bsas

here i am, drinking mate in our small room with view on loud street and thinking how to present to you huge and wonderful metropolis bsas in one blog. i will not succeed i know [ : ) ] but i will do my best to bring you at least for few moments around here....
but first let me explain above mentioned unknown (to most of you) word mate. i will use old good friend lp for that:

"nothing capturesthe essence of argentiniadad (argentinity) as well as the preparation and consumption of mate perhaps the only culturalpractice that truly transcends the barriers of ethnicity, class and occupation in argentina. more then a simple drink, mate is an elaborate ritual, shared among family, friends and coworkers. in many ways sharing is the whole point. Yerba mate is dried, choppedleaf of llex paraguayenisis, a relative of common holly. also knownas paraguayan tea, it became commercially important during thecolonial era on the jesuit missions' plantations in the upper rioparana. europeans quickly took to the beverage, crediting it withmany admirable qualities. the austrian jesuit martin dohrizhoferwrote that 'mate provokes a gentle perspiration, improves theappetite, speedily counteracts the languor arising from the burningclimate and assuages both hunger and thirst'....
....
preparing mate is a ritual in itself... nowdays, one person, the cebador (server) fills the mate gourd almost to the top with yerba, heating but notboiling the water in a pava (kettle) and pouring it into the vessel.drinkers then sip the liquid through a bombilla, a silver straw witha bulbous filter at its lower end that prevents the yerba leavesfrom entering the tube..."
well i must tell you there is always some yerba that comes to tube so you have to eat some yerb too, but it is ok...it is not such a good taste, that mata tea, so strong and bitter, bljak, xexexe..but as with bear or blue cheese, i think, one can use to flavor and start to like it. we bought our guards and bulbous in one middle range souvenir shop but they sell it everywhere: on the streets for 10 pesos and on fansy places for 100 (top of cup is made form silver, bla bla...) .
here i realize that i didn't tell you rates here so here it is...
1 us$ = 3,05 $ (same sign) ; 1 eur = 4.05 $
so the easiest calculation for us is pesos x 20 csd (or din, serbian valute) , so 10 pesos is like 200 csd.

now seat your belts and prepare to take off...let me try to bring you here...

getting out from hostel and reaching the avenue de mayo just 50m on the right acrose the street (at nb. 800) there is "el cafe tortini" traditional cafe, the one where frederico garcia lorca and jorhe luis borges had always reserve their own table. in our new nice 3d bsas book there is a drawing (3d) of insides and those tables are marked...so on saturday before leaving bsas towards patagonia we are going to took exactly one of those tables and have a breakfast :)).

besides this one and other popular cafes in bsas there are really many places where one can sit and have a coffee or snack: some empanadas or tartas or pizzas or cookies...i prefer empanadas, similar to samosa but better, small dow, shaped as panzzerota, filled with carne(meat, meso, mleveno) or pollo (chicken) or jamon y queso (ham and cheese, sunka i sir) or queso y cebolla (cheese and onion, sir i luk) or queso y spinet...i do not have favorite, all are the best! similarry with tarte...

avenue de mayo runs in direction east-west from plaza del mayo on the right hand side when step out from our hostel, and plaza del congreso, if we turn left. both are huge, wide and busy, full of people, cars and busses; squares with lot of sightseeing spots... for me every square (plaza) in bsas is sight for itself...and there are lot of them...
plaza del congreso is dominated with palace congreso nacional and cuerpo monumento a los dos congresos. there is also a park around with benches and fountain, nice place to sit and rest. around square there are mix of old and new buildings which is characteristic to hole town and which gives him a unique charm. from my point of view one of the most interesting city i've ever seen, i can not stop making pictures of buildings, squares, streets... will be obvious in this blog, xexe...







walking from hostel to the congreso we left behind us many beautiful buldings such as edifico barolo plaza de mayo is home of casa rosada, el catedral metropolitana (inside of it there is tomb of some general san martin and outside is flame keeping his spirit alive!!!) and more, different kind of buildings, estatuas of belgrano, de loca...

from the square streets defensa, peru, or bolivar bring you to south parts (barrios) of bsas, first to san telmo and then to boca, both already mentioned...

san telmo artistic and historicaly rich barrio...narrow streets with old houses atracts many artist bohemians to run souvenir and antiq shops. square plaza domengo is heart of san telmo and it hosts famous sundays antique market. we pass there several times and on sunday when we were going to cancha (football mach) not only square were market, it was also defensa street from its beginning almost to the end...many people walking down the street, music around, so colorful....
barrio boca we visit three times, cancha is detailed explained with many pictures in misha's post...here i will just repeat that it was great pleasure to be there with boka jugadors (12th player-supporters), that everything around was blue and yellow-boca juniors colors, that people here have great love for their club, love full of respect. all generations, form 7 to 77, male or female...stadion almost filed for ordinary ligue mach tells me how football culture is important here.
on the first of may we visit caminito, touristic part of boca, so again we were walking through boca's streets with charming old houses...caminito complete in colors offer to tourists souvenir shops, cafes tango dancers, markets...but boca itself is more then that...
To the north from plaza de mayo runs pedestrian street florida and after some time cuts big avenues corrientes and cordoba and reach san martin(alive soul!) plaza with big park and hotel sheraton on it. florida is full of shops and trade centers and on working days it is not easy to pass through it...moreover, there is too many people, lot of them in some busness...galerias pacifico is french stile shopping center dates from 1889 and host lot of modern boutiques and shops...if turn look to west into av corrientes one can see city's famous obelisco sitting on plaza de la republica, another beautiful square. it is crossroads of corientes and "the widest street in the world" how proud portenos would tell you. this is lp info, none tells me that but i would say same since it has 7 lines in one way...really huge and busy av 9th julio devide also av de mayo into two same parts just in our neighborhood, like 50m from entrance to hostel.

walking to the north from obelisco yesterday we reach recoleta and its main attraction cemetery (cementerio recoleta) where one should talk to dead (lp says, we did not...even no pic from me...misha took some but for that we have to wait developing film). later on, again proceeding to north, we came to palermo, residence of higher class where we visit museum of latinoamerican modern art malba. one of the best museum space in my opinion...remind me on vienna's leopold...i took only one photo of court since guard came to tell that it is not alow... pity it would be great to have pictures from there, lot of free space...i like that architecture. in museum there were school kids around and they all same dressed...and they look beautiful. dress is very fashionable and differs from school to school. since i couldn't took picture inside museum, there is another one from shopping center abesto which is, as previous one, situated in an old building...since there is big rain today, no photos from outside...


another museum that we've visited was museo de ciencias naturales, so museum of natural science, nice one. there we find scelets of animals which does not exists any more, as dinosaurs and that is in a sense spectacularly for us. also nice various shells...here is the biggest one.

so what is left to do from de mayo is to take east and enter the newest part of bsas on the river la plata puerto madero...we went there on may of 1st to see residential part as well as reserve natural and we found vashar i klasichno srpsko roshtiljanje (xexe, untranslatable...but many people around, markets and barbique) and it was the reason that reserva was closed...so we will probably left it for next visit.

i miss to mention

huge fixus (i do not know english or latin word, if someone does, please to tell me) trees that grow in the city...

and dogs!!! many many dogs, not alone, dogs-pats and guys who take care of them during working ours of theirs owner...

what we miss to do is to visit some tango show or even dance it and going out into nightlife. this time daytime took us completely...but it is good to leave something what for you will come back. we will be back in two months and fill some gaps. to fill them all one would need all life not only the trip.

for those who are still with me, thanks for your attention...i am sure it is not such a good story, it miss details, there is lot of stuff...but it was like that, a lot in a few days....also some photos missing we can see already...

trip to puerto madryn of 16 hours will sum some impressions. i hope that in patagonia we will find enough technology and time to keep you in touch via this blog...

sorry for spelling and grammar mistakes, spell check do not work and no enough time to think a lot, so any suggestions and corrections are welcome, also comments to my e mail ljubicao@yahoo.com as well as here on blog.

many regards
hasta la vista
pozdrav drugari!

ps. small line with regards from tortini cafe, where we've just had a breakfast and soon we will left bsas...