"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 4

So often I would ask girls where they bought some great looking tango clothes and almost always the answer would be "In BA". That's why I took two suitcases, filled up the small one and put it in the big one for my flight down. The sweet anticipation of the fabulous clothes and shoes I would buy quickly got substituted for the frustration of not finding any clothes that I like and only uncomfortable or/and ugly shoes. Needless to say that one of my suitcases travelled back empty. I wasn't really desperate to buy clothes but certainly in more than dire need for shoes, so I ended up buying only one T-shirt, which I can't even wear to the milonga, a pair of white lead's shoes from a company called Tango Leike (they are super light and comfy), 4 pairs of follower's shoes from Alanis and 1 pair from Artisenal. Just to clarify, gentlemen - with those 5 new pairs of follower's shoes now I own a proud total of 9 pairs. And I call myself a professional dancer… Anyway, I had never heard of Alanis or Artisenal before. Years ago I started off with Flabella and then moved on to Neo Tango, but since the quality of the Neo Tango shoes dropped so much I decided to switch again. My first impulse was to go and check out Flabella, since I remember liking their quality. The sales representatives there seemed to live in some parallel universe where there are no clients waiting in front of their eyes. The 3 sales women extensively chatted with each other after which one sat down to chill and stare out of the window while I was waiting for somebody to end up paying attention to me. The other client had already gotten some shoes and was trying them on. Turns out that Flabella has some nice designs for small feet but for my "huge" size 9 feet they had only some quite unappealing styles. Same with Tango Leike. Comme il Faut was out of question anyway since they have never been comfortable to me. Artisenal has custom made shoes but they also sell pre-made shoes. The pair that I bought would have been really comfortable if there wasn't a two-finger-wide gap between my arch and the sole of the shoe. Same applies to the Alanis shoes that I bought. Alanis makes shoes in regular width and in wide, which I liked. They produce a batch of shoes and when they sell them out they don't make more in the same colors. On one hand this means that there won't be too many girls out there with exactly the same shoes but on the other hand makes shopping a little more difficult since they always need to check if they have your size in the style and color you like. The internet shows only one Alanis store but they actually have two locations. The one I liked, in Palermo, is not on the internet and since it's quite hidden and not very busy Carmelo, the sales representative, does a great job being super attentive and helpful. Their shoes are soft and well padded, although the longer I wear them the more I have the feeling that the padding is getting compressed and rather useless. In all shoe stores it was definitely best to pay in dollars, as it was in most other stores too actually. In the majority of the shoe places they had additional discounts if one paid cash or in dollars. I hear that things change all the time but for me it made most sense to bring dollars to Argentina and either exchange them there for a much better rate than I got in New York, or just pay in dollars. The stores were offering the best exchange rates of all in order to entice you to pay in foreign currency. The way I see it is that right now the Argentines don't have much trust in the banks AND in the strength of their currency, that's why they prefer real pieces of paper with dollar or euro signs on them instead of electronic numbers in their bank account, or very real but highly inflational pesos. By the way, did you know that the symbol for the Argentinian peso is exactly the same as for the US dollar? I didn't, so when I saw the price of the car service being $200 I think I choked. They sometimes specify AR$ versus US$.

In Argentina you often need to leave some extra time for things to get done. Like one porteño said: "Here there is a line for everything." At first I didn't feel that. On the way to BA the procedures at the airport went fast and I got to the apartment 1.5 hours after I landed. For that on the way back I had to spend 2.5 hours at the airport itself waiting on 4 consecutive lines. In the end saw myself forced to cut the last line and run to the gate in order get on the plane 10 min before the door closes and I would miss the flight. The other time when I really felt it was when I went to the company "Personal" to buy a phone card. If you ever need a phone card go to "Claro" or may be one of the other providers, but never to "Personal". At the "Personal" store my dancing partner and I had to wait 20 min for the "receptionist" to ask us why we were there and take the data from our passports. (Yes, you need to bring a passport if you want to buy a phone card.) Then we sat down and waited for almost a whole hour for the 3 people in front of us to get taken care of by the 4 employees in the store. When we finally sat down in front of a representative the information field on her computer was showing that we were being "helped" for 20 min already, while we were stunned with the info that they are currently out of phone cards. No arguing that the receptionist told us that they have them could make one magically appear or undo all the waiting. Sadly. What I also learned from the continuation of this experience was that an Argentine phone card does not work in an European phone. But the phone company won't tell you that. Or at least not at the moment of you buying the card. Then, once you have it and want to return it you find yourself in a Catch 22 situation from which you can come out only in two ways - either with a phone purchased from the company who sold you the phone card, in which phone that card will work; or if you don't want to buy a phone - with the same Argentinian phone card, which is yours to keep just like the money you paid for it is theirs to keep.