Coins of the Realm

Argentine coins

I mentioned in an earlier post that, by a mere coincidence, Jen could catch a bus across the street from our apartment that would take her all the way downtown, to within a block or two of her office. As it turns out, she also has the option of walking around the corner from our building (one block) and catching a different bus that takes her to the front door of her office. Amazing!

For the Americans in our reading audience, you are aware that public transportation in the U.S. stinks. Except for a very few urban centers, the only reasonable way to get where you need to go in my country is by automobile. However, one of the nice features of our life when we live overseas is our lack of dependence on the automobile. When we live in the States, Jen has her car and I have mine. While we go places together on the weekend, during the week we travel independent of each other - each of us burning gas and insurance premiums as we move around our individual environments, a thousand miles a month apiece. When we live overseas, we never drive cars - ever. Although I really do enjoy driving, what a relief not to have a car!

We have, in the past, had the luck to live in a few places where the public transportation was cheap and easy. We rode the city buses in Bulgaria and Slovenia - efficient and inexpensive. In Kyiv, Ukraine, the metro was ten cents a ride. One thin dime to go all the way across the big city! When I lived in San Francisco 30 years ago, the bus was a quarter - I wonder what a bus ride in S.F. costs today...three bucks? Which brings me to the bus service in our new city, Buenos Aires.

Joe's favorite bus: the 29

The bus service here is pretty much awesome. Mainly because you can get where you need to go easily, with a minimum of hoofing it, for about thirty cents a ride. There are dozens of independent bus companies that make up the BA bus system, driving zig-zagging routes throughout this huge city of 13 million. The price structure and method of payment for each is identical: you get on, tell the driver approximately where you plan to go, and pay between 1.10 and 1.25 pesos by dropping your coins into the machine. Easy, right? Es muy facil! This, however, is where it gets tricky.

Luckily for us, the current conversion rate for Argentine pesos into US dollars is almost exactly four to one: 4 pesos = 1 dollar/ 1 peso = a quarter. This first-grade level math allows for super-quick calculations on the fly and keeps us from accidently paying 8 bucks for a small bottle of Tabasco. So far, so good. We are handling notes ranging from 100 pesos (25 bucks) to 2 pesos (50 cents) - eezey-peezey, no?
"But whaddya have smaller than a 2 peso note?"
Ah...we have coins in Argentina! One peso coins, 50 centavo coins, 25c, 10c...Unfortunately, we have approximately 112 total coins in circulation in a country of 41 million people...we are suffering a severe coin shortage in this huge metropolis where the labrynthine bus system takes - only coins. Yikes!

We had been tipped off to this situation and began (like everyone else in BA) hoarding coins early on. One actually starts planning their purchases around the potential return in monedas. We've learned to try to never to buy anything for an even number of pesos, unless using a 5 peso note. Example: if something costs 14 pesos and you pay with a 20, you'll receive three 2 peso notes in change (every merchant outside the major chain supermarkets is hoarding, too). If you pay with a 10 and a 5, they have to give you a 1 peso coin...score! Better yet, buy something for 12.50, pay with a 10 and two 2s and get back 1.50 in coins...GOOOOL!!!!!!!
It's getting a little crazy now that our once fat stash of coinage has dwindled down to nuthin'. The last couple of days we've been reduced to buying odd amounts of junk-food just for the price -otherwise, we would be forced to walk across town. Tomorrow, we're going to visit a reputable bank and beg for coins. I plan on shaving and wearing a tie.

The Hounds of Bs As

Pack Leader

Bs As, as you can guess, stands for Buenos Aires - you see that often here in addition to BAires (pronounced "buy-res", well kind of). Before we moved to BsAs, we thought about what it might be like. Images of stereotypes tred to push their way into our heads, but we tried to keep an open mind. Now that we've arrived, we've become more concerned with observing and noticing . . . things that seem to stand out as common . . . things that help you start to form a real picture of the place, culture, people, and  . . . dogs.  As I do in every country, I can’t help but notice the dogs. Slovenia has its trained dogs, the US has its untrained dogs, Ukraine has its stray dogs, Laos has its wild dogs, and Argentina has its walked dogs.



Which one is yours again?

Dogs are popular pets here. Cats, not so much. We live in the city, mind you, which means apartment living, and we have seen every size, shape, color, and fur length under the sun. The most outstanding feature of dog maintenance is the dog-walker. Joe had told me that the Recoleta neighborhood was famous for their walkers . . . but I could have never imagined how many dogs one walker can manage!

We walk for exercise in the mornings and, without fail, see 4 or 5 dog packs each with its corresponding human holding the leashes. Its amazing how each group seems so content, calm, and aware of the routine . . . I swear they look like they are smiling as they trot through the streets. Only occasionally do we see any aggression among or between them. I really can’t believe how they “all get along.” The unfortunate part of this little tradition is, you guessed it, failure to do “doo” diligence. We’ll save that for another blog entry as Joe has devised a special sidewalk “scan and step” method. Sometimes he'll miss an interesting haircut, outfit, or building we pass by. He's committed to looking at the ground. For that reason, we’ve been lucky so far.

The Suitcases Go into Storage

Home Sweet Home

The news: we’ve moved into our new apartment. We have been “moving” since sometime in December when we began packing our stuff - sending boxes to Argentina, selling some items, giving away things, putting some essentials into storage – but, after living in five different places in the last 19 days, today we stop moving for the next eleven months (at least).



We looked at about a dozen apartments in our first week in Buenos Aires before settling on a brand-new, never-lived-in, modern loft in a somewhat obscure neighborhood about 5 blocks east of our temporary digs on Av. Coronel Diaz in Palermo Viejo. Our original plan was to find a place in Palermo – the oh-so- hip part of town renowned for the best cafes, restaurants, bars, and shops. After looking at a number of overpriced, cramped, semi-clean apartments in Palermo, we realized our budget would not allow us to combine primo apartment with groovy neighborhood, so we opted for a nice apartment in a “where’s that again?” kind of location.



View from the roof of our building





Actually, everyone knows where our building is located (give the cross streets and every Buenos Aires resident knows the ubicacion), but it’s hard to get people to agree on the neighborhood designation. Is it Palermo? Is it Recoleta? Is it Barrio Norte? We actually told everyone it was Barrio Norte until I researched our ‘hood on the internet and discovered it is officially one block inside the borders of Recoleta, but not the identifiably fancy “Parisian” part of Recoleta.

Our neighborhood is middle-class, leafy, mostly quiet – we like it. By pure accident, the bus that stops in front of our building goes directly to Jen’s future workplace downtown. At 30 cents a journey, it looks like a fabulous stroke of luck. We moved in just hours ago and our stuff is strewn everywhere. We'll post more pix of our apartment and neighborhood later.