We were told they eat meat, and they sure do! There are delicious steaks to be had everywhere, for about 8-12 euro. The best bet is just to order "bife de lomo" everywhere. Potatoes and suchlike often have to be ordered separately.
in Patagonia they have Patagonian lamb (I can especially recommend the one in the restaurant called Las Barricas). In Iguazu they have the traditional local fish (surubi, dorado and pacu). The only reason it became traditional is probably because they didn't have anywhere to put cows to pasture, or any better fish. Avoid if possible. They do also have salmon and steelhead trout, so the fish lovers are not totally fucked.
The have quite a lot of sushi places, I even saw a kosher sushi place in Buenos Aires. My one and only attempt at sushi revealed that the restaurant only had four kinds of fish: salmon, tuna, shrimp and an unidentified white-colored fish. They did a very good job out of it, much better than I could ever imagine anyone doing, but I decided to leave sushi at that.
Anything sweet either looks very suspicious or contains a lot of dulce de leche. I happen to like the stuff; if you don't, Argentinian pastry is probably not for you.
Finding the wine to our liking was a challenge at first; later we fould a producer we liked a lot, Luigi Bosca. Among local beers, El Bolson totally rules.
They make good coffee. Really good coffee, though in all my travels i still haven't found anyone who'd brew coffee as good as the guy near the big market in Istanbul.
There is a local specialty called cappuccino italiano. That's as opposed to the regular cappuccino, although occasionally you ask for regular and get italiano. It's cappuccino with cream (in addition to milk), cocoa and cinnamon, which makes for a surprisingly pleasant combination.
Ice cream in pretty good. Normally I like coffee, caramel and green tea flavors, but in Argentina they make very good ice cream flavored with strawberry, raspberry and other berries, often combined with mascarpone. I think their secret is that they put enough berries in there.
Showing posts with label argentina. Show all posts
Showing posts with label argentina. Show all posts
Sunday, April 11, 2010
More about Argentina
Our first experience of Argentina was an immigration official looking at my parents' US passports, noticing their birthplace in Russia, and asking "do you happen to have a Russian passport as well? If you do I won't have to charge you the entrance fee."
They didn't, and paid. I used my Finnish passport, and didn't have to pay. When it was time to fly back, the airline clerk instructed me to show both passports to her, the Finnish one to the Argentina border control, and the US passport to the US border control. (Incidentally, I passed the US border control in Miami, for the first time ever, and was absolutely shocked by the Customs and USDA officials addressing me in Spanish. They did switch to English as soon as they noticed my open mouth.)
The combination of high-trust and low-trust features in Argentina is sort of strange. On one hand, locks, bars (not just the drinking establishments) and guards are everywhere. On the other hand, the population, including lone young women, does not seem to be in any way afraid of being out at 4am. On one hand, any bill starting from 50 peso (about 10 euro) up is checked for being counterfeit by its recipient, and even fairly small credit card purchases often require a picture ID. On the other hand, nobody has ever tried to cheat us in a restaurant.
The people are friendly, laid-back, and mostly southern European in appearance. They are also covered with liver spots in a way that I found scary, and to a much higher degree than in Southern Europe, which made me wonder whether Buenos was much sunnier than, say, the south of Spain, or the sunscreen much less popular.
I really loved the way they tried to correct my Spanish, and started thinking that if I lived there for several months I would be fluent. Once I tried to find matches in a supermarket, and having failed in the attempt to find them by myself, asked an employee for cerillas. He led me where the damn things were, pointed at them, and said in Spanish in a schoolteacher tone: "Fosforos. Only Bolivians say cerillas."
Argentinians seem to love demonstrations, dogs and traveling. We'd seen at least 10 demonstrations in about 8 days in Buenos Aires, mostly on various political topics: they supported some party or other, demonstrated against paying of the national debt, in favor of recapturing the Falkland islands "because our brothers' blood is priceless!" (somebody should explain them the concept of sunk costs), and against drugs. Every self-respecting demonstration had drums, and people who beat them with a big stick and a great enthusiasm, and demonstrations seemed to compete among themselves in how much noise they could create. The only exception was a rather sinister-looking demonstration of people in Che Guevara t-shirts with evil-looking faces, who had very big sticks and no drums at all.
There is a great number of dogs, who are just as laid-back as humans. The city was full of people walking dogs, people walking as many as 10 dogs at a time, and a great number of dogs without any visible people present, who nevertheless did not seem to be strays. Picking up the dog shit from the streets is not common, and one should exercise due caution while walking.
The national parks were full of tourists, most of whom were from Argentina. There was quite a lot of people from the other South American countries, too. The parks usually have different prices for Argentinians, people from the local province, people from the local town, people from Mercosur (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay) and all others.
Another interesting feature of the national parks was the languages: posted notices tended to be in Spanish, English, Portuguese and Hebrew.
They didn't, and paid. I used my Finnish passport, and didn't have to pay. When it was time to fly back, the airline clerk instructed me to show both passports to her, the Finnish one to the Argentina border control, and the US passport to the US border control. (Incidentally, I passed the US border control in Miami, for the first time ever, and was absolutely shocked by the Customs and USDA officials addressing me in Spanish. They did switch to English as soon as they noticed my open mouth.)
The combination of high-trust and low-trust features in Argentina is sort of strange. On one hand, locks, bars (not just the drinking establishments) and guards are everywhere. On the other hand, the population, including lone young women, does not seem to be in any way afraid of being out at 4am. On one hand, any bill starting from 50 peso (about 10 euro) up is checked for being counterfeit by its recipient, and even fairly small credit card purchases often require a picture ID. On the other hand, nobody has ever tried to cheat us in a restaurant.
The people are friendly, laid-back, and mostly southern European in appearance. They are also covered with liver spots in a way that I found scary, and to a much higher degree than in Southern Europe, which made me wonder whether Buenos was much sunnier than, say, the south of Spain, or the sunscreen much less popular.
I really loved the way they tried to correct my Spanish, and started thinking that if I lived there for several months I would be fluent. Once I tried to find matches in a supermarket, and having failed in the attempt to find them by myself, asked an employee for cerillas. He led me where the damn things were, pointed at them, and said in Spanish in a schoolteacher tone: "Fosforos. Only Bolivians say cerillas."
Argentinians seem to love demonstrations, dogs and traveling. We'd seen at least 10 demonstrations in about 8 days in Buenos Aires, mostly on various political topics: they supported some party or other, demonstrated against paying of the national debt, in favor of recapturing the Falkland islands "because our brothers' blood is priceless!" (somebody should explain them the concept of sunk costs), and against drugs. Every self-respecting demonstration had drums, and people who beat them with a big stick and a great enthusiasm, and demonstrations seemed to compete among themselves in how much noise they could create. The only exception was a rather sinister-looking demonstration of people in Che Guevara t-shirts with evil-looking faces, who had very big sticks and no drums at all.
There is a great number of dogs, who are just as laid-back as humans. The city was full of people walking dogs, people walking as many as 10 dogs at a time, and a great number of dogs without any visible people present, who nevertheless did not seem to be strays. Picking up the dog shit from the streets is not common, and one should exercise due caution while walking.
The national parks were full of tourists, most of whom were from Argentina. There was quite a lot of people from the other South American countries, too. The parks usually have different prices for Argentinians, people from the local province, people from the local town, people from Mercosur (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay) and all others.
Another interesting feature of the national parks was the languages: posted notices tended to be in Spanish, English, Portuguese and Hebrew.
Monday, April 05, 2010
Argentina
Just got back from my first trip to Latin America, which (the trip, not Latin America) consisted mostly of various parts of Argentina.
It's a damn big country, incidentally. My mother's packing advice was along the lines of "pack for the moderate climate, the glaciers, the rainforest and don't pack too much".
The first words that came to my mind upon seeing Buenos Aires were "old-world charm", which was strange, because I have never seen any in the old world. Or rather there is quite a lot of charm in the old world, but none of the kind that I have ever felt like calling old-world charm.
The second words were "that's fucking huge". Buenos Aires has some streets that are so huge that they have to be seen to be believed.
I expected Argentina to be a reasonably civilized third-world country, but it didn't feel particularly third-worldly to me. The general impression is similar to that of a poorer Western European country, for example Portugal. Nowhere where we'd been was in any way scary (we did not seek out slums, but we weren't careful of where we were going, either), tap water was drinkable though not tasty, the restaurant bills did not have any mysterious extra items, and there were fewer beggars than in Prague, or in fact fewer beggars than in Helsinki after Romania joined the EU. The general impression of Argentina was way more civilized than that of Hungary or Czech republic.
More later.
It's a damn big country, incidentally. My mother's packing advice was along the lines of "pack for the moderate climate, the glaciers, the rainforest and don't pack too much".
The first words that came to my mind upon seeing Buenos Aires were "old-world charm", which was strange, because I have never seen any in the old world. Or rather there is quite a lot of charm in the old world, but none of the kind that I have ever felt like calling old-world charm.
The second words were "that's fucking huge". Buenos Aires has some streets that are so huge that they have to be seen to be believed.
I expected Argentina to be a reasonably civilized third-world country, but it didn't feel particularly third-worldly to me. The general impression is similar to that of a poorer Western European country, for example Portugal. Nowhere where we'd been was in any way scary (we did not seek out slums, but we weren't careful of where we were going, either), tap water was drinkable though not tasty, the restaurant bills did not have any mysterious extra items, and there were fewer beggars than in Prague, or in fact fewer beggars than in Helsinki after Romania joined the EU. The general impression of Argentina was way more civilized than that of Hungary or Czech republic.
More later.
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