Long journey

After two ten hour flights, I´m finally hear, tapping away on a weird spanish keyboard in the hostel tango, Monserrat, Buenos Aires.

Both flights were pretty fun, confounding expectations. They´ve got an amazing safety video on Delta airlines featuring a hostess who looks like she´s just been cut out of plastic: make sure you put your luggage in the overhead "bins", and fasten your seatbelts in case of rough air" etc. Atlanta was swarming with US marines who seemed to be heading to Amsterdam, and we were treated to a good two hours of a CNN presenter speculating about whether Rihanna would testify against her husband/boyfriend-whatever.

Finally got into Buenos Aires at seven this morning. It looks like it´s rained loads: the countryside was green as far as I could see. I also met an Argentine on the plane who warned me about which areas of Buenos Aires not to visit and which verbs to avoid: coger for one. I´ve also yet to master the art of Argentine slang which seems to be quiet similar to Argot in French: Cafe becomes feca and so forth.

I wandered round Buenos Aires this afternoon, or rather the central area near my hostel, Monserrat. To get there, I first traversed the financial area of the city, called "La City" in homage to the renowned acumen of British bankers. Its actually suprisingly impressive: small skysrapers of glass and metal. The bits of Buenos Aires that I´ve seen so far, down Avenida de Mayo, seem like an older and more tawdry version of Barcelona, a city of the early twentieth century struggling into the twenty-first. I did see loads of interesting buildings though(see pictures on facebook).

The only problem is that they´re surrouded by parks inhabited by homeless people and their dogs. Peronism, and Evita Peron in particular, still exert a hypnotising effect over the people. I only had to walk ten or twenty yards from the hostel to see graffiti featuring the famous "descamisados". Anyway, that´s all for now.