Mendoza: Vineyards and Sun-kissed Beauties

Chris had done his homework and arranged for us to stay with a couple of couchsurfers in the city of Mendoza.  Nacho and Franco were wonderful hosts—not only did they give us all the pointers we needed to explore the city, but hearing how much we missed good bacon and eggs, they bought us some, which we woke up to the following morning! 

Mendoza is pretty easy to navigate, and though not a particularly remarkable city in and of itself, is very relaxing and easy-going: it’s a joy to sit at cafés on the edges of its leafy plazas or wander its streets—the center is framed by four parks, one at each corner of a several block grid.  A truly bizarre experience was a snake farm that resembled less a farm or museum or zoo than it did one of those eerie tunnel rides at an amusement park… it did feature a twenty foot python in a glass cage!

More of interest than the city itself were all the vineyards surrounding it, and it was with anticipation that we found a bike rental that supplied you with a map of the various wineries.  We had fallen in with a fellow American the day before, Wiley J. by name, student by trade, recently come over from Chile where he had been for the semester or the year, I don’t remember.  He gladly joined us, as we cycled the dusty backroads of Mendoza in search of a buena desgustación!  Well unfortunately, and unbeknownst to us, the winetasting market had apparently grown cynical of all the freeloaders in recent years and had consequently started charging between 20 and 30 pesos per person for a tour.  This was somewhat above our means, so, our spirits crushed, we were forced to settle for a wine museum (that nonetheless included a free tasting), a cheaper winery (15 pesos), and a family-run chocolateria.  This last one proved an incredible find, though—molten chocolate infused with delightful hints of various fruits and liqueurs; the family also pickled their own olives in a slew of different spices and flavors, which we also got to sample.  For my money, though, Argentina’s best kept secret are its Mendocinas—you can keep your Rosario girls any day!

Chris, Wiley (r.) and me with our lovely tour guide at the family-run chocolateria

On Leaving a Place

Who knows if, when you finally leave a place for good and you feel like the place has well and truly started to grow on you and you’ve just found your place among a close circle of friends it’s because you really truly have; or because yearning immemorial for greener grass, and the eternally ineffable and poignant impermanence of human existence have called your number, and you need some reactionary heartstrings to be tugged at to avoid guilty feelings that you are a cold and impersonal drifter wandering through the world and life with no close relationships, a tree with no roots, the disease rather than the cure?

So I wondered as I said farewell to mi Buenos Aires querido after a year and change there.  I had started my online application to join the Peace Corps in June 2009, and reading that the whole process took anywhere from 3-9 months, I planned to give my notice in December and get a bit more South American traveling under my belt before I was done.  The idea was to travel around Argentina’s Western wine region of Mendoza and hitchhike down through the remote and storied wildernesses of Patagonia, before traveling up through the Bolivian Andes and the South of Peru to the ruins of Macchu Pichu.  From there I would fly up to Northern California to visit Marjana and AJ for a month or so before (as I thought), I would be sent somewhere with the Peace Corps.

All that remained was to find a traveling partner, as I’d learned from my European experience that, while traveling solo can have its rewards, being on the road by yourself can also be very lonely.  I used couchsurfing.org, a website that has proved invaluable for thousands of travelers all over the world; in fact, I met many of my Buenos Aires friends through couchsurfing, and played football once a week with that crowd.   Chris S., a recently arrived college graduate from the U.S., answered my post, and we met at a café to see if we’d be able to stand each other’s company for three weeks.  We figured we could, so with a little planning and a lot of excitement, we set off in a bus for Mendoza a week or so later.

Learning the language

"England and America are two countries separated by a common language" -- An overquoted witticism of George Bernard Shaw's that nonetheless rings true to me.

Of course, you could say the same of the Spanish spoken in Latin America as opposed to in Spain, the Portuguese of Brazil as opposed to that of Portugal or Angola, etc.  It is even more extreme in the Arab world, where very little is mutually intelligible between say, a Moroccan and a Saudi, if they are speaking in dialect.

Those of you who have learned another language know firsthand the difficulties, frustration, joy, hilarity, bewilderment and satisfaction that result!

Language was probably my primary motivation in going to South America, and definitely the main factor in choosing Argentina over Brazil, Spanish being my Moby Dick.  I had spent two years at university in Spain, but besides my Spanish being rustier than I liked, there was always the knowledge niggling at me that I hadn't really put in the effort to learn the language as well as I could have.  That I went to an American university there was not really a factor--I had chosen that beforehand.  But fate, circumstance and, most significantly complacency and comfort, saw me surround myself with English-speaking friends.

As much as I love Madrid, I never really felt a connection to Spaniards my age; those at St. Louis University kept to themselves and were probably not the best representatives, to be fair.  So despite leaving Spain fairly fluent and able to more or less communicate what I wanted to, I always felt I'd sold myself a bit short in that language experience, and I would never feel really good about it until I'd returned to the fray and harpooned the beast.

My linguistic foray into Argentine Spanish thus started with some trepidation, but rapidly turned into one of the most fun language-learning experiences I've had.  Rioplatense is the name given to the version of Spanish spoken by those living near the banks of the Rio de la Plata in Argentina and Uruguay, and what an expressive and exuberant little bugger it is!  Since there are so many people of Italian heritage, the cadence is much more noticeable than in other Spanish dialects.  And if you don't know how to use your hands, 'olvidalo, che!' ('forget it, maaan!')  Besides the sing-song tone and the wild gesticulations are the expressive sayings and vocabulary of lunfardo, as the slang of the capital is known.  I was fortunate enough to hear of Che boludo! which is an absolute must read if you are going to be in Buenos Aires for any significant length of time.  The phrase "Che boludo" roughly means "Hey, dude" and is ubiquitous.  Of course, it suffers from overuse by foreigners trying to fit in, but you will hear it aplenty if you spend time with Argentines.  Following are some of my favourite phrases, words, and expressions gleaned from the pages of Che boludo! and from many many conversations throughout the year.  The book also covers (if somewhat briefly), the differences between the standard Spanish 'Tu' and the very Rioplatense 'Vos'.

Che - Hey, man, dude, bro(seph), buddy, etc.

Boludo - Idiot [when used with friends, a term meaning dude, man, bro, etc.]

Viste? - You know? [literally Did you see? Not a word exclusive to Argentina, but this particular use is]

Tipo - 1. Guy [literally type]  2.  About/Like [E.g.  'Vamos al shopping tipo diez' - We're going to the mall at about/like 10]

Mina - Chick, girl

Quilombo - Mess [The normal Spanish word for mess is 'lío', so if you use 'quilombo' Argentines will love you for it.]

Chabón - Guy [used in reference, but not normally to get someone's attention]

Boncha - Chabon.  This is an example of a phenomenon in lunfardo where you reverse the syllables of a word to get the same meaning.  So feca = café (coffee) and sope = peso (their currency)

Bondi - Bus

Te parece? - How about it/You think?  [Once again, not exclusive to Argentina, but this use is. *This is not a sarcastic You think? like in English]

Re - Really

Fiaca - Laziness  [As in: 'Me da fiaca (hacer algo)' - I can't be bothered (to do something) OR 'Estoy haciendo fiaca nomás' - I'm just hanging out, not doing anything]

Nomás - Just (roughly translated)  Used for emphasis ['Pasá' - Come in.  'Pasá nomás' - Come on in.]

Pedo - Fart [literally, but used as in conjunction with different prepositions to mean a variety of things]:
            En pedo - Drunk
            Ni en pedo! - Not even drunk! [I.e. No way (am I doing that)!]
            Al pedo - Useless, Doing nothing ['Estoy al pedo' - I'm not doing anything]
            A los pedos - Very fast ['Ibamos a los pedos!' - We were booking it!]
            De pedo - By chance

Que garrón/embole/bajón - Bummer!/That sucks!

, eh? - Used to add meaning e.g. 'Gracias, eh?' - I appreciate it (as opposed to a simple thanks)

Me mataste - You've got me [when you don't know the answer to something.  Literally You killed me.]

No hinches, che! - Don't be a pain!  [Literally Don't bust my...well, you know.]



These words are powerful, my friends.  Use them wisely.  Suerte!

My Teaching Experience

My teaching experience in Buenos Aires was as different as I expected it to be from that of Ankara.  In Turkey we were put up in some pretty nice digs on the university campus, with return airfare, health insurance and meal tickets to boot.  It was also (supposedly) Turkey's most prestigious university, a gargantuan, not-so-smoothly-oiled machine of bureaucracy.  On the other hand, my quest to find a job as an EFL teacher in Buenos Aires, while not lengthy, involved a bit more elbow grease, such as a lot of emailing and hoofing it round in an Argentine summer to various institutes, resume/CV in hand.

As providence had it, one of the apartments I went to see--and which I eventually chose--also happened to double as an English institute in the room above our place, the director (and half of the staff) also being the landlady of the apartment.  But that would only provide me with enough hours to fill half the week, so I had to keep looking.  Fortunately within three weeks of arriving I'd landed a job at IdiomaNet, a business English institute on Viamonte in the financial district of downtown Buenos Aires.  This turned out to provide the lion's share of my teaching, but it was nice to be able to finish the day's teaching above my apartment and to already be home.

I won't lie and say teaching English in Buenos Aires is anywhere near as lucrative as elsewhere in the world, for example as it can be in the Middle East or the Far East.  But nor was I nearly as bad-off as many local people, so I couldn't really complain.  If I'd wanted to I could have survived on what normal hours of teaching would have made me.  But it didn't take long to determine that if I wanted to travel around Argentina and the rest of South America a bit I would have to work as many hours as they could give me.  So I did.  No two days were the same in terms of schedules, but some went from 8.30 am to 9.30 pm, and none ended before 7.30 pm.  This wasn't solid teaching throughout the day, however; the system worked as follows.  IdiomaNet would either host classes at the institute, or if the company preferred (remember it was all business English), send the teacher to their company building, where the class would take place.  I would get the train into Retiro every morning, and walk to the institute, where several days of the week I taught my first class.  Otherwise I would get a bus from Retiro straight to whatever company I was teaching my first class at.  Throughout the day I was constantly crisscrossing the city on its underappreciated but very overused, extensive network of buses.

Depending on the particular day and hour, this could mean stopping for a leisurely coffee or lunch someplace in between classes, or, as was more often the case, a mad dash for the bus stop the second I could get out of class in order to ensure I got to the next class on time.  The upside of this system was that it was rarely monotonous and I got to (if in a sort of perverse way) 'see' some of the city.  The downside was that we didn't get paid for our travel time, of course, nor were we reimbursed for the insane amount of bus fares that inevitably added up.  More frustrating even than that is that the bus system, at least the vast majority of lines while I was there, operated on a coins-only basis, which meant you were constantly having to either a. make sure you had enough coins to last the day before you left home or b. buy chewing gum and other sundry items you didn't need throughout the day in order to have enough coins!  Of course this latter option (which I inevitably had to resort to on most occasions) meant shrewdly calculating, at a frantic pace while rushing for the next bus, what item you could buy, based on the bill denominations you had in your wallet, that would mean the vendor would give you enough change for the bus, but not so much that he or she could give you a bill back, thus stymying your efforts to make your next lesson on time because you couldn't take the bus or had to make another useless (and increasingly expensive) purchase.

It all worked out in the end.  I made some friends through my classes, which were a lot more relaxed and low-key than in Turkey, since in Turkey we were not supposed to 'fraternize' with the students.  Their words, no joke.  There were also plenty of good-natured and somewhat heated debates on the various pros and cons of Spanish vs. English, to say nothing of all the political, sporting, business, cultural, gossip, religious, and philosophical bases we touched on.