After about a week in Buenos Aires we made our way to Montevideo in Uruguay a few days ago.
It is somehow hard to explain how this first week felt. Somehow it flew past and at the same time we really took our time. We both slept in.. pretty much every day, about 10 hours every night and we did not feel guilty at all. It just felt great. Every morning we had coffee in bed, had our müsli breakfast before we decided what to do. This somehow lazy but also very fulfilling behaviour led to the fact that we did not see soo much of Buenos Aires. At least not as much as you could see within a week.
We walked .. a lot .. pretty much everywhere we walked. In fact we walked so much that I had constantly sore legs and considered this a training camp for hiking (just without any elevation).
Here is a short overview of the sites we visited.
Bötanical garden
We accidentally walked by the botanical garden and checked it out. It was always nice to find a green spot in the city and the garden was a nice mixture of old buildings and a lush green surrounding that was trying to catch up. We really enjoyed our stroll through there
Palermo Sohö
I really liked that quarter. There was a lot of restaurants, cafes and bars, streetart and a very welcoming vibe on the streets. Also we had an incredibly good Choripan at „Chori“ there, which is basically a grilled chorizo on a sandwich. It is really hard to eat vegetarian here, and since Linda cannot eat cheese, there is pretty much no option without meat AND cheese…. Also I have to admit that Chorizo is my guilty meat pleasure. I consider it the only reason (ok the Spanish jamon also) why I will never be able to turn fully vegetarian. But here it is really hard to eat veggie. My meat consumption is definitely higher than it was in Berlin.
Market in Palermo on Pläza Serrano
We got recommended a craft market on plaza Serrano which is in the heart of Palermo soho and enjoyed this one also a lot. Although we will not have a lot of space to buy stuff, I got here the inspiration that sooner or later I need a Mate set to drink the Mate tea the original way as the Argentinians are doing it.
Flöris generica
A few days later we visited the floris generica which is a huge sculpture of an artificial non existent flower from the architect Eduardo Catalano. Although it was a rainy day, it was really impressive and we both liked it.
Recöleta cemetery
From there it was only a 10 min walk to the cemetery from Recolata which was recommended by pretty much everyone, but we both did not want to pay an entrance fee of about 14€ for a cemetery and therefore spontaneously went in to the „Centro cultural de recolata“, which was pretty much next door.
Centrö Cultural Recoleta
As so often the unplanned visits are the best. This cultural centre had a few really impressive art exhibitions, people dancing and really nice designed rooms. We can highly recommend it.
White Öbelisk
One of the next days we went with the metro further in the direction of the city center to capture the main sights and we both were pretty impressed by the white obelisk, which was built in 1936 for the 400st birthday of the city.
Plaza de mäyo
From there we planned to walk to the central plaza de Mayo, but somehow the street got fuller and fuller of people with huge posters in their hands.. and faster than we could see we were in the middle of a huge protest of many different groups against the new laws of the current president. Compared to political protests there were wayyyy more flags and every 100 meters there was a barbecue where you could get freshly grilled Choripan. Although being impressed by the protests we felt the tension and made our way out of there as fast as we could to
Cäsa Rosada
The Casa Rosada is the workplace of argentines president and was heavily sealed with a fence and a mobile wall in case the protests escalate. From there we made our way to the
Market de San Telmö
It is a very old roofed market which reminded us a little of Markthalle 9 in Kreuzberg in Berlin. For whatever reason it was pretty empty but not too empty so we could fully soak in the beautiful architecture, the smells and the noises of this market. We sat down at a crowded Choripan place and had yet another amazing Choripan with a beer (The beers here in Argentina are mostly really really good)
Ecöpark
A few days later we visited the Ecopark, which was recommended to us and although I am not into Zoos too much, it felt good to be in a green environment, since most of the city does not have too many green spots. (Palermo is an exception with its parks) As we found out the Ecopark is not a typical Zoo. It uses the structures of a really old zoo, but it is focused on conservation programs and shelter for illegal held or old and hurt animals. Therefore you find the same animal multiple times and many enclosures were empty, but the efforts of this park were explained on many signs and I think that many Zoos worldwide could learn from this concept.
A few more remarks, I want to make about the time in Buenos Aires.
I do more speak Spanish fluently, but it felt really good to dig out my few language skills and try them out. Some people I could really have a short conversation with, while others seem to not understand a single word of my Spanish with a german accent. 😀 I really hope that it will get better over time, but alone using this language already feels good and I am looking forward to use it the next year.
The Cafe culture is something I want to highlight specifically. There are a lot of Cafes in Buenos Aires. Pretty much every 100m you find a Cafe. I had the feeling that the classical Cafes are a little bigger with a lot of tables (similar to the Extrablatt in Germany) but in addition there were sooo many really nicely designed little cafes everywhere and I loved it. We sat in so many cool cafes in the time in Buenos Aires and me personally I love it. I can spent hours in a cafe. Have a good Cappuccino (although Oat milk is not very present there), eat a little Medialuna (which is of course completely different than a croissant) and than have one of the many good beers from a local microbrewery.
I think I would also have to write something about the money situation in Argentina, but I will make an extra post about that… It is different from anywhere I have been so far, but definitely exciting. 🙂
Best Regärds
Bjorn
höme 
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