Sunday, February 13, 2012
Sunday is a great day for ferias (fairs). Last Sunday, we’d visited 2 fairs briefly on our city tour in San Telmo and Recoleta so Angela and I made plans to return to these places and see what treasures we could find. But before we met, I had to take the subway. And while they are great for fairs, Sundays are also great for the streets and subways to be completely empty.
Congreso de Tucumán is the last stop on the D line, and while it’s still a 15 minute walk from my house, it’s the closest one to me. After just narrowly missing the train while coming down the escalator, I had to wait for a very lonely 7 minutes for the next train to come. When the train finally did come, all its passengers disembarked (because it’s the last stop), leaving me free to pick whatever seat I wanted amongst the few other people getting on the train too. Thus I found it incredibly odd when a younger woman sat down right next to me. Really? An empty train and you’re gonna sit right there? I got that leery feeling that I seem to carry with me all the time in this city. Because if somebody is that close to you, it’s either because your mode of transport is packed, you’re having a conversation, or something fishy is going on. She asked me for directions to somewhere and the feeling grew stronger as we’ve been told to never stop when someone asks for directions. We look like foreigners—why would you ask us for directions unless you weren’t actually looking for anything but our wallet? (Do you see how they’ve brainwashed us?! I can’t even give anyone directions…even if I did actually know where anything was, which I don’t). But after that, she kept to herself. The feeling grew again, however, when a man got on the trainand sat across from me, simply reading a book. This wasn’t strange until, out of nowhere, he came and sat next to me. Again, the train was still mostly empty and we were mid-transit, so it was completely nonsensical. Despite the fact that he was reading Foucault, I was about to get up and scream. This had to be a scam. WHY DID YOU JUST COME SIT NEXT TO ME? I deliberated getting off the train and switching cars, but then the Foucault-reading fellow got off at the next stop. STOP PLAYING GAMES WITH ME, ARGENTINES!!!
I finally arrived at my meeting place with Angela just as she was coming across the intersection. We walked towards the Plaza de Mayo and decided to stop in at the Casa Rosada because we saw that there were tours going on. But it wasn’t so simple. We had to buy tickets and wait in line and all the nonsense that comes with tourism and or bureaucracy. So we merely enjoyed the front lobby area and took some pictures with some abundantly "flirty“guards”.
We finally arrived at the San Telmo fair on Calle Defensa and it was literally all trinkets as far as the eye could see. Arts and crafts,jewelry, food, clothing, accessories, toys, antiques, books, strange and useless junk—everything you’d imagine a fair to have. We walked for what felt like a hundred blocks amongst hundreds of tourists and artisans alike. And while there were a million things to buy, I hardly felt like buying anything. Not because they weren’t “worth it” or I didn’t find them appealing, but merely that I’m going to be here for so long that unless something really struck me, Iwasn’t going to buy it—I need to save my money. I know for sure this will bethe place to get my souvenirs for people before I leave, but until that time, I could hold off. Plus, after visiting South Korea, I think I got a little jaded with accessory offerings at street fairs, so I'm pretty hard to impress…
The one purchase I did make was my mate and bombilla. Mates are sold everywhere, but I’m not really a fan of their classic look and I’m still surprised the mate market hasn’t exploded, offering hundreds of styles and colors to suit everyone’s mate attitudes (think of the water bottle market in the US—there’s millions to choose from!). But the stand I purchased mine from had a unique spin on the drink holder, and I couldn’t resist. I named him Boo, as the word for owl in Spanish is búho
I still needed a bombilla, however, and spotted a leather/mate store whose owner couldn’t have been a bigger fanatic about leather and mate. Perfect. He enthusiastically told me about each of the bombillas they had and why only about 2 of them were actually worth buying. Hewas the type of guy you’d wanna talk to for hours and would probably invite you to his house so you could do so; he was the type of guy who’d ask you your sign—and he did. Before leaving for this trip, I used to think about the type of people I’d meet, and for some reason I think I imagined lots of Porteños being like this guy. In away I was right, because all of them are nuts—just not always in the good way sometimes…
We finally reached the end of the market (400 blocks later…) and came to the conclusion that we probably needed to head home before it got dark. We consulted the map and realized that we were close to the last station on the C line, so we headed to what we thought was the obviously placed station. We stumbled around looking for the station and had trouble finding it. While I wasn’t freaked out, I was noticing that this part of San Telmo wasn’t the type of place you wanted to be in past dark. It was the kind of place even pigeons might say “I don’t wanna land there!”. The Constitución station was pretty sketchy too, but we stuck to our bags and conversation in Spanish and todo pasaba bien. No weirdos reading Foucault this time…
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