Dancing the tango in the park, cuddling cats in the libraries, eating steak so tender that you could cut it with a spoon – what a great time it was in Buenos Aires.

Maybe because it is so incredibly far away (from Europe), a trip to Argentina felt very exotic to me. Adriano had lived in Buenos Aires for two years before meeting me and calls it his second home. I (Inga) travelled to Argentina for the first time in 2016. During our one-week vacation, we visited Iguazu Falls and the capital Buenos Aires.

To be very honest, my first impression of Buenos Aires was not that great. Another huge, modern, very European looking city, I thought. Though there is nothing wrong with this, I felt disappointed to see the same thing after a long 11-hour flight. However, it grew on me as I discovered its very specific atmosphere, and now I cannot wait to come back. This change of heart came from experiencing local tango places, loads of traditional musicals and drama theatres, getting to know local people, visiting the libraries that are present on every corner, and discovering a unique mix of architecture.

Tango

Street of the tango singer Carlos Gardel 

The first thing I fell in love with in Argentina was tango. This is not just encountered in shows for tourists. Of course, you will find it in touristic bars, but also in very local places. One of probably many local neighbourhoods where you can find many restaurants with tango programmes, and almost no tourists, is called Boedo. We went to various local restaurants and even simple bars in the parks, where tango dancers were performing during the evening. There are plenty of places where guests can dance themselves later. When we visited Cuba a few years ago, I found out that the so-famous salsa was danced only in shows for tourists in Havana, but in Argentina, it is entirely different. Its tango culture is alive today.

Because Adriano had worked in Buenos Aires before, we met some of his friends and had an Easter party with his ex-boss, his family and friends. They told us a funny story of once bringing American guests to a restaurant where Argentinian tango was danced. The Americans were disappointed in the famous Argentinian tango and said that they had experienced much better in the USA. Later there was an occasion to invite the Argentinians to show them the American tango show in the USA. After the show, the Argentinians laughed that it was a circus, an acrobatic show, but nothing else –nobody really dances like that. Indeed, in Buenos Aires Tango is very down to earth. It is sensual, but not exaggerated. Nobody goes flying through the air – people of any age and physical fitness can dance the Argentinian tango.

If you do not see people dancing around, probably there will at least be live tango music. This single characteristic –tango everywhere – made me fall for Buenos Aires.

Bookshops

Let me introduce you to Romeo, the cat in the photo above. He is ten years old and lives in this bookshop. He has many relatives of the same destiny all around Buenos Aires. Loyal customers know and call them by name.

Now take a look at the shelves – the interior of the bookshops is very different from that of European bookshops. In Argentina, they look more like libraries and have a vast assortment.

I have never seen so many bookshops as in Buenos Aires. The most extraordinary thing is the amount of second-hand bookshops, which are visited by a lot of people.

Writers and Literature

In Buenos Aires, you do not have to go to a wax museum to find statues of famous people. They sit around you in various traditional bars and restaurants. Those statues are made for famous writers, poets, and singers who have created, sung, or just drunk coffee in Buenos Aires. For me, it was an eye-opening experience how many writers and artists have created their works there. We do not know of many of them; they were more famous in Argentina or Latin America. I had an impression of entering a different world with lots of famous names that I had not heard of. In the photo above on the right sits writer Adolfo Bioy Casares (Adriano calls him the real Kafka), while on the left is Jorge Luis Borges – famous Argentinian writers and best friends.

Argentinians have a big demand for literature and art. There is a culture of reading, exchanging books, and second-hand bookshops like nowhere else these days. I was truly impressed.

Statues of artists surround you: not just in famous old bars, but there are plenty of them on the streets, as well as various memory boards on the buildings, announcing who lived where. Of course, in the evenings there are lots of programmes to choose from – notices announce which bar is playing whose music, and theatres offer loads of musicals and performances to see.

In the photo below is one of the most famous old bars, Cafe Tortoni. Many books have been written there. Many cultural meetings have been held in this place. Some tables are still reserved for highly-esteemed guests. Local people do come here, but it has become a very touristic attraction point, and you even have to wait in a queue to get in. All the walls and tables tell the rich story of this place.

Food

Argentina is a paradise for meat lovers. Meat, mainly beef, is of excellent quality wherever you go, and what we just call a steak, they have a one-page menu for. There are many different names and prices for what we call steak depending on which part of the animal is used. Some restaurants in Buenos Aires guarantee that the meat will be so tender that you can cut it with a spoon, and they even demonstrate it in front of you.

I absolutely do not recommend fast food as there are plenty of good and not too expensive restaurants in Buenos Aires, but just as a trial, I decided to try a simple McDonalds hamburger and, indeed, even this usually tasteless hamburger seemed much better as if it had real beef inside.

Empanadas (in the photo below) are very popular as snacks or main meals. Though you can find similar meat pasties in other countries, the ones in Argentina are stuffed with a loooot of meat. So you get the idea – beef is everywhere; it is delicious, fresh and inexpensive.

We celebrated Easter in the house of Adriano’s ex-boss from Buenos Aires. As they grilled the meat, I observed that they were using a different and very smart Argentinian barbecue grill. It had grooves (see the photo below) so that melting grease from the meat would be collected carefully and not cause a fire by dripping down. In the end, all liquid fat ran into the big groove in the front and was collected in the pot on the right-hand side. Intelligent innovation – I wonder why the rest of the world has not copied this.

There is another Uruguayan style grill without any grooves, therefore melting fat falls directly on an open fire under the meat. People say that burning fat gets back to the meat. I have not seen such grill myself.

Sweets

Dulce de Leche, boiled condensed milk, is a very popular ingredient. There are many sweets, chocolates and ice cream containing it. Dulce de Leche is a product that is consumed daily. Argentinians also use it for breakfast, just spreading it on bread like jam.

Architecture

Walking in Buenos Aires is like walking in a hundred other cities you have been to before. In one corner it looks like Cuba, in another just like Amsterdam, London or something else.

Buenos Aires is a city with many European immigrants, mainly Italians and Spanish. Wikipedia suggests that up to 25 million Argentines (62.5% of the population) have some degree of Italian descent.

European influence can be felt a lot in the culture and architecture of the city.

Depending on where you go, Buenos Aires is modern, colourful, creative, poor, rich – all of this at once, and very frequently not separated but mixed right next to each other.

La Boca neighbourhood in Buenos Aires

La Boca used to be the neighbourhood of poor Italian immigrants from Genova. Italians would not be Italians if they didn’t come up with something creative. Here they have painted their poor houses made from shipping containers in all sorts of bright colours, and even today thousands of tourists come to walk through this lively district, which has become a colourful museum.

Centre

The obelisk in 9 de Julio Avenue, the widest avenue in the world. It was about six to eight lanes on each side, with a wide pedestrian area and a narrow sort of park in the middle.

Congress building:

A little chat in Corrientes, the Broadway of Buenos Aires. This central street is full of theatres, musicals, operas, and new and second-hand bookshops.

University:

Some very modern districts

This is the Women’s Bridge (Puente de las Mujeres) and a rich area of Buenos Aires (Puerto Madero). If I had not known, I would have thought that this was London.

Parque Las Heras

A snobby area of Buenos Aires. No negative meaning intended – I loved all the snobby areas of Buenos Aires, because they were the cleanest, were safe, and were also cosy with many green and well-cared-for parks and nice little cafe places. However, in these areas, it seemed to be very important what people wore, how they lived, and what others thought. As also happens in many other developing countries, wealthier people in Argentina seem to consider the English language, and European or American (maybe Western in general) habits, to be the most “cool”, and to despise local traditions, considering what is local to be sort of “lower level”.

Football fields like in the photo above are quite common in the bigger parks.

Even more than playing football themselves, Argentinians love to watch it. Football matches are broadcast in various bars from early morning to late evening. After several days in Buenos Aires, it was evident that besides tango, literature, and art, there is a strong football culture as well.

Galerias Pacifico shopping centre

I would have thought it was a museum, but no, there are many stores inside.

Parks – the romantic side of Buenos Aires

There are a lot of tidy parks in Buenos Aires. In general, it looked like a green and cosy city. While wide, high-traffic streets are polluted by old buses, vast numbers of green areas compensated for that. Wherever we went, the parks were always full of people, kids and off-lead dogs freely playing around.

Parque Lezama

Parque Lezama is historical and famous also in literature. One famous book  Sobre heroes y tubas of Ernesto Sabato was set here.

In industrial areas and busy streets, the widespread view was of “sandwiches” of tiny old buildings squeezed in between newer, modern buildings.

Recoleta Cemetery

The most beautiful cemetery I have ever seen. It is like walking through a museum.

Transport in Buenos Aires

Surprisingly, there were very few cars for such a big city. There were some scooters, but mostly a LOOOOOT of buses. Buses are the primary form of public transport. There is probably no other city with so many buses. Therefore moving in the city is effortless. However, I could not walk along high-traffic streets for long without getting a headache – air pollution is terrible because Argentina still utilises old-generation buses that leave black smoke clouds behind them.

Safety

Unfortunately, Buenos Aires is not a safe city. There are extended areas and parks that are safe to go to, but among them, there are many poor areas to avoid. At night anywhere outside main avenues is very dark. I was happy to have a “local guide” with me, but if I had gone alone, I would have considered this challenge as the most significant problem in Buenos Aires. Don’t get me wrong, it is a beautiful place to go to, and thousands of tourists visit the country without anything happening to them. You have to be a bit more cautious, that’s all.

The problem is that it is not even easy to explain which areas are dangerous. Adriano was often saying to me, “Look, this park is safe, and three directions from here are ok, but never cross that part over there as you are likely to get robbed there.”

The ground floor of almost all building looks like this.

At this point, I would like to tell the story of how Adriano ended up living in Buenos Aires years ago. While travelling in South America, he was robbed in one of the parks in Buenos Aires. They took his backpack, all his money, his documents, even his belt – everything. Terrible start, isn’t it? He stayed in Buenos Aires for a month waiting for his new passport so that he could get out, during which time he fell in love with a local girl and with the city. At the end of his trip, he returned to Buenos Aires and worked there for almost two years. He loved the city and living there.

Many travellers know that quite often the most unexpected and bad experiences on the road become the most exciting adventures. Anyway, there are some not safe areas in Buenos Aires and the rest of Argentina is, hopefully, ok.

Around Buenos Aires

Tigre area

One day we went to a holiday destination –Tigre outside Buenos Aires. It is like an Argentinian “Venice”, with many canals and summer houses, where owners arrive only by boat.

Lujan town

Here is the beautiful gothic Basilica di Lujan, which we decided to visit on Easter Monday. Lujan town is a nice area for a walk and worth a one-day trip if you wish to get out of the big city.

Conclusion

I didn’t fall in love with Buenos Aires from the first glance, but as the days passed by I began to fall for it. Beyond the busy cosmopolitan city lies a different culture, with unique traditions and still a massive demand for art, literature and music at any social level. To some extent it feels like Europe but with a Latin-American flavour: more relaxed, less commercial, not too touristic, and full of dancing, dancing, dancing… After the trip, I started to attend tango classes and even convinced Adriano to give them a try. There is definitely something exotic and inspiring to take home after a visit to Buenos Aires.

Read Argentina. Iguazu Falls