William Boyd sends...
Six Postcards from Buenos Aires
The Alvear Palace
It’s a long way from London to Buenos Aires: many thousands of miles and a good 15 hours when you travel via Sao Paolo and your plane is diverted to another airport because of fog. But when you arrive in Buenos Aires the disconcerting feeling you have is that you are still in Europe — particularly when you check in to the Alvear Palace, one of the great hotels of the world, all marble, towering ceilings and chandeliers — Ritz-like, Georges-Cinq-like. Old Europe and its traditions live on here grand, confident, over-staffed, supremely comfortable. As do old Europe’s prices: outside everything is five times cheaper.
Recoleta
Normally I’m not drawn to graveyards but this ornate crowded necropolis (not far from the Palace) outrivals anything I’ve ever seen. All graveyards replicate cities in their own morbid way (with their streets and alleys, blocks and grid-systems — your last address, after all). In Recoleta the tombs are like elaborate minihouses — neo-Gothic, classic, brutalist, streamline moderne — and apparently some areas of the cemetery are more upmarket than others and families squabble for realestate. I dutifully sought out Eva Peron’s grave as all visitors to Recoleta must (and was dutifully let down by its modesty) but it is the graveyard’s architecture itself that demands a serious tour.
Jorge Luis Borges
Borges is to Buenos Aires what James Joyce is to Dublin. If you’ve read Borges and love him (as I do) you wander this enormous city seeking his traces. I went to see where he first lived (in a district called Palermo), stood at the famous junction of streets where he said Buenos Aires was invented (one of the more bathetic experiences of the trip, it has to be said: think run-of-the-mill urban crossroad with traffic lights). Borges was brought to life more by the cafes he frequented: the Café Tortoni — huge, crowded, pillared — very 19th century. My preference was La Beila, like a large genteel brasserie — very popular with middle-aged ladies at tea time — one could almost be in provincial France. At Borges’s regular table there is a commemorative, very realistic, life-size wooden statue of him sitting there. It took little persuading to have my photograph taken alongside him: it looks uncannily as if we are enjoying a chat over our coffees. La Beila also serves the most delicious toasted sandwiches in the world.
Meat
Don’t go to Buenos Aires if you’re a vegetarian — I’ve never, ever eaten meat like the meat I ate in Buenos Aires. An Argentine actor friend, Gregory Dayton, took me to two local parillas — grills — where we were served charcoal-grilled cuts of meat on wooden boards, accompanied by salads. In the second parilla our joint of meat was carved with the side of a spoon to signal its unbelievable tenderness. These were local places, amazingly cheap and relaxed. At the other end of the scale I ate my way through a five-course meat meal at the legendary La Cabana (one of Hemingway’s favourite restaurants) with a different wine for each course. Argentine wines — another long and delectable story.
Tango
It is a cliché but the tango is both something special in Buenos Aires and somewhat omnipresent. You hear the music constantly, you see it danced on street corners and there are large tango clubs (for tourists) that do manage to deliver something of the dance’s unique melancholy frisson. I went to a small bar late at night in San Telmo called Bar Sur — there were only 20 of us watching the dancers as we drank and ate. The dancers were old, the guitars badly tuned, but it was unmistakeably authentic. San Telmo is the antiques district of Buenos Aires and there is a sprawling and spectacular flea market there on Sunday. Also one of the world’s great bars, the Bar Dorrego.
Portenos
Buenos Aires is huge, a bit like London in that respect, and its 19th century scale and splendour still exists. You have to travel long distances to reach districts with their own charm and character. I liked San Telmo, I liked the Palermos — Palermo Chico and Palermo Hollywood, where the media folk hang out. La Boca is a slightly themed shanty town, full of bars and clubs, reputedly where tango was invented, but its vivid and visible poverty (luridly painted walls and corrugated iron roofs) does remind you, in this strangely European city, that you are on another continent, in the Third World. When I went to the famous Plaza de Mayo there was a small demonstration of veterans from the Falklands war. Today the Portenos (as Buenos Aireans call themselves) are unfailingly charming and friendly. Almost a quarter of a century on, these vets were now middle-aged men, all Indians with strong boney faces, drawn from Argentina’s impoverished northern provinces. They had been neglected, they complained, they had no pensions, the wounded had no state support, their pointless sacrifice had been forgotten. I joined the small queue and signed their petition. It seemed the right thing to do.
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