Please excuse any awkward formatting, the blogger app doesn't like us or the iPad...
One aspect of travel that is often glossed over in our instantaneous pleasure seeking world of social media gloats are the un-sexy tasks all travellers must undertake. Washing being one of the more challenging tasks during travelling. In BA, there was a laundromat across the street from us. Feeling fortunate and with a large bag of dirty clothes, we headed there and started a game of charades as we tried to make ourselves understood. The particular climax of said game was when the shop attendant asked for a name. Now as a disclaimer to my spoilt lingua franca English speaking friends, the letter 'J' in Spanish is mostly pronounced more like our 'H'. So, wanting to be understood when asked for a name, Julia responsed with "Hulia"; to which the shop attendant looked perplexed and promptly corrected, "Julia?" Sheepishly Julia acknowledged that 'Julia' and not 'Hulia' was in fact her actual name. Meanwhile I stood in the background in the grips of hilarity witnessing a stranger correcting someone else's own name. Much laughs were subsequently had.
The best handwritten Julia picture I could find without going to the extreme effort of writing it myself
Argentina has a curious history with their currency, pesos or amusingly coded as ARS. Whilst I won't bore you with historical details, suffice to say that certain peculiarities still exist. There's a widely held consensus that the pesos is over valued and undergoing hyperinflation. The practical realities and most amusing aspects of this as a tourist are two fold. Firstly, one can only withdraw roughly $160 AUD a day. Now of course this is mostly fine but you can imagine it being frustrating at times for regular citizens. Secondly, even with such restrictions banks regularly run out of money to dispense. We encountered this problem after trying to take out money from numerous banks only to be told by a local in the most sincere and nonchalant way, "there has been a public holiday so the banks have run out of money." How silly of us for not making that obvious* connection.
Finally on the topic of money let me regale you with an amusing anecdote. We walked into a bank to use an atm. Fortunately there was nobody in the queue (I haven't yet mentioned that Argentinians absolutely love to queue) so naturally we went and stood at the front of the queue. That was until the security guard who was standing there alone became agitated at us. Nervous we'd done something wrong, it slowly dawned on us that he was a security guard from somewhere else patiently queuing to take his own money out!!! Really, what are the chances? We laughed and chuckled at this fluke encounter for days afterwards.
As a podiatrist one habit that I can't shake is my tendency to observe people's gait and footwear. Amusingly for me, and Julia too, Argentinian women are in the grip of an awful obsessions with obnoxiously thick soled (wedges) footwear. From thongs and sandals to joggers and dress shoes. I'll let you decide on the fashion credentials of these but needless to say that I hope they don't catch on in Australia; just awful! To top the shoe fashion show off, crocs***, which really should only be used indoors and out of sight of the general public, were ubiquitous also. Adding to the disharmony of my podiatric frustrations.
If there is one memory that is forever etched in my mind from BA it's the sheer number of dogs and the sheer number of professionals dog walkers who simultaneously walk upwards of 6 dogs at a time; resembling Santa and his reindeers. Unlike the gifts Santa and his reindeers leave behind, unfortunately with such a handful of leashes the professional walkers don't have a spare hand to pickup the copious amount of dog shit that is subsequently left for smart phone absorbed pedestrians to stand in on the street.
Finally, on the recommendation of some expat locals, we took the plunge and bought tickets to a postmodern theatre show called Fuerza Bruta or 'Brute Force'. It's a show like no other where the whole performance involved interactions with the audience. The set is fluid and described as '360 degrees' as it changes constantly from the roof to the walls to the stage et cetera. The audience gets showered in water, glitter and confetti to name a few. It's toured the world and I'm hoping it ends up in Australia too. Just wow. Here is a teaser: http://youtu.be/taBAtxasWto
Jay on the right and Julia on the left
They lowered a swimming pool on top of us containing performers in it
They erected a tent over us and performers entered through the phallic shaped centre
*not obvious
**not literally
***I confess to owning a pair but use them following the strict guidelines I laid out
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