Buenos Aires: 6/9/07-6/22/07

It might be just me, but my initial and still strongest reaction to this city of Buenos Aires is that it is just a bizarre, incomprehensible place. Unlike Peru, where the customs are very different from ours but usually seem to make sense if you think about them, the things you see people doing in Buenos Aires generally provoke a reaction more along the lines of “What the hell are you doing?” or “Are you serious?” I came across an online list of the 30 best things to do in Buenos Aires, which helped me out a little, but I thought that a list of the weirdest things to do here would paint a much more vivid and accurate picture of the city. Yeah, maybe not EVERYTHING in the city is that weird, but it’s more fun to try to fit everything into this list. I’d say this pretty accurately sums up my impressions so far. Here goes:

The Top 15 Weirdest Things to Do in Buenos Aires

1) Take a walk to the Botanical Gardens, otherwise known as the “Cat Park,” where you can pet and feed hundreds of stray cats. If you are an old man and are looking for somewhere to gather with your contemporaries for a never-ending outdoor chess tournament, you’re in luck—this is also the place for you.
2) Dress your dog up in a sweater and take it for a walk. (Don’t forget to put a sweater on it before you go out in the cold, or other people might thing you’re mistreating it.) If your dog is suffering from blurry vision, you might also want to take it to the opthomological veterinarian and have it try on some prescription glasses.
3) Sign up for an internship in Buenos Aires (Caity), only to sit around your drinking “mate” (Argentinian green tea) for hours on end while awaiting instructions about what the heck you are supposed to be doing. Come to the eventual conclusion that Argentinians just don’t like working.
4) Go on a mission to buy an entire outfit in all different very, very specialized stores. Examples: the button store, the hair stick store. Go insane trying to figure out the arbitrary one or two hours a day when each of these stores is actually open.
5) For anything else you might need, you can make a visit to the Chinos (Chinese people) in one of the many Chinese-owned grocery stores popularly referred to as “en donde los chinos” (“where the Chinese people are”). If you’re lucky, you might even arrive during one of the few daylight hours when the supermarket is actually open. However, if you do decide to shop where the Chinese people are, beware that instead of giving you small change they will give you “caramelos,” or little taffy candies. Rumor has it that these “caramelos” will one day become an actual currency, so start hoarding them if you want to get rich.
6) If you get hungry, have a delicious lunch of Barfy™ Burgers, which can be found in any grocery store. You may even want to treat yourself and buy an expensive wine to go with it of over $10, even though you could get a lesser wine for a buck.
7) As an alternative, you can go out for a traditional Argentinian “parrilla” (meaning barbecue), including several different body parts of several different animals. If you’re feeling really in the traditional kind of mood you can request a white ceramic penguin from which to serve your wine.
8) If you are hungry but don’t feel like leaving the hostel, there’s always the option of getting delivery. Pleasantly, your delivery will not come in a box or a bag, but rather carried on a tray by a waiter for as many blocks as your hostel is from the restaurant. Tip him well.
9) Be offered to smoke illegal substances with a middle-aged Argentinian man with an unintelligible accent who appears to have no job other than living and breathing Boca Jr., the Argentinian soccer team, and a 21-year-old Colombian chef who calls you “mujer” (“woman”) and keeps saying that everything is “so beautiful.”
10) If you have kids, you can buy them a nice gift in the “supermarket of toys”, or for something a little more classy, another toy store that sells life-sized cigarette-shaped human dolls and plays seizure-inducing music to make you grab what you want and buy it before you go insane.
11) Go to the Recoleta Cemetery, a city of tombs that deserves its own zip code. Many tombs resemble miniature cathedrals and nearly all have stairs inside leading down to what you might call the “bedroom.” If you want to get a little more intimate with the locals, just knock on one of their homes with the brass knocker on the door (ok, so don’t really do that, that’s just spooky). If you want to reserve a space in this cemetery, it only costs $20,000 for a plot. And just think, once you get there you won’t even know it.
12) Visit the Recoleta Cultural Center, which features many interesting exhibits including a special show where you can fake your own wedding, and an independent sci-fi/documentary film which amazingly manages to link the themes of the U.S. occupation of the Philippines with something about Dykes on Bikes, with some kind of intergalactic thematic connection (don’t ask me).
13) Take a guided tour of the Palacio Paz, a mansion that used to belong to a really rich family but is now a military club. No, it is not government-owned, just a private club for people in the military. (???)
14) Take a beginner tango lesson with about 100 other people, but instead of actually learning the dance, just settle for tripping all over everyone else’s feet. You get to know everyone better that way.
15) Take a day trip to a pharmacy that advertises “injections all day.” A lovely outing if you have the time to spend. Or, take a day trip to Uruguay, and…I dunno, walk around Uruguay, just to say you were there. What else is there to do in Uruguay?