A Vacation From My Vacation

Monday was a holiday, so I spent the long weekend in Rosario, a city 4 hours from Buenos Aires, in the Santa Fe province. Before I even left the limits of Buenos Aires, I felt very far away. The bus station was on the edge of town in a very poor neighborhood like nothing I had seen in Buenos Aires so far. This was not the empty streets and dirty sidewalks that had so far characterized the ¨bad parts¨ of Buenos Aires. This was crumbling shacks made of wood planks that looked as thin as cardboard, on unpaved roads wide enough for just a few people. When I saw the kids running around with dirt-streaked faces and no shoes, I realized what the kids begging on the subway come home to at night (if they have homes at all). Needless to say, it was a real eye opener. In a lot of ways, Buenos Aires is like any other modern city, with safe parts and dodgier parts. But I don´t think we have this kind of poverty in America, and we certainly don´t have it around the edge of every major city. I slept for nearly all of the 4 hour bus ride, but when I woke up in the outskirts of Rosario, I saw the same thing, though possibly a bit worse.

Like Buenos Aires, Rosario has heartbreaking outskirts, and a charming center. Actually, Rosario was like a mini-Buenos Aires in almost every way, right up to its central Plaza de Mayo with a pink government building in the middle. Although it had the same gorgeous French architecture, charming cafés and ubiquitous nightlife, Rosario was smaller and more laid-back, with 1 million people to BA´s 3 million (and thirteen million in the metropolitan area). I never though a city of 1 million would feel like a small town to me, but compared to Buenos Aires, it did. It was great to walk down sidewalks and have space to swing my arms, to find a seat on the bus, to wander without fear of getting totally disoriented. Rosario used to be called the Chicago of Argentina for all it´s ties to the mercantile exchange and the cattle industry. But it was like Chicago in other ways: the kindler, gentler counterpart to hectic Buenos Aires, just as Chicago is to New York.

We started off the trip by going to the monument to the flag, a huge tower commemorating the birth of the Argentine flag, designed in Rosario. The monument itself was huge and pleasing to the eyes, if a bit gaudy. The whole area was basically a giant show of nationalism, including a Falkand´s war memorial with the phrase ¨The Falklands, always for Argentina¨ written on it. Most interesting was the design of the one-room museum that housed the first flag. When I walked in, the flags of every American and Carribean country (including the US and Canada) lined the sides, plus a Spanish flag and an Italian one (because Christopher Columbus was born there). At the very end, on its own wall, hung the Argentinian flag. Although the Argentinian flag was bigger and glowing under a light, the museum was not just a tribute to Argentina, but to all the American nations. In the US, I don´t think most people consider themselves linked to South America, so it was interesting to see an almost nationalistic take on the Western hemisphere, something that is much more common here. I also think that the decision to include Spain and Italy says a lot about the self-image of many Argentinians as descended from European colonizers rather than the colonized natives. I don´t want to go too deeply into a complex issue I know little about, but I do find it fascinating that the museum honors the place of Spain and Italy in forming the modern Americas, rather than condemning it, as I would have expected.

We also went to a tiny, charming museum about the river islands on the Rio Paraná, which borders Rosario. Basically, this painter, Raul Dominguez, fell in love with the islands and spent his life painting them, writing books about them, and, at the end, making this museum about them. The museum, now curated by Dominguez´s two sons and wife, was full of great paintings and really interesting recreations of life on the islands at the beginning of the twentieth century. I´ve always found small sub-cultures really interesting, so I knew I would enjoy the museum. But this one was especially great for its genuineness. It was obvious that the people there loved the islands, and, for lack of a less corny phrase, really put their hearts into the museum.

We also decided that we would have our first real Argentinian night: going to a boliche (dance club) at three in the morning and coming home at 7 am for breakfast. This plan was a total failure. We walked to a bar-dance club that the staff at our hostel recommended to us, but when we got to the intersection, we couldn´t find it. However, there was another bar right there, so we just followed the lights, music, and people. Our first clue that this was no ordinary dance club should have been the incredibly invasive, unannounced frisking that each one of us got before entering. Imagine going through airport security, and then multiply it by ten. We walked into the club, and for about ten minutes it was really fun. They were playing great Carribean-influenced pop music. The crowd seemed to be mostly immigrants (which here means Peruvians, Bolivians, Paraguayans, and a few Central Americans), and they were doing cool dances I had never seen. I definitely felt out of place, but I was willing to push past it and get my groove on. We wandered up to the second floor, which had a balcony overlooking the first, and all of the sudden every man in the room seemed to teleport to the balcony at exactly the same time. Still not getting it, my friends and I innocently wandered over to see a girl stripping on the stage below us. Very surprised and very amused, we stood there with our mouths open until the end of the dance. The fun music began to play again, so we thought maybe it was just a strange interlude, but a few minutes later, a man came onstage and did his own strip tease, right down to a very small thong. My friend Bennet and I laughed hysterically while our two male friends looked very uncomfortable. Finally, in the middle of the third dance, which involved the man and the woman together, we decided to leave. It was definitely my funniest night in Argentina so far.

Despite these exciting episodes, the weekend in general was wonderfully relaxing. We sat at cafés along the river, read in parks, and perused craft fairs. We ate incredibly good food (much cheaper in Rosario), including wine with every dinner and the best steak I´ve had in my life. Until this weekend, I didn´t understand what the big deal was with Argentinian steak, but this was mouthwateringly, party-in-my-mouth good. Oh my god. We also met a group of Argentinian college students from Mendoza in our hostel, who gave us their names and numbers and told us to call them if we ever go to Mendoza (which I plan to do). Basically, Rosario just had great vibes, and I enjoyed a lovely weekend there.