El Subte – The Buenos Aires Subway
Everyday, I take the subway (El Subte) to and fro my Spanish Institute. I take Linea D (Line D) from Plaza Italia which is one block from where I live in Avenida Santa Fe, and I get off at Station Tribunales, where all the lawyers and other people working in related areas congregate. There is a huge Palacio de Justicio where I exit the Subway station and it is quite a nice building to walk by everyday. From there I walk along Talcahuano street for 6 blocks starting at Lavalle and ending at Rivadia where my classes are held. After 2 hours with Debora, I walk back 6 blocks to the subway station and start my journey home.
Previously, I had written that I enjoy bus rides alot because they allow you to get acquainted with the streets and you get a view of the city which is quite distinct from the view of the same places you get when walking in the streets. The subway is a completely different story; you don’t get a view of anything at all, except the people taking the subway of course. Since it is underground, the view i get most is of dark tunnels through the windows that are the only form of ventilation. Yes, there is no air-conditioning, as you might have guessed very rightly. Now in autumn, people wear all their winter jackets when they walk in the streets and when you are on the subway, you feel like your are toasting in your pullovers, turtlenecks, trenchcoats and stockings. Imagine the sunway during peak hours in the summer; when guys have to wear suits to work and stand in the subway sweating in the 36 degree celcius heat.
Alright, I shall not complain about the air-conditioning; Singapore has spoilt me and I know that not every country in the world has public transportation as world-class as in our tiny island nation. I do like the subway because it is easier and much more efficient than buses. Yes there are certain places where buses can take you directly and where taking the subway is much more inconvenient, yet at the same time, I know that in approximately 15 minutes I will get to my destination and unless the workers decide to go on a strike and announce a stop in the subway service, I usually get wherever I want to go on time. The subway here is also very cheap; it costs 1.10 peso each trip, which is equivalent to S$0.45, which is the price I used to pay for buses in Singapore when I was still an income-less student! So to its merit, the subway is really quite an economical form of transportation. I know I should stop converting everything into Sing dollars since soon I will be earning in pesos, and inflation here is almost 22%, but still, there are somethings which are considerably cheap, like subway tickets.
The subway is also a very entertaining for of transportation because everyday, I never fail to see at least one person trying to ask for money or attempting to sell some thing or another. These people are generally those who live below the poverty line and have very little education and hence have to resort to such measures to make a living. This is how they do it. They stay in the subway the whole day (so they pay for one ticket to enter and then they don’t leave till maybe the end of the day). They bring with them a bag full of things to sell, some sell chewing gum, others small cards with a plea for giving them money because they have no money at home, and some others even sell pens or bathroom suction pad clothes hooks. You see people of all ages doing this; from children as young as 4 years old, with their little innocent faces and hands dirty from lack of proper sanitation, to adults as old as 70 plus years old, making speeches about having no jobs and hence no money to support their families and hoping for your understanding and help in aiding them to do so. For those with things to sell, they come to you carriage by carriage and put the item on your lap. After they have covered about 3 cabins, they walk back and by then hopefully you would have decided to buy the item; if not, you just return it to them and they walk to other carriages in hopes of selling their wares. Usually I tell them not to put it on my lap and so they walk away.
Other times, there are people who stand at a corner of the train, and play their musical instruments, hoping for a coin or note in return. Just a few days ago, I heard a man playing his accordian; it was indeed quite a pleasant way to begin my journey; I might have given him a note if not for the fact that he was quite far away and I had arrived at my destination. All these things are quite unheard of in Singapore; any peddlers would be chased out of the MRT if I know my country well.
The subway is also a place where pickpockets make their living. As the subway here is almost always packed no matter the hour of the day, it is easy for someone to pickpocket another and leave at the next closest stop. As a result, Susana always warns me to hold my bag in front of me, zipped up and never to carry any important documents. One other tip she gave me was to keep my money in my pockets, and never carry more than one or two hundred pesos (which is equivalent to no more than S$70-75), just in case of pickpocketing or robbery. All sorts of people ride the subway however, and while it is not the safest train in the world, it is interesting.
More stories from the Paris of South America another day. Signing off, your RWT latam correspondent. Kisses from Argentina.
Spanish classes with Debora & Villa 31
Today was the second day of my Spanish classes – two hours per day, supposedly group lessons. However, because I’m the only person at my current level (Advanced C1), these group classes have shrunk and are now one-to-one classes. I’m not complaining – I’m paying the same ridiculously cheap group class rate (29 pesos/hour) for more intensive private tuition. The only thing that I feel slightly disappointed about is that I was really looking forward to making new friends with other foreignors in my Spanish group course – like the great friends that I made in Las Lilas in Singapore. Other than that however, I really like my classes so far.
The best part of the classes are the conversations that I have with my professor, Debora. We spend quite alot of time conversing only in Spanish – which is perfect because she can understand some English words so if I need to explain something too technical she helps me to translate it into Spanish, but other than that she doesn’t speak to me in English AT ALL. It’s great because I’ve realized when I was taking German classes in Mannheim that that is almost the best way to learn a completely new language; being forced to express and understand completely in the foreign language is the most accelerated manner of learning. So I’m really glad for that – I think I will be really fluent in a few weeks, not to kiss my own ass, but I really think so.
Today, we had a conversation for 1.5 hours before starting with grammar, but oh how much I learnt in those 90 minutes! We started talking about my day, but then later we somehow digressed and proceeded to talking about the slums (also known as shanty towns) in Argentina, called “Villas” – derived from the word “villages”- which is a paradox since the same word in English means nice grand house where the rich people stay in! The most peculiar thing about some of the slums in buenos aires are that they are situated next to some of the richest neighbourhoods in this Porteno city. For example “Villa 31″, proably the biggest slum in Buenos Aires, is situated across the railway tracks from Puerto Madero, which for me is one of my favourite places in the city. From Sheraton Hotel just across the Microcentro (the central business district if you may), you can see the shanty towns, a combination of houses made up of tin, clay and other scrap materials; a weird neighbourhood lacking in any proper street signage or infrastructure, without much electricity or safety. Apparently, 10-15 years ago, the area currently occupied by Villa 31 was worthless; the land on which those little houses sat was of no value to anyone, and since Puerto Madero had not yet been properly constructed and created to be such a beautiful place, the government didn’t give two dimes about who wanted to build a little tin house on that piece of land.
Now however, the tables have turned. With Puerto Madero being such an attractive tourist destination and place to relax and enjoy, the current Kirchner government wishes to reclaim the land on which Villa 31 sits. It wants to shift the entire shanty town to a place out of sight, out of mind, as far away as possible. The government doesn’t really care much for the poor; there are too many of them for the government to do very much; or maybe the government just would rather spend its money elsewhere more productive. The funny thing however is, from my knowledge, that it is the votes of the poor that helped the current government to be where they are today. However, excuse my limited political knowledge if you find this statement inaccurate or politically incorrect.
Debora did tell me however that there is currently quite a good project that the Kirchner government has executed thus far, to its credit, it has implemented a plan which tries to keep poor children off the streets (away from drugs, delinquency, robberies, and other crimes in general) by incentivizing their parents to enroll them into school, which is free up to a certain educational level. Parents, regardless of income level (I believe) are able to claim 200 pesos per child per month from the government as long as a current certificate of enrollment into a school is produced. This is quite a brilliant idea to me, as while education may not be the only way to keep kids out of crime and to give them a good future, it certainly is the most important and efficient methods to give them an understanding of the potential they can have; and it allows them a path to greater financial freedom. Parents with many mouths to feed (especially if they are poor) may find it hard to understand and see so much into the long term, particularly if they would rather see the benefits of their children working from a young age to ease the financial burden.
This is the part of Buenos Aires life that you get exposed to briefly when you see children lying on the subway platforms and their mothers begging for money; the man on the subway or the bus giving a speech about his unfortunate situation; or the youths that knock on your car window when you stop at a traffic light, demanding money in exchange for cleaning your windscreen. But, as a tourist, as a visitor, they are but another part of the city; you don’t actually realize or understand the lives that the slum-swellers suffer not because they don’t want to work; but because of the economic situation in their home towns in other smaller provinces that forced them to the capital to find jobs; but even with those meagre salaries, they have to live in badly constructed houses without any job security and without a tangibly potential career that most teenagers take for granted.
I’m just starting to understand and comprehend this city that I’m living in; so many many other things that I have yet to come across; so few that I can surely say I understand enough to explain. But thank god for spanish lessons; they come in quite handy to understanding this city. More updates another time. Maybe next time I will write about the many Chinese that are living in Argentina and their Chinese supermarkets (supermercados Chinos). But I’ll save that for another time.
