Vos Domestic Product

Speaking the local language here in Argentina will make it a lot harder for me to speak Spanish next time I’m in Mexico.

The word “you” is pretty common in most languages, even if you subdivide “you” if it’s formal vs. informal, plural vs. singular, male vs. female, weekend vs. weekday, tall vs. short, cloudy vs. sunny, or clever vs. not. I was thus disappointed to learn that I was using "you" incorrectly while here. The second-person singular is “vos” instead of “tu” like almost everywhere else that speaks Spanish. It’s also conjugated differently.

It's nonetheless way better than the German approach. 

I had this conversation with my host (entirely in Spanish, mostly translated):

I’m going to get an uber.

You’re going to fuck an uber?

No. Get. Coger.

Coger means “to fuck” here.

I’m sure it means “get” in Mexico and Spain and can be used to get a cab or rideshare, but I’ll try to blend in by following local rules. I learned this from my host, Victoria, seen here with a smile as usual:

Argentina is famous for its beef. Paradoxically, they don’t typically ask how you want it cooked and serve it well done. This is also popular in Brazil and many Asian countries. This is one way I’m not even gonna try to blend with the locals. Argentinian beef is a gross domestic product when so gruesomely overcooked.   

I horrified my host by telling her I put empanadas in my toaster. Makes sense to me. They're the right size. They get crispy on the outside and warm on the inside. 

Palta is avocado (aguacate elsewhere). There are many other examples of different words down here, but their management of -illa/o is most entertaining:

Strawberries – called “fresas” in most other Spanish-speaking countries – are called “frutillas” here. It means “diminutive cute little fruit” or something vaguely like that. Local strawberries are appropriate if you're thirsty. 

Butter - called "mantequilla" in most other Spanish-speaking countries - is called "manteca" here. So, Argentina considers strawberries relatively cute, unlike butter. I'm cool with that. 

Slidewalks

The locals here in Argentina, like in Bremen, are as warm as their Januaries. Here's only one example. They invited me to a going away party for one of their labmates. This is not standard practice. I'm not in their lab. I'm just a visitor. But I was invited and they made me feel welcome. 

The local infrastructure gets bonus points for having countdown timers on all traffic lights, like some other countries. Not the USA, since it would somehow lead to more road rage shootings. Not sure how. 

Trash cans are elevated and are walled with grids instead of solid metal or plastic. This isn't a complaint. The function of a trash can is to enable you to put trash in it and forget about it. They do that just fine. I just don't see why. Gerv speculated they were elevated to deter animals. He is a brilliant engineer. But I live in bear country with public trash cans that (like most of them) have solid walls and extend all the way to the bottom to provide much greater capacity.

Putting holes in the sides of those trash cans would only help spread the smell, which would attract more bears and get tourists killed. Oooh. I like it! So I now appreciate why local trash cans are as they are (never mind the absence of local bears). I hereby remind these nonexistent Argentine streetroaming bears that I am not a tourist; I'm here for work. Go eat an Englishman. Viva Las Malvinas. 

The sign below prohibits putting anything there without a bag. Obviously ineffective. 

I'm less keen on other infrastructure. 

I'm afraid to walk the streets at night. 

I wasn't walking through Las Ramblas in Barcelona, where I was pickpocketed several times. The most they ever got was a plastic hotel key while I said to the thief in Spanish: "Mi carretera es en mi hotel."

I wasn't afraid walking around Mazatlan, capital of the Sinaloa Cartel, even after there was a drugwar murder right across the street from me.

I fear the sidewalks. 

Sidewalks launch out pseudorandomly like a Picasso painting of and after a sustained artillery strike. They somehow manage every angle except flat. My buddy Duncan referenced Escher instead of Picasso. Here's an example. Given time, trees beat concrete every time. 

The elevator in my assigned housing requires riders to close two doors to use it, rather than closing doors themselves.

Assigned housing is iffy. The bed frame is broken. The mattress and pillow are soft and lumpy. Ants abounded when I moved in. Fans made a never-changed vacuum cleaned filter look clean The shower is tiny. The bathroom does include a bidet, which would be nice but I never use them. The towels and blankets could be combined into one airline blanket. They would then be thicker than the walls, which transmit sound like air. Internet is intermittent. My room has a clock, which was broken. I added a battery and it's still broken. The microwave door is broken. The A/C works wonderfully, which is worth quite a lot. The nearby gym has no A/C and limited hours. Keys and locks are silly.

They've eliminated coins, which is reasonable with such high inflation. Most of the streets around my apartment are one-way. This is quite convenient for me since I don't drive here. You just have to look one way before crossing the street. And also down to find the right angle on the slidewalk. 

American Undercover

I'm now in Santa Fe, Argentina on a Fulbright Specialist Award. My blog posts remain highly correlated with travel, and you're welcome. I'm even more boring at home. 

I've been playing American Undercover like I often do abroad. It's easy - just lie about your nationality. Many Americans play Canadian and that's pretty uncreative. If I were a foreigner, I'd suspect anyone claiming to be Canadian as a Fauxmerican. And if I were Canadian, I'd be annoyed at all the lying Yankees apeing my nationality. Although I'd be polite about it. 

I have limited myself to English-speaking countries due to obvious linguistic inadequacy. I was often Mexican in Timisoara because there was almost no chance of running into any real Mexicans (although in fact I did). In Argentina, I'd be expected to speak Spanish with a flawless Mexican accent. Never had it, never will - though I do try. 

You may think: but the differences between and within Englishspeaking accents are really obvious. Yeah. To you, fellow native English speaker. Can you spot the differences among different Spanish accents? Also, I might have been born somewhere and learned English somewhere else. 

For the first time, I played accidentally. I actually told an Uber driver the truth [Translated from Spanish]:

Where are you from?

Colorado.

Ah! Canada! Very beautiful.

Yes, very beautiful. 

Colorado is in Canada?

Excuse me, I got a WhatsApp. 

I was also graced with a free shot this morning. I sipped a morning coffee and realized it had whiskey. The waiter smiled and said he gave me a coffee from my country because I was friendly and left a generous tip last week. Took me a while to remember I had told them I'm from Ulster. I do have an Irish first name and Welsh last name. I do not know whether "Irish Coffee" is also "Northern Irish Coffee." I do know I got a free shot of whiskey. 

But region-based food names are highly suspect anyway. I keep encountering the same phenomenon as in my many Eurodining and other posts: so-called "American" food. Yes, technically I'm in the Americas now; no, according to many people I've asked, they don't mean "pan-American food" but specifically "USA American food." I also don't think they mean that the food contains Americans. 

This is only a partial list:

American ice cream. 

American cream is an ice cream flavor. Eww!

They also have Russian cream. Sounds worse. 

American ice cream "The Danube."

I lived in Linz, which is on the Danube. The Danube is very long but goes nowhere near Argentina. 

American pizza. 

   American sandwich.

American sandwich and Gringo milanese. 

Just threw this in for my Germanspeaking reader. (Yes, you, Gerv.)

First, I don't recall seeing "Berlin pizza" anywhere in Germany. 

Second, the menu does not include pizza with tuna fish, onions, and black olives [nor any of those three ingredients], which is common in Germany. No, really. That horrifies Americans but it's good. No, really.

Kentucky Pizza. It's a major chain that PREDATES KFC. That's right, If you think they ripped off the design from KFC, it's the other way around. The friendly "Kentucky" waiter asked me if KFC is a fancy restaurant in the US and I said that's where you take the junior high school football team after they lose. 

"Costilla" does mean "rib" but not "reab."

This is my favorite so far. All four of these earthly delights in one place?! Be still my beating heart! and hand....

On the opposite end of favorite, all the sushi restaurants in Santa Fe (population almost 400K) serve canned-tuna sushi. That includes western Colorado, quite far from any source of tuna. Ouray (population 900) had a sushi place that got uncanned tuna. The salsa sushi wasn't so exciting either. 

(Dis)honorable mention for the pizza cone. Brilliant. Add Doritos, deep fry it, license it to Taco Bell. 

I also grant an award for design to Fabric sushi from Buenos Aires. I've never seen any interior like this. Obviously a lot of work. Masterful indirect lighting. 

Come again? The bottom one reminds me of something. Very warm and archetypal.

Add some pink paint and soft lighting, a melange of tasteful aromas, maybe a little mood music. Those plants could be painted black and moved up top where they belong, perhaps carefully trimmed in the appropriate triangular pattern. A fishy smell would match the sushi theme.

 

However, our efforts to mimic reality might not include Aunt Flo. Also no crabs or “chlams” on the menu even though it’s a sushi joint. And no beer cuz we can’t have any yeast nearby.