Buenos Aires 2009 Part 2 - Tuesday, February 23 and 24, 2009 continued

Dear V,


Well, it was nice to talk to Alberto and Paulina and to give them the presents we had been planning all year to give them. Man Yung gave Alberto some of his calligraphy and a Chinese seal carved with a dragon figure and the words “Recuerdo” in Chinese - Alberto liked these very much because I told him that the calligraphy was describing and dedicated to his tranquil way of dancing.  We gave Paulina a scarf made of felt pieces in the form of tiny leaves in all different kinds of blue, all sewn together - scarves are great fashion accessories.

We didn't want to make our visit too long, as we didn't want Alberto to feel too tired - so it was time to go.  Alberto had a lot scheduled for the afternoon - physiotherapy as well as classes.

Leaving Alberto and Paulina's apartment, we went through the big Abasto mall to get to the other side where all the touristy tango stores were - Man Yung wanted to check out the Artesanal shoe store.  We found it pretty easily (except it was kind of hard to find our way out of Abasto - we went in a big circle because we can’t find the direct route) but Man Yung couldn’t find any shoes he wanted after just a quick look.  There was a big orange long haired cat with amber eyes though dazing on the chairs - and Man Yung woke it up and started playing with it with a piece of string he is carrying with him everywhere just in case he  encountered cats in Buenos Aires.  Fluffy cats with dark yellow eyes ….. Yummy!

We took the taxi to Lacoste on Santa Fe, about two blocks from Callao and Santa Fe.  Time to buy Man Yung’s favourite polo shirts.  They were having a sale so there were quite a lot of fussy people rummaging for deals.  Alas, the classic polo shirts were not on sale (that is because they are “the best” Lacoste products, according to the manager).  The staff actually remembered us from last year and the year before - the manager whom we saw two years ago and who was on vacation when we went last year remembered us too.  They brought us stacks of shirts with all the colors for us to choose from.  Man Yung bought four with what I called “washed out” colours - light blue, white, mauve, and one blue one.  I got a red one and blue one myself, I didn’t bring enough casual shirts this time. 

We walked back to La Madeleine and had our lunch.  I was still not feeling 100% in anything (I had a massive cold just before the trip - and the ordeal with Air Canada did not help any), so I have been really careful about what I eat.  Man Yung had a creamy ham and chicken pasta (Parisienne) baked with cheese and I had empanadas.  The empanadas were not as good as Santa Fe 1234 in that the meat was kind of like pate and there was a tomatoes sour sauce inside.  And they were more burnt.  But it’s food that I can eat that won’t make me sick… yet.  We noticed in both Santa Fe 1234 and La Madeleine that now they have a strap on the back of the seats so that people can secure their handbags and shopping bags.  It’s a good idea… and shows that things are not as safe as last year.

Back at the hotel and they’ve put us in the same lovely room as the one from our first visit, the one with the huge cavernous bathroom and waterfall faucets.  Except when we came back it wasn’t all ready because a maid and Newman from Seinfeld were installing a new tv (awwww…. Just for us).  We had to wait about 20 more minutes before we could go in and relax.

This past year we connected with a well-known, expatriate tango blogger on the internet - N.  Originally we weren't going to stay at the Wilton - N claimed the folklore dancing landlady of these tourist apartments was her really good friend, and she could hook us up.  Well, it turned out to be a bit of a fiasco.  Before we confirmed our booking, we were told there was internet - but then a little later we were told there wasn't any.  Annoying, but not a deal breaker.  We were also promised our own apartment (the landlady owned several), but then suddenly things changed a couple of weeks prior to our departure. We were notified by N that we were going to have to live with the landlady in her own apartment on the ground floor.  It smelled fishy so we asked N to tell us honestly what was going on.  Turned out the landlady found some other tenants who were going to stay longer than we were, so she bumped us out of the apartment we wanted.  Sneaky.

Hmmmmm...what other "surprises" would there be in store for us?  Just as Roberto De Niro's character had said in "Ronin" - "If there is a doubt, there is no doubt."  We just cancelled and looked for alternative accommodation.  I think we incurred around $1,500.00 in extra costs making this arrangement on recommendation and encouragement of N: we booked our flight without booking accommodation on Expedia, so we lost on the few hundred dollars in savings we would have received if we booked the flight with Wilton together.  Then, we were planning to stay 11 days, but we extended our stay by several days more to accommodate the rental period of N's landlady "friend".  Lastly, because we had to cancel so close to our trip due to the dubious last minute switcheroo, we had to book Wilton separately at a higher price for more days than we planned.  Frankly, we would rather pay more than to risk any more funny business from the shady landlady.

Despite the very inauspicious start, we gave N the benefit of the doubt and called her once we arrived in Buenos Aires to arrange to meet.  We got her machine the first time, but now, when we called her again, we reached her.  Her eye has an infection so she didn’t want to meet up just yet.  She sounds much lower pitched than I thought she did from her photos, and she was surprised that I sounded much more British than I look, heh.  We could not make plans with her until she felt better, so we promised to keep in touch over the next few days.

With all that eating and visiting Alberto and moving to the new (old) room there wasn’t much time to rest before having to go to Martha and Manolo’s milonga class at la Escuela's location at Talcuahano and Santa Fe.

We took a quick taxi trip there (taxis are much more easy to flag down this year than before, because people can’t afford taxis anymore, I guess).  This Escuela location is in a practice studio for Valeria Lynch’s show (she was the female lead and singer in the movie Tango Bar with Raul Julia) - the walls were adorned with huge glitzy posters of her mega stage productions.  The Escuela seemed like a complete afterthought - a couple of flyers on a table was all the evidence that there was of the Escuela. We sat down on one of the few couches/chairs in the "waiting area", blown about by the huge whirring standing fans that they had put up to beat the heat.

Some performance tango couple was teaching the class before M&M, and there were lots of students in that particular class, although they weren’t really teaching anything that was useful or practical on the dance floor (back ochos into front sacada - but what for?)  M&M were late almost half an hour, I think some students left, and there were only two other students apart from us who attended the class - one a total beginner.  We were worried about M&M because they are never late.  But this time they were - because they had just finished teaching a Master Class (classes for tango professionals/teachers only!!!) that’s part of a “Master’s festival” (Everyone in Toronto should take these...hint hint) at the Rodriguez Pena location, and that ran late.

So all the better for us!  Because we don’t really want to be working that hard on our vacation.  We thought that we could take it easy - but we should have know better.  M&M are very serious whenever they teach and now with few people in the class their eyes were always on us - no slacking off! We were soon practicing so hard that we were sweating again.

Martha and Manolo's class at Escuela Argentina de Tango - Martha and Manolo are doing a little demo with Manolo's signature corriditas.  The background waterfall noise is actually the noise of all the big electric fans - there was a mini-hurricane in there!

Manolo was so kind to demonstrate the corriditas he and Martha were teaching with me so we could film it clearly and practice when we got home.  The move is amazing...but what is really amazing is my hair!  How did I make it so straight, being so tired and busy on our first day in Buenos Aires?  I can't make it as straight and as glossy as in this video anymore!

We have been taking classes with M&M for three years now and still they have stuff to teach us that we don’t know yet.

After the class we walked (very slowly) together to Santa Fe 1234, which was close by.  Last year M&M weren’t able to eat anything with us because they were on a no salt, no flavour diet.  This year apparently everything was fine so they ordered pizzas with so much cheese that there was more cheese than bread.  Manolo has had a pretty bad bout of bad health, and they didn't tell us because they didn't want to make us worry even though we were constantly emailing each other.  Something was affecting the nerves in his face and head, but after medicine and acupuncture and Chinese medicine from Barrio Chino (Chinatown) he is feeling much better - just has to avoid eating stuff that is too cold or too hot.  Heaping amounts of oily cheese was ok though.  Martha had her beer, Man Yung had pizza and I had some empanadas - and we had a chat about lots of stuff. They are a lot less stressed this time because Martha’s daughter is no longer sick, and because Manolo is feeling better.  He is 77 the end of March, so he is very very old - but still in good spirits and happy to be teaching and living his dream with the love of his life, Martha.

We talked about the Villa Urquiza “phenomenon” which had kind of exploded all over Tango.  Now you were not considered authentic unless you were "Villa Urquiza". They don’t think much of this "phenomenon" at all - people are just making a name for themselves with self promotion, and tagging "Villa Urquiza" onto their resume for marketing purposes.  As for famous “Villa Urquiza Fino” - well, yes, he is a great dancer, but he wasn't from Villa Urquiza - he was from Paternal.  They concluded that the internet is full of lies.

M&M went home and we walked the four blocks back to the hotel to get ready for our rendezvous with Alberto at El Beso at 10 p.m.  We had a little rest before we went - if we didn’t take as much opportunity as possible to rest on our trips to Bs As, we would be dead.  We did way too much already for one day. 

El Beso was super quiet.  Only twenty couples.  LOTS of space to dance, yippee!  Osvaldo Natucci wasn’t the DJ that night, it was “the other guy”.  The music was not thrilling, they only played one tanda of vals all night and that’s when we were walking in.  Alberto and Paulina arrived a little later than we did, and they were hungry so they had empanadas and beer.  Alberto wanted to check out our dancing - he was pleased and generally proud of us.  Paulina said that we were very “harmonious”. But then they concluded our style of dancing was only good for "no pause" music of Troilo, D’Arienzo, Donato etc. (that’s because despite all Alberto’s pains to teach us we still dance “Canyengue” - hee!).  He didn’t like us doing “traspie” to Di Sarli milongas and got up to show us how to dance it properly.  He also demonstrated how to dance to Pugliese, his favourite.  His friend Juan Esquivel from Milonguisimo sat next to him and they were talking about us.  We could hardly recognize Juan because he is usually in a suit and looking like a “President” (we mentioned that when we saw him last year and Jorge Uzunian from the show said, yes, “like President Chavez”). Juan is a very long-winded person.  He is friendly but once he gets started you get a lecture.  Well, I did learn something - about the “three eras of tango music” and how Alberto’s interpretation of Pugliese was correct (well, much better than the other dancers there in any case).  He agreed that Alberto is a very good teacher, I guess we are “living proof” of that (heh, except we dance in everybody elses’ style except his!)

We left a little past midnight, we knew Alberto and Paulina wanted to keep us company but then it was getting late for them. As they drove us home, I asked them who was the person that they mentioned that was sucking the attendance out of Tuesday’s El Beso?  Alberto says that someone (a semi-reknowned tango personality) had a grudge and had been telling the women that El Beso Tuesdays has Milongueros who won’t ask the women to dance.  So the women went away, and then the Milongueros followed.

So that was our busy Tuesday.  The first day and we were just about everywhere, seeing everyone but N.

By the way if you read this email and you see me mention “malingers”, what I really mean is “MILONGUEROS”, but the spell check changes them all to “malingers”, which is really kind of a neat description, don’t you think?

Wednesday to follow.  Reading this is probably taking more time than your full day’s work!

Irene

Buenos Aires 2009 Part 1 - Monday and Tuesday, February 23 and 24, 2009

Dear V,

So much for Air Canada's “direct flight” - instead of 12 hours it took us 24 hours to reach Buenos Aires.  We arrived at midnight on Monday instead of 2:15 p.m. Monday afternoon.  I was dead tired after the ordeal, even though the flight was much better than any flight I’ve had since I was wearing a pair of “compression socks” ($29.99 at Shopper’s) which made sitting still for 12 hours much more comfortable since my legs were not twitching or getting pins and needles every half hour.  I was able to sleep a few hours on the flight, and the service was exceptionally good on the flight to compensate for the good scare we had with the “attempted” failed flight earlier - ahem!  It seemed that everyone got unlimited wine and beer, so we saw lots of people with incredibly red faces.  Nothing like alcohol-fueled “Dutch courage“, I guess!

Lots of entertainment on the flight - about a million movies or shows to choose from.  Unfortunately we weren’t able to access a map of our flight progress despite all this great new fancy technology, the screen always froze when we tried.  Man Yung watched Godfather II and JVCD (the JeanClaude Van Damme movie).  Godfather II was excellent; JVCD was less so (surprised?).  Even though Man Yung watched without sound (he can’t stand the earphones) he gave me a running commentary of everything that was happening in Godfather II.  There was also the guy in the aisle seat who was trying to talk to everyone.  He spoke Spanish very fluently but with a gringo accent.  He tried to strike up a conversation with us - asked me whether I understood Spanish and I said no ;-).  Then he proceeded to talk to us switching from Spanish to English and back - well, he was one of those who took advantage of the free wine - and it was pretty boring, all about his family and son who married the daughter of a Chinese government official, blah blah blah.  The reason for the strange accent?  He is from Uruguay but lived in Canada for most of his life.  Before the plane landed water from the ceiling started to drip on him.  Pretty scary - and the steward said it was “condensation”.  Man Yung said that this… was definitely not normal.

Since we arrived so late at Ezeiza, it was a pretty fast queue at immigration and customs.  The airport was still full of people roaming around, sitting, waiting, but what for I don‘t know, surely there are no flights this late? (compared with Pearson at midnight, which was like a ghost town).  Big crowd waiting for airport taxi.  The price has gone up again.   2007 - 50 pesos.  Last year 75 pesos.  This year, 98 pesos.  Only one guy working to take the customers to the taxi - usually it‘s one guy per customer. This one was disgruntled and took whole groups of non-English speaking customers all at once - and he spoke no English.  There was a mix up and we followed the guy out to the taxi stand on the advice of the taxi agent at the counter - and he was quite pissed off for some reason trying to sort it out.  He kept on trying to explain to us and complaining, and I had no idea what he was saying, but one of the taxi drivers “volunteered” to take us anyway.  I was glad it was the old taxi driver with missing teeth rather than the young burly taxi driver.  Shouldn’t make a difference anyway but I figured that old toothless taxi drivers are kinder, and if anything should happen my “old husband” can certainly take on an “old taxi driver” better than a young one!

Not much cars on the highway into town.  Well, it was pretty late - past 1 a.m. already.  So it was  fast.  The taxi driver said the prices went up in January but now it is “better security”.  Not sure what that means, bullet proof taxis?  We talked to the taxi driver about where we were from and he was quite determined that the cold weather in Canada would “kill” him.  It’s always good to try to talk to the taxi driver - and give a bigger tip than normal.  They are much nicer to you if you do this.  When we got into town Man Yung noticed that there were less people in the street.  He figured it was because of the economy, but the whole mood on the street is a little “depressed”.  Not that we saw any of the people pushing the big carts of cardboard though like the last couple of times.

We thought we might have trouble checking into the hotel so late but no, since we notified Expedia, Expedia notified the Wilton staff and they had both a bellboy and a counter staff ready.  In fact there was another pair of customers checking in at the same time.  Richard at the counter did a double take when he saw us - he recognized us from the previous stays!  We are easily recognizable for some reason, I wonder why?  He didn’t even ask me for my credit card and passport.  However, we couldn’t get a room on the 2nd floor like we asked - it was a room on the 9th floor instead.  We didn’t unpack a lot, since we were going to be moved the day after to a 2nd floor room.  It has been so inconvenient - first the “free hotel” stay courtesy Air Canada (Delta Airport West) in which we had none of our personal toiletries and no change of clothes, and now the first night as nomads “on the run” to another room. 

After a change of clothes and a quick shower, we went out to eat.  Alas, La Madeleine right on the corner was closing, and we thought it was open 24 hours?  We asked ourselves, was it because of the economy?  We asked the guy cleaning the door at La Madeleine where we could get something to eat and he told us to go down Santa Fe “four blocks”. Since Man Yung loves wandering around any strange city on the first night and has no fear we decided to walk.  It took quite a while and we were questioning whether four blocks was really a euphemism for eight blocks.  Anyway, we were half a block from Av. 9 de Julio when we finally reached “1234 Santa Fe”, a Confiteria which was still open (24 hours).  It has a bit of an old world exterior, and patrons were still lingering outside in the sidewalk tables and inside too.  Soccer was playing on the tv, which was a bonus for Man Yung.  We had to move from one table to another though - they were cleaning the floor with a tidal wave of something that smelt rather harsh.  Not that a table close to the other remaining patrons was any better - the tidal wave was swept our way by a sleepy busboy about ten minutes later.

Only one unsmiling and rather disgruntled “no-nonsense” waiter was serving the whole restaurant.  The kitchen was partially closed so we could only order empanadas or pizzas.  We ordered a whole bunch of empanadas (they were really good, better than La Madeleine) and Man Yung also insisted on getting a pizza.  I had a pepsi and Man Yung had a big Quilmes “Bock” beer - the pizza was a bit heavy though with all that cheese, and Man Yung was not impressed with the sour pickled red pepper garnish, even though otherwise the food was very good.  Man Yung jokingly tried to grab an order of olives on the waiter’s tray - and without responding the waiter just quickly whisked his tray away from the grabbing hands.  We did actually order some  olives anyway and finished that off too.  The waiter didn’t smile at all but after we gave him a big tip he did and was actually very friendly by the time we left.

We walked all the way back to the hotel - almost 4 a.m. when we finally got to bed.  The streets were “deserted” along Santa Fe but there were still some individuals running around alone on some mysterious business.  A lone person waiting for the bus.  Some young girl walking alone on the street.  Flower stalls that were still open with all the lights on but no customers anywhere.  A dog with no collar trotting along like it was normal for a dog to be wandering around by itself at 4 a.m.   Man Yung said definitely the street showed signed of economic troubles being so deserted.  I pointed out it wasn’t exactly normal for the street to have people at 4 a.m. even in Buenos Aires.

We only slept 4 hours, our internal clocks were still wacky and in any case we were probably thinking about the free hotel breakfast.  I was dreaming that I was flying, in any case sleeping like I wasn’t in Buenos Aires yet.  I am kind of depressed this trip.  I felt kind of like this the first afternoon in Buenos Aires last year, but this time the feeling is lasting longer.  It’s like, what am I doing here, so far from home?  I feel like it is the “same old, same old” again - the stress of having to deal with all aspects of travel, having to cope with using another language, trying to accommodate Man Yung’s extravagant wishes and trying to just plain understand what it is that he wants me to do! 

And there’s also the very intense “agenda” that we have to deal with.  We were up at 8 a.m. for our free hotel breakfast.  Breakfast at the Wilton is pretty good - you get cold cuts, fruit (fresh and canned) boiled eggs, juice, tea and coffee, pastries and bread, yogurt, cereal.  I was sending you an email right from the breakfast room about our delayed flight.  By the way, exactly the same staff at the Wilton this year doing exactly the same things.  It’s like we never left.  It’s also like no one ever got a promotion since we started coming here! 

Back in the hotel room, it was time to call everyone.  We immediately made plans to see Martha and Manolo at their classes at the Escuela de Tango Argentino at 7:30 p.m. at Santa Fe and Talcahuano - a new location we haven’t been to before.  Then we called Alberto and made plans to see him at noon at his place.  My brain was working - clack clack clack - trying to see what other activities we could fit in before Alberto and between Alberto and M&M.  We also had to factor in moving from our current room to a second floor room.  Anyway, even though it is a traditional for two years now that we go to Comme Il Faut the first thing after we arrive, I had to SACRIFICE that (boo hoo!) because we weren’t going to have enough time to do that AND go to Lacoste and buy Man Yung’s beloved polo shirts. 

After resting in our room a little bit and then repacking everything back into our suitcases, we set off for Alberto’s.  The taxis are a little easier to flag down this year, and the traffic is not so bad - even the air feels a tad more cleaner than usual.  It seemed that we got to Alberto’s pretty quickly - perhaps because we were now familiar with the route?  He was waiting for us outside his building, on the leafy street right next to Abasto.  Of course he was very happy to see us, and us to see him too.  Paulina had to work in the afternoon but she had time to see us so we all sat down to chat.  We were of course most concerned about what happened to Alberto last summer in Europe.  It is a LONG story - he got very sick on the trip and so sick while he was flying back to Argentina he had to be held and stabilized at the airport in Sao Paolo.  Back in Argentina he was in hospital for a whole month while the doctors tested him every day to find out what was wrong with him.  Lyme disease was just a lucky guess and it happened to be the right diagnoses, so he was taking like a million antibiotics just to get rid of that.  His right leg still doesn’t feel the floor normally, and the right part of his face is still stiff from the neurological effects.  He was most afraid he would not be able to dance again, and he doesn’t dance as much as he used to.  It is the worst thing to happen to a dancer.  But he’s at it again - touring and teaching in Europe in April this year, with plans to teach in San Francisco as well.  Man Yung is always worried about him pushing himself too hard and keeps on saying “Don’t go!” to Alberto.

But Tango keeps him going.

We’re going out right now, I’ll continue this long winded account a little later…

Have a good Wednesday,

Irene

Innocence

With Martha and Manolo at Sunderland, February 28, 2009

Periodically, Man Yung will ask me: "So, when are you going to write about our trip to Buenos Aires in 2009? Are you ever going to write about it?"

My answer would always be yes....just that I haven't gotten around to it.  2009 became 2010.  2010 became 2011...other posts intervened.  Other trips intervened.  Life intervened...

I wondered what was the real reason for my writer's block.

I recently took another look at the videos and photos and written records we made of that trip.  Amazing stuff!  And I know why I didn't want to write it.

How innocent we were, back then.  And it was merely two years ago! Looking at our fresh smiling faces in all our photographs, I could feel how much more jaded and cynical and snarky we have become since [What? you ask. You weren't jaded and cynical and snarky in 2009?].  Was it Life or was it Tango that did that to us?

No, we are not as we were in 2009.  We've danced with all the milongueros and milongueras we've ever wanted to dance with.  We've gone to all the milongas in Buenos Aires we have ever wanted to go to.  We already have the most wonderful teachers in the world - we wouldn't want to learn from anybody else.  Comme Il Fauts can't get more amazingly gorgeous or interesting, we've seen (and bought) all the pairs that our hearts could possibly desire.  We have even achieved one of the "Holy Grails" of Tango - the opportunity (or opportunities - we have performed several times already, isn't that nuts?) to perform in Buenos Aires - and while it is great, it isn't all that.

I am plagued by the sense that people are tired of reading about what we were up to in Buenos Aires - I could hear them say, "Come on, all you do is eat, dance, hang out with your friends having a great time - isn't there anything new?"

The only thing new,  I guess, is the cynical: some of the people we have encountered in our Tango journey, whom we trusted and considered friends, turned out not to be worthy of either friendship or trust.  Personalities we had admired from afar in Tango have turned out completely unworthy of admiration.

But even that isn't really anything new.


No, there isn't anything new.  I think that's what makes it perfect.  That's what makes Tango perfect - not the new, or the innovative, or the fancy and new-fangled and the exciting.  You don't have to escalate - the basics are your shining treasures.  Tango connects us to our feelings and emotions, our hopes and dreams, our successes and failures, our strengths and vulnerabilities.  Tango is love - and humanity. 

We'd do it - and write about it - all again in a heartbeat.  Despite the ravages of experience, nothing is really old and tired if we can still embrace it with the same innocence.