2. September 2016 | Von Lisa Hersacher 
Macromedia Blog

What’s up Buenos Aires?

Today I’m going to tell you about my experiences in the first month of my semester in beautiful Buenos Aires, Argentina. A lot of exciting things happened- so buckle up guys!

Buenos Aires

First I might give you a brief overview of the city. Buenos Aires is the biggest city of Argentina and also the capital. It’s parted in 48 districts, where Palermo (that’s where I live) Recoleta, San Telmo, Centro and La Boca are the most known ones. Around B.A are some ghettos where tourists should never ever go! I repeat- never! These ghettos are called “Villas” and are inhabited by the very poor people in Argentina. As poverty also brings criminality, it is not safe to go into a villa. Anyway if you keep an eye on your valuables and you keep paying attention to your surroundings, B.A is absolutely safe to travel.

The city has outstanding architecture which I am still blown away by! There are magnificent buildings out of the richer times of Argentina in the 1920s right next to a house that could be easily blown away by the wind. The mixture of architecture and style is absolutely characteristic for Buenos Aires. Also the Porteños (that’s how people from B.A are called) like to paint there houses in bright and colourful ways, so it feels like walking through an art gallery when you are walking down the streets. Especially in La Boca in an area that is called “Caminito”.

In general there is a lot to see here. For example the famous Sunday-markets in San Telmo where you can find all kinds of handcrafted goodies. On these markets you can really feel the Argentinian lifestyle. Everyone is drinking mate, the typical tea here in Argentina, they are dancing tango on the streets and on every corner there are awesome street musicians having a party with the people walking by.  Furthermore there is the impressive obelisk in the centre of the city, the stadium “La Bombonera” which is the home of the famous soccer team “Boca Juniors”, the opera house “Teatro Colón” and so much more!

Rosario

But not only Buenos Aires has a lot to offer! So far my roommate and I travelled to Rosario, which is not only the second biggest city of Argentina but also a beautiful lively city with a nice river and amazing monuments. Another trip on a long weekend took us to Córdoba which is about a ten hour bus ride away from B.A. The weekend we spent there was super busy, we walked around the city one day, the next we visited a small hippie town called “Capilla del Monte”.

Apparently you can see aliens from there but somehow we didn’t see any :D. On the same day we drove to another town called “Carlos Paz”. This city is known as THE party village so of course we went out there and it was amazing. But I will talk about the nightlife a bit later. In the last day of our trip we went to the german town Villa General Belgrano where we had german food and of course our beloved german beer. A lot of other trips are already planned, like visiting the Iguazu waterfalls, quickly hop over to Uruguay and travel to the south to go to Patagonia. I’ll keep you updated!

Universidad Austral

Quickly in between I will now tell you something about the Universidad Austral. Because of course, firstly we are here to study ;). The university has three different campuses in Argentina, two of them are in Buenos Aires the other one is located in Rosario. The campus we are on is right in the centre of B.A. in the district of Recoleta.

It is a beautiful old building with a stunning entrance, but unfortunately it had a gas leak and had to be evacuated before we arrived. So for now, until the problem is fixed, we have class in a university branch. The bigger campus is called Pilar campus and is about one hour by bus from the centre of the city. We’ve only been there once for the orientation day but it was impressively big. The classes and the professors are really interesting and fun. The only thing we have to get used to again is the compulsory attendance but it is manageable with only three days of class per week. In general the staff of the Universidad Austral is really helpful and gives you a hand whenever you need it.

Nightlife

Now to something more fun! Let’s talk about the nightlife, because it is outstanding here in Argentina! The clubs here are called “boliche” and typically they play all kinds of music styles. Mostly Cumbia and Reggeaton, which I had to get used to in the beginning, I have to admit. Next to clubs, there are a lot of nice bars here as well. In some you can even play beer pong- yay! Important to know about going out here is that the argentines are going to the club really, really late. They won’t go before 2.30am, which for us is already pretty late.

Another typical argentine thing is Fernet and coke. Hell they love their Fernet and coke, they drink it all the time! Fernet is originally an Italian liquor and tastes similar to Jägermeister.

Now an important information for the girls! The men here are really stubborn when it comes to flirting. Here they are called “chamulleros” which means roughly translated “charmer” but comes from the Spanish wort “chamullar” which means talking someone into something. And that is absolutely what they are trying to do. There are signs to recognize a chamullero.

Listen carefully girls, better take notes! First they will put their hand on your shoulder, then they will start telling you sweet, sweet lies like “you are the most beautiful woman on earth”; one guy even said to me I would be so beautiful I should sit on an altar so everyone can worship me. Yeah they like exaggerating :D. Then they will take your hand and ask you to dance. You won’t be able to get rid of his hand because he won’t let go. As I said- they are stubborn. So be prepared. When a guy approaches you and touches your shoulder- run! 😀 Except he’s hot. 😉

Alright, that was a lot of information! I hope you liked the article and I could show you how awesome Buenos Aires is! I’ll keep you updated!

See ya soon!

Lisa

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