"Mi Buenos Aires Querido"

In March of 2012 I went to BA for the first time. When I came back I was asked to write an article about it for a blog called "The delicate strength". I don't know if that blog is still around and how long it might exist, that's why I decided to publish the article on my blog too.

Buenos Aires Trip 2012, Part 1

My first time in Buenos Aires… Three weeks in the haze of voluntary sleep deprivation, shoe shopping, tango classes, daily, or rather "nightly" dancing till 6am, no sight-seeing, frustration, soul searching and tango bliss. Aaah…"Mi Buenos Aires querido…"

Before I start telling you the tale of my journey I need to explain one thing: I started dancing tango in the year 2000, and by 2002 I was already teaching. In 2004 I decided to switch from being a finance person who teaches tango to being a full fledged tango professional who lives from and for tango. Since I have been dancing tango for 12 years now - I've taught, performed and DJ-ed in Europe and the United States - I don't go to the milonga to get exercise or move a little. I go to out for the dances that would allow me to appreciate my lead's musicality, provide me with the connection that I crave within the embrace, amuse me with the lead's skilled and unexpected choice of steps, and allow me to express myself to a receptive and sensitive partner. My body and feet often hurt due to all the dancing I do on a daily basis. For that reason when I go to the milonga I don't want to be danced just so that I don't sit, I want to dance to enjoy, otherwise, many times I'd rather sit. Since I came back often students would come to me and say something like: "If even you had ups and downs there, there is no chance for us to enjoy". But it's actually exactly the opposite way round! People who have been dancing only for a short time still have a great number of potential partners, who have been tangoing longer and who can provide a great experience. The milongas in BA are full of them: mostly porteños - eager, able and unafraid to ask for a dance. That's not the problem. The problem is that the longer you dance and hopefully the better you get, the trickier it gets to find the right partners. Somebody like Chicho for example seems to dance with only 2 to 3 women in the whole world! (OK, even if they were 10, you still get the point, right?) Lucky for me, (How weird is it that I would say this!?) I am by very, very, very far not on Chicho's level, otherwise I would probably be quite lonely. Where I am now there is a whole wonderful, bright pallet of fantastic dancers, who could make me feel as if in heaven and who could have at least a good time dancing with me. The trick is to get them… and here is where my story begins.

Before I left New York I was hardly excited about my trip because I was scared. OK, I have to admit that I am a worrier in general and as such I was worried about things like this: Will I understand them? Is it safe? Where should I keep my money at the milonga? (The answer is - in your bra. If you don't wear one give it to a male friend or figure it out.) Will I manage to get dances since my cabeceos are so bad? Should I bring cash to BA or pay with card? What will my dancing partner do at the milonga since he doesn't speak Spanish? How should I deal with the latinos possibly excessively hitting on me? And so on and so forth….

Friends recommended that my dance partner back then and I stay in Palermo and rent an apartment. This turned out to be really great advice. In the area we wanted - "Palermo SoHo, no more than 12 blocks from La Viruta" - the price of a place with two separate beds, a bath and a kitchen/kitchenette was $1200-1300 for 3 weeks. An average Argentine makes this kind of money in 3 months but when it comes to foreigners they know that they can ask for higher prices. I found the rent high because I was still expecting BA to be cheap, which it wasn't, but renting an apartment is still more inexpensive than a hotel or even a hostel if you will be there for a longer while.

I had stayed overnight in Miami in order to cut in two the 10h flight from NY, so my plane landed in BA around 10:30pm. I had already gathered the info that I should get a car service called "remise" instead of a taxi to bring me to the hotel. The advantage is that the car service charges a fixed price of about $50, which gives them an incentive to bring you quickly to the destination, instead of giving you the scenic route like a pay-per-mile taxi might do. The car service kiosks are all located in a separate area through which everybody passes between Customs and the general area. There is no way to miss them and the representatives all speak English. The car driver was extremely friendly, talked to me all the way to the apartment and gave me his card to call him if I needed "anything". The way he enunciated the word "anything" still makes me think that his decision wasn't dictated only by pity for the confused foreigner, who is coming to visit for the first time. A man in BA just doesn't miss a chance to hit on a girl.

Arriving in Palermo I was excited to see that our building has two metal gates - one after the other -, each with its own key. Turns out that all buildings get locked manually and the buzzers don't work, so that nobody can buzz in a stranger, and most buildings have at least one metal gate. Besides, most balconies or at least the ones on the lower levels have metal nets for robbery protection. The fact that the locals feel the necessity for such measures tells me that life even in Palermo - the very heart of BA - is not safe and yet I only twice felt uneasy on the street late at night.

Back at the apartment the landlord was waiting for me with the key and all necessary information. I settled in, took a shower and… at 2am headed out to my first milonga. :) I was actually quite uneasy since I didn't know where I was, didn't know exactly how far away the milonga was or if it was at all safe for a woman to walk around alone at night. As I was walking down one of the avenues I spotted a man moving with his arms stretched away from his body and turning his torso in one direction for a couple of steps, then in the other. He was practicing his dissociation at 2am on the street!!! A closer look revealed an American tango dancer who I knew. :) What a small world… At my first milonga, "El Yeite", I met quite some foreigners that I new from the US and Europe, who turned out to be almost the only people I danced with that night. In my BA journal I wrote down that the locals are hard nuts to crack. And that on my first night! Little did I know…