I was premature in declaring that summer ends in January. On January 30, just moments after talking about how grateful we were that our regular butcher had remained open for the month, we walked up to an empty carnicería. The produce vendor told us the butcher would be back in March. I laughed, assuming he was joking, but he didn't and pointed at a sign. Closed from February 2 to March 5. They even left for their month-long break three days early. If you can't rely on butchers in Argentina, who's left?
Soon enough, we realized that February is as much if not more of a vacation month as January. Most of the government functions are back, but private businesses take their turn to escape the heat. I don't expound on this among Argentines for fear of coming off too "American", but I have a hard time comprehending how businesses can afford to shut down for an entire month that doesn't even include Christmas. Are their rents that cheap? Do they all own their property? Is there really that much less demand to justify zero revenue?
The stereotypical U.S. pace has some adjusting to do here. In fact, on our very first day in Buenos Aires, we immediately noticed how slowly the city seemed to be moving, despite it being a Thursday in August. That turned out to be because of something else, though—a nationwide strike.
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| Welcome to Argentina. |
To be fair, that was the only national strike we have experienced since moving here (subway strikes are still pretty regular). But it was a good introduction to the change of pace we were in for. There are parts of that we appreciate, like long meals and unhurried conversation. Then there are the parts that feel like a less than ideal use of time.
Take, for example, money. To buy a plane ticket in the U.S., I would go on Kayak, enter my credit card information, and see the e-ticket in my inbox. The actual purchase process takes a minute. Here, because of the cash situation, the process for us to book domestic flights involves bringing physical dollars to an exchange house, changing them to pesos, going to the airline office in person, taking a number, staring at the board, reserving the itinerary, waiting in a separate line to pay, and watching the cashier count out all those bills by hand. It can take literally five hours. And that's not counting the time it took to get the cash in the first place—going to Chile, hopping from one ATM to another withdrawing Chilean pesos, and finding exchange houses to convert those pesos to USD, just to be able to begin the process in Argentina.
The clear fallacy of my complaint is that we could buy those plane tickets with credit cards and save the time. We'd just be paying 50-70% more for them. The cash process described above exists only because the government has set an artificial exchange rate, while putting severe limits on who can buy dollars, and how many. Argentines want dollars to protect themselves against rampant peso inflation, while tourists want more bang for their buck, thus creating the "blue market" and a whole slew of inefficiencies. It didn't have to be like this.
Alas, every government inevitably offers its own definition of "Kafkaesque" (in Spanish: kafkiano). The classic, everyday example: the post office.
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| The perfect place to stamp out frustrations. |
Esperar has a triple meaning in Spanish: to expect, to wait, and to hope. We experienced this gamut of emotions on what ended up being a trek across the city to retrieve a package. The delivery slip instructed us to go to a local branch, so we braced ourselves for a line out the door, based on the horror stories we had already heard. We were pleasantly surprised to see almost no one there. They took our delivery slip, shuffled around in the back room, and returned with... another slip of paper. We were then instructed to go to the main post office at the edge of town. There we saw what we had expected: a line snaking around three walls just to get inside the building. Once inside, a line that ran the length of the building twice. All that just to pay the post office to receive your package. Next, the good ol' number and waiting room before actually, finally, seeing your package. But you're not allowed to take it home until you open the package in front of customs, just in case you have to pay import taxes or present other documentation, like a doctor's note for things like probiotics (seriously). We managed to get out in three hours with the package, which we were told was fast. The stories we had heard usually ended with the package being returned to sender.
I remember an article I read in the newspaper here about some street construction in an upscale neighborhood. They roped off the street in order to fill in some potholes and widen the lanes, because it was a traffic bottleneck. Of course, that meant traffic in the area was even worse during the time that street was closed, which ended up being a period of months. The punchline is that the repair project continued to be delayed for some reason or another, until finally they reopened the street with no work done at all! It's like they're begging for satire.
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| Like by naming a government entity with the word "fast". |
One of our most endearingly Argentine experiences occurred at the Chilean border. Chile, we learned, is notoriously strict with their customs laws and enforces them thoroughly at the border. Our bus driver knew this, so before pulling into the checkpoint, he opened up a secret compartment above his seat and started stashing several bags of yerba mate, hopefully out of dog-nose reach. They have mate in Chile, too, but apparently it's not the same; an Argentine has his preferences.
Crossing the border the other way, there was no such stashing required. In fact, Argentine customs didn't even collect any paperwork from us, and we breezed right through. Sometimes, there's just no need to wait.