Friday morning we had our appointments to begin the second part of our student visa process (and after this, they will be complete). This of course included a visit to the Immigrations office, which is located near the Retiro train and bus stations--arguably some of the sketchiest places in Buenos Aires. By 8am the office was already full of people waiting for whatever type of citizenship they were seeking. Luckily I was the 4th student in line and was in and out in no time. However, it was obvious that the Argentine bureaucratic process makes even less sense than ours does in the US. By this, I mean that there were 3 different cajas we had to go to. During our visit at the second caja, we had to fill out paperwork but go to a different window to pay, meanwhile while people waited in the line to pay, the guys in caja 2 didn't begin processing someone else's paperwork. So in theory, had I had to wait in the payment line for 10 minutes, that would be ten minutes the clerk in the window would just be waiting. How does that make any sense? And as I've mentioned before, if there are 10 windows with 10 employees supposedly working at them, chances are only 2 will actually be open while the 8 other people have a laugh, drinking mate and ignoring you while they perhaps dance to Kid Cudi...
And lucky us, we had to go back to Retiro to buy our bus tickets for our weekend in Mar Del Plata (a coastal city in the Buenos Aires province). The walk from the train station to the bus station wasn't that long, but it seemed so sketchy. Hundreds of vendors selling the same usual crappy kitsch were yelling to all of us in the street. The area is obviously busy with travelers with luggage (and presumably luggage with lots of goodies inside), making it a hotspot for being robbed or pickpocketed. We walked quickly, aware of who and what was around us. (The more this happens the more I get convinced that "it won't happen to me")...As for the station, imagine 100s of small kiosks all selling bus tickets in a grubby station. It reminded me of something they would have in China, where there are tiny shops filled with people trying to sell you some overpriced thing, springing to attention when you walk by. Of course, we couldn't find the window for La Tostadense, the company we had tried to book our tickets through online. So we settled for Chevallier, which is a reputable company. They offered student discounts, and despite having the documents for our student visas, we apparently needed our student ID cards from UB. What?! Those IDs only have our names on them. They're not official documents, yet they're somehow more valid than a government issued student visa?! Bye bye 20% discount...
The whole reason we had to go to the train station was what made it even more frustrating. We had tried to order our tickets from a website that ISA recommended to us. Everything was going well until it came time to process the payment. Lo siento, fue rechazado. Lo siento, fue rechazado. 3 different websites and we couldn't process a payment online. This seems to be standard in Argentina, where they are far behind in the world of online payment and payment with a card (despite the fact that they lack actual cash). Not only is this frustrating because it requires a person to go to the station or bus company every time they want a ticket, which is time consuming, but also we lost money and had to spend more than $60 pesos to buy in person than what we found online. Granted, we got reclining seats which proved to be invaluable for our 2:30am departure...but still...how did the world function before things like Pay Pal??
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