Third Weekend Wrap-Up

So thanks to the less than reliable internet here today, I lost a rather long, extensive, and exciting blog post.  I turned my computer off as punishment.  I figured I’d try to re-write it later tonight.  Lucky, we’ve had some fun in the ensuing few hours, so now I don’t just have to re-write, I get to expand.  But first, back to where I started this afternoon…

 

Third Weekend Wrap-Up

 

Sorry the Passing Through Palermo blog hasn’t been so readily overflowing with updates these last few days.  Plowing through the end of my first week of classes took some recently unpracticed focus.  No worries though.  Tearing it up with classic style.

 

So Friday night was pretty much the most perfect Argentinean night.  We went to the dinning hall here for the homemade pizza.

 

Pizza here! Oh how do I describe you?  Perhaps a haiku:

 

Pizza Argentine

Oh how you don’t need sauce

Just cheese and olives

 

But yeah, Pizza here gives Chi-town deep dish a run for its money.  Well I guess it’s more akin to giving Backroom or In-n-Out Convenience store a run for their monedas, because it’s definitely more new York style.  Actually Italian apparently.  We have an Italian girl here.  She said so, so it must be true. 

 

Fainá also.  It’s this weird and delicious thing here.  You buy a slice of it with your pizza.  It’s fried chick peas.  Kinda like a hummus pizza-slice.  You put it on top of your pizza and eat it like a sandwich.  Quite delectable.

 

Man what a tangent.  So Friday night.  After residencía dinner, we went to the corner bar for some wine, from like 11 to midnight.  Then we cabbed over to Milión.

 

Frequent PTP readers (“Passing Through Palermo,” yeah, that’s right I can abbrev my own blog) will remember Milión from before; it’s where Michelle took me on my second night in town.

 

So, Milión is this beautiful old mansion/townhouse, which I really didn’t get the full scope of when Mich and I ate in the backyard courtyard.

 

You enter the courtyard through this tiny little unmarked tunnel, walk up this sweeping marble staircase, onto a grand marble balcony on the second floor.  This opens up to an oldish yet somehow modern wooden bar and the rest of the dining space.  The real charm of the place are the second and third floors. 

 

The second floor is basically just the preserved house.  Instead of beds they have couches, but besides that, it’s really just a beautiful mansion with great modern art hanging everywhere.  We snagged one of the rooms right around 1, which was quite lucky because the house really started to fill up after that. 

 

There were about 8 of us, all lounging around on these beautiful old leather couches, and it really felt like we were at some millionaire’s house party. 

 

The coolest part of the house is the top/third floor.  It’s the converted attic, and the ceiling is still unfinished, there was a projector playing 80’s music videos on the wall, and a tiny little bar that was no bigger than an innertube around the bar tender.  And it was our lucky night, the bartender was freaking out because a bunch of Argentineans had ordered a few hundred pesos worth of drinks and then left, but the bar-back had brought them all up from the downstairs bar.  As he was yelling to the bar-back, I asked if he would let us buy them for half price.  He was more than willing to get the drinks off his hands, and I got a bottle of expensive Champaign for $20 pesos, or about $6 us dollars.  Woot!

 

 

So we schmoozed around the penthouse party till about 4:30 in the morning, when the fun really began.  Somehow, when we left the building as the place was closing, we fell in with these two Argentine girls.  Me and two other guys and a girl from NYU just started talking to these girls on the street corner, and somehow we all ended up in a restaurant down the street, sharing litres of Quilmes and French fries and having epic all encompassing conversations, 100% in Spanish, till about 6:30 in the morning!  The girls were students from UBA, one was an architecture student, one was a polisci major.  Too cool.  When the sun came up, we all went separate ways.  Me and Jasmin (the girl from NYU) were walking home, and after I dropped her off at her homestay, I was mentally preparing myself for a long, but pleasant walk home for the 20 or so blocks (down the major, very safe, main street) when I realized that it was 7:00 and the Subte was on the verge of opening.  I walked until I saw the open signs lit up, jumped on the first train, and was home in my bed 10 minutes later.  Well, not exactly 10 minutes later, I stopped by the café across the street from my dorm to say Buenos Dias to the owner who knows my order every morning.  Then to bed around 7:30am!

 

For those keeping track at home:

 

Study-Abroad Goals Met Friday Night:

1. Stay up till the sun comes up.
2. Get breakfast before going to bed.
3. Become friends with porteños

 

 

Great night.  And just as nice, I woke up four hours later Saturday around noon feeling epically refreshed and almost giddy (okay well definitely giddy) at the night I had just had…. [Moving into abreve mode again] Went to the café, did some homework (yeah yeah yeah, it finally happened, I’m a student again), got a call from Jake, the two of us went to Palermo SoHo (the uber trendy shopping area), checked out a classic-High Fidelity-esque record store, checked out the swatch shop, fell in love with a watch, met up with some more friends, went to Mark’s Café and Deli, a restaurant opened by an American in 2001 and the ONLY place in BA to get a real American style brunch and iced coffee, did some more wandering, went home, went to dinner, [FREEZE!]

 

Dinner.  Saturday night.  Perfect meal.  (How does this keep happening?)

 

So a bunch of us from master decided to back to Don Julio, the restaurant you may recall from my second night here with NYU. 

 

Let me just say right now, anyone that comes to visit me down here, this is where I’ll take you first.

 

It’s a straight-up gaucho parilla, but uber-nice.  The owner/host and the waiters really show what classic service is really like, did everything to make our dinner (for 8!) perfect.  When I asked them what the difference between the three differently adjectived Befe de Chorizo was, the owner took me back to the grill and have the chef show me the different raw cuts of meat.  Too cool.  As I was talking to the chef, I asked him what he makes himself after work, and he said the parillada (mixed grill) and specifically the kidneys, chorizo sausage (which like in Mexico is absolutely delish, but in BA is all beef, and not spicy), and….. um…. Cajones. 

 

And I’m thinking to myself, why not!?! You only live once, so I ordered a round of beef kidney, heart, chorizo, throat, and testies for the table.  Let’s just say, one of the above was a little to much to handle, but the rest were superb.

 

So we go all out, 5 course meal, appetizers, salad, more appetizers, entree (STEAK!), and dessert.  I know what you’re thinking, hundreds Sam, maybe more.  Well you’re right, this amazing meal cost $600 pesos.  Sounds like a lot right?  Wrong.  Let’s do some math.

 

$600 / 8 people = $75 pesos / 3.5 = $21 dollars US.  Oh, and did I mention we drank wine the whole time, from 11 till 2:30 in the morning?

 

That’s right 21 bucks.  For one of the best meals of my life.  And I know I keep hammering on how good the food is, and how cheap, but it really is mind-blowing.  I’ve had meals here that I would expect to pay at least a hundred dollars for the in the US and not one time have I paid more than 25 dollars American to eat.  Or at a bar for that matter.  I’m pretty sure moving to BA for 5 months is the best possible way to save money in this economy.  I highly recommend it, especially if you like meat.  Well, only if you like meat really.  Not entirely true though.  There is a very interesting, and almost comically underground vegetarian culture here.  The restaurants are totally unmarked most of the time, but the three times I’ve been (cause really I needed to eat vegetables at some point) it was just amazing.

 

And so Saturday came to a conclusion.

 

Today you might ask?  Today was a good lazy Sunday, filled with lots and lots of homework.  Me, Jake, and Lindsay went to the local starbucks equivalent (Café Martinez) and worked for a bunch of hours. 

 

After coming home and mate-circling there was some long hanging out time around the residencia, watched some fútbol, and then was swept up in a kinda nuts adventure.

 

We decided that we wanted to cook food for Oscar night.  We, you may inquire?  Me, two other guys, and 4 girls from around the dorm.  So we headed over to the super market to pick up the necessary supplies for pasta, sautéed veggies, and dessert.  Get everything for a 8ish person dinner for about 20 bucks American, and head home. 

 

Interesting problem.  Power’s out at home.  Crap!  Tons of food, no power, BUT WE STILL HAVE GAS!  So we head up to the kitchen to proceed to cook a giant dinner with nothing but the light from our cell phones.  That’s right.  We didn’t even cook by candle light.  Cell phone screen.  And there were no plates not locked up, so all eight of us (and by this time, a bunch of other people had decided they wanted to buy into our feast so it was really more like 12) ate pasta all together out of our one big industrial pot that we mixed our sauce, pasta, and sautéed-in-white-wine-and-garlic vegetables in,  along with French bread and asparagus.  One of the best meals I’ve ever taken part in cooking.  And the best meal I’ve ever cooked in the dark.  And we managed to clean up the whole kitchen in the dark as well. 

 

And you know what happened next.  I know you do.

 

The moment we turned off the water and put away the last dish, the power came back on.  Damn you Murphy! 

 

But it was just in time to watch the Oscars.  In awfully dubbed Spanish.  But I toughed it out, trying to focus on the Spanish, but finding it unbelievably difficult because they really just laid it on top of the English, and my brain can barely decode one language, let alone two at once.

 

I’m actually still toughing it out.  Just saw slumdog win best song.  Love that film.  And love that Heath Ledger actually got the props he deserved.  And love the choice in host.  Really funny stuff.  Miss watching the Oscars with you especially Mom.  I know how you love them.

 

Anyways.  After more than two thousands words of update, I feel like you’re pretty caught up.  Or at least I hope I’ve done a bit to make up for a few days of being off the grid.  I’m having a great time (duh), and I’m more than ready for week two of class. 

 

I’ll try and talk to you all early this week.  I have my first day with my charity volunteer thing, and I’ll have to tell you how that goes.

 

Chao, Sam