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Choosing a milonga

As I mentioned in Kid in a candy store there are over 128 milongas each week in Buenos Aires. Choosing the “right” one for you each day is obviously important if you want to have a good experience and not waste your time or pesos. There are a number of factors to consider when choosing. The weightings you apply to the factors depends on your tango objectives.

My objective is to dance close embrace milonguero style. These are the factors that might run through my head. The list is not exhaustive and your weightings for the factors may differ from mine. I divide the factors into 4 broad categories.

People.

How many, how friendly, how old, how good, how many singles?

Obvious things really. At this stage in my tango development I want to and need to dance as much as possible with as many different people as possible. Working on there being 6 tandas an hour and staying for 4 hours I would like to dance about 12-18 of them. It is not usual to dance more than 1 tanda with the same partner. Not everyone will want to dance with me and I'm still choosing to dance only with taller partners. So there needs to be at least 30 followers for me to have a chance of getting all the dances I'd like.

By friendly I really mean how receptive are they to dancing with extranjeros or people they don't already know. I don't really care how friendly they are. If my castellano was better then I might care a bit more. Right now the standing around for 15-30 seconds at the start of the 2^nd, 3^rd and 4^th tracks in each tanda making (or not making) small talk is generally an awkward waste of dancing time.

There is almost a whole generation of porteños (I'm using the Spanish custom of masculine plural referring to a mixed group of both genders) – roughly the 30-50 year olds – who don't tango. And the 2 groups either side of that generation don't generally dance at the same milongas as each other. While I appreciate that the older dancers may be fantastic dancers, and many of them have danced longer than I've been alive, it's nice sometimes to dance with someone of a similar age and not old enough to be my mother.

How many singles is a question of how many potential partners are actually available to dance, not how many are actually single. This is more easily determined at the more traditional milongas where single tangueros sit opposite the single tangueras and the couples and mixed groups sit together.

Music.

Is the music any good?

In my experience the music in most of the milongas I attend is much the same. It's nearly all traditional, even in the more informal milongas at Villa Malcolm, loca!, Practica X etc. People who know the music better than I do say some DJs are better than others. Whether they agree on which are the best DJs is another matter. The only difference I really notice is whether they play the traditional 2Tango-1Milonga-2Tango-1Vals-repeat tanda sequence or something else.

Internal.

Traditional/tourist/informal, what's it like inside, how big is it, how big is the pista (dance floor), what's it made of and what condition is it in, what's the seating arrangement, how much is the entrada (entrance fee), how much are the drinks, what are the mozos (waiters and waitresses) like, what are the food options, is there a bog troll?

The traditional/tourist/informal category largely determines the nature of the people. Traditional milongas are mostly frequented by older porteños. A few curious or brave tourists may be present. Tourist milongas have a mixture of locals and tourists, the ratio depending to some extent on the time of year. Right now, in July, we're very much in low tourist season and some of the tourist milongas, for example at Salón Canning, have far more locals than tourists (they also have much lower numbers overall than they do in high season). The informal milongas generally attract the younger locals plus tourists and those who want to dance more open embrace tango.

Some people care more than others about the ambiance and surroundings. Some people like more space on the pista than others. More important than the actual size of the pista is the density of dancers on it and the quality of their floor craft. It makes little difference to me whether the pista is tile or wood but I like it to be even. Very few of the wooden pistas are sprung, some of the pistas (especially the tile ones) are very slippery and some of the wooden ones are very uneven and/or have holes which can trap stiletto heels.

The seating arrangements go somewhat hand in hand with the traditional/tourist/informal category and affect how many successful cabeceos you're likely to be able to make.

At most of the milongas I attend the entrada is at the upper end of between $15 and $20 (pesos not dollars). I mentioned inflation in a previous post and other bloggers have mentioned it in relation to milonga entradas recently. I haven't noticed an increase in the entradas since April, or since my visit last December, but both Janis and Bob have commented on how much they've increased in the past few years. They're still relatively cheap for tourists, especially those only here for a couple of weeks, but for the residents and long stay visitors I wonder how much higher they can go before they have a serious impact on the number of admissions. Some bloggers think this is already happening and have bemoaned the death of the milongas.

Lots of dancers drink water at a milonga and a bottle is between $6 and $8. Many milongas have waiter/waitress service and of course they expect a propina (tip) per order or at the end of the evening depending on when they charge you. At one they stick your bill for each order on a little spike on your table and collect their money when you signal you're ready to pay. Every now and then one of them wanders round the room with a little rubber stamp stamping all the tourists' bills with “Service not included” or words to that effect. I do know that, stamping it on my bill doesn't give me a warm fuzzy feeling! The level of service varies greatly from milonga to milonga; I find it especially poor at one in particular.

Different milongas have different food options ranging from simple snacks like peanuts or crisps through empanadas to full dinners.

The state of the restrooms and their facilities varies widely and bears little relation to the perceived status of the milonga venue. I don't know what the ladies restrooms are like but some of the men's are bad, or very bad. The best I've seen are at Practica X. At some milongas there is a bog troll, an attendant who holds the paper towels and maybe even the toilet roll hostage. As well as expecting a propina in exchange for a bit of paper towel some of them have stuff to sell, ranging from sweets to CDs, photos and posters, and sometimes even clothing. One I find particularly amusing has an honorific title, clippings and pictures of himself with various famous people all over the walls and advertises in the tango magazines. He's got an email address too. Hang on - “Dear Bog Troll, please get some nice soft toilet paper for tonight's milonga...”

External.

Where is it, what time is it, is it in a safe neighbourhood, how do I get there, how long will it take and how much will it cost to get there?

The milonga venues are scattered all over the city although there are some distinct clusters visible on the Caserón Porteño tango map. Obviously some are closer and easier to get to than others. Some start in the afternoon and run until about 10pm or 11pm, others start at night and run through to 2am-6am.

There are 4 basic options for getting there and home again: walking, subte (subway), colectivo (bus) or taxi. Some of the venues are in not-so-nice to unsafe neighbourhoods. While you might be happy to walk/subte/colectivo there you might prefer to take a taxi home. The subtes stop running by about 23:00. The actual time depends on the line and day of the week. It's safest to assume the last train leaves by 22:00. The first train of the day is at 08:00 on Sundays, 05:00 all other days. The colectivos run all day but with reduced frequency at night. Taxis are often available from right outside a venue, or within a couple of blocks. A subte ticket currently costs $1.10 to go from anywhere to anywhere within the network. There are about 150 colectivo routes, each operated by different companies. If you're travelling by colectivo your journey may need more than 1. There are 5 different fares, currently ranging from $1.10 to $2 depending on distance. All of my journeys are $1.25 or less. Taxis start the meter at $4.60 and most rides are about $15-$30.

Out of all that lot, the people factors are the most important to me.

What am I talking about?

A couple of non-tango friends have recently commented that they don't know what I'm talking about in some of my posts. There are "funny" words they don't understand. So belatedly I've created a little glossary to explain the funny words. For easy access there's a permanent link to the glossary under the "Pages" tab in the right hand sidebar.

If you find a funny word you don't understand in the blog pages and it's not in the glossary, let me know and I'll add an entry for it.

Que pasa

There's not a lot for me to report on the tango front. The week before last I tried a new milonga for me - the Tuesday afternoon El Arranque at Salón La Argentina. I got there shortly after it opened, at about 3:30pm and stayed for about 4 hours. There weren't many people there when I arrived but by 5pm there were about 100 people, with an excess of men. So rather more people than the Monday afternoon milonga at La Ideal. I was the only extranjero (foreigner) there and easily the youngest man in the room by at least 15 years. Some of the guys looked like they'd have difficulty walking without a zimmer frame, never mind dancing. A couple of the women were possibly in the same decade as me, the rest were at least a decade older. Despite those things, or maybe because of them, I danced all the tandas I wanted to.

The following night at Sueño Porteño I had something of an epiphany (in the feeling sense). It struck me that actually I don't need to tango every day. This came as quite a surprise and I haven't worked out all the ramifications yet. On the practical front it does mean I've only been out to dance 4 times since then including (another new one for me) the Nuevo Chiqué 1st anniversary milonga at Casa de Galicia. 3 of them were rather disappointing outings because my heart wasn't in it, but last night at los Consagrados was good as usual.

There's a photo from El Arranque and a few from Nuevo Chiqué in my Milongas set on Flickr.

I've had a few days out and about sightseeing. One was a wander around Plaza de Mayo and Puerto Madero. Plaza de Mayo houses many government buildings and the architecture is very grandiose and monumental. Puerto Madero is rather like London's Docklands - a rejuvenation of the docks area into a luxury flats and fine dining complex complete with a single pylon suspension/swing bridge, La Puente de la Mujer. According to the designer it represents a couple dancing tango but I can't really see it myself. Have a look at the photos in my Plaza de Mayo and Puerto Madero set and see if you can.

Another was a wander around Palermo and Recoleta, including the world famous Cementerio Recoleta. Having been before I didn't need to track down the tombs of the rich and famous in general, or Eva Peron in particular. But it was a good excuse to take a few photos.

The third was a visit to Palacio Barolo in Avenida de Mayo. When it was built it was the tallest building in Buenos Aires, at 100m, and the views across the city from the lighthouse at the top are quite impressive. At the time of writing this post, their website is broken but you can read a bit more about the building and it's history here and see some photos in my Palacio Barolo set at Flickr.

In a couple of weeks I will either have to go and sit in Migraciones all day and pay $300 (pesos not US dollars) to renew my visa, or take a boat trip across the Rio de la Plata to Uruguay. Spending the money on the boat trip sounds like the better option...

I'm making a bit of progress on the castellano front. Slow and not at all steady, but progress nonetheless.

Oh the anticipation

It's so close I can almost taste it. Sallycat's guidebook to dancing tango in Buenos Aires - Happy Tango - is on its way. You can't quite buy it yet, but you can pre-order at Amazon or register your interest here.

Getting a book published sounds like hard work. Writing the words is only the beginning. There have been a few challenges and setbacks between the final full stop and now. But maybe any delays were meant to be. Instead of arriving late in the 2009/2010 tourist season it's going to available before the start of the 2010/2011 tourist season. And it's going to be available before Mundial 2010, the tango festival and dance world cup in Buenos Aires in August 2010.

Congratulations, Sally, all the hard work, perseverance and determination is about to pay off :-)

When bloggers meet

I met up with a couple of fellow tango bloggers this week, Sally on Monday, and Bob on Tuesday.

The Monday afternoon milonga at La Ideal is usually a fairly quiet affair, with about 40-50 people and this week was no exception. I went mainly to meet up with Sally before she flew to England today for 3 months. We didn't get to dance this time or much time to chat so afterwards we went for a pizza. She introduced me to a pizza place on Av. Corrientes about a 15 minute walk from La Ideal. As we chatted on the way there I had ideas for a couple of new blog posts. I didn't make a note of the name of the place but the pizza was excellent and I'll go back for more some time. We talked about her plans for her trip back to England, how my adventure is progressing, some ideas for a few more touristy things for me to do, and tango of course.

A big part of her trip will be a promotional tour for her book “Happy Tango”, a guide to tango in Buenos Aires. If you're thinking of coming here to tango I can't recommend it highly enough. It should be available real soon now. She and her Argentine beau, Carlos, will be visiting lots of UK tango venues, classes and milongas. Leaders, if you get a chance to dance with Sally, don't try to impress her with your flashiest moves. Just dance your best, most connected dance possible and be rewarded with the gift. Followers, don't be shy to ask Carlos for a dance. It's not every day you get a chance to dance with a porteño so make the most of it.

On Tuesday afternoon I met Bob and his wife, Viv, in a bookshop/CD shop/café called Crack Up in Palermo Soho. I arrived a bit late because on the way there I found some street art/graffiti which caught my eye and was worth a photo or two. I thought mermaids were supposed to be pretty things. Not this one...

Timekeeping in social situations here is very lax and I think they forgave me. Bob and Viv have an apartment here and come as often as possible. It's funny, we were envious of each other's circumstances. I'd like to be able to come here more often, they'd like to be able to stay for longer when they come. Maybe when we all win the lottery or don't have to bother with that pesky work nonsense any more we'll be able to. We chatted for almost three hours about all things tango related and the time just flew by. Finally they had to leave to shop for a mirror for their apartment.

Afterwards I wandered around the cobbled streets of Palermo Soho in the late afternoon sunshine taking a few more photos. This afternoon I've messed about with selectively colouring a few of them, the results are in my Palermo Soho set on Flickr, along with the ones that made me late for our meeting.

Tango this week has been a bit disappointing, at least on the quantity front. El Beso on Tuesday was a waste of time and money. There were less than 40 people, an excess of leaders and not much dancing for me. I met another Brit there, David from Norwich, who is here for a couple of weeks. He's not been impressed with the quality or quantity of dances he's been getting. This really isn't a good time of year to come for a short stay, especially for leaders. I suggested he try Sueño Porteño on Wednesday night.

Happily for both of us Sueño Porteño was nearly full, although like everywhere else I've been recently with an excess of leaders. The locals were friendly as always and we both danced a reasonable number of tandas. Last night I went back to El Beso which was about three quarters full and again with an excess of leaders. It was another 3 tanda experience for me, partly due to a duff seat (my own fault, I should have arrived earlier) and the mostly porteña followers not wanting to take a chance on a gringo. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. David was there too and had a similar experience. I think for now I can scrub El Beso off the list of places to go any night except Sunday. We left about 11:30pm to try our luck elsewhere. It was a toss up between Salón Canning and Niño Bien. I've had mixed experiences at both on a Thursday night. David was disappointed at Niño Bien last week so we went to Canning. It was the quietest I've seen it, less than 40 people and some of them obviously just there to watch. It was nice to have so much more space to dance in than usual, but a shame there were so few followers available to utilise it.

Tonight I will try somewhere new for me, La Nacional.

How was your tango this week, and did you meet anyone interesting?

Random observations

Apparently I may be a soulless techie barbarian, at least in some respects. No one actually said as much but reading between the lines that was the gist. Never mind, here are a few random observations related to Argentina and Buenos Aires.

Inflation is something that the Argentinians are very familiar with. In 2009 Argentina had the third highest rate of inflation in the world. In 2010 it may overtake Congo and Venezuela and reach the top of the league table. I've noticed it myself in taxi fares, the cost of mints and breath fresheners and McNuggets. 8 weeks ago a McNuggets (go large) meal cost $24 (pesos, not US dollars). Now it costs $26. That's an 8.5% increase in 2 months. Some economic experts predict the annual rate could reach 40% in 2010. If McNuggets keep going up at the rate I've seen they'll cost me about $30 by the time I'm due to come home at the end of September.

The state of the pavements here in Buenos Aires is shocking. There are 2 problems: dog poo and “potholes”. It's obvious where the dog poo comes from and the porteños do nothing to clear up after their dogs. Utility companies (or whoever) dig holes in the pavements (sidewalks for the American readers) but seem to never make good the holes. They fill them in with dirt but forget to put back the tiles or slabs or whatever was there before they started. While walking around you need to keep at least one eye on the ground at all times to avoid stepping in something squishy and stinky, or breaking your ankle on the broken surface. There are a few photos of the pavements near my apartment over at Flickr. They were taken on Av. Santa Fe and Av. Scalabrini Ortiz and are typical of the pavements I've seen all over the city. I know, you'd have to be really bored to look at them, but you could check out the less boring pictures at the same time.

Argentina, or at least Buenos Aires, must be a good place to be a dentist. Porteños in particular, possibly Argentinians in general, collectively have a very sweet tooth. There are panaderias (bakeries) all over the city selling all manner of delicious, sweet, teeth rotting, calorie laden facturas (pastries). Virtually all the breakfast cereals are sugar coated crap of some form. The porteños love their dulce de leche (think caramel but made with milk and sugar), they put it on and/or in just about everything, including facturas. One tried to tell me it was healthy because it's made with milk. And a whole lot of sugar! I'm sure by the time they've spent hours cooking it, virtually all the milk has evaporated and what's left is basically caramelised sugar. So I imagine the dentists here do very well. Even without all the cosmetic work they do. The facturas are delicious though! Here are some I ate yesterday.

OK, 3 things there not helping the soulless techie barbarian image – a discussion of inflation, admitting to eating an occasional McDonalds meal (less than one a week, honest!) and photos of potholes in the pavements.

A good week

On Monday I proclaimed I was on a roll. Things were going well and could only keep getting better. I walked up Av. Scalabrini Ortiz on Monday night to Salón Canning feeling cocky and pretty damn pleased with myself.

Expecting that it might be busy because of the bicentenary holiday weekend I had telephoned and made a reservation. When I arrived the host gave me a front row seat, although it was in a corner so not as good as it could have been. By about 00:30 the place was full, the first time I've seen it that busy since I arrived in April. There were lots of porteños and long term visitors in, very few obvious tourists. For the first 2 hours or so I had a really good time, my cabeceos were accepted and I danced reasonably well. The floor was never less than very crowded. There was the obligatory demonstration dance followed by the singing of the national anthem.

And then it was like someone had dropped Harry Potter's cloak of invisibility over me. After a couple of hours with no dancing I gave up and left.

I didn't go out to dance on Tuesday, Thursday or Friday nights. On Wednesday I went to El Beso. It was a very quiet night, only about 50 people with a slight excess of leaders. It wasn't a good night for me. I danced one tanda and then most of the rest of the night became an exercise in frustration. I danced just 3 tandas in total.

My private lesson on Thursday with Maya went well. Lots more milonga and a little bit of tango.

On Saturday night I went to Los Consagrados again. I arrived just after 7pm and was given a second row seat half way down the leaders side of the floor. The guy in front of me left before 8pm so I effectively had a front row seat for most of the night. In contrast to Wednesday night I danced almost every tanda. In the 4 hours from 7pm until 11pm I think I sat out about 3 tandas, in each case through choice. I even danced a reasonable milonga tanda which included my favourite "la milonga que faltaba". A certain person will be delighted!

In other news, I had a little sight-seeing outing on Wednesday to Calle Lanin. In the Barracas barrio of Buenos Aires, Calle Lanin is a short street where the house fronts have been decorated with tile mosaics. They're quite colourful but not really in the same league as Caminito in Boca. Or maybe they're just in a different league. There are some pictures in my sightseeing and Calle Lanin sets at Flickr.

Most remarkable of all this week, I actually made a little bit of an effort on the castellano front. It's somewhat overdue since I'm nearly 2 months in and only have 4 months left here, but better late than never.

So overall, a good week. 

It's a bank holiday weekend in the UK and the start of half-term. True to form the weather there wasn't brilliant today. The forecasters predict better for Sunday and Monday, so for my friends back in the UK I hope they're right.

An exercise in frustration

The music starts. It is the first track of the new tanda. Classify it quickly and make a dance/don't dance decision. If it's dance then get busy with the cabeceo.

Your first choice is giving the mirada to one of the tango gods (the old milongueros who are recognised by sight, if not by name, by everyone and who can dance with pretty much whoever they want, whenever they want). Probably half the followers in the milonga are doing the same thing. Tango god is ignoring them all, happily chatting with his friend. At least this night there is only one tango god in attendance. If he decides to dance he can only dance with one of the followers at a time. If there are 3 of them in attendance then mere mortals like you have a proportionally harder time.

You switch your attention to your second choice and see her complete the cabeceo with one of your rivals.

Your third choice is obscured by a.n.other follower sat next to her and leaning forward to catch tango god's eye.

A quick check on your first choice and she is standing up to step onto the pista, her leader waiting in front of her.

Your fourth choice is obscured by a couple already on the pista. Time is marching on, cabeceos complete, contracts made, the pool of available followers is diminishing by the second. And you're only 5 seconds into this tanda!

Your fifth and sixth choices are already on their feet and out of the game.

Now, 10 seconds into the tanda 80% of the dancers in the room are on their feet. The dregs and those who chose not to dance are left sitting and you're one of them. There are a couple of extreme shorties but you're still exercising a height-ist partner selection policy, there's a miserable looking sourpuss slouched in her seat who no-one has danced with all evening and a few in pairs or small groups chatting to each other having given up on this tanda and waiting for the next round.

So what do you do? Act nonchalant, pretend that you didn't really want to dance this tanda. Make the most of the time: listen to the music, watch the dancers, learn and absorb as much as possible. Or order another drink, munch some peanuts or Tic Tacs, visit the little boys' room, dream about being a tango god, plan tomorrow's photo outing, ...

This exercise in frustration is exacerbated by the excess of leaders present but the situation improves a bit when tango god decides it's time to move on to the next milonga of the night.

Obviously this is written from a leader's perspective but a similar experience can befall followers too. Potentially it could be repeated for every tanda of the night.

On a roll

I had a really good weekend of dancing; Saturday night at Los Consagrados, and Sunday at Sueño Portenõ and El Beso.

The bicentennial celebrations have been playing havoc with the traffic in downtown Buenos Aires. The bus ride to Los Consagrados took about twice as long as usual so I arrived later than normal. The hostess was about to park me in a corner seat at the far end of the dance floor. It wouldn't have been a good place to sit. Fortunately Ruben saw us on the way past and invited me to join him. It's always a pleasure to sit at Ruben y Cherie's table - good company and good dancing. My castellano still hasn't advanced to the point that I can have a conversation with Ruben, and Cherie was feeling a bit unwell and wasn't there on Saturday, but they always have guests at their table and this night was no exception. Those guests are usually extranjeros, often English speakers and always friendly.

My dancing got off to a bit of a slow start but picked up nicely. About an hour before the end, as the numbers started to thin out, I moved to a table with a free seat about half way along the pista for a better cabeceo position. I've seen the guy sat at the table several times and assumed he was a local. It turned out he's another Brit and has been living here for several years. He came for a holiday and "forgot" to go home.

The bus ride home was more twisty and turny than Blackadder's most devious twisty turny thing. Lots of roads were closed and I had the impression the driver was making it up as he went along. It took even longer than the journey to get there and would almost have been quicker to walk.

On Sunday I tried Sueño Porteño at Boedo Tango. I've only been there on a Wednesday before, when it is always very busy. I wasn't sure what the numbers would be like because of the bicentennial celebrations and because of the torrential rain that started at about 6pm. I don't know all the locations in the city where there are special celebration events so decided to use el Subte (subway) instead of los colectivos (buses), figuring the journey time would be unaffected by any road closures. When I arrived a bit before 7:30pm it was only about one quarter to one third full. My friend arrived a little while later and we actually got a front row table. I guess they reached about half capacity by the time we left at midnight. By then I'd danced lots, watched an enthusiastic amateur bicentennial celebration dance by some of the regulars and sampled the Boedo Tango pizza. There are a few photos from the evening in my  milongas set at Flickr (and also a couple from the chacarera tanda at los Consagrados on Saturday).

While waiting for the bus home I got an invite by text to El Beso. The night was still young, there was still 3 hours of dancing to be had at El Beso so I went. When I arrived it was standing room only. Standing at the bar gave me much better cabeceo options than I'd had from a seat on Thursday night and I danced lots.

My first dance was with a French girl, Octavia, who arrived just a couple of days ago and is here for 6 months. I commented recently on Mari's "Proper" tango shoes post that I don't care what shoes a follower is wearing so long as we have a good dance. We danced a good tanda and afterwards I noticed that she was wearing an eye-catching pair of silver and black 4" stilettos. No, I haven't a clue whether they were CIFs or Payless. I really, really don't care. The point is they caught my eye and I watched her dance part of the first tango of the next tanda. When I'm not dancing and not trying to cabeceo someone I spend a lot of time watching the dancers' feet. Dancers will know what I mean. She had the most beautiful feet I have ever seen. Ever. Period. Dancers will know what I mean.

Anyway I stayed until closing time and rode home on the number 12 colectivo, buzzing after 2 really good nights of dancing. It feels like I've turned a bit of a corner after being here nearly 7 weeks. It feels comfortable, the crisis of confidence I had a few weeks ago a distant memory. I'm ready to learn new stuff, to improve (and maybe it will rub off on my castellano efforts too). I'm on a roll.

Diary entry

It's been quite a varied week or so on the tango front with 7 milongas in 8 nights. I've been to the gym just about every other day, still not doing enough on the Spanish/castellano, and generally lazing around.

Last Friday I started the night at Salón Canning. It was about ¾ full and I danced a lot, with tourists (a group of girls from Texas and another group from Brisbane) and porteñas. When the last of the tall followers left just before closing time (4am) I gave up and walked the 3 blocks or so to La Viruta where there is free admission after about 3:30am. I don't seem to do well on getting dances at La Viruta so only danced a couple of tandas and munched my way through a plate of medialunas which they serve from about 4:30am. After 30 minutes of not dancing I called it a night and left just after 5:30am. It was tempting to stay until the end because there is a panaderia on the corner of Armenia and Honduras – which I pass on the way home – which opens at 6am and which serves all sorts of deliciousness. Being a bit of a PC addict there was the obligatory email, facebook and blog checking when I got home so it was 7am before I finally got to bed.

I must be getting old, late nights like this wipe me out for the “next” day. By the time I got up it was nearly time to head out to Saturday's milonga of choice – Los Consagrados. I danced quite a lot and if it hadn't been such a late one the night before would have liked to go on to Boedo Tango or Salón Canning in search of more dancing.

On Monday I was back at an only ½ full Salón Canning and apparently wearing Harry Potter's cloak of invisibility. Not a single dance in nearly 3 hours despite a front row seat.

On Wednesday orchestra Los Reyes del Tango played at La Garufa. I had heard they were good so went along to hear for myself. There are a few new photos in the milongas set at Flickr. Unlike a month earlier when ColorTango played at the same place there was a much smaller turnout – only about 50 people. I kept thinking more would arrive, and maybe the orchestra did too because they didn't play until about 2am. They sounded OK to me but I preferred ColorTango. With such a small crowd height-ism wasn't really working in my favour and I didn't dance much but the tandas I did were good. Sonya was there again and we spent quite a lot of time chatting about the multitude of group classes on offer every week.

I've been here for 6 weeks without a visit to El Beso, so on Thursday night I corrected that. The place was not quite full when I arrived at about 10pm; there were 3 empty tables in 2 of the corners. A corner seat isn't ideal for the cabeceo, especially when only targeting the taller followers, and I danced less than I wanted but had some nice dances.

Last night I went back to Entre tango y tango. Numbers were down on a month ago and once again there were more leaders than followers. Combined with my height-ism policy on followers the result was again fewer dances than I wanted.

My private lesson with Maya on Thursday went well again. As planned we spent most of the time concentrating on milonga. During a lesson like this I can switch between patterns and dance something not too boring for my partner. But as soon as I'm at an actual milonga my brain does a goldfish impression and everything goes out of my head. Maya is going to Europe for a few weeks soon and I'll be switching to lessons from Ruben y Cherie. No prizes for guessing what we'll be concentrating on.

One of the other things I mentioned in that post was the free drink at Niño Bien. I made some enquiries whether the same policy applies anywhere else. Apparently it doesn't and it only happens at Niño Bien. Shame!

By presidential decree it's a long (4-day) holiday weekend here in Argentina, to celebrate the bicentenary of the revolution in 1810 that lead to independence from Spain. There are all sorts of cultural events planned in various locations around Buenos Aires (and presumably elsewhere). Rather like a holiday weekend in the UK the weather forecast isn't brilliant but hopefully if the promised rain arrives it won't disrupt things too much. When I was here in December there was a big outdoor tango event planned for one Saturday evening which was cancelled because of rain...

Since I've mentioned the weather now I might as well add that the days of me sitting out on the balcony after breakfast (ie: somewhere between about 11am and 2pm) grabbing a few rays appear to be over. There are fewer sunny days now and the temperature is falling. Not really surprising since the trees are losing their leaves and we are well into autumn now.

Why so many?

Since coming to Buenos Aires I've had a lot of free time. OK, not just a lot, actually all my time is free time. I don't have to do anything at all and I do only what I choose to and when. It's an incredibly fortunate position to be in. One of the things I've been doing with some of that time is reading blogs, especially tango blogs.

Tango bloggers write on every imaginable topic. The tango-related posts generally fall into 2 main categories, which I think of as technical and observational. For some reason there are a lot of blogging tango dancers. By which I mean there are a large number, and (I believe) also a higher proportion of blogging tango dancers than blogging dancers of (many) other dance styles. I don't have statistics to support my assertion, and if I did then a sensible reader would take them with a pinch of salt anyway. Do your own research if you feel so inclined but to save you a few seconds here are some completely non-scientific search results from you-know-whoogle -

Obviously the number of hits on a search phrase including a dance style and the word blog is not the number of actual blogs about that dance style. However I think we can infer something from the relative numbers of hits and the relative numbers of dancers of each dance style.
 
I've been wondering what it is about tango dancers that seems to predispose them to blogging. Maybe they're we're (after all, I am one too) creative people. Well hang on, so are dancers of other styles. Maybe we're passionate. What, and other dancers aren't? Maybe we're egotistical? What, and other dancers aren't? Maybe we're more of those things? Could it be that we're just a caring, sharing bunch of people? Perhaps there aren't really (proportionally or absolutely) more tango dancers' blogs, it just seems like it because those are the ones I like to read.

I really don't know. There was one search I tried which produced a (considerably) larger number of hits than "tango blog" -

Ugh! Shudder!

There are links to some of those tango blogs in a panel on the right hand side of this page. Those are the ones I read often. There are many others I read occasionally. I may add a page containing links to them all (because the web really needs that redundancy!) at some point.

My reasons for blogging are given in my first post. If you're one of my friends who suggested I start this blog then I encourage you to go on a link-hopping expedition. Don't be surprised if you spend a big chunk of time in the process.

Back to my assertion. What do you think? Are there really "more" tango bloggers, and if so, why?

Crisis of confidence

I've not had much to say on the subject of tango in the last couple of weeks. There were several nights when I didn't go out, and some when I went out but didn't dance much or even at all. The reason was a crisis of confidence. It wasn't the first and may not be the last. Happily I seem to have overcome it.

I have tried a couple of new (for me) milongas this week; loca! at Chalmers Club on Sunday and La Catedral on Tuesday. 

The loca! venue at Chalmers Club is rather nice, a bit like Práctica X but not so cavernous and with a proper bar and food available. The floor is polished concrete tiles, not as slippery as Práctica X and with a few rough spots. The dancers were mostly young, in groups and very good. Not quite as intimidating for me as Práctica X but close. I went with Maria, a porteña friend, and we both enjoyed it.

La Catedral was an experience! It's on the first (or second if you're American etc.) floor of a converted church. It had a distinctly bohemian feel. It was very dark with a high stage at the end you enter, a medium size dance floor with settees/couches down one side and rough tables and chairs on the other, a larger seating area at the far end and a bar beyond that. There was a separate room behind the wall with the settees which had tables and chairs and comfy seating and a bar serving food and drinks. Most of the people were in groups, having a night out with friends. There wasn't really much dancing going on and some of that was truly appalling. I saw several leaders attempting very badly to lead moves they couldn't lead to followers who couldn't follow them. The dance floor was wood, very uneven and not somewhere you'd really want to be wearing stilettos (although a few brave followers were). I saw one guy dancing who obviously knew the music inside out, back-to-front and upside-down. He was hitting every accent in every tango but so over-doing it that he looked completely crazy. The music from the DJ was pretty good. There were 2 live acts, the first was so bad I thought it had to be a joke (but the locals enjoyed it) and the second, an orchestra, were quite good. It was far too dark to use the cabeceo, strictly verbal invitations instead. You can probably tell it made a bit of an impression on me. Somewhere interesting to see but not somewhere I'll hurry back to. There are a couple of pictures in my milongas set at Flickr.

On Wednesday I went to Sueño Porteño again and managed to get my confidence back. Lots of dancing and even a compliment from a porteña - so much better than a "disculpe" and having them walk off mid-tanda! I enforced my blatant height-ist policy and enjoyed all my dances.

My private lesson with Maya yesterday afternoon went well. I think next week I'll ask if we can concentrate on milonga. I really struggle with milonga tracks, usually getting stuck in a pattern and unable to get out of it. The result is I'm likely to bore my partner to death long before the end of the track, never mind the tanda. There is one particular milonga track I hear here quite often which I really like, it's called "la milonga que faltaba" and reminds me of watching Bonanza on TV on Saturday afternoons as a kid. There are lots of videos using it on YouTube, this was the first one on the list. I have a couple of tanguera friends from home, Jo and Sam, who are coming out here in August. It will be nice if I can dance a half decent milonga tanda with them, hopefully including this track.

I planned to go to Nuevo Chiqué at Casa de Galicia after my lesson, then get something to eat and go on to Niño Bien. In the end I was hungry after the lesson and decided to skip Nuevo Chiqué and eat in instead.

It's obvious from the number of people in the (tourist-circuit) milongas that we're out of tourist season. A month ago Niño Bien was full, last night it was only about three quarters full. And there were more men than women. I heard one tanguero complaining that May and June are dead months. Height-ism reigned again and it was another good night for me. And I made an interesting discovery - the entrada at Niño Bien includes a free drink. Simply exchange your entrance ticket for your first drink order. Why did no one tell me that before? I don't know if the same thing applies elsewhere but I'll be finding out! If you happen to know other places this applies feel free to comment...

Enjoy the weekend!

Clarity and castellano

It's a good job I'm not a professional writer. Apparently some of my posts have been open to misinterpretation. They lack the clarity I thought they had.


So just in case you thought otherwise, my teachers in the UK have not taught me to tango in a hurried “Anglo-Saxon” way, or to dance without regard for my partner, or the music, or the surroundings. When I had some private lessons here with Cherie y Ruben last December they complimented me, and therefore my UK teachers, on not having been taught any bad habits. I hope to take some more lessons with Cherie y Ruben soon.


Clarity is required in tango too. It sounds obvious but a leader needs to lead. I have to communicate to my follower what I want them to do. Sometimes I forget to do this physically and try to do it telepathically instead. And then things go wrong! Doing it physically doesn't mean being aggressive but it does require a degree of assertiveness. There's the equivalent of a volume control on the assertiveness. Too much volume is uncomfortable for the follower, too little volume means she can't hear me and things go wrong again. The way they go wrong depends on the follower. Sometimes she'll do something other than what I intended, sometimes she'll just freeze and wait to be lead. Occasionally I think the volume is OK but the follower still does something other than what I intended.


Whenever a follower does something other than what I intended I try to adapt what comes next to suit and keep dancing. I'll usually try to lead the same thing once more a little later in the dance. If it still produces not the intended result then I don't try it again with this follower in this tanda. Also I make a mental note to review and maybe to change the lead for whatever it was.


If the follower just freezes that's a clear sign to me to turn up the volume and lead with more clarity.


Sometimes I wonder if I'm generally not leading “loudly” enough. There are often hot and sweaty leaders coming off the pista at the end of a tanda. Unless the room is overly warm I'm not one of them. Maybe this has more to do with the fact that I prefer dancing to the slower tangos and usually find a way to dance the faster tangos slowly too.


If something goes wrong in a class or practica situation and the follower apologises to me I always reply with “Just assume if something goes wrong it's because I lead it wrong, even if you think I didn't”. It seems most likely to me that I lead it wrong because when I have been in a follower position with a teacher in a group class or private lesson there is no doubt at all what the response should be to their lead. In general I subscribe to the view that a good leader with a relaxed follower can lead just about anything. By implication, if the follower fails to follow then the leader didn't lead properly. However, Mari presents a different perspective in this post.



The opposite of clarity is ambiguity. Ambiguity is imperfection and that irritates me. Context sensitive languages are ambiguous and the irritation that creates inside me is a very real barrier to learning. Castellano (Spanish) is very context sensitive. Here a few examples:

• si – means “yes” or “if”
  
• si no – means “otherwise”
  
• sino – means “but”
  
• hablamos – means either “we are speaking/we speak” or “we were speaking”. The 1^st person plural of an ~ar verb conjugates the same way in the present and the preterite tenses.
  
• fui – means either “I was” or “I went”. The verbs ser (to be) and ir (to go) conjugate identically to each other in each of the 6 (in Spain) or 5 (in South America) positions.
  
• por – means “for” or “by” or “through” or “per” or “in”
  
• que – means a multitude of different things depending on the construction it is used in.
  

Castellano is also supposed to be a phonetic language – words should be pronounced the way they are spelt and vice versa. Yet the porteños (residents of Buenos Aires) often aspirate the final phoneme of a word and speak so fast as to run one or more words together. Attempting to decode which words they have spoken, and then decoding the meaning from the context to work out what they actually said is hard work.


And when I try to talk to the locals and they look puzzled and say “¿que?” - because I haven't worked out how to create some of the phonemes correctly, let alone pronounce whole words and use the right aspirations and spew the whole lot out at 200 words per minute – that is just plain frustrating.

Those are my (admittedly not very good) reasons for not working hard enough on learning castellano. So the promised 1-month blog post entirely in castellano will not be happening this week.

This post may also lack a bit of clarity, but if I try to make it perfect it will never happen!

Sightseeing

I had a touristy afternoon yesterday. It was overcast and a little hazy, so not the best day to be out taking photos but undeterred I went for a walk along Avenida de Mayo from the Subte linea A, estacion Peru, to Congreso Nacional and then along Callao to Subte linea D, estacion Callao.

The photos are at Flickr in the Sightseeing and monochrome sets.

I'm generally cooking for myself and eating in most nights. While in Salamanca last year I discovered I rather liked tortilla española. Last night for the first time (ever) I made it myself. My landlady, who is a bit precious about her kitchen was rather worried by the idea and assured me it wasn't easy. It was a bit time consuming but not difficult. There are loads of recipes on the web, I used the one here but halved the quantities to fit the frying pan I had available. A (much) larger frying pan would have been useful and would have cut the cooking time by 15 minutes - I had to cook the potatoes in 2 batches because they wouldn't all fit and cook in one go.

It was delicious. My landlady agreed.

Those who know me won't be surprised to hear that I had the same thing again tonight. I was going to add some mushrooms and ham to the mix but couldn't be bothered to go and buy them this afternoon. Next time... (which won't be tomorrow!)

As expected I did suffer a bit with DOMS on Sunday. My plan to go to the gym on Saturday was thwarted by it being the May Day holiday, and just about everywhere was closed. I went out for a walk instead which probably helped reduce the DOMS effect a bit. I was back in the gym yesterday morning and this afternoon. And the aches are all gone now.

There's still not much progress to report on my efforts to learn castellano. Mainly because I'm not making anywhere near enough effort. There is another reason which I might write a blog post about.

I've added a "subscribe by email" button over there on the right hand side of the screen for those who would like to receive an email notification whenever there are new posts here. Simply enter your email address, click subscribe and answer the anti-spam challenge in the pop up window. You'll get an email from Feedburner/me asking you to click on the embedded link to confirm your request. Click on the link or cut'n'paste it into the address bar of your browser and hit return. Honestly, it's easier to do than describe.

Bring on the DOMS

Stop sniggering at the back. And erase from your mind images of buxom ladies clad in Lycra or leather or rubber or PVC, wearing stockings and wielding a whip. They're not the doms I'm talking about.

This is Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness, the poorly understood phenomenon of muscles aching 24-48 hours after exercise. I expect to be in for a dose of DOMS on Sunday. I have finally joined a gym 2 blocks up the road from here. I spent an hour and a half in there this afternoon, my first time in a gym in about 2 months. So I tried to take it a bit easy, but being a competitive sort of person probably did more than was wise under the circumstances. Going back again tomorrow and doing some more exercise might alleviate or even prevent the DOMS but if not I'm going to be sore on Sunday.

To anyone thinking “but you tango every night, that's exercise” I have to say tango doesn't meet my definition of exercise. It doesn't get my heart rate up above 120bpm, doesn't get my pulse that high for at least an hour, and doesn't get me out of breath. Similarly west coast swing doesn't count as exercise in my book. Modern jive (some call it ceroc) fits the bill, but so far as I can tell that's not on offer in Buenos Aires (and nor is west coast swing). If you happen to know anywhere I can dance west coast swing or modern jive in Buenos Aires do please let me know.

I'm still being very lazy during the days: getting up late, faffing about on-line and wasting time. A good friend says that's OK, I'm allowed 6 weeks of laziness before being ready to get on with stuff. Progress on learning Spanish/Castellano is almost non-existent. That promised blog post entirely in Castellano is going to be a very short one at this rate.

Oh well, one step at a time. The gym is a good start.

For those keeping count, and for me in a few months time when I'll have forgotten, my tango inventory since the last blog post is:

• Tuesday afternoon        - Group class at Caserón Porteño
• Tuesday night               - Porteño y Bailarín
• Wednesday night          - Sueño Porteño
• Thursday afternoon       - Private lesson with Maya
• Thursday night              - Niño Bien

There are a few new photos in the milongas set at Flickr.

I had planned to go to El Beso tonight. El Beso is a traditional milonga in a rather small venue. If you're not there when the doors open, or you don't have a reservation then you might not get in. Since I've adapted rather well to Argentinian time keeping I thought I'd call and make a reservation. It turned out to be a good thing to do. El Beso no longer runs on Friday nights. It still appears in some of the milonga listings, including the one I refer to every day.

It's a bank holiday weekend back at home in the UK. Traditionally that means bad weather, and indeed the forecast is not good. I hope the weathermen are being their usual hopeless selves(*) and the weather turns out to be uncharacteristically good. If you're planning a barbeque I hope it goes well. And if you're dancing somewhere, sometime, have a great time.


*Honestly, in what other profession can you get it wrong almost every single day of the week and still have a job at the end of the month?

Like a kid in a candy store

There are 128 milongas each week on the Caserón Porteño tango map. That's between 10 and 27 milongas each day. Other listings are available and not all milongas are listed. Punto Tango lists nearly 200 group classes each week, the print edition of el tangauta lists about 500 group classes each week. There are countless teachers offering private lessons. And I'm only here for another 5 months!

There are limits to how many classes, practicas and milongas it is possible to fit into 1 day, or 1 week, or 1 month. With so many possibilities and so little time I might never become a regular at any of them. I'm not going to try every one of those practicas or milongas. Some I can rule out for location, or timing, or type, or music. But even so, it's going to take a while to try the ones I want to and decide which ones work best for me.

It really is like being a kid in a candy store. My candy selections milongas for the last few days were Entre tango y tango at Centro Región Leonesa, and La Viruta at Club Armenia on Friday night, Club Gricel on Sunday night, and Confiteria La Ideal on Monday evening. There are a few new photos on Flickr. I've created some sets so you can jump straight to the milongas if you prefer.

ColorTango

Last night (Wednesday) ColorTango played at "La Garufa" milonga in Konex, close to the Abasto shopping mall. I have heard people rave about them and I thought they were very good indeed. It was really nice to dance to a live orchestra. There are a handful of photos over at Flickr. It was a nice bonus to bump into Sonya, an Australian girl I met here in December. We danced a couple of tandas and she said my dancing has improved.

I went to La Garufa with Isabelle after a we pigged out at a restaurant in Palermo. Isabelle had bife de chorizo and a huge salad, I had bife de lomo and a mountain of chips. The food was plentiful but nothing special. We talked mostly in Spanish which I thought would be good practice for tonight's Spanglish event. She's flying home on Saturday - volcano permitting. Her Spanish is far better than mine and I was pleased to understand and be understood. I didn't expect it to be so easy tonight.

Spanglish? More of a shambles really and very few native Spanish speakers. I didn't bother to stay. Maybe I'll look in again next week, maybe I won't.

My private lesson this afternoon with Maya was much more productive. The list of technique things for me to practice and improve is getting longer. It's a good job I'm here for a while!

Earlier in the week, on Monday afternoon I did a couple of touristy things: visited El Ateneo and the Galerias Santa Fe shopping centre. El Ateneo is a bookshop which was originally a theatre. It's a rather more interesting building to look at than most bookshops as you can see in the photos over at Flickr. The attraction at Galerias Santa Fe is not the shopping (it's only a small mall with nondescript shops) but the ceilings. There are a few photos in my Flickr steam (the colour has been enhanced a bit because the flash on the camera wasn't powerful enough to illuminate the ceiling properly). You could sit in the comfy chairs in El Ateneo, or in the cafe section and soak up the surroundings for half an hour quite easily. Galerias Sante Fe might hold your attention for 5 minutes.

Monday night at Salon Canning was disappointing. It may not be the "best" milonga for me but it's very convenient - only a 10-15 minute walk along Scalabrini Ortiz from where I'm staying. If you're interested in what it looks like, there's a picture of it early in the night, before the floor gets crowded in the Flickr photostream. Vals is not my favourite form but I was determined to try. Unfortunately I made the mistake of starting the night with a vals and compounded it by dancing with a rather short Argentinian girl. It certainly wasn't a good first dance but it wasn't that bad. Her assessment was less favourable; she thanked me after the first track of the tanda and walked off.

It's a good job I'm not a local; I'd have had to fall on my sword. Confidence dented I sat out for a bit and the floor got busier. I carefully avoided the vals and milonga tandas for the rest of the night. I danced some tango tandas with other people later which went better.

On Tuesday night after Maya's group class at Caseron Porteno I went to Practica X (pictures at Flickr). It was rather less crowded than on my visit in December. Although all the dancers were a really high standard, they seemed not quite as good as on my previous visit. Maybe they'd gone somewhere else this week.

Tonight it's not too late to go dancing. Perhaps Nino Bien. And for the weekend, well more dancing obviously!

Thanks for reading. Have a good weekend. If you've been affected by the travel disruption caused by the Icelandic volcano and you're travelling this weekend then I hope it goes smoothly for you. If you're dancing somewhere, have fun :-) And if you have something special planned and want to share the details, I'd love to hear them.

(If you post a comment but don't want me to publish it, just say so.)

Slowing down

"Remember, slow down" were Amiee's parting words as she turned and walked away on Friday afternoon. I walked back into Jardin Botanico, which you can see here from my balcony, and did just that. Sat on the benches, meandered round the paths, stroked some of the cats and took a few more photos (you can see some of them at Flickr).

At Los Consagrados last night, Cherie said something similar, along the lines of "forget the Anglo-Saxon rush, rush, rush. In tango there is time. Take it slowly". I danced some not-too-shabby tandas after that.

Settling in to the "manana manana" mindset is not easy, at least on the tango front. Since my private lesson on Thursday I've done another group class and been to three more milongas. Soho Tango at Villa Malcolm on Thursday, Parakultural at Salon Canning on Friday, and Los Consagrados again last night.

I'm being much more South American about the other objectives I set myself! Still no regular exercise program, still no Spanish learned. And I haven't bothered to do a blog post about the irritations of life here (which admittedly are pretty trivial). But I will still go to Spanglish on Thursday.

For the rest of this afternoon I'm going across the road to sit in Jardin Botanico. I'll take the Spanish books with me, just in case. And tonight more tango at La Glorieta.

How was your weekend, what have you been doing? Have you been rushing around in an Anglo-Saxon way, or taking it easy in a South American way?

Faffing around

It's been a very lazy week for me so far. Monday night was Lunes de Tango at Club Gricel, Tuesday evening I did Maya's group class at Caseron Porteno, and last night tried TangoLab at Club Villa Malcolm. So it sounds like I have been busy, but I've been frittering the days away with reading blogs, daydreaming, facebooking and other non-productive stuff.

I can't spend 6 months (well, I could!) doing basically nothing; I need some more specific goals, ones to be done during the days. The 2 main reasons for being here are to dance and improve my tango, and learn Spanish. Group classes, private lessons and lots of milongas will help with the tango. The learning Spanish needs more work!

So here are some publicly stated goals for the Spanish -

1. Attend Spanglish next Thursday.
2. Publish a blog post entirely in Spanish in 1 month, 3 months and 6 months time.
3. Achieve at least an 1800 word vocabulary by October.

Another objective is to get back into a regular exercise regime. Tango is not exercise! I've made a start on this but need to do more. It's going to have to be outdoor exercise, there's not enough money in my budget to go to a gym.

Last week the weather here was great, mid 20s, sunny, blue skies - very nice indeed. The last couple of days have been a different story. Still quite warm but lots of rain - not exactly encouraging for outdoor exercise. We're back to dry today with showers possible and a forecast of 22 degrees and sunny again tomorrow. Well I am a Brit, we can't help but talk about the weather!

I've got a private lesson with Maya this afternoon and tonight I'll probably go to Nino Bien at Centro Region Leonesa.

Now, to all those folks at home (especially the non-facebook ones) who wanted to hear about my "adventures" - what have you been up to, what are your goals for the next 6 months?

First night's dancing - done

I'd forgotten how intimidating the Buenos Aires milonga pisos (dancefloors) can be. But thanks to encouragement from some friendly tangueras I did dance a few tandas and a chacarera last night.

I arrived at Los Consagrados at about 6.30 after a short taxi ride. The taxi prices have gone up since I was last here. The meter started at $4.60 instead of $3.80. What I guestimated as a $12 peso ride actually came to few centavos over $14. The taxi driver didn't want a $100 note - they usually don't - but accepted a $10 and a $2 which were the only other notes I had. So that was me $2 up on the evening. Do that about another 100 times and I'll recoup my pickpocketed loss.

The floor wasn't too crowded when I arrived, but my friends weren't there yet. The hostess seated me at Ruben and Cherie's table as I asked. I had plenty of opportunities to cabeceo the ladies seated on the other side of the room. But I was content to watch those dancing and maybe pick a few out to cabeceo later. That might have just been an excuse to cover up feeling intimidated.

Ruben arrived some time later, without Cherie who had stayed home. Ruben speaks about as much English as I do Spanish so we managed "hello" and a couple of pleasantries and that was it. I started work on my Spanish today!

Some of Ruben and Cherie's students arrived, including Carol and Martin, Flo, and Cheryl. My friend and part inspiration for this crazy trip, Sally, also arrived. So I had some friendly faces to dance with but remained glued to my seat. I wasn't really enjoying the music - lots of valses, Biaggi and D'Arienzo type of stuff. I prefer the likes of Di Sarli but most of the milonga DJs don't. And the floor was more crowded and more intimidating. Carol was the first to persuade me out of my seat. We danced the last tango of a tanda and a litle while later I had part of a tanda with Sally.
After the lottery draw  (none of us at Ruben and Cherie's table won anything) came the chacarera. Sally had commented earlier in the evening that she liked the chacarera but rarely got asked to dance it. I like it too (it's an Argentinian folk dance which reminds me of a barn dance) although I'm not great on the steps. But that doesn't matter, it's just for fun. So we danced the chacarera and I think I only went wrong once. Later I danced a vals tanda with Cheryl and a Di Sarli tanda with Sally. The piso no longer seemed so intimidating and it was just the music keeping me in my seat. I'll have to work out where they play the music I prefer, or better still, adapt.

I'll be dancing outdoors in the bandstand at La Glorieta tonight. I hope it's not as windy as last time I was there. Knowing it might be I'll go prepared.

1 week in

That's an exaggeration, I've not been here a week yet. But I am one (work) week into my 6 month sabbatical. Here is Buenos Aires and I've come to dance and improve my tango and learn Spanish. I might do a few other things while I'm here but tango and Spanish are the only objectives right now.

This blog will start out as a diary. It will let anyone who cares or is remotely interested in what I'm doing know what I'm doing. And in 6 months, or 6 years, or even just a few days from now, remind me what I've been doing.

So here is the story so far...

Arrived in Buenos Aires on Tuesday morning. Less than 2 hours after landing at Ezezia International airport I was in my hotel on Avenida Cordoba in the microcentro district of Buenos Aires. My reservation here was for just 6 nights. In that time I intended to find somewhere to stay for the next 6 months.

After 3 days of scuttling around I have found a room in a flat on Av. Santa Fe, opposite Jardin Botanico. I hope it's going to be OK, but if not I can always find somewhere else. I looked at about a dozen places and it's amusing to compare the reality with the descriptions. In my book a "beautiful apartment" wouldn't have paint flaking off the walls, or electrical sockets hanging out the wall on the cable, or a white bath that was actually last white a decade or more ago. I could have looked at more places but really couldn't be bothered. It's surprising how much effort there is in arranging appointments to view places with people who don't share the same sense of urgency or purpose. Anyway it's sorted now and I'll move in on Monday morning.

The only glitch so far was being pickpocketed on Thursday afternoon. I'm almost certain it happened on the subway, on linea C between the 9 de Julio and Av. de Mayo stops. The carriage was jam packed full of people. Among those squeezing their way in at 9 de Julio were 2 local girls, probably in their mid-twenties (but I'm rubbish at estimating peoples' ages correctly). As the train lurched out of the station one of them fell against me. She wouldn't have fallen over, there was no room for that, but I caught her hand and she held on to mine until the next stop. Both girls got off at Av. de Mayo. About 2-3 hours later I found I had no wallet. Now I might have dropped it, or it might have been stolen somewhere else, but it was in a zipped pocket and I'm pretty sure the girl on the train pinched it. Next time I see someone falling over I'll leave them to it! I lost a tatty wallet, a debit card and a couple of hundred pesos cash, and (I thought) my UK SIM card. It turned out I didn't actually lose the SIM card but I didn't know that until after I'd spent an hour on the phone to O2 (thank goodness for Skype) trying to sort it out. I'm sure most pond life is more clued up than the "customer services" numpties I spoke to. At least stopping the debit card was a painless experience.I tried reporting the theft to Tourist Police. They said I'd have to report it to the subway police at Boedo station. Since I won't be making an insurance claim I think I'll pass on the aggravation of that one!

My reward for having sorted out some accommodation is to go and tango. I planned to go to La Ideal last night since it's only a 10 minute walk from my hotel, but after eating a ridiculously cheap pizza (pizza and soft drink for $17 (that's Argentinian pesos, not US dollars) - about 3 quid) I decided to leave it until tonight.

So I'm about to set off to Los Consagrados at Centro Region Leonesa. Hopefully I'll meet some friends from my previous visit to Buenos Aires, and dance some tandas and munch a few empanadas. It's an early milonga, finishing at 22:00 so I might go on somewhere else afterwards.