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So we got there and it wasn´t as painful as expected! We had emailed a hostel before arriving and confused it with one in the book, a good mistake as this hostel turned our to be really nice.
The communal feel of staying in hostels feels strange at first, probably as we are very used to being in our own space at home. After a while though it feels nice and you look around for more people when the numbers are scarce.
Tango City Inn hostel had all we needed, very lovely staff who spoke great English without objection but encouraged your Spanish (just what we need), a cool bar, happy hour, pool table and really nice clean rooms. We have now moved to a sister hostel as such just down the road and it is just as nice - grand old building, five stories high, wooden and tiled floors and iron banisters. Our new place has french doors to our room, how posh!
BA has a lot to offer. The four of us spent the days we had walking around seeing the various sights, including the ´pink house´ famous for the Peron speaches, the colonial architecture, grand cemetary for the very wealthy, modernised port, very Canary Wharf esque, a huge arts and antique market and the biggest roads I have ever seen, that is not an exaggeration - 18 lanes, 9 each way on one road, 14 one way on another!
We took a really interesting walking tour which encompassed a short political, social and economic history (note - Cultour). This country has a past!! We learnt about the Peron era and Evita (did you know she died at aged 33 from cancer of the womb), about the various miltary coups and governments and dictatorships, resulting in thousands of people ´disappearing´in the 70´s, those the government deemed ´dangerous´, they literally disappeared. On Thursdays the Grandmothers and Mothers of those that were not found still walk in protest as such and more recently this had pushed the current government to put more committment into finding where they went - essentially, they were taken, locked up and tortoured and in most cases killed, some got out. It is said that they were taken up in planes and dropped into the sea. Our guide said if you studied arts, had long hair and a beard you were in trouble. It is so sad, the marching mothers was very sad. They still dont know where their children went. We also learnt a lot about the Peron era and what they stood for (workers rights, socialism) and what an impact they had. We visited a small museum run by a man in his 80´s who was there in the time of Perons government, he had a museum for Evita in what was her office, she was laid there to rest and embalmed there too. It was a special place to visit. We also learnt about the historically weak economy and the effect this had and finally that Maradonna means so much to Argentinians as in the time of his peak people came together and trusted more in football than the government.
Sam and Tom have left us now (sniff sniff) for what is probably a much sunnier England, they literally left and then it poured! It is Sunday night and we plan to spend another week here as tomorrow we start Spanish lessons for a week, Lee has grown a proper student beard in prep and we are excited about it (the lessons, not the beard.....).
This week also we workout our next steps and spend our free time (when we aren´t proper students) mooching around BA seeing the sights we haven´t seen yet. Tonight we cooked our first meal in a hostel kitchen so we feel quite cosy and it is home for now, until we move to the next home, although home is deep down where the heart is and we miss you all loads.
Nic x
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