour the city everyday looking for cardboard and other items that can be recycled for cash at factories an hour or two away in Provincial Buenos Aires

Weekly Roundup 28-Sep-2008

2008-10-01T11:42:00.004-03:00

Well, we didn't get up to anything out of the ordinary this week, which is probably why I have been procrastinating about writing this post. It has been a full week of dancing for me, and this Saturday, for the first time, I felt the need to soak my feet in a bucket of water :)

Scott had a quiet week. He was still feeling really sick, and by Friday, he had conceded defeat on whatever virus was attacking his body, and went to a doctor (one who could speak English, and charged us $250 pesos for the privilege). He is feeling better now, fortunately.

This weekend I also did some gardening of sorts. I spotted mint and chive plants outside a nearby shop, and I couldn´t resist. Ten minutes and 30 pesos later, I had pots, plants, and dirt, and was on my knees getting my hands dirty.... Now all I need is to track down basil and coriander seedlings.

Unfortunately I had an 'interesting' incident with a taxi driver at the end of a night at El Beso. This occurred only a week after a 21 year old female tourist was attacked and raped by a taxi driver. So just a reminder, please, If you are female, and traveling alone, be very aware of your personal safety.

Chamuyo (sweet-talk)

2008-09-26T22:42:00.001-03:00

Chamuyo is a big part of the milonga experience. Its the chitty-chatty part in between songs. In the past, the short time in between the songs of a tanda was the only time a man could talk to/court a lady, who, even at the milonga, would be under the watchful eyes of her parents/guardians. The word itself ´chamuyar´can mean anything from ´to sweet-talk´ to ´to bull-s$%t. I have recently started writing down some of these gems. Enjoy:

´I wasn't here last week but I was told that you looked even more stunning than usual´ (I found out later that this man´s friend had given him a full report on what I wore the previous week)

him: ´I have been trying to catch your eye all night´
me: ´My apologies, I have really bad eye sight´
him: ´that´s OK. tango is ´to feel´, not ´to see´´

´I love dancing with you because you finish each tango the same way - with a huge smile´

him: ´you weren't here last week - i missed you´
me: ´I'm sure there were plenty of other women here to keep you busy, though :)´
him: (Quoting a verse from Pablo Neruda) ´it takes only a short time to fall in love, it takes forever to forget´

´We are just like magnets - its so hard to separate from you at the end of each song´

him: ´I want to go out with you´
me: (laughing) ´But my boyfriend will get jealous´
him: ´Then don´t tell him´
me: ´I don´t have secrets from my boyfriend´
him : (after thinking for a second, or two) ´Then tell him. Tell him everything!´

´There won't be a problem if there is a power failure tonight - there's enough electricity between us to keep this place going´

´you dance like a porteña´

Him: ´How long have you been in BsAs?´
Me: ´Since May´
Him: (looking up to the sky) ´Why God? ´
(Looking back at me) ´Why haven´t I seen you here before? How long will you be in BsAs for?´
me. ´Till next May´
Him: (looking up to the sky again) ´Thank you God. All is forgiven´

´when you embrace me i feel like I am the only man in the world´

him: ´what type of work do you do in Melbourne?´
me: ´Maestra Jardinera (Kindergartn Teacher)´
him: ´Now I know why boys fall in love with their first teacher...´

Pedro Sanchez

2008-09-22T20:37:00.014-03:00

What can I say. He is such a lovely dancer. All you need to do is embrace him, close your eyes, and you're on this magical journey. The music truly comes to life when dancing with him. You can feel every nuance. You can hear things that you never even realised were there.

I had a private class with him this week, wanting to work on milonga traspie. The class lasted a bit over an hour, but the lesson went for much longer than that. Before the class we went for coffee, and we got talking about the music - the composers, the orchestas, the singers.... After the class we spent over an hour talking about the dance in terms of the culture that surrounds it, the way of life, both now and then, the men, the women.... He mentioned the old movies, which soon set us on a trek around the city, trying to hunt some down. We walked and talked, all the time I felt that I was being immersed deeper and deeper into this magical world. Along the way, he pointed out venues where Pugliese used to play in.... He´d stop here, to point out a venue that used to be a milonga in the past. He stopped there, to point out the cafe that he and his friends used to go at 6 am, after a long night of dancing...

A wealth of knowledge on and off the dance floor, with the generosity of heart to share it. This man is a treasure, and I would definitely encourage people to take the opportunity to learn from him.
................................................

Wendesday 15th October.
I had asked Pedro for permission to write about him, and about a week later, when I saw him again, he asked me what I had written. I told him that I would try to translate the post for him, so here it goes:

Y ahora en Español. Espero no tiene muchas equivocaciónes:

¿Que puedo decir? Es un bailarin tan asombroso. Todo lo que necesitas hacer es abrazarlo y cerrar tus ojos, y entras en un viaje mágico. Bailando con el, la musica realmente cobra vida. Puedes sentir cada matiz. Puedes escuchar cosas en la musica que nunca antes te habias dado quenta que estaban allí.

Tuve una clae privada con el esta semana , y queria traajar en milonga con traspie. la clae duró un poco mas de una hora, pero la leccion fue mucho más alli que esto. Antes de empezar la clase, fuimos a tomar un cafe. Empezamos a hablar sobre la musica, las orquestas, los cantantes.... Despues de la clase, hablamos por mas de una hora sobre el baile, la culture que lo rodea, los hombres y las mujeres - ahora y antes....

Mencionó las peliculas viejas, y esto nos llevó a un recorrido por la ciudad intentanto encontrar algunas. Caminabamos y hablabamos, y todo el tiempo sentía que estaba sumergiendome mas y mas en lo profundo de su mágico mundo. A lo largo del paseo él me señalaba lugares donde Puglieses solio a tocar. El paraba aqui para señalar el cafe donde él y sus amigos iban a las seis de la mañana, despues de una large noche de baile.... Paraba alli para señalar un lugar que fue una milonga en el pasado....

Una abundancia de conocimiento, dentro y fuera de la pista, con gran generosidad de su corazon para compartirlo. Este hombre es un tesoro, y yo definitivamente alentaria a las personas a encontrar la oportunidad para aprender de el.

Weekly roundup 21-Sep-2008

2008-09-22T19:48:00.006-03:00

This has been a particularly quiet week for me as I spent a fairly large chunk of it sick. I came down with a bit of a flu last weekend, and it turned into fever by Tuesday, when I was forced to spend the entire day in bed. Even now I still have a bit of a sniffle and a sore throat, but I'm feeling a lot better. Although it's slowed me down, it hasn't completely stopped me.

This week while I was laid up in bed, Niki took the opportunity to re-try some milongas she hadn't been to in a while. On Monday she went to Gricel. The last time we went together on a Monday night, we were sat in a really bad spot, and Niki didn't dance with anyone except me. This time she got seated alongside a really friendly, one of the regulars. She had lots of good dances and when she came home she was still on a tango 'high'.

Wednesday and Thursday I spent indoors recovering from my fever, this gave me an opportunity to work on my computer projects that I have going at the moment, and I am starting to feel that they are getting somewhere.

On Friday after our private lesson, Niki decided to head off to a CD launch for a pianist called Fernando Otero, and really enjoyed it. While I returned home and prepared a nice healthy meal that gave me the energy to get out and go dancing.

On Saturday we had lunch with our friend D.L. and finally got to meet his wife and 2 year old child. He also gave us a present, his latest CD. By this stage I was fully back into the swing of things, and on Saturday night, I went to two Milongas, "Milonga de los Consagrados" with Niki, and then out to "Sunderland" on my own.

On Sunday I went to a concert with a friend on Avenida 9 de Julio. and when I say "on Avenida 9 de Julio", I mean on "Avenida 9 de Julio". For those who don't know Buenos Aires, Avenida 9 de Julio is the main street through the city. It normally has 14 lanes of frantic traffic, but on sunday it is quiet enough to close off 6 of the lanes and hold a concert in the middle of the street.

This particular concert was the inauguration of Art Week, and the main act was an orchestra called Esteban Morgado Cuateto. Esteban Morgado is a brilliant guitarist, and he even did a few solo pieces that were quite amazing, including a solo version of Piazola's "Libertango" which sounded reminiscent of John Williams playing "Asturias". My friend and I even took the chance to dance in the middle of Avenida 9 de Julio.

I decided to stay home on Sunday night, but Niki went out for a great night of dancing, partying on at Canning followed by El Beso.

My Latest Acquisition

2008-09-20T19:40:00.007-03:00

No, I didn't buy yet another pair of Comme Il Faut which, by the way, have gone up in price yet again, but appear to have gone down in quality (I have had so many friends tell me, and show me, shoes that had been worn a couple of times, but straps and finishes are falling apart).

My latest acquisition has to do with my other passion - Middle Eastern percussion. Back in Melbourne, I am part of a Middle Eastern percussion group. I miss jamming with the guys. I miss working with the dancers.

Middle eastern percussion and Argentinian Tango are so different, but at the same time there are strong similarities. The relationship between a drummer and a dancer can be like the relationship between a couple dancing tango. there is the lead and follow aspect - the drummer 'suggests' and the dancer 'disposes' or 'interprets'. Yes, there are times when the dance is fully directed by the drummer (lead). but at its best the drummer/dancer relationship is one where there is communication - where the drummer indicates and is clear about when a change in rhythm is coming up... when the dancer can indicate that she s happy to stick to a certain rhythm for another set of four bars, and also can indicate when she needs a change in rhythm/speed... when the drummer and dancer pick up on each other's signals - that is when magic happens.

Progress with Spanish

2008-09-16T14:19:00.005-03:00

As far as acquiring a new language goes, my personal belief is that the benchmark for knowing another language is being able to dream in that language. It is when you become confident enough and competent enough for that language to seep into your dreams, into your unconscious thoughts. Last night I had my first dream in semi-Spanish. In my dream, my Spanish wasn't perfect, it was still patchy, but understandable. The confidence is there. now I need to work a bit more on the competence side of things :)

Obsessions...

2008-09-15T13:57:00.009-03:00

There is a specific song...
it has a bizarre effect on me.
every time I hear it i feel anxious...
every time I hear it I feel unsettled....
every time I hear it I feel like running away....
... away from where I've been
...away from where I am
...away from where I was intending to go.

Tango music can bring out such intense emotion.
This is why I love listening to it.
This is why I love dancing to it.

(My obsession is 'No Está'-the lyrics and music are by José Bohr, recorded by Carlos Di Sarli with the voice of Alberto Podestá on 30/3/1942)

Weekly Roundup 14-Sep-2008

2008-09-14T19:45:00.010-03:00

Back to routine this week, starting up our Spanish classes again after a one month break, and also increasing our private sessions with Natacha. This week I also started taking Pilates classes. The instructor is a classically trained dancer, who also does tango. She has a studio with three reformer beds, so sessions are small enough to get personal attention. Perfect!

After over three months of being here, we finally made it to a Fernandez Fierro performance. They all sounded amazing! They all looked amazing! O.K., they all looked stoned, but they sounded amazing! My favourite was the lead bandoneonist. He looked like he was making mad, passionate, violent love to his bandoneon - watching him was almost voyeuristic (I will add a youtube link when I get the chance). A big 'thank you' to L. from Sydney for recommending them.

We are settling it to our new accommodation quite well, and we even had our first dinner party. Staying true to my Cypriot upbringing, I catered for 20 even though there was only six of us. Good food tastes even better when you share it with friends.

The days are getting longer and warmer, and Scott and I are making full use of the outdoor area of our new accommodation, reading/working on the computer and enjoying the sunshine. We are having a quiet weekend with a mild case of the sniffles, sipping on lemon and honey tea, prepping ourselves for the week ahead.

Random Acts

2008-09-13T20:46:00.004-03:00

The other day I needed to go to Congreso. It was the first time that I had reason visit this area. I got there by Subte, and once I had finished what I needed to do, I made my way back to the Subte station. I went down the steps, validated my ticket, and walked through the barrier. It soon occured to me, though, that I needed to be on the other side of the station, and that there was no underground passage connecting the two platforms. I asked the security person who confirmed my suspicion, and I shook my head in a 'geez, I'm an idiot' sort of way. I walked out of the barrier and headed towards the stairs leading out to the street, when the security person called out for me to wait. before I knew it he was by my side. He walked up the stairs, and onto the street with me. We stopped at the traffic lights, and crossed the street, walked to the other Subte entrance and down the steps. He then opended the side, emergency barrier for me to go through, thereby not needing to revalidate my ticket (and saving 90 centavos / au$0.40). He smiled and said goodbye, and made his way up the stairs.
It's those random acts of kindness...

Weekly Roundup 7-Sep-2008

2008-09-07T20:00:00.010-03:00

This week saw our return from Uruguay, relaxed and refreshed, and ready for another 3 months of Busy Buenos Aires. We've had a number of changes, the first being a change in accommodation. We are still in San Telmo - only a block and a half away from where we were previously, and we are sharing the space with a couple of other people. The kitchen/living space is bigger, which is making us feel more inclined to have people over for dinner. There's no electric mixer, though, so I still won't be able to make a cheesecake :( Our daily routine has also changed significantly since arriving back in BsAs. We now get up much more early in the morning, which is giving us more time for dance practice, classes, etc. Our bodies are getting so much vitamin 'd' that they don't know what hit 'em. The down side is that come 11 pm all my energy is gone, and I don't feel like going out dancing.

I went to Canning on Monday. Not so much for the dancing (my favourite milonguero doesn't go there any more), but for catching up with friends. The place was chaotic! I usually think of people on a mionga floor moving in harmony, flowing like a school of fish. Well on Monday night it was as if a shark had been thrown in the mix - Chaos! I ended up leaving at 2:30 (whereas I'd normally be there till 5am).

On Tuesday I stayed home while Scott went along to Tango Queer. He has been really inspired by their take on role swapping, and is eager to learn to follow better. He was so proud when he came home and told me that for the first time ever he had been invited by a man to dance. They both took it in turns to lead and follow. Should I be worried?

This Thursday we took a group class with Pablo Veron. Scott didn't want to miss the opportunity to meet the person who made him want to learn tango in the first place (he had watched the movie 'The Tango Lesson' a few too many times). He has such a strong presence, and his lead, well he doesn't so much lead you but rather he wills you to move....

We also tried out a new milonga - a matinee, that we arrived at a bit too late to get a decent perspective of. I'll try to get there next week, at a more decent time, and will report back. If, our new daily routine and my floundering energy levels at night-time continue, matinees might be the way to go. That way I can be in bed by midnight :)

Other than that it had been a very quiet week in terms of dancing, spending lots of time catching up with friends, instead. It was the 3rd week that I had turned down an invitation by Natacha Poberaj to go to Sin Rumbo with her. Note to self: leave next Friday free for Sin Rumbo...

Performing Gender

2008-09-07T14:21:00.001-03:00

Thanks to our friend in Melbourne B. for pointing these out to me. I have just watched a 3 part series on gender roles in Argentine tango which is very interesting in relation to my discussion on my attitudes to the role of Machismo in Argentine tango, and how this is changing. It is fairly well researched, although not exhaustive, and there are some things I'm not 100% in agreement with, but then again, when am I ever? For your viewing pleasure.

PART ONE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWh4m7ZOddA
PART TWO: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwXaplXex0M
PART THREE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sr52zQOVdlI

General Impressions of Uruguay

2008-09-04T14:57:00.001-03:00

It was great to get out of the big city and escape for a while to where the air is a bit cleaner. Although there are many similarities between Uruguayans and Argentineans, there are also some significant differences too.

People in Uruguay tend to be a lot more relaxed. This was reflected in their tango scene, where there was a lot less pomp and ceremony than over here, and we didn't feel like we had to live in constant fear of making a social faux pa by breaking some obscure tango protocol. Invitations to dance were offered either with the cabaceo, or as just a verbal invitation, and women felt as comfortable as men initiating the invitation.

Their seemed to be a wider variety of food in Uruguay, and more flavoursome dishes. There was the traditional Parilla type foods, but they also liked to play a bit more with herbs and spices. This was also evident from the fact that fresh herbs and spices seemed to be easier to procure than in Buenos Aires. I will say though that I think Buenos Aires has it slightly over Montevideo with respect to pizza, the Pizza in Montevideo was good, but often I felt lacking something. And don't get me started on coffee. As mentioned in our post on Colonia, we were quite shocked when we were served instant coffee at an otherwise really nice French restaurant, and that wasn't the only time this happened. Even when we expressly asked if the cafe con leche was made with espresso coffee, we were almost always disappointed with the end result. We did manage to find 1 cafe that did really good coffee, Cafe Hispaña on the corner of San Jose and Rio Negra, I would even go so far as to say that their coffee competed very honourably against the best cafe's in Buenos Aires or even Melbourne for that matter, I just don't understand what was wrong with every other cafe. If it wasn't for my heavy dependence on caffeine I would have refused to drink coffee in Uruguay. Doh, I told you not to get me started on coffee, now look what you've done.

Maybe their acceptance of average coffee has something to do with the countries addiction to mate. Mate is big here in Buenos Aires, but nothing prepared me for how prolific this habit is in Uruguay. Everywhere you go, you could see people holding a thermos under their arms, and a mate in their right hand, or with a leather mate and thermos carry-case over their shoulders. It was so constant that you could notice the Uruguayans when they weren't drinking mate by the deformed right arm and hand that seemed almost permanently welded into the mate carrying/drinking position. It caused me to wonder why they didn't just dispense with the middle man, and take mate intravenously.

Man drinking mate at the Sunday street markets.

Mate supply store on the main street of Montevideo.

Niki and I both found Uruguayan Spanish much easier to understand than here in Buenos Aires. We have both been struggling somewhat with the speed at which Argentineans talk, in fact we tend to say "mas despacio por favor" (more slowly please) more often than we say "hola" (hello) here in Buenos Aires. The Uruguayans speak more slowly, and much more clearly in general. We actually had this amazing experience when we were talking to a guy at the hotel about making our way around the streets of Montevideo, he went on a long spiel telling us where all the points of interest were, and how the city is pretty safe, etc..., when Niki and I walked away, we turned to each other and said "wow, we actually understood all that, we can actually speak Spanish after all". I even had my longest Spanish conversation to date with the woman who owned the hotel in Cabo Polonio. We sat and chatted for about half an hour about mate, food, the nearby seal colony, the weather, Carlos Gardel, what it's like in Australia, even what she was going to prepare for dinner for us that night.

Unlike Buenos Aires we didn't see a lot of bad plastic surgery. It seems to be quite common here in Buenos Aires to have plastic surgery. Breast enlargements, face lifts, nose jobs, bum implants, expressionless over-botoxed faces etc... are all common place in Buenos Aires, and they are extremely obvious. I've even been told that 1 procedure per year is funded by health insurance here. So either Uruguayans don't have the same obsession with cutting themselves up in order to achieve the "perfect body", or they have some really world class plastic surgeons.

Uruguay Roundup

2008-09-02T16:12:00.002-03:00

It's Monday morning and Niki and I are sitting in the Ferry terminal completely exhausted after having had only 3.5 hour sleep last night. We're waiting for a BUQUEBUS (Ferry) to take us back to the city we're calling home for the next 9 months. We have had an amazing time in Uruguay, and we're so glad we didn't just do the standard visa renewal plan of catching the ferry to Colonia in the morning, having a coffee in the port, and then returning on the afternoon Ferry. Uruguay is an amazing country, and we've lots to say about it. We didn’t get time to blog during the past week, so now that we have the time, we are blogging about it in one big hit. So if you have the time to read it, sit back with a cup of coffee, and some Alfajores, and enjoy.

Our last weekly roundup describes our first day in Montevideo, and our first experience of the Montevideo tango scene, so we'll continue from there. On the Sunday, we decided to go to the street markets. The street markets were huge, with absolutely everything for sale. We discovered that unlike their Argentinean brothers Uruguayans actually understand olives, and how to prepare them, we found some amazing black olives marinated in crushed garlic and oil, and some beautiful green olives.

More photos : Motevideo Sunday Markets

Tango in the Subte

That night we went to a special one-off tango event that was held in an abandoned subte (Subway) station. The story goes that the Uruguayan government had decided that Montevideo absolutely needed a subte (just like big brother Buenos Aires), and so started to build the central terminal. They'd almost completed it when they discovered that the majority of the road under which they intended to build the subte was on solid bedrock, and it would be completely absurd to continue construction of the subte. So the abandoned subte station is now used as an exhibition/performance/event space. Most of the people who were at this event weren't there to dance, but to just watch, and "enjoy" the tango's as they echoed (the Subte station had really bad acustics) through the space. Niki and I had some good dances, but had to sit down when the milonga's came on because the poor acoustics made it impossible to distinguish the beat from it's echo's. It was weird after every tango to here applause from the audience as though we were performing for their entertainment. After the subte event wound up we followed some of the other dancers to a quaint little milonga called "Las Musas". The space was intimate, and we had some lovely dances.

Legislative Palace Attempt #1

On Monday we decided to take a friends advice and go to see the Legislative Palace (parliament house), so we asked the receptionist at the front desk of our hotel where it was, she pointed it out on the map, and we decided the 17 block walk would do us good. As we walked around we began to notice that the city seemed rather quiet. In fact, 'dead' would be a more accurate description. Nothing was open, no businesses, no shops, no restaurants, nothing. We were starting to wonder what was going on. When we finally got to the Legislative Palace to find it completely closed up, we began to suspect something wasn't quite right. The building itself is an amazing Italian designed palace with 52 different types of marble and 17 different types of granite, intricate engravings, and elaborate statues around the architraves.

The fact that it was closed was quite frustrating, as our friend in Buenos Aires specifically told us we must see inside the Palace, and raved about the stained glass windows, and the marble and granite work on the inside. Frustrated at the palace not being open, we decided to do what we always do when we can't think of anything else to do... go have a coffee. So we set off down what looked to be a main street, and walked block after block searching for a cafe that was open. Nothing, not even a Kiosco. We kept walking until we eventually found an Italian cafe that was open, by which time we were also quite hungry, and figuring that this may in fact be the only thing open in all of Montevideo, decided to have lunch. We also asked the waiter what was going on, why everything was closed. As it turned out, the 25th of August is Uruguay's independence day, so it was a public holiday. After lunch we wondered down to the old part of town, which again was completely dead, but had some amazing buildings. We eventually ended up at the foreshore, and discovered that this is where half of Montevideo spend their public holidays.

More photos : Uruguayan Legislative Palace, Montevideo foreshore

City Tour (Legislative Palace Attempt #2)

On Tuesday we decided to do a city tour of Montevideo. The city tour included the Legislative Palace (amongst other things), so we thought this might finally get to see it. The city tour took us to the old part of the city, then independence square, the main church in Montevideo, and at each place we'd stop get out, walk around, walk into buildings, and take photos while the tour guide gave us little tid bits of historical information. We thought that we were finally going to get to see inside the Legislative Palace, but alas, we simply pulled up in front of it, got out, took some more pictures of the outside of the building, and then piled back onto the bus. We saw some other interesting buildings and points of interest, and the tour guide also explained how Montevideo got it's name, sixth (roman numerals VI) mountain (monte) from the (de) west (Oeste) (Monte VI de o) . We then travelled back home all along the coast road.

Dinner and Milonga

That night we wanted to go out to a Milonga called "Lo De Margot", but first we decided to grab dinner at a Restaurant close to the milonga. We walked around a bit, and found a Restaurant called Don Koto (Corner of Colonia and Gabato), and sat down to what we have to say was our best meal in Uruguay. We had a delicious Provolone (melted cheese wheel with capsicum and herbs), followed by a nice big juicy chunk of Bife de Lomo cooked to perfection, and a house salad (tip to eating in Parillada's in Uruguay, order the salad named after the restaurant, in this case "ensalada Don Koto", they seem to take pride in these salads, and it is a show case of their fresh and preserved salad vegetables). We also ordered a jug of Sangria which was divine. Niki is a always super critical of Sangria as she makes a really good Sangria herself, and is often disappointed when we drink it at restaurants, but this one she enjoyed so much that she kept drinking and drinking to the point where she had become quite animated, and giggly (she normally doesn't drink much, and never drinks if she intends to go out dancing). After the wonderful meal, we wandered slowly down the 6 or so blocks to the milonga. Fortunately it gave Niki enough time to start sobering up a little so she was able to dance and enjoy the night. The milonga was in an intimate little cafe space, and there were some fairly good dancers there. Niki and I started the night with a tanda of milongas, and we must have impressed them because after that everyone wanted to have a tanda of milongas with us.

Legislative Palace Attempt #3

The next day we decided that before we headed off for Cabo Polonio, we would try a third time to see the Legislative Palace. This time we were successful. We arrived at the front door, where a group tourists were waiting for the hourly tour of the palace to start. The tour guide arrived, and showed us in to the building, As our friend had suggested, it is an amazing building, definitely a must see if visiting Montevideo. I can't really do justice to it in words, so I'll let our photos speak for themselves.

More photos : Uruguayan Legislative Palace

Cabo Polonio

I'm probably going to get into trouble here because certain friends have asked us not to mention the name of this place on our blog out of fear of it becoming too popular, but I think I can safely say that out of our huge readership (I think it's approaching 5 people now), 2 of them are people who actually told us about it, and the other 3 have no idea where Uruguay is, let alone intend to visit it and put in the fairly large effort required to get to Cabo Polonio. Also, Cabo Polonio is already the worst kept secret of Uruguay, literally everyone we talked to in Buenos Aires and Australia who knows anything about Uruguay recommended going there, plus there are other articles circulating around the internet about this place.

Everyone kept telling us about this mystical place, Cabo Polonio..., it's on a remote beach, it has no roads, it has no electricity or phone reception, it's really romantic, it's a must see if you're going to Uruguay etc.... So using my limited, but ever growing command of the Spanish language I managed to book a bus to get us to the closest point possible, then called and booked a hotel room, and then figure out that I needed to ring a guy who would meet us where the bus dropped us off and would then take us to the hotel in his four wheel drive. After our trip to the Legislative Palace, we boarded the bus for a 5 hour bus ride. After the bus driver dropped us off at the side of the highway, by which point it was night and pitch black, we walked about a hundred metres where we were met by the man I'd talked to the previous day, and boarded a 4 wheel drive truck that had been especially designed for the purpose of escorting large amounts of tourists across the sand dunes to get to Cabo Polonio.

We arrived at the hotel after about 10 minutes of driving across the sand dunes, and to our amazement, there were actually lights. This was because the hotel actually has it's own generator. We were informed that if we wanted something to eat our only option would be the one little shop just down the road. The hotel owner escorted us there where we purchased some cheese, salami, olives, preserved vegetables, membrillo and a bottle of red wine, which was pretty much all the shop could offer us that was edible and didn't require cooking. They didn't even have bread. When we got back to the hotel, the hotel owner informed us that she would be turning off the generator in about an hour's time. We consumed our makeshift dinner, and then talked until the lights went out, and decided that sleep was probably the easiest thing to do at that stage. It was amazing, the darkness was so complete. It's been a long time since I've experienced that kind of dark.

That night a violent storm descended on Cabo Polonio, and the remnants of the storm were still around the next day to greet us when we awoke. It was overcast, very cold, and it rained on and off the entire day. We were the only people staying at the hotel, and every time I saw the hotel owner, I imagined her thinking "Estupido Touristas" for the fact that we had come in the middle of winter, and not when Cabo Polonio is at it's best in late Spring and Summer. However, we did manage to find a few clear patches in the weather and started to explore around the rocks, and the beach. It is truly a beautiful place, and I would love to see it in better weather. Even with the poor weather we could see seals playing in the ocean not more than a hundred metres from where the water lapped the porch of the hotel.

The bird life was truly amazing - I even saw a small owl sitting on a sign post watching me as I walked by. Every time we'd leave the hotel to walk along the beach, an entourage of dogs would accompany us, wanting little more than our company, and a bit of play.

We also discovered that apart from the corner store we had purchased dinner from the previous night, nothing was open. There were lots of restaurants, and even an Heladeria (Ice cream shop), but all were shut up until the tourist season started back in full. For lunch we were forced to revisit the corner shop, and purchase pretty much the same ingredients as we'd had for dinner the night before. Fortunately for dinner on our second night there, the owner of the hotel was able to convince one of the local men in the town to come and cook us a meal. He cooked us a simple slab of fish with some chips and vegies, but it was just so good to have something different.

That night the storm raged again, this time with even more violent winds. Fortunately by morning the storm had blown over, and we were granted a few hours of glorious sunshine before we had to leave. We made the most of it visiting the local light house which gave us an amazing birds-eye view of the town, and also the seal colony basking on the rocks beneath the light house. Later that afternoon, after having treated ourselves yet again to crackers, cheese, salami, preserved vegetables etc... (or as we came to lovingly refer to as ’the Cabo Polonio winter special’), we left Cabo Polonio, and headed back for Montevideo, having really enjoyed our time there, but a little disappointed that the weather hadn't been so great.

More photos : Cabo Polonio

More Tango in Montevideo

After we got back to Montevideo, we decided try another Milonga, "El Farolito". We turned up just as the lesson was ending, and then noticed that not only weren't there many people there, but the actual level of dancing was somewhat low. Niki and I danced a few tanda's, but when one of the less skilful dancers lead his partner's heels onto Niki's leg during a tanda of milongas, she finally decided that this venue had nothing to offer her, changed her shoes, and sat there playing games on my phone completely unaware that some good dancers had actually turned up. I, on the other hand, was trying to make the best of it when our friend M. turned up wanting some company for a non-tango night out. Niki jumped at the opportunity, and we went our separate ways. After I'd had my fill of dancing I joined Niki and M. at the bar they had ended up at, and then we all went back to our hotel room where we raided the mini bar and watched obscure you tube clips that M. recommended. We then introduced M. to one of our favourite animations, and he became instantly addicted watching "Drawn Together" with us until 5am.

Dinner and Dancing

The next night, after a day of wandering around the city, looking at art and craft markets, and sleeping off the night before, our friend M. took us to a food court that had a dance floor in the middle. He said that he doesn't go there very often as it's predominantly a family oriented venue, and he feels out of place as a single guy. When we arrived there were people dancing tango, but we were too hungry to think about that, and set about ordering dinner. While we were waiting a group of tango musicians and a singer started to perform. M. explained that for some reason they didn't like people to dance at this venue when there was live music, and in fact he had been told off one time for doing just that. We watched as the singer used pretty much the entire dance floor, wandering up and down it while he was singing, and concluded that he just didn't like sharing it.

The meal was amazing, we'd ordered Paella, and it was absolutely packed with muscles, fish pieces, squid, etc..., and so large we couldn't quite finish it.

While we were eating another singer got up and started singing what sounded like Jewish songs, but this singer was glad when people got up and danced to his music. After the Jewish music ended, the DJ played some Latino rhythms, cumbia, bachada, mirengue, salsa, cha cha, everything except tango. We were amazed watching the people as they danced. All ages were out on the dance floor, but the ones giving it all they had, and shaking there stuff the best were definitely in the over 65 bracket. They seemed so uninhibited by modern western concepts of skill, but had just released themselves to the music and were enjoying the moment totally. Although it was interesting to watch we really wanted to dance some tango, so we headed off to Vieja Viola where we had gone the previous Saturday night. This time there were fewer people, but we still had a good night.

Dinner and dancing... again

The next day we spent some more time wandering around the city and buying some souvenirs, then decided that for dinner we would go to Don Koto one last time. We walked all the way from our hotel room to the restaurant, only to discover that Don Koto is closed on a Sunday. We decided to try a restaurant M. had recommended, raving about the fish burgers, which was on the complete opposite side of town, so we jumped in a cab. We arrived there only to discover that it also was closed. We started to walk back towards our hotel, finding that most restaurants in Montevideo are closed on a Sunday night. We eventually found a restaurant that looked like it could satisfy our desires, although it was more out of frustration and exhaustion that we decided on this restaurant. The meal was quite nice (not as good as Don Koto though) but what really made the meal special was desert. 'Frutos Rojos' is a mixture of red fruits, brazed in a sugar syrup and then drizzled on top of a ring of panacotta, with a toffee lattice for decoration. It was a superb way to end a really nice meal.

After dinner we walked the 2 and a half blocks to the milonga, "Las Musas" again. There was a really different vibe this time, more people, and also more space. Niki and I both danced quite lot, and had some really fantastic dances. They didn't play cortinas at this milonga, but every now and then (usually after about 10 tangos) one of the men dancing would walk over to the bar, pick up a guitar, and play something for our enjoyment. It was a great way to spend our last night in Uruguay.

More photos : All photos of our trip to Uruguay

Weekly Round up 24-Aug-2008

2008-08-26T09:43:00.003-03:00

Monday night Scott and I parted ways after our empanada lunch- Scott went to la Catedral to see a performance by Planetango - a group that does their own interpretation of tangos from all over the world. I on the other hand, went off to Canniing, where I got to meet up with a tango tourist from Greece. I must admit, I did enjoy the opportunity to speak Greek, if only for a little while.

Scott also picked up his third pair of dance shoe this week, so now we are even - quick, I need to buy at least two more pairs if I am to do justice to the female gender :).

we gave ourselves a night off from tango on Thursday, and went to a friend's photography exhibition instead.

The end of August marks the end of our first three months in BsAs. So, as all good tourists who want to retain a blemish-free passport, this Friday we left the country, catching a ferry to Uruguay, where we will spend the next 10 days.

We spent a day and a half in Colonia, before catching the coach to Montevideo. On Saturday night we caught up with M. at a local milonga. Tango in Montevideo is definitely more relaxed than in Bs As, with women having no issues coming up to a man and asking for a dance. It all started when the woman sitting at the table in front of us turned around and asked Scott for a dance. Before he knew it, women were flocking towards him from the four corners of the mionga, he didn't have to ask for a single dance all night.

More tango on Sunday night at a one-off milonga held at the Subway Plaza exhibition space, with more of a nuevo (or organic tango, as they refer to it over here), with live music and an exhibition from the winners of the Metropolitan Tango championships.

We are enjoying spending our days lazily in Montevideo - being on holiday is hard work...

Machismo and Tango - my 2 centavos

2008-08-25T13:58:00.005-03:00

Scott´s post `No me gusta machismo (also see posts in the ´folklore´ category for full back story) seems to have generated bit of interest, both online and in person. I thought I´d offer my opinion:

There is no need for machismo (defined as ´an arrogant assumption of male superiority´,and not to be confused with ´confidence´, which I do see as an important quality) in tango. There is a need for communication. Have you ever been on the receiving end of someone who was talking ´at´ you? Someone who won´t let you get a word in? Not a pleasant interaction.
Tango to me is a conversation, with two active participants. I do not see following to be a passive or submissive part in this conversation. I do not like to be ´talked at´. Just like any conversation, there are times when I have something to suggest, something to comment on, something to expand on. There are, however, times when what the other person is saying is so interesting that I don´t want to interrupt. By no means does this make my contribution submissive or passive. By no means does it make me a 'damsel in distress' needing a macho male to come to her rescue. Tango is a conversation.
Let's talk.

Colonia, Uruguay

2008-08-25T13:45:00.001-03:00

Due to the fact that we have a 3 month tourist visa for Argentina, we have to leave the country every 3 months. and return to get our visa re-stamped for another 3 months. Some people just catch the ferry across to Uruguay for the day and come back later that night, but Niki and I thought we'd use it as an excuse to see some more of South America. Because it is so close, we decided to make Uruguay our first expedition, and because we're not due to move into our new accommodation until the 1st of September, we decided to spend 10 days travelling around Uruguay.

So we caught the "Buquebus" from Buenos Aires to Colonia which is the closest port to Buenos Aires. Colonia is a small, but historic town, and because it is a popular tourist destination it is also a bit more expensive than the capital Montevideo. It is for these reasons that everyone told us that we only really needed to spend a day in Colonia. We arrived after dark, and immediately went to change some US dollars into Uruguayan New Pesos. The exchange rate is currently 19 pesos to each US dollar. Niki had some trouble adjusting to the new currency, not realising that the 20 peso note she thought was too much to tip the guy who wheeled our baggage the 400 meters from the ferry terminal to where we could change money and get a cab, and instead got me to give him the 5 peso Argentinean note that I had in my wallet which in reality was actually worth more.

We went for a walk down the street after we checked in looking for a restaurant that had been recommended to us. On our way we passed a few clothes shops, and with our newly acquired sense of prices were able to determine that the clothing in the window not only looked good but was also fairly cheap. What amazed us even more was two of the store dummy's. It was so refreshing to see store dummy's that represented real women with real beautiful curvy full bodies, instead of the stick figure dummy's you see in most places. We were sort of hoping that this might be a common theme in Uruguay, but it seems not, in fact it seems as it was only that particular shop in Colonia that was brave enough to use full figured dummy's. We found the restaurant we had been recommended, "It's not only good food, but quite cheap" the guy who had wheeled our baggage told us. As he had said, "Parrillada de Ponto" turned out to be a fairly good quality, and reasonably priced meal. After a very nice Asado and Ensalada Completa, a carafe of wine, and a really nice chocolate cake for desert, the bill struggled to make it to 500 pesos ($25 US). As there is no tango in Colonia, we decided it was a great excuse for an early night.

The next morning we woke up in time for breakfast at the hotel, and decided to see what Colonia had to offer in daylight. It was a lovely day, and we made the most of it wandering all over the historic part of town, climbing a light house that was built on the remains of an ancient monastery, soaking up some sun on a wharf while we watched a couple of kids learning to sail. It was so relaxing after the hustle and bustle of Buenos Aires.

We got hungry around 2pm, and started to look for somewhere for lunch. There were lots of Parrilla's, but based on our meal the previous night, they all seemed extremely expensive, and I personally needed a change from Parrilla. I remembered walking past a restaurant off the main street where there was a table out the front, and the chef had been standing near the doorway watching people pass by. I thought we'd give it a go. It turned out to be a French restaurant, and the chef went to lengths to assure us that absolutely everything was prepared fresh only after you order it. Although they didn't have the garlic prawns that initially coaxed us to take a seat, we settled on getting some Omega 3's and chose the fish in shrimp sauce to share, as well as a mozzarella and tomato entree. The Entree was presented beautifully - a mound of thinly sliced mozzarella cheese surrounded either side by a mound of thinly sliced tomato in a really tasty vinaigrette, and topped with pesto. As per usual we asked for butter with the bread, and even the butter came out with a drizzle of pesto. So far we were really impressed with the effort they had made in the preparation and presentation of their food and my suspicion that the chef really took pride in his work. When they bought out the fish that we told him we were going to share, we were amazed that they had already halved the fish for us, and placed each piece on it's own plate and accompanied by it's own mound of spiced rice with a couple of sprigs of sage on each mound. This was service. We both enjoyed the fish, and spurred on by the overall quality of the meal, we decided to order a cafe con leche (coffee with milk, what we'd call a flat white back in Australia). The chef double checked the order asking us if we wouldn't prefer a cappuccino, we were surprised at this, because we don't normally have a problem ordering cafe con leche, but we confirmed the order. We couldn't believe it when 5 minutes later the very same chef bought back 2 cups of what was obviously instant coffee, and then had the audacity to charge 60 ($3 US) pesos for each.

We paid the bill, and continued on our walk. Two and a half blocks later, and while we were still complaining to each other about the instant coffee, we felt a tap on the shoulder. It was the waitress from the restaurant. We had left a shopping bag at the table, and she had followed after us to give it back. Now that’s what I call service.

After this we decided to hop on the bus for Montevideo.

P.S. Photos to come at a later date.

Lunch Tucumán Style

2008-08-24T19:47:00.001-03:00

Monday was a public holiday here in Buenos Aires, although I'm still not sure what we were celebrating, and it didn't make much difference to us as we would have continued to do what we were doing regardless. However, friends of ours who work here in Buenos Aires thought they'd make the most of the day off, and invited a few friends around for an empanada lunch. Ruben is from Tucumán originally, but has been living here in Buenos Aires for many years. So he treated us to a bit of home-style cooking with his famous empanadas de Tucumán.

Empanadas de Tucumán are very different to those you generally get in Buenos Aires. They contain diced beef, and diced potatoes, as well as some lovely herbs and spices, and are extremely juicy. We sat around on there 8th floor balcony drinking lovely red wine from the Mendoza region, and between 7 of us polished off 2 trays of these delicious empanadas de Tucumán. As the Argentineans say, they were "muy rico" (literally very rich, but more accurately translated as very tasty).

The day was absolutely beautiful, and the view of Buenos Aires from their 8th story balcony was amazing. Unlike other major cities around the world, there is nothing particularly noticeable about the Buenos Aires Skyline, just row after row of old apartment buildings in various states of disrepair, and although you won't see any of these images on the back of a Buenos Aires postcard, this gives you a more accurate sense of the real Buenos Aires. (Note: click on the image to reveal larger picture on flickr, or click here to see the full set of BA Skyline photos from that day)

As the day got colder, we moved inside, and Ruben put on some tango music, and cleared some space. Ruben and I then took turns in dancing with all of the women present. It was a great way to spend a public holiday.

No me gusta Machismo

2008-08-20T21:04:00.004-03:00

I have been challenged by Tango Cherie in a post entitled Mucho Macho about my attitudes towards the "machismo" culture as it is represented in the form of dance, and specifically in my passion Argentinean Tango. I guess one of the difficulties is with definitions, so let's deal with this right away. Dictionary.com defines machismo as

1. a strong or exaggerated sense of manliness; an assumptive attitude that virility, courage, strength, and entitlement to dominate are attributes or concomitants of masculinity.

2.a strong or exaggerated sense of power or the right to dominate: The military campaign was an exercise in national machismo.

I think there are a few things in the post that as an "enlightened" male I have real problems with. As a bit of background I should also say that this comes from the perspective of someone who all his life has never really had a lot of close male friends (or "mates" as we call them in Australia). Most of my close friends have been females, and the few close male friends I have had, have been very unusual males, and not the machismo stereotype at all. This is not to say they are not masculine, or that they are feminine, I think right here is the crux of the identity crisis of the modern man; that being "what does it mean to be masculine without being 'machismo'".

If you'll allow me to do a grave injustice to the roots of the machismo culture, I would like to say that many of our concepts of "machismo" and even to some extent "masculinity" are a combination of various evolutionary, social, political, religious, and environmental pressures. I'm not going to be so naïve as to try to say that there is no fundamental difference between men and women, but I will say that many of our differences are socially constructed, and reinforced by our customs and traditions.

Before I get into what I think we disagree on, I would first like to verify that in some things we are actually in violent agreement. Inequality in pay, women being ignored by waiters/taxi drivers when a man is present, any behaviour that expresses that women are somehow less intelligent/worthy/respectable/human than men, are not desirable things in our modern world. These things unfortunately exist in society (some societies more than others), but all attempts should be made to eradicate these from an "enlightened" culture. Another thing that I hope we are in agreement on is that qualities such as confidence, strength, sensitivity, sensuality are all good whether they are found in males or females.

So now let me start on where I disagree with the Mucho Macho post. Firstly I disagree with the way in which the post makes out the followers part in tango to be completely passive. In tango, as I know and dance it, the follower should strive to be an equal partner in the conversation and in expressing the music. The leader should strive to be more and more open to this interaction, and as I (as a leader) learn more about tango I find I am becoming better at picking up the subtle signals that advanced followers give to communicate how they are wanting to interpret the amazing music that has thrown us onto the dance floor together.

Also there are points in the dance when the follower can take full control of the dance, making the leader wait while the follower plays with the music. Like when a leader leads a parada (a stop) with the foot, and then invites the follower to step over the obstructing foot into a forward ocho (a figure 8). Ever since I did my first tango lesson I have been instructed in this, and I find it surprising that so few followers actually know this, and that even those that do know it, don't make more of the opportunity when it arises.

Both of these situations ignore completely the act of "back-leading" where a follower can actually wrest control off the leader. This can happen in two very different scenarios. Firstly if the follower is a far more experienced dancer than the leader, and needs to back-lead to actually make the dance worth dancing, and secondly when the leader is experienced and sensitive enough to sense that the follower has connected so powerfully with something in the music that to not pursue it would be to deny something within themselves, and thereby lessen the conversation. I have experienced the latter a few times now, and it invigorating when it happens.

I have danced with many women as followers, from the very passive right through to the very active, and I must say that I enjoy so much more when a woman is an active participant in the artistic expression that we are creating together.

Secondly the post states

Maybe the woman is a CEO, or "wears the pants" in her family, or even is La Presidenta de la Republica. But when she dances tango, she wants to be feminine and to follow the lead of a man. She wants to submit to machismo.

Dance has always been a reflection of the culture it evolves in, and as the poss quite rightly states, our culture has moved on. I can't agree though that women must "submit to machismo" even if it is only for a tanda, and conversely why shouldn't a guy be able, and open to experiencing the "tango heaven" that can come from following a good leader. It is instructional to look at how the gay community is changing modern tango. Obviously, in the gay community, it's not possible to assign the lead and follow roles based on gender if you are dancing with someone of the same sex. Incidentally this harks back to the original roots of tango where men would dance with men, so don't give me "[in] traditional tango ... the man leads, the woman follows", tango evolved into these gender roles. There are new ideas coming from, but certainly not limited to, the gay community that opens up the possibility of role swapping. Not just changing the roles for each new song, but even finding points within a song for partners to transition between the lead and follow roles. This is not a "Gringo" thing in fact the pioneers of some of these ideas are right here in Buenos Aires, places like Tango Queer and La Marshall have been teaching and experimenting with these ideas for years now. True I don't think "traditional" milonga's are ready to embrace some of these ideas just yet, but I personally think that the aesthetic of watching a couple, be they male-female, male-male or female-female, flowing gracefully between the lead and follow roles is beautiful, and adds a whole new dimension to the dance. For more information on some of these new ideas, there is a brilliant article by a friend of mine on this very subject called "Queer Tango: Embracing change". I highly recommend reading it.

Our societal values and culture have changed. Gender roles in society have become far more complex, and every relationship and social interaction needs to negotiate not so much gender roles, but partnership or interaction roles. Reflecting this, the roles in tango have become more complex, and also need to be negotiated between any two partners that wish to dance it. If people wish to dance in the traditional milonga's and they enjoy the traditional role play of lead and follow and see the follow as a submission for a tanda, then that's fine. I have no problem doing this, or dancing with people that feel this way. However, to say that this is what tango is, and that this is the way it must be danced, is to confine it to becoming a museum piece. Less and less people will be interested in dancing it as they look for a more socially relevant form of self expression. I personally hope that tango will evolve and change. Tango may have it's origins here in Buenos Aires, but for a long time now it has had influences from all over the world. True Buenos Aires is still, and will be for the foreseeable future, by far the biggest influence in tango, but as others bring their different ideas to tango the dance will evolve and live on, hopefully for many generations to come.

I will end with an anecdote. I had a bit of an argument with my tango teacher here in Buenos Aires. When she was pulling apart some of the problems she had seen while watching Niki and I dance, I made the statement... "It's always the leaders fault". She immediately chided me and told me that although this was the old "codigo" (code) back in the golden age of tango (40's and 50's) when women were not allowed to suggest anything, either in life or consequently in the tango (which after all is a microcosm for life), that tango like society has moved on, and that by the very conversation nature of tango as it is danced today, blame should not be attributed to one partner alone, and that both need to consider how to improve the conversation. She was, of course right, and I continue to learn much from this amazing woman of tango.

Tigre

2008-08-20T11:50:00.010-03:00

On Sunday we woke up at the ridiculous hour of 9am, on a grizzly, grey morning. We had to meet friends at the entrance of Independenia Subte station - the starting point for our daytrip to Tigre. After a long line up to get tickets at the Retiro Railway station, the group of nine finally boarded the train. 45 minutes and a lot of chitter-chatter later we arrived at Tigre. We stepped off the train to be greeted by beautiful blue skies, warm sunshine and a fresh breeze.

The restaurants on the delta have a little booth near the pier, where you can have a
look at the menu, and pick out the restaurant of your choice, before booking the ferry ride out there. We settled on a restaurant that was on an 'island', and surrounded by a park. we made our booking, bought our ferry tickets and were on our way.

The ferry glided past marshes and houses. there was one house that caught my attention - a house that appeared to be encased in a glass box.

The restaurant was lovely, with the conversation flowing as freely as the wine. When we eventually decided to leave the restaurant we went for a wonder in the park. We stretched, sketched, we played and we rested.

We finally decided it was time to get a move on (OK, the disappearing sun may have had some influence on that decision). We headed to the pier to wait for the next ferry back, and with half an hour to spare, we found the perfect opportunity to fit in some tango.. the ferry ride back was a dozy affair - with full bellies and energy being used up by fun , frivolity and tango.

Once on dry land we hit the markets, where I discovered, what has to be my favourite dessert so far - skewered, candied strawberries, covered in popcorn!

I also just had to buy the biggest tub of what I was guarranteed was the best dulce de leche you can buy. Oh, and I couldn't resist buying a whole kilo of huge, plump, juicy strawberries. Scott managed to hunt down some liquer wine and peppered cheese. Scott and I are so alike - the way to our heart is definitely through our stomach.

It was dark by the time we boarded the train back to Retiro. Tired and content, we parted outside Retiro station , but not before agreeing to meet up once a fortnight to get away from the concrete jungle that is BsAs.

Weekly Roundup 17-Aug-2008

2008-08-18T13:43:00.002-03:00

This, as most weeks are becoming, was a really big week. We started the week by making some new friends. K. and R. are a couple of friends who met a close friend of mine in Australia, and we have been trying to meet with them ever since we arrived. K. is German, and R. is Argentinean. It was interesting for Niki and I to see another mixed race couple and how they have handled similar issues to the ones we've faced, and how they are finding life here in Buenos Aires. R. has a great sense of humour, and we were laughing most of the night. It was interesting to see that K. who seems to us to be a free spirited, liberal thinking woman, having to assume some very traditional gender roles in order to survive in this very misogynistic culture.

On Tuesday Niki and I went to a class at Tango Queer, but did the class in reverse roles (ie me following and Niki leading). It was very revealing for both of us, but we got there in the end. After this Niki braved a return to Practica X after a self imposed abstinence since our first time there 8 weeks ago. She enjoyed it more this time, and puts it down to the mental preparation from Tango Queer.

On Wednesday I went to my first class at DNI. A friend had been trying to get me along to take a class from Pablo and Dana, who she worships as the God and Goddess of Nuevo tango. The lesson started out fairly straight forward, and progressively got harder and harder to the point where I was not really able to get the combination they were teaching, however, I hope that I am at least able to incorporate some of the techniques they were teaching. The class was absolutely packed, and I think that it was actually a little too advanced for most of the people that were there.

A while back I met a girl through the writers' group I'm in, who is a very talented food writer, and currently has a project where she jumps into a cab and asks the driver to take her to a nice restaurant, but somewhere where he'd eat or even take his family. She then writes about it on her blog foodquests. On Friday we were invited to join her on one of these "taxi adventures". It is a strange feeling to put that much control of your destination into the hands of a taxi driver, and I was surprised that the taxi driver didn't say something like "Hey I know this great little parrilla just out past Villa Urquiza", and 50 pesos later drop us off at the furthest restaurant he knew of. Instead the taxi fair struggled to get over 5 pesos as he took us to one of his favourite little eating places near by. As Layne says on her blog post

... the meal was less than inspiring ...

but we had a great time in each others' company.

On Sunday we went with a group of friends to Tigre. We had a great time, and have lots of photos, however this deserves a blog post all to itself. Check back in a day or so if you want to hear about Tigre.

Greek Tangos

2008-08-13T14:33:00.008-03:00

I am currently listening to CyBC (Cyprus Broadcasting Corporation). Every Monday to Thursday, from 8:30 till 9:00 pm (2:30 - 3:00pm, if you are in BsAs) there is a programme called Τραγούδια μιας αθάνατης εποχής - Songs of an unforgettable era. Greek songs, including tangos and valses, from the '40s and '50s.
I discovered this program when Scott and I were in Cyprus, this past September. We were on the road, driving to a specific spot that my dad wanted to take us for drinks. My mum turned the car radio on, and the car flooded with these beautiful old melodies...

Click here then click on 'A' to get a live feed.

Finally

2008-08-11T18:27:00.003-03:00

I posted about my attempts to find a pool here in Buenos Aires back in June, but between being sick, busy and lazy, I haven't actually gone yet. I was also put out by the cost. At $240 pesos per month, it works out far more expensive than my pool membership back in Melbourne, plus that particular gym was fairly difficult to get to, as it required 2 separate trains from here.

Friends had told me about a gymnasium in San Telmo that had a 25m pool, and I was interested, especially when they said the price was $80 pesos per month, or $15 pesos for a single visit, but it wasn't until this morning when I woke up with a sore back that I finally got motivated to check it out.

The language barrier is still a problem, but slowly becomming less of one. I still start any discussion with "mi castellano no es bueno" (my spanish is not good), just to set expectations of the ensuing verbal exchange. So I started with the guy at the desk, he spoke very little English, but I was able to negotiate the terms, "no I don't want a monthly pass this time, if I like the pool, then next time I come back I will get a monthly pass". At least that's what I intended to communicate, and when he accepted my $15 pesos. He gave me a green slip, and then told me that I had to see a doctor on the second floor before I could go into the pool. I had heard that this was the case, so it wasn't a surprise. I made my way up to the second floor and found the correct room. There were 2 other people waiting, so I sat and waited. Eventually I went in to see the doctor, who asked me to write my name on the form, although for all he really cared I could have written Zaphod Beeblebrox, as he had nothing to check it against, and he seemed to be about as interested as an anorexic at an all you can eat buffet. He made me take off my shoes and socks, and checked my toes for tinea. Then asked me if I had goggles, and flip flops (thongs for the aussies in the audience), goggles, check, flip flops, no. He said I'd need them, but let me go this time anyhow.

I then went back down to the pool, and after figuring out the labyrinthine entrance to the main area, handed my note to one of the attendants, and was directed to the change rooms. I returned and was about to dive into the pool when the attendant had a last minute panic, and asked me if I actually knew how to swim. I managed to relieve her concern, and then proceeded to swim 40 laps. On getting out of the pool I felt great, and immediately went and undid all of my good work with a few delicious empanadas.

Next time I'll get the monthly pass

Weekly roundup, 10-Aug-2008

2008-08-11T02:04:00.004-03:00

This Tuesday I got a chance to catch up with a friend and colleague from Australia. B. is from Argentina, and comes over every year to visit her family. It was great to get together and find out what's been happening back in Melbourne since I've left. Tuesday night was also the first night in over a fortnight that I chose to not go out dancing. I do need to learn to listen to my body a bit more, and give it a break every now and then (as opposed to my normal 'biting the hand that feeds..' approach)

Friday was our last Spanish lesson till September, since our Spanish teacher is going away for 2 weeks, and by the time she gets back, Scott and I will be off to Uruguay. Hopefully we can stay motivated, and do some self study during this period.

We had yet another private with Natacha this week. Each time we get together, be it for a lesson or social dancing, my respect for her grows - as a teacher, as a mentor, and slowly as a friend. It was about a quarter of the way into of our session that I had my second Coffee Moment. I have no idea what posessed me to choose that time/place for it. Natacha was very supportive, and after a bit of a chat, she offered to cancel our class for the day if we were not up to it. I was not up to resuming the lesson, so I suggested that Scott continue on with Natacha. So they did. I thought that I would be left alone to wallow while the two of them carried on, but Natacha had other plans for me. She asked me to take over, and critique their dancing. After their first dance together, my commentary ran along the lines of: 'Scott, that was perfect. Natacha, honey, I think we need to work a bit more on your technique...', which lead to an outburst of laughter from all three of us. She really did make me work, though. At times forcing me to repeat my input again and again, in different ways, trying to get me to communicate my advice/ideas more effectively. Scott had no easy task either, with Natacha challenging him throughout the dance. Anyone who is under the impression that the woman's role in tango is passive has no idea what tango is all about...

That very night my faith in Argentinean 'man'-kind was restored, during our get together with F. We met F. about 4 weeks ago, (at a milonga, naturally), and have been catching up a couple of times a week ever since. I have to say, that F. is the most genuine male we have met in Argentina. He is Kind and modest, and doesn't treat women like trophies to be conquerred. In this part of the world, where ego and machismo seem to be a national trademark of the men, F. definitely breaks the mold. On this particular occasion, he had invited us over to his place for pizza, and we arrived, thinking, that a take away/delivery menu would be involved in the evening's proceedings. We walked into the kitchen to see that F. was in the middle of laying out the made-from-scratch pastry base, with a bowl of freshly made tomato paste on the side, ready to go. What came out of that oven was the best pizza we've had - crisp, filling passtry, yummy fresh tomato, plump green olives that were simply drowning in a sea of molten cheese, topped off with a sprinkling of oregano. It's amazing how good food and good company makes everything better.

On Saturday we met up with P. at 'La Milonga de los Consagrados'. P is from Argentina, but lives in Melbourne. He is a musician/singer/songwriter (argentinean folk music), and is here for the release of his latest CD, travelling between Mendosa and Buenos Aires for the past month, giving interviews, CD launches, performances. We are both glad to have been able to catch up, if only for a short time, before he heads off to Mendosa again.
Today was a lovely sunny winter's day. We got together with friends for brunch (which went on till mid afternoon) at a nearby cafe. Nothing special. Just a lazy get together - chatting, eating, laughing, reading the Sunday paper. Actually, now that I think of it, it was the 'nothing special' factor that made it very special indeed.

Coffee Moments

2008-08-10T14:33:00.010-03:00

How it all started
Back in June, we had a friend, C., over for dinner. C. had already been in Bs As for 2 months by this point, and was talking about the extreme 'highs' and 'lows', that seem to be an integral part of spending any decent amount of time in BsAs. When she had finished talking about her latest 'low', I mentioned that the 'lowest' I'd ever felt since being in BsAs was over a cup of coffee:

There is a cafe close to our apartment where Scott and I normally go to for our afternoon coffee and empanada. The first time we went there I commented that the coffee was REALLY hot (I prefer my coffee the Italian way). We kept going to that cafe, and every time I felt like I had to force myself to to wait 5 minutes before even considering taking a sip from my cup. My afternoon coffee had become something I had to endure, rather than enjoy. One day, about a month later, the cafe owner placed my cup of coffee in front of me and walked away. Well that was it! That was all it took for me to fall apart and burst into tears (poor Scott - the things this man has to put up with...). Why was I forcing this unpleasant experience upon myself on a regular basis?

That night, over dinner with C., we laughed at my silliness and we coined the term ''Coffee moment' to to describe my little moments of crisis. After having had my second 'coffee moment' this past Friday (see previous post on Porteños), I decided to start documenting these rare (hopefully) incidences.

P.S. We still go to that cafe, but I have since learnt to ask for the milk in my coffee to be 'menos caliente'. How cool would it be if the worst thing that happens to us, for the entire duration of our trip, is a less than perfect cup of coffee? I think I'm becoming a bit better at putting things into perspective - till my next 'coffee moment'...

Porteños (aka: 'Coffee momenet' no. 2)

2008-08-08T12:45:00.007-03:00

I am really starting to miss my male friends.
Over the past 2.5 months, we have developed many friendships. I jokingly refer to the group as 'Scott and his harem', since almost all of them are with women . Why, you may ask? Well, in a nutshell, the men over here are IMPOSSIBLE. They only seem able to relate to women in one way (...). I have, as a result (or rather, as a survival strategy), gotten into the habit of using the words/phrases 'Scott', 'my boyfriend', 'my partner', 'we' in every sentence when I talk to men. Even then, the men just start searching for loopholes ('Is it an open relationship?', 'Will he be with you the entire duration of your stay in BsAs?' etc etc.). The concept of friendship between a male and a female seems to be non-existent.
I am really starting to miss my male friends.

¿De Donde Sos?

2008-08-06T23:00:00.006-03:00

A bit of background information: I am from Cyprus.
I was born in Australia (my parents came to Melbourne in '75, after the northern part of Cyprus was invaded by Turkey). When I was 7 years old, my family moved back to Cyprus, where I completed my primary and secondary education. When it came to making a decision about University, Australia was the only financially feasible option. I therefore came back to Melbourne in 1997, and have been here ever since. Even though I was born in Australia, and have been living here for the past 10 years, I still do not call myself Australian - I always refer to myself as being Cypriot.

¿De Donde Sos? (Where are you from?)
In BsAs, you get asked this question at the end of the first song whenever you dance with someone new. I had given this question a passing thought a week or so before we left Australia, and back then, I thought, "surely my response would be 'from Australia', if only for the sake of ease and practicality". This turned out not to be the case. From the very first time I was asked the question, my response, in my broken Spanish, has been 'I'm Cypriot, but have been living in Australia for the past ten years'. Culture is not a matter of praticality - it's a matter of being.

Quality, Not Quantity

2008-08-05T06:47:00.004-03:00

Tonight I went out to Salon Canning. This was the first milonga we went to, back in May when we arrived in Bs As. I hadn't been to Canning for over a month. I came out tonight to catch up with a friend and to dance, but mainly to listen to the music.
I did dance, but my 'rejection to acceptance' ratio was extremey disproportionate. I danced only a handful of tandas. However, every single one of them was special. Tonight I did not want any surprises. Tonight was about quality, not quantity.

Weekly Roundup 3-Aug-2008

2008-08-04T16:36:00.004-03:00

This week had the effect of bringing us back to reality. The friends who were renting our house in Melbourne and looking after our cat have decided to move back to New Zealand. So this means that we have to find some other plans for the cat and the house in a hurry. As the poet Robert Burns once said, "The best-laid schemes o' mice an men Gang aft agley".

These dramas haven't really slowed us down though. In fact this week marks a first for us both. This week we have been out to a milonga every night of the week. Actually I have done 10 days straight, and I'm ready for a small break, I think I'll stay in tonight. Niki on the other hand has done 13 days straight, and is powering on planning to go to Salon Canning with a friend tonight.

Last week I decided to revisit one of my failures. Last time I went to Practica X (6 or so weeks ago now), I found it really hard to get dances, and got 2 rejections fairly early in the night, and this really set me back. Naturally I danced with Niki, and also 2 other women, a friend from Melbourne, and a woman I'd met and danced with the night before at Salon Canning. However, it was the ONLY venue in Buenos Aires where I have not been able to satisfy My Rule (every milonga I go to I must dance with someone I've never danced with before), which is very important to me. I tried to forget about it by saying "It was just a practica, so technically not a milonga, but I knew in my heart of hearts that this wasn't good enough. I went because a friend told me she would be going there, and I really wanted to dance with her. This time was much better. I didn't get any rejections, and had some really lovely dances, one with a girl from New York, and later with a girl from Holland who had a wonderfully quirky sense of humour. I also met an Australian guy there who came to Buenos Aires for a year 9 years ago, and hasn't gone back. I think I am now over my 'issues" with Practica X, and can now go back there whenever I feel like it.

Later that evening we went to "La Catedral" which I must say has to be the worst dance floor in Buenos Aires, but the space is simply amazing. The reason we went there was because we had become fairly close friends with two women from New York who were leaving the next day, so this was their last night out. In the three weeks we'd known them we'd become very close. Niki went shoe shopping with them, I danced with them, we'd gone to milonga's together, we'd had meals together, and we'd become very fond of their company.

After they left a sad realisation hit us both. Most tango tourists are only here in Buenos Aires for three or four weeks, and if we keep getting close to these people we will spend our entire time here in tearful farewells as we bid the next lot goodbye. Fortunately we have started to create a friendship circle that consists of locals, and ex-pats who aren't going anywhere in a hurry, so hopefully the next tearful farewell will be our own in 10 months time.

This Sunday I turned 35. A group of friends had been asking about going out to Sunderland, so the night before I had organised a table and we all met up at the milonga. I hadn't told anyone that it was my birthday, because I had organised a party for the next day. While I was dancing with one of the women from our table, Isabella, she asked me in between dances how old I was, knowing that Sunday the 3rd of August was my birthday I replied "what time is it?", she looked at her watch puzzled and said "2:30am", to which I replied, "then I'm 35". She was a bit shocked, and asked for confirmation, but eventually believed me. I danced with a few more women, and then went to sit back at my table. Within a few minutes of sitting down the waiter brought me over a large piece of pudding, with a candle stuck in the middle of it, and a small bottle of wine. The culprit was Isabella, and so they all sang 'happy birthday' to me, and we shared out the pudding. We actually stayed until the bitter end of the night, (something we hadn't done before at Sunderland), and by the time we got home it was 5:30am. A great way to start my birthday.

The next day I had organised a small group of friends to go out to a parilla (steak house) called "Club Agricultura" for a birthday lunch. As most of the people I have met here have been women, (through dancing with them), the vast majority of my invites were to women. The 2 men that I had invited couldn't make it so it turned out to be me and 6 women (including Niki). I guess it's lucky that Niki's not the jealous type. We had a great time discussing our various experiences in Buenos Aires, with 'the attitude of most Buenos Aires men' being one of the hot topics of conversation. One of the women at the table was a food writer/critic, so I asked her to choose a wine, she chose really well ("La Linda" Malbec for those interested). The meal was really good, but I think the desert was by far the best part of the meal. I had flan con dulce de leche, Niki had Tiramisu, and another of my friends had pancake with dulce de leche. All three were absolutely fantastic.

Laughter

2008-07-30T18:24:00.003-03:00

Normally I have a very quick (or is 'sharp' the word I'm looking for) tongue.
Over the past 2 months I feel that my Spanish has improved greatly. However, there was one thing that was missing - being able to make someone laugh, in Spanish. This Saturday, though, was the first time that I was able to do so. It felt so good to be able to bring out the cheekiness in my personality, and to see another person's face totally light up. I finally feel that I am making the transition from 'bi' to 'multi' lingual...

More Shoes

2008-07-28T18:08:00.004-03:00

Rosalyn, Jeff, Jenni,
this is what I got with your birthday present:

Weekly Roundup 27-Jul-2008

2008-07-27T21:08:00.001-03:00

After a week where we went out dancing every night, sometimes 'til 4:30am, we decided that Monday would be a quite, stay in, eat pizza with a friend in front of crap TV night. We really needed it, thank goodness for cable TV.

This week marked a real turning point in our stay in Buenos Aires. We no longer feel like we are in holiday mode. We are having regular Spanish lessons twice a week, I am reading the news in Spanish (although painfully slowly), I am really starting to get back into some professional development, and we finally settled on a tango teacher for privates. We had our first private lesson with Natacha Poberaj on Friday.

It is amazing how even after 8 years of dancing tango, a lot of the problems with our dancing comes back to things we learnt in the first 3 tango lessons we ever had. Stand up straight, don't hunch over, indicate intention with the chest, don't look at your feet. Natacha concentrated on these, and other very subtle but crucial things during our lesson.

I also got inspired to write a little Pocket PC application to help me learn Spanish. It is a simple dictionary style application that allows me to enter words in either Spanish or English, add a translation (in the opposite language), and then later when I come across that word again and can't remember it, I can look it up. It took me a bit over half a day to put the application together, however ,I keep tweaking it as I use it. It is the first serious development work I've done since leaving Melbourne almost 3 months ago. This is significant for me because one of the reasons I am here is to decide if I can stay in the IT industry or not, as I was starting to get quite stressed and not enjoying my work back in Melbourne. This proves that when I'm inspired I can really enjoy development, the trick I need to figure out now is how to stay inspired.

I feel like I have established a real rhythm at milonga's, I have what I refer to as my "harem" of women who I really enjoy dancing with, and I'm also finding I have more confidence to ask new women. As a consequence I usually get very little time to sit and watch as I dance most tanda's. Niki also has a number of men she really enjoys dancing with, and even has one particular milonga she goes to regularly where she has someone I'm referring to as her "muse", that she always has fantastic dances with.

On Saturday night we decided to forgo our usual milonga (Sunderland) and go to a closer milonga at Plaza Bohemia (Maipu 444) called Cachirulo. It was a smaller venue, and by the time we got there, the dance floor was absolutely packed. You could not take a single step without bumping into someone, it really tested your metal as a milonguero style dancer. It is a very traditional milonga where men are placed on one side of the dance floor, and women on the other. Mixed groups and couples where generally at either ends. Because we arrived fairly late we got placed right up in the back corner on the men's side of the dance floor, which made it slightly harder for Niki to get dances. By about 2am, the dance floor had started to clear somewhat, and we were both getting lots of really good dances. We really enjoyed this Milonga, but still prefer Sunderland. Next time we're going to turn up separately so that we get seated gender appropriately.

On Sunday we decided to check out a museum as our weekly "Touristy" thing. We headed up to the San Telmo Markets where on Humberto Primo, there is a "Penitentiary Museum". There was one display that really intrigued us both. It was an exhibition of all the contraband confiscated from the prisoners. These things included home made knives, bombs, bongs, a roulette wheel, packs of cards, dice, equipment for making tattoo's, hooks for smuggling things in over the prison walls, even a home made rifle. We were amazed at the ingenuity and imagination of people when placed in this situation, and given the barest of equipment to work with.

My Rule

2008-07-25T20:25:00.001-03:00

I have a rule that goes like this

Every milonga I go to I must dance with someone I have never danced with before

Within a matter of months of starting this rule I had danced with pretty much every woman in the Melbourne tango scene, and started to find it hard to satisfy this rule, but between out of town visitors, new beginners, and people who attended milonga's irregularly I managed to satisfy this rule 99% of the time. I guess I should probably move on to the men next.

I have had this rule for about 2 years now, and I think it is a great rule, because it challenges me to get out of my tango comfort zone, and makes me a better dancer. We all have our favourite dancers, who we just love dancing with, and some people rarely stray from their favourites. I believe this will eventually make you a stale dancer. You get used to the way your favourite dancers dance, and they get used to you. Apart from the odd new move, nothing really surprises you.

Forcing myself to dance with at least one new person every milonga has given me a taste of so many different styles, levels of experience, and ways of connecting to the music. I now feel as though I have the ability to take anyone out on the dance floor and within the first 10 to 20 bars of dancing, have a fairly deep understanding of how experienced a tango dancer they are, how they connect to the music, and what is going to be possible for the rest of that tanda. Sure I've had some really bad dances employing this rule, but I've also had some fantastic dances that I would not otherwise have had. I have often seen a woman from out of town, turn up to a milonga in Melbourne, and sit waiting to be asked for a dance for quite a while, and just so that I satisfy my rule, I'll go up and ask them for a dance, it'll be fantastic, and other guys will realise just how good she is, and consequently start dancing with her.

I encourage all leaders who are serious about improving their tango to adopt this rule, at least for a while, and see how it goes.

Mum will be proud...

2008-07-25T12:55:00.004-03:00

I saw some vine leaves in the supermarket the other day and I couldn't resist. My mum will be proud when she sees this.

To Dance or not to Dance

2008-07-23T17:40:00.003-03:00

This post was sparked by a fellow tango blogger's (female) post about who to accept dances from, which sparked off a comment from another tango blogger's (male) post about who to invite to dance - I do love a good chain reaction.

The man's point of view was that if he sees a woman dancing with a man whose character is known to be questionable, then she'd fall off his list of people to dance with. The woman's point of view was that future offers to dance were determined by who she was dancing with, ie if she were to be seen with a 'bad' dancer, then the good dancers wouldn't ask her for a dance . I know someone who, when in BA (I've never seen her do this when in Melbourne - I guess it's a totally different ball-game when you are in your hometown, and everybody knows you), has no issues with leaving the man mid-tanda , if he/the dance displeases her. I must admit, I think this is EXTREMELY rude behaviour (I guess the few exceptions would be if the man were drunk or behaving inappropriately, or causing physical pain). If you have been silly enough/not observant enough to accept a dance from a man that isn't as fantastic as you thought he might be, then just shut up and put up with it, woman. What if the shoe was on the other foot? I'm sure a woman would be mortified if a man walked her back to her seat mid-tanda.

Different people connect in different ways on the dance floor. There are people that I just don't connect with - even though they may be great dancers. This would obviously affect what I look like when dancing with them , as well as what they look like when dancing with me. As far as dancing with a bad leader affecting future invitations to dance, surely men watch a woman for more than one tanda before deciding on whether or not to ask her for a dance. Sometimes, for me, at least, it can be hard to determine the quality of the dancer just by looking at him. My way around this is to observe the faces and the body language of the women he dances with (is that a lovely close embrace? or is he squeezing the will to live out of her? - you will always be able to tell from the woman's expression).

Weekly roundup, 20-Jul-2008

2008-07-21T15:24:00.006-03:00

Lots of dancing this week (every day, except Monday). We even visited a couple of new milongas - La catedral (see relevant post) on Tuesday and Sin Rumbo on Friday.

Tuesday was a day of civil unrest in BsAs. there were masssive demonstrations, with over 300,000 people gathered in a two locations around the city. With road blockages, and extensive media coverage, the people were expressing their opinions on a new piece of legislation that was about to be decided on. It actually gave Scott an excuse to buy the local newspaper, and attempt to find out a bit more about the issues involved, with the help of our Spanish teacher.

This week we managed to organise accomodation for the rest of the year, and potentially for the rest of our stay. It's great to know that I won't have to look at another accomodation website again.

On Thursday Scott had lunch with a guy from the local Mircrosoft office - and agreed to potentially do a presentation at one of the local user group meetings, he's not sure if he'll try and do it in Spanish or stick with English.

I actually did something that wasn't related to tango on Thursday - I went to a fashion show. A local designer, whose current collection was based on recyclable materials. Later on I went to my local Thursday night milonga. At the door, the girl, someone I hadn't seen before (apparently another organiser takes over every 3rd Thursday of the month), asked for 30 pesos instead of the normal 12. When I questioned this she told me that there was live music and performances on. I smiled and said thank you, and walked out. Walking back home, I thought how ridiculous it was for me to have considered 30 pesos a high price to pay. Back in Melbourne, for the equivalen amount AUD$ you'd just get entry (no live music or performance). I have fully adjusted to living in pesos, though, and I had stopped converting things back to AUD$ weeks ago....

Natacha Poberaj had invited us to attend the opening night of a play for which she had done the choreography on Friday. The language was a bit tricky for us at times, but we were able to undersatand enough to get what was happening, and even be able to laugh at some of the jokes. After the play, we all headed to the milonga at Sin Rumbo. Definitely a venue for the older crowd, but expect to be reqarded with some great dances for your efforts of trekking to the Villa Urquiza neighbourhood

On Saturday we followed our normal tango routine - the evening milonga at Region Leonessa (Milonga De lo Consagrados), followed by Club Sunderland. We had a couple of friends from New York with us. They really wanted to go to Sunderland but they had been too intimidated to go on their own. It was great to be able to take them out there, and even better to see that they had a great time.

This weekend, we also said 'goodbye' to a friend from Melbourne, who had been here since early May. I have to admit that, back in Melbourne, I never felt that I had much in common with this person. Yes, we would greet each other, and engage in general chit-chat, but never really connect. In Bs As, on the other hand, we got along like a house on fire, and I will miss her quite a bit.

We are falling behind on our quota of tourist activities (hey, there's only so much you can fit in when you don't get out of bed till after midday), I guess there's always mañana.

Tango Jargon

2008-07-20T14:35:00.002-03:00

Knowing that there are a number of our friends, colleagues, family etc... back home in Australia and Cyprus reading this blog who don't do tango (and yes, 2 is a number), I thought I should provide a bit of a glossary that may help these 2 people understand our tango related posts a little better. So here are a few definitions of jargon commonly used around the tango scene.

Vals : This is derived from "Waltz" (of Viennese fame), and is a 3/4 rhythm usually danced in beautiful long flowing steps (when the dance floor allows for it). Here is a good example of this style.

Milonga : This word has 2 very distinct and sometimes confusing meanings. The correct meaning can usually be picked up from the context.

a) A milonga is a style of tango music that has a very specific rhythm. The underlying 2/4 rhythm can be described in music terms as a dotted quaver followed by a semi quaver, then two quavers as shown below.

The natural accent on the first and second beats of the bar fit nicely with a brisk walking style of dancing whereas the more experienced dancer will also play with the off-beats using what we call a "traspie".

This YouTube video demonstrates this style of music and the way it is danced.

b) A milonga is a venue where people go to dance tango socially. The essential components of such a place are a dance floor, a sound system of some description, and a DJ who is responsible for playing the music. Tables and chairs are often provided, but not always (outdoor milonga's generally don't have tables and chairs). Food and drink is often served as well, and there is sometimes a tango performance by renowned dancers. Here is a clip of social dancing at one of the more famous milonga's in Buenos Aires, "Salon Canning"

Tanda : A set of tango pieces ending in a short snippet of non-tango music (cortina). All pieces of music in a tanda are at the very least of the same style tango, milonga, Vals, Nuevo, but traditionally the rules of a tanda go even further specifying that not only should all pieces in the tanda be by the same tango orchestra, they should also be of roughly the same period in that orchestra's career, and with the same singer (if they a sung). Most commonly a tanda is a set of 4 pieces, although it is quite common to only play 3 in the case of a tanda of milongas, as dancing milonga tends to be quite demanding especially on a stinking hot day. The idea is that when you invite someone to dance, or accept an invitation to dance, you dance the entire tanda with that person, then when the cortina comes on you both return to your seats, and wait for the next tanda to start. This way everyone gets to dance a few tango's with the one partner (often the first tango is spent finding out where each other is in terms of experience, and understanding of the music etc...) but then everyone gets a chance to mingle, and no-one is able to hog one person all night. For the more experienced dancers, it also creates an opportunity to pick which dancers they want to dance with to which style (milonga, tango, vals etc...), or even which orchestra, as sometimes you connect really well with one dancer for a particular style, but not so for another style. In Argentina, the dance floor literally clears at the end of a tanda, whereas in other countries some of these rules aren't always followed as strictly.

Cortina : A short snippet of non-tango music used to separate tanda's.

Cabeceo : An invitation to dance by making eye contact with the prospective partner from a distance, and then tilting the head towards the dance floor. This invitation is traditionally issued by the man, however, in some places it is becoming acceptable for a woman to initiate the invitation. It is also becoming more common to use a verbal invitation, especially among people you know. The cabeceo is designed to protect men's fragile ego's as an open rejection from a prospective dance partner could cause considerable embracement. This way, if the woman doesn't want to dance with a guy, she just doesn't make eye contact with him, or if she accidentally does, and can't pretend not to have seen the invitation, at least it is only the two of them that know anything about the rejection. Like many things in tango, it does work both ways, a woman can stare down a potential partner to the point where he is almost obliged to invite her to dance (believe me I have seen this happen), however, if the guy for whatever reason really doesn't want to dance with the woman, all he need do is avoid looking in her direction, or pretend to be focusing on something else. Although the cabeceo is common in Argentina, I have rarely seen it used anywhere else, in most other places I've danced tango, a verbal invitation is generally preferred.

Milonguero : This is the name given to the most skilled dancers that frequent milongas. As milongas tend to be very crowded, the true milonguero needs to be able to dance in a very small space, yet still be able to make the dance interesting for his partner.This lead to a style of dancing tango called Milonguero which is strictly close embrace and devoid of any high leg flicks or moves that take up too much space or endanger others on the dance floor. In the traditional sense, someone was considered a "Milonguero" if they could dance within the space of 1 baldosa (floor tile).

Practica : A practice milonga. The idea is to keep the feel very similar to a milonga, but many of the social rules, are relaxed somewhat so that people can practice in a non-threatening environment. Here is a YouTube video of one of the famous Nuevo style practica's called Practica X.

Some Photos

2008-07-17T19:57:00.002-03:00

I have been copping some flak for not having enough photos from some of my friends back in Australia (no names mentioned JK). So I thought I'd do something to rectify this.

I'll start with the bar I've been spending a fair bit of time in. El Federal is a great bar, it has a really good atmosphere, and serves great food at a reasonable price, but the main reason I go there is that it has free wi-fi. So I go there and take my laptop to do geeky stuff, it gets me out of Niki's hair.

El Federal

As per usual Niki is befriending all the stray cats in the city. This one was a resident in a cafe we went to one day, and after Niki did no more than say hello to it, it decided to jump up on her lap.

Niki the cat lady

next is the outside of a milonga we frequent on Sunday nights called Torquato Tasso.

Torquato Tasso

One of my colleagues back in Australia made the unusual request of asking me to take photos of food. I have to date been a little shy about whipping out my camera after the waiter has bought me my meal, it's just not the done thing, but I've decided that I can at least use my camera phone to discretely snap a quick shot of my meal, so Darren, I hope this will keep you happy for the moment. This is an Argentinean style hamburger from a restaurant called "Quincy", and by the way, it was very tasty.

Hamberguesa Quincy

I like taking street-scapes, so here's one

Avenida Caseros

There are also some amazing buildings around Buenos Aires, here is a random one on the corner of Defensa and Caseros

Appartments on the corner of Defensa and Caseros

and here is a picture of the congress building

Congresso

To look at the full resolution of any of these photo's, just click on them and browse them on flikr. Also I have uploaded more photos than this, you can see all our photos from Buenos Aires by clicking on this link http://www.flickr.com/photos/60213491@N00/tags/buenosaires/

La Catedral

2008-07-16T21:26:00.003-03:00

In the wee hours of Monday morning, standing outside La Viruta, we (3 local guys, 2 girls form the US, and Scott and I) were tossing ideas about where our next tango venture would be. On the recommendation of one of the locals, we agreed to meet up again on Tuesday night, at La Catedral.

The venue has a very interesting concept of interior decorating, and the floor is the worst Ive seen yet (ladies, leave the stilleto heels at home, otherwise you risk getting them caught in the cracks between the floorboards). There is even a resident cat, that roams around the dance floor and under the tables.

The milonga attracted a younger crowd, with some of Scott and my favourite people to dance with present. Nuevo and milonguero styles blending in nicely on the dancefloor (one of the things that I dislike about nuevo is that the majority of dancers of this style tend to have little or no respect for other people on the dancefloor, but there were definitely no legs flying all over the place in this venue).

And if you stay till the very end of the night, you may be lucky enough to be treated to a performace from a dreadlocked, crossdressing, stripping tango singer - but only if you're lucky!

Weekly roundup 13-Jul-2008

2008-07-14T16:17:00.002-03:00

This week was Niki's birthday, so to celebrate, I took her out to a restaurant a few blocks away that looked really nice. The restaurant L'Embruix turned out to be Mediterranean cuisine. It was fairly expensive by Argentinean standards, but without a doubt the best meal we have had here. I had decided that I would buy Niki a piece of art that she's had her eyes on. The artist is a good friend of ours who sells her paintings at the San Telmo markets every Sunday (one of the few artists there that doesn't sell paintings of tango poses), so she had to wait almost a week to get her present. The piece (below) is entitled "Las Amigas" (The girlfriends).

On Tuesday night I was invited out to a dinner hosted by Microsoft for all the MVP's and conference speakers in Buenos Aires. I was hoping to get hooked up with the software developer community here in Buenos Aires and maybe get involved in some community events. I met some really great people, and they were keen to talk to me which gave me an opportunity to practice my Spanish.

Speaking of Spanish, this week we finally started Spanish lessons. We are having private lessons with a girl who has come recommended to us by a friend here. We are really enjoying the way she teaches, and it is good finally be proactively learning.

Niki finally conquered her fear of going to the hairdresser and attempting to communicate what she wanted done with her hair. She was reasonably happy with the end result, although it may take a couple of weeks of growth to get her fringe back to the length she likes it. Now all I have to do is conquer my laziness and go do the same.

This week also marked a very important event for me, I was finally let off my leash, and allowed to attend milongas on my own. To be truthful, it was the first opportunity I'd had to go out to milongas when Niki didn't feel like going, or wanted to go to another milonga. I was invited out to an open air milonga "La Glorieta" by a friend, and this clashed with one of Niki's favourite milongas. It was a really good atmosphere and reminded me somewhat of when Melbourne had open air milongas in the botanic gardens, afterwards I went to Sunderland, but Niki decided she was too tired to make the trek out there. I must say it was a very different feeling going out to Sunderland on my own as a single guy. I was seated in the most remote corner of the milonga, which makes it hard to make eye contact with potential dance partners. Fortunately, a bit later, 2 women were seated next to me, so as soon as one of them had her shoes on, I asked her. To my surprise she said "yes" (normally a woman will wait to see you dance before agreeing to a dance with you. The dance was really good, and the next tanda I asked her friend, and had yet another really good dance. I also danced with another woman who recognised me from the previous two weeks when I was sitting at Natacha Poberaj's table. I think I am really starting to become known at Sunderland, even the organiser of the event greeted me with a kiss on the cheek (common even amongst men in Argentina) this time. This felt like a real show of acceptance. Other Milongueros were even acknowledging me. It was also the first night where I had great dances all with Argentinean women, previously the only Argentinean women to dance with me were beginners, and the only advanced dancers who would dance with me were either other tango tourists from various countries, or ex-pats.

In our effort to do one touristy thing every week, we made our way out to the Feria Artesanal in Recoleta. This is specifically a hand craft market, and although we've seen a lot of markets, we were surprised with the sheer variety of arts and crafts. everything from leather goods to copper work, paintings using acrylic on wood, handbags made of ribbon, stuffed toys, wooden toys, wrought iron sculptures, jewellery, and so much more. I highly recommend visiting these markets if you're in town.

On Sunday night we trotted off to our regular haunt, Torquato Tasso where we had a lovely time as usual (even though the floor was at it's worst and the venue was so hot from the body heat of people dancing that it felt more like a sauna than a milonga). As the night drew to an end (at around 2am), and not quite readt to call it a night, one of the guys sitting with us asked us if we would like to go on to La Viruta as it was open until 4am. "Why not" we thought, and so 7 of us piled into his friends car and travelled across town. We then proceeded to dance until about 4:45am, and finally got back home just after 5am. What a night.

Don't judge a book by it's cover

2008-07-08T01:29:00.006-03:00

Scott and I were at our regular Sunday night milonga with a group of friends. At one point during the night, I felt a tap on my shoulder - an invitation to dance, not by any means the most appropriate way to ask a woman for a dance. STRIKE 1! But I smiled and nodded, quietly took a deep breath, and started to get up from my seat. Before I knew it, this man, not waiting for me, had plodded on ahead and was now already on the dance floor. STRIKE 2! OK, so far this man had left me TOTALLY unimpressed with his lack of tango etiquette. I walked onto the dance floor thinking to myself 'Three strikes and your out, Buddy', and had fully psyched myself up to leaving the floor mid-tanda, if this person's dancing displeased me in any way. However, once we embraced, and started to move, all sins were forgiven. It was one of those magical dances - the sensation of floating across the floor. It was definitely the best dance I had all night.

You really can't judge a book by it's cover... or by the first two chapters, for that matter.

Cultural differences not to blame

2008-07-07T19:56:00.004-03:00

I was a little offended by the way Niki attributed my dislike for folklore in her post about La Peña de Tucu to cultural differences. What she said about Australian culture was fair enough, it is considered extremely 'uncool' for Australian men to dance, I've no idea why. However, after doing various forms of dancing for about a decade now, I consider myself somewhat removed from this side of Australian culture. So I thought I would explain my feelings towards folklore properly in this post rather than allow myself to be mis-represented.

Firstly I would like to say that I don't dislike folklore in general. I really enjoy the Cypriot/Greek style folk dancing. I love the communal aspect of it, I love the inclusiveness of it, and I really think that Australians are the poorer for not having such a unifying folklore. Secondly I'd say that I don't hate all Argentinean folklore. I loved the Malambo we saw on Sunday, it was very creative, and showed great skill on the part of the dancers. My main dislike (if you could call it that) is for Chacarera.

There are a number of reasons I don't like Chacarera, so let me try and arrange them in some kind of order.

Firstly, having been involved in the tango scene for almost 8 years now, I have seen the Chacarera done many times. The first hundred or so times, I quite enjoyed it, but the Chacarera is a very simple dance that has very little possibilities for creativity, and watching it for the thousandth time, there are no real surprises. True it can look quite elegant done by professional folkloric dancers who put in a lot of effort on costume and have the space to exaggerate their steps, but then of course it starts to loose touch with the folkish nature of the dance. I'd also like to say at this point that Niki herself has often commented that when it's done in long lines of people in looks like a disorganised barn dance, and she doesn't particularly like that.

Secondly I don't like the aesthetic played out by the story line, it is a stereotypical courtship. Boy and girl meet, they like each other, they draw close then move away, they cross paths, then they decide to try to win each others hearts. The girl prances around waving her dress in front of the man feigning coyness, who, in turn, decides that a round of overt male posturing in the form of an elaborate tap dance should do the trick of convincing the girl of his worthiness. I guess I have never really liked the aesthetic of male posturing (which incidentally is certainly not uncommon in Australian culture). Also because it is a couple dance, it is not as inclusive as some of the Greek style communal dances I was talking about where it's pretty much everyone in together.

Thirdly because I don't really enjoy it I generally don't dance it when it comes on in a milonga (unless forced at knife point). As a consequence I view this as an unwanted interruption to my tango time. I guess it is understandable in Argentina where the milongas have been instrumental in keeping this particular dance alive and out of the museum of folklore history, but I really don't see the relevance of it in any milonga outside Argentina.

Having said that, I know my opinion is not supported by the majority, so I'm sure I will have to accept the inevitable flames that come my way from readers of this blog, and will undoubtedly sit through (in respectful silence) many renditions of the Chacarera at the various milongas I go to, both in Argentina and outside.

Weekly roundup, 06-Jul-2008

2008-07-07T13:54:00.008-03:00

This week we finally got serious, about finding a language instructor, Hopefully, we we can start classes on Tuesday or Wednesday.

On the recommendation of a friend, we took a class from a new teaching couple - Analia Vega and Marcelo Varela. they had a nuevo teaching approach, with a good portion of the class being spent on technique. the class went on till 11 pm - a bit too late for me.

For some unknown reason, my corset-lust has been reignited, and I am regretting my decision to only bring one of my 'babies' to Bs As. So this week I went on a mission to find a local source of tightlacing goodness. I popped into a punk clothes shop that I had spotted earlier this week , and asked if they new where I could find what I was after. The Sales person directed me to 'Bond Street', which I thought would be another shop. It turns out that Bond Street is a 3 level shopping centre/mall devoted, to punk/rock clothes and accessories, tattoos and body piercing, but no corsets :( The search continues.

This was a week of live music As mentioned in a previous post we saw an orchestra at Peru 571 called El Afronte on Wednesday night. On Friday night we went for the first time to a milonga on Independencia, and were treated to yet another live tango orchestra called 'Sexteto Milonguero'. Sexteto Milonguero did an absolutely awsome tanda of milongas They had such an amazing energy. Then on Sunday went to La Peña de Tucu and were treated to yet more live music, both folkloric and tango, (the tango provided again by Sexteto Milonguero).

This week we also, for the first time since arriving in Bs As, had someone over to our place for dinner. It was great to be able to cook for someone, even in the close quarters of our little apartment.

On Saturday we went for a walk in the only green space within the barrio of San Telmo -Parque Lezama. Walking on grass - what a treat for our feet!