BsAs... Buenos Aires...
It's HOT, very hot... humid (and people say it can get worse...) and the city is fantastic...
Imagine you got a raise of salary of 200%... that's more or less the feeling in BsAs... prices nearly 3 times cheaper than in europe. And a wide choice of eveything... restaurants, nice shops... etc etc... I guessI'll need one (or more) extra suitcases when going back home. It's a permament temptation... and that is not limited to local shops... if you know what I mean.
The city is a great mixture, not only as regards the people (from italian, spanish, jewish from central europe, arabic, local native and other backgrounds) but also as regards the architecture and urban styles. There are very different neighbourghoods, Recoleta looks like Paris, 25 de Mayo looks like Madrid... Santa Fe like New York), some parts have the more colonial touch like San Telmo, other are unique loke Boca (could be some italian port though...). Some areas look like New York, San Francisco, even Miami and judging by the weather... this looks pretty tropical to me...
And yet... there's no sea... I mean, there must be... but one does not see it. I was at Puerto Madero, a dockland which has been renovated, with fancy restaurants and hotels and chic apartmemt areas... it smells to sea... but that was the closest feeling I got. Or the boats at Riachuelo at Boca. That is a pitty... one misses the sea and water... Maybe I should venture in one of those public swimmimg pools by the Rio de la Plata, but they're probably too crowded.

Anyway, there's a lot to see and do and time flies, so I'd better take advantage.
The city is very developed, there's everything, modern shops and fancy cafes and restaurants, fancy fashionable areas, like Palermo Viejo (with its Soho and Hollywood areas) with nice fashion and design shops and modern restaurants, always bustling with a nice young crowd (and the inevitable tourists of course...), but also nice shopping malls like Palacio in Florida street (the main mass shopping street) and Pateo Bullrich in Recoleta which would make some european shoppings looking like 3rd world ones, especially in Belgium...
Yet it is far from perfect... then one sees all the many police in the streets and particular around public buildings and areas (very young people), people searching the waste for valuable things and some areas of San Telmo or Boca, 'conquered' by new immigrants from the interior or other neighbouring southern american countries and the economic and social situation (despite higher crime rates apparently) seem to be much better than a couple of years ago, although people say they survive... living by the day. Yet some peopel are travelling abroad, having two jobs and struggling. One is hit by mixed feelings about this city... of admiration, surprise, delight, some blurred feelings yet it is noticeable the fighting character of the people and their willingness and struggle to progress... move on, improve.

In a magazine a journalist writing on BsAs wrote that one "feels continuously as a party crasher, never unmasked, but in a party of the elite"... and there's certainly some true to that... although here there aren't only elite parties... and one can feel that in the streets. But one can get what one is looking for in BsAs and make it our own BsAs... or at least try to.
All in all, the most interesting about a city (yes even more than the architecture) is its people. And here people are usually very friendly, in the streets, in shops, restaurants... very warm & welcomimg... yes this is Southern America... or just America.
Well I'd better go and check it out there... there are 13 million people out there and many square meters to be discovered... for pictures of the city look up at google... sorry...
mario