The night before last, I survived my first tango lesson.
Apparently, I have potential. For what, exactly, I’m not sure. But, seemingly, my feet go mostly where they’re supposed to. Except, of course, when they don’t. And I have a problem remembering to breathe. But I didn’t dislocate a hip, or dislocate my instructor, so I consider this a triumph.
There’s something exhilarating about dancing (and I use the term very loosely) on a rooftop in sultry, steamy Buenos Aires, this Paris of the South, with the music floating out into the night and your tattooed, mohawk-sporting tango teacher yelling, “feeeeeeeeel it, feeeeeeeeel it!” I mean, under such circumstances, how could you not?
A tango shared is trouble doubled
I had happily linked up with fellow guest, Janella from California, for a class organised by our lovely hosts. We figured that the whole experience would be less painful if we both made complete and utter fools of ourselves at the same time. We also share a penchant for Dutch courage, which came on this occasion in the form of a bottle of ice-cold Tomero sauvignon blanc and couldn’t go down quick enough.
Gustavo and Jorgelina, our incredibly patient and good-humoured instructors, started off by showing us what an Argentine tango was supposed to look like. After we’d scraped our jaws off the floor, the panic set in. I’d looked up the Argentine tango (not to be confused with the stuffy and stiff ballroom one) on Wikipedia earlier in the day and had been informed that it was “essentially walking with a partner and the music”. If this was walking, I clearly needed a Zimmerframe. Or euthanasia.
Gustavo was 5’6” of solid muscle, with rippling pecs and buns like two plums in a hankie. He went to great lengths to try to put us at ease in a mixture of Spanish, Italian and English, even though he must have been a very nervous man indeed. In his dancing shoes, I would have been terrified.
Jorgelina, meanwhile, looked like she had wafted in off a movie set, with a cascade of long, black curly hair, calf muscles that could stop a truck, a clingy red dress and heels that would make you dizzy if you even saw them in a shop window. She was a doll. I, as usual, was underdressed. Right down to the fact that I wasn’t wearing any shoes. But she waved off my concerns in surprisingly good French, which meant we could all communicate, a bit like a United Nations cocktail party, without the politics and the cheese on a stick.
Don't look back
They started by making us walk backwards. Hah, I hear you say. Easy. Oh, do you think?
Well, you’re not allowed look where you’re going. You look at your partner. Or, if you’re me, you squeeze your eyes tightly shut and try to count without moving your lips. Now, those of you who know me are fully aware that I’m not very good at looking where I’m going at the best of times. I can’t even walk in a straight line. I fall over stuff, up stuff, down stuff, through stuff, into stuff. I trip over tramlines, fall down stairs, disappear into holes. At any given time, about 15% of me is bruised. So, just imagine me being as much of a clutz in reverse and you’ll get the idea. Sexy, huh?
Anyway, you’re supposed to glide-slide-walk backwards (if you’re a woman), on the ball of the foot, legs stretched, bringing your feet together, brushing your knees and ankles, but never actually pausing. Depending on the step, you dance at arm’s length to your partner, or chest to chest (or everything to everything, if you’ve drunk quite a bit and let the mood grab you). And you’re not allowed to bob up and down or sway from side to side. And it’s not salsa, so you can’t move your hips. You’re supposed to relax. But don’t lean back. And don’t fall over. And avoid the aloe vera plant. Ouch.
At this point, we were only three minutes in. Even still, our hoots of laughter had managed to draw an audience from the guest house, which thought it might be fun to stay and watch the show while getting hammered on the local brew. At least we were being entertaining – Janella in an impressive way; me more in a monster-trucks-on-ice kind of way. But I was having a ball and didn’t give a rat’s patooty. What’s more, I was starting to get the general gist of it.
[I break off briefly here, friends, just to mention that as I sit and type this missive, there is a man on the street corner opposite, breaking what looks to be like a bidet into small pieces with a mallet, while his friend tries to fit the resulting shards of porcelain into a plastic suitcase. Intriguing.]
The last dance
Back to the matter in hand. Or, rather, afoot. Next, we were taught how to do a twisty, pivoty thingy, whereby you swish around on one foot, while looking like you’re swishing around on two, cross your legs and do it all again on the other foot (or was it the same foot?), without moving your upper body and without taking out your partner. After that, we were taught how to do it backwards. Well, we were shown how to do it backwards. The doing escaped us somewhat, but was highly amusing.
Then, Jorgelina (with, I guess, great relief) took to the sidelines while Gustavo cajoled, then coerced us in turn into dancing an entire tune with him. How anyone left with all toes intact is beyond me. But Jorgelina, bless her, kept making whooping sounds of encouragement, which made me think I might actually get through it and keep Gustavo out of the ER.
And so it came to pass. I felt like I’d finally finished my doctoral thesis and run a marathon. It was freaking brilliant. I had danced my first Argentine tango and I’d loved every minute. The hard-core tango clubs of the barrios don’t know what’s about to hit them. But that’s probably just as well.
© Poilin Breathnach 2009
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Biting the Bullet (Part II)
Well, how do I put this? Sigh.
Dressing up as a slightly dodgy-looking feminist militia was as far as we got. The gun club wouldn’t accept a foreign passport as a valid means of identification. And Gary on the desk said he had no other way of proving I wasn’t an ‘undesirable’. I told him I was highly desirable and that he could check for himself, but he wasn’t for turning. Gary was also unable to tell me whether Ireland was part of the Axis of Evil, as he didn’t have a current list, but he said he couldn’t rule it out. And, to be honest, neither could I, because it had never occurred to me to check. Indeed, I still haven’t.
As a consolation prize, I was told I could watch The green-carded Lovely C fire off a few rounds from a safe distance (safe for them, I reckoned, as opposed to safe for me), but she, understandably, had been more interested in watching me accidentally shoot an instructor than shredding a paper target I thought looked suspiciously like Maximus without the hair.
This was a darn shame, I thought, as how often does a woman have an opportunity to eviscerate a life-sized silhouette of her other half, then keep it tucked away at the back of the wardrobe for that one occasion on which she can say: “You did what? Okay. Let’s look at the kind of damage I can do to you in a matter of seconds and talk this through.” But, hey.
So, we gave up and went for Chinese food and cocktails instead.
Locked and loaded
In the end, it was probably just as well, as my US visa application form later asked if I had had any specialist firearms training and I was in the happy position of being able to report that I’d never even shot tequila, let alone a bullet. I assume this is the sole reason that this marvellous country is now allowing me to enter as a legal alien to take up a real job, as opposed to signing me up for freelance sniper duty in Albania. And I must say, the Chinese margaritas were pretty good too.
All this meant in terms of my bid to do something constructive in California, though, was that it was back to the drawing board, yet again. And at this stage, the drawing board was looking pretty full. I couldn’t learn to drive. I couldn’t learn to shoot. I couldn’t be bothered to stalk the governor. The Iron Man museum was about as scintillating as roadkill and my Church of the Chocolate Nut Martini had yet to receive its first donation. What’s more, I was starting to run out of time.
Thankfully, I still had four glorious days in Hawaii to look forward to. Where better to ponder my state of inertia than face down in the middle of the Pacific with a snorkel up my nose, or wherever you put it. Even better, I’d convinced my extraordinary friends, Maximus, The Lovely C and Le Grand Belge, to tag along for the ride as a kind of belated bachelor-ette-stag-hen thingy for the wily Walloon, who had managed to coerce someone into marrying him the previous December. The lucky lady, at this point, was still pondering said luck in Belgium, at what we canny single folk call “a safe distance”. So, one word: party.
The best laid plans ...
We were due to fly out on the Thursday morning and back overnight on the Sunday. And as I was scheduled to return home just a day later, we decided to throw a little going-away bash for the rest of the crew on the Tuesday evening prior to our departure. This basically meant that Maximus would do manly things at the barbeque while the rest of us depleted his wine stock. Perfect.
I should add that we had a pretty slick catering operation going during my stay. I’d pootle away many a happy hour by ploughing through, say, a pictureless Greek cookbook written in Swedish, then conjure up an approximation of what I thought it might or might not be in a quantity fit for a military campaign. The Crew would arrive back from work and proceed to eat this concoction for about three days and, bless them, even make appreciative noises. Eventually, the remnants would disappear into the unfathomable freezer to come back and haunt them on those days when I was missing in action and they could microwave it into tasty oblivion.
So, I spent the afternoon throwing together the makings of side dishes to make Nigella wince, then parked myself on the terrace with Le Grand Belge and a glass of wine to mull the meaning of life and the metaphysics of being a global bum, while Maximus lugged around bags of charcoal and waved very big pronged instruments in our general direction to emphasise his culinary machismo.
It was at this point that the Swedish chef and his damsel decided to drop the bombshell: “You know, we were thinking we might get married.”
Yeah, right.
“In Hawaii.”
Sure.
“On Friday.”
Well, paint me blue and call me Mary. Things were about to get interesting.
© Poilin Breathnach 2009
Dressing up as a slightly dodgy-looking feminist militia was as far as we got. The gun club wouldn’t accept a foreign passport as a valid means of identification. And Gary on the desk said he had no other way of proving I wasn’t an ‘undesirable’. I told him I was highly desirable and that he could check for himself, but he wasn’t for turning. Gary was also unable to tell me whether Ireland was part of the Axis of Evil, as he didn’t have a current list, but he said he couldn’t rule it out. And, to be honest, neither could I, because it had never occurred to me to check. Indeed, I still haven’t.
As a consolation prize, I was told I could watch The green-carded Lovely C fire off a few rounds from a safe distance (safe for them, I reckoned, as opposed to safe for me), but she, understandably, had been more interested in watching me accidentally shoot an instructor than shredding a paper target I thought looked suspiciously like Maximus without the hair.
This was a darn shame, I thought, as how often does a woman have an opportunity to eviscerate a life-sized silhouette of her other half, then keep it tucked away at the back of the wardrobe for that one occasion on which she can say: “You did what? Okay. Let’s look at the kind of damage I can do to you in a matter of seconds and talk this through.” But, hey.
So, we gave up and went for Chinese food and cocktails instead.
Locked and loaded
In the end, it was probably just as well, as my US visa application form later asked if I had had any specialist firearms training and I was in the happy position of being able to report that I’d never even shot tequila, let alone a bullet. I assume this is the sole reason that this marvellous country is now allowing me to enter as a legal alien to take up a real job, as opposed to signing me up for freelance sniper duty in Albania. And I must say, the Chinese margaritas were pretty good too.
All this meant in terms of my bid to do something constructive in California, though, was that it was back to the drawing board, yet again. And at this stage, the drawing board was looking pretty full. I couldn’t learn to drive. I couldn’t learn to shoot. I couldn’t be bothered to stalk the governor. The Iron Man museum was about as scintillating as roadkill and my Church of the Chocolate Nut Martini had yet to receive its first donation. What’s more, I was starting to run out of time.
Thankfully, I still had four glorious days in Hawaii to look forward to. Where better to ponder my state of inertia than face down in the middle of the Pacific with a snorkel up my nose, or wherever you put it. Even better, I’d convinced my extraordinary friends, Maximus, The Lovely C and Le Grand Belge, to tag along for the ride as a kind of belated bachelor-ette-stag-hen thingy for the wily Walloon, who had managed to coerce someone into marrying him the previous December. The lucky lady, at this point, was still pondering said luck in Belgium, at what we canny single folk call “a safe distance”. So, one word: party.
The best laid plans ...
We were due to fly out on the Thursday morning and back overnight on the Sunday. And as I was scheduled to return home just a day later, we decided to throw a little going-away bash for the rest of the crew on the Tuesday evening prior to our departure. This basically meant that Maximus would do manly things at the barbeque while the rest of us depleted his wine stock. Perfect.
I should add that we had a pretty slick catering operation going during my stay. I’d pootle away many a happy hour by ploughing through, say, a pictureless Greek cookbook written in Swedish, then conjure up an approximation of what I thought it might or might not be in a quantity fit for a military campaign. The Crew would arrive back from work and proceed to eat this concoction for about three days and, bless them, even make appreciative noises. Eventually, the remnants would disappear into the unfathomable freezer to come back and haunt them on those days when I was missing in action and they could microwave it into tasty oblivion.
So, I spent the afternoon throwing together the makings of side dishes to make Nigella wince, then parked myself on the terrace with Le Grand Belge and a glass of wine to mull the meaning of life and the metaphysics of being a global bum, while Maximus lugged around bags of charcoal and waved very big pronged instruments in our general direction to emphasise his culinary machismo.
It was at this point that the Swedish chef and his damsel decided to drop the bombshell: “You know, we were thinking we might get married.”
Yeah, right.
“In Hawaii.”
Sure.
“On Friday.”
Well, paint me blue and call me Mary. Things were about to get interesting.
© Poilin Breathnach 2009
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Argentina: Cash, Cows & Creature Comforts
I knew Buenos Aires was going to be beautiful, bohemian and vibrant. I didn’t know the lunatics had taken over the asylum. The Argentine capital (echoing, I suspect, the rest of the nation) shamelessly gives the finger to anything vaguely resembling common sense and lures you into a world in which vegetables are viewed with suspicion, ministers stash their cash in government lavatories rather than in banks, and retailers try to give you sweets instead of change. I love it.
My home for the next two-and-a-half weeks is a gorgeous guesthouse owned by Zoe and David Deadman (www.abodebuenosaires.com), two UK escapees who genuinely seem to love what they do. My digs are huge – a bedroom, bathroom and enormous live-work area, with a balcony, a selection of books, fruit and water, closet space that would make Nancy Reagan hiss with envy and 24-hour access to a beautiful roof terrace with a well stocked honesty (honestly!) bar.
My hosts are not only friendly, informative and funny, with an innate understanding of the beneficial effects of good wine, but go to great lengths to ensure I'm having a great time. Breakfast this morning was vast, delicious and entertaining, and I was plied with gallons of excellent coffee. Tomorrow night, they’re hosting an asado, or barbeque, for a very reasonable fee, which appears to include half a cow and a barrel of vino per person.There was no mention of salad. Actually, if you’re a teetotal vegetarian, maybe you should think about rebooking your trip.
Right now, the sun is setting, there’s a flock of parrots on the tree outside my window and a frenzied cockerel down the road who can’t tell if it’s day or night and who has had his doodle-doo stuck on repeat for about 18 hours. I’m about to head up to the deck and catch the last of the sun’s rays prior to shooting the darn bird for tomorrow’s grill-fest. After that, I think I’ll have a typical Argentine evening, involving an empanada, a glass of malbec and an easily influenced dictator.
Lesson of the day
Yesterday, I very quickly learned that Argentina is a cash economy. The locals have heard of credit cards, but they find the idea of using them quite hilarious. And with little to no faith in their own currency, they prefer dollars, especially when it comes to buying substantial things like property, which is traded exclusively in the US currency. If you want to buy a house in Buenos Aires, you fill a large suitcase or three with greenbacks, hire yourself an armed guard and choose a relatively safe location to do the deal.
And you think I’m joking. In 2007, the country's economics minister saw her career come to an abrupt halt after being unable to properly explain how a cleaning lady managed to stumble across $64,000 in cash stuffed down behind the cistern of her parliamentary loo. She claimed she had borrowed it from her brother to buy a house and had wanted to put it in a safe place. Uh-huh.
Furthermore, for reasons that completely escape me, Argentina is chronically short of coins. People hoard them like demented piggy-banks, so much so that the one-peso coin is actually worth more than the two-peso note. People will turn down your business rather than hand over 50 centavos in change. Normal-looking people shriek with delight at a mere glint of metal – particularly ironic, considering the country's vast copper resources.
The public, not illogically, blames the federal government, which holds the monopoly on minting coins. It clearly hasn’t minted enough to go around. The government, however, blames the squirreling masses, as well as the country’s private bus companies, which only accept coins and, apparently, repackage and sell them back to the punters at a premium in a kind of black-market bus-fare sting.
The government has told the banks to hand over 20 pesos in coins to anyone who asks for them, but the banks, well, they don’t pay much attention to the government. Yesterday’s taxi driver offered to drive me around the block a couple of times to bring my fare closer to a round number, and when I declined, gave me a packet of biscuits rather than part with his pesos. I haven’t actually seen an Argentine coin as yet. And no-one will show me one, in case I mug them for it.
It’s also hard to break any kind of note, as the locals need the smaller denominations to give you instead of coins when you're not actually trying to break a note. It feels a bit like trying to buy a cup of coffee with a gold bar. So I can’t take a bus and am forced to buy wine in bulk. You can imagine how upsetting that is.
But maybe this glass will help.
© Poilin Breathnach 2009
My home for the next two-and-a-half weeks is a gorgeous guesthouse owned by Zoe and David Deadman (www.abodebuenosaires.com), two UK escapees who genuinely seem to love what they do. My digs are huge – a bedroom, bathroom and enormous live-work area, with a balcony, a selection of books, fruit and water, closet space that would make Nancy Reagan hiss with envy and 24-hour access to a beautiful roof terrace with a well stocked honesty (honestly!) bar.
My hosts are not only friendly, informative and funny, with an innate understanding of the beneficial effects of good wine, but go to great lengths to ensure I'm having a great time. Breakfast this morning was vast, delicious and entertaining, and I was plied with gallons of excellent coffee. Tomorrow night, they’re hosting an asado, or barbeque, for a very reasonable fee, which appears to include half a cow and a barrel of vino per person.There was no mention of salad. Actually, if you’re a teetotal vegetarian, maybe you should think about rebooking your trip.
Right now, the sun is setting, there’s a flock of parrots on the tree outside my window and a frenzied cockerel down the road who can’t tell if it’s day or night and who has had his doodle-doo stuck on repeat for about 18 hours. I’m about to head up to the deck and catch the last of the sun’s rays prior to shooting the darn bird for tomorrow’s grill-fest. After that, I think I’ll have a typical Argentine evening, involving an empanada, a glass of malbec and an easily influenced dictator.
Lesson of the day
Yesterday, I very quickly learned that Argentina is a cash economy. The locals have heard of credit cards, but they find the idea of using them quite hilarious. And with little to no faith in their own currency, they prefer dollars, especially when it comes to buying substantial things like property, which is traded exclusively in the US currency. If you want to buy a house in Buenos Aires, you fill a large suitcase or three with greenbacks, hire yourself an armed guard and choose a relatively safe location to do the deal.
And you think I’m joking. In 2007, the country's economics minister saw her career come to an abrupt halt after being unable to properly explain how a cleaning lady managed to stumble across $64,000 in cash stuffed down behind the cistern of her parliamentary loo. She claimed she had borrowed it from her brother to buy a house and had wanted to put it in a safe place. Uh-huh.
Furthermore, for reasons that completely escape me, Argentina is chronically short of coins. People hoard them like demented piggy-banks, so much so that the one-peso coin is actually worth more than the two-peso note. People will turn down your business rather than hand over 50 centavos in change. Normal-looking people shriek with delight at a mere glint of metal – particularly ironic, considering the country's vast copper resources.
The public, not illogically, blames the federal government, which holds the monopoly on minting coins. It clearly hasn’t minted enough to go around. The government, however, blames the squirreling masses, as well as the country’s private bus companies, which only accept coins and, apparently, repackage and sell them back to the punters at a premium in a kind of black-market bus-fare sting.
The government has told the banks to hand over 20 pesos in coins to anyone who asks for them, but the banks, well, they don’t pay much attention to the government. Yesterday’s taxi driver offered to drive me around the block a couple of times to bring my fare closer to a round number, and when I declined, gave me a packet of biscuits rather than part with his pesos. I haven’t actually seen an Argentine coin as yet. And no-one will show me one, in case I mug them for it.
It’s also hard to break any kind of note, as the locals need the smaller denominations to give you instead of coins when you're not actually trying to break a note. It feels a bit like trying to buy a cup of coffee with a gold bar. So I can’t take a bus and am forced to buy wine in bulk. You can imagine how upsetting that is.
But maybe this glass will help.
© Poilin Breathnach 2009
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