LandingPad Buenos Aires

3. Enjoying a quiet moment alone while washing the mugre off your feet

One of the few perks of a Buenos Aires winter is that shoes and socks protect your feet from the mugre (scum, filth) of the city. This silent assailant will attack any flip-flop adorned foot that dares to step out of impeccably clean environments, such as the MALBA museum and most parts of the Recoleta neighborhood. Mugre hides under the uneven sidewalk obstacles, in the unfiltered car and bus exhaust, and in the heavy dust that inevitably cakes this busy microcosm.

While lazier days and nights encourage the admiration of ones “foot tan,” those who enjoy hopping into bed with clean tootsies will start the bath and scrub away. I love those 5 minutes I spend sitting on the tub edge marveling first at all the mugre my busy day has accumulated and then at the cleanliness of my no longer offensive feet.

Those who live in BA and don’t do this and think its weird: look at your feet.
Who’s laughing now?

4. Pronouncing English words with an Argentine accent

Argentines have been exposed to English speaking culture in a serious way. They love the Rolling Stones (de eroll-eng estons) and Bob Dylan (boeb dee lan). The have made these and other words their own and may have difficulty understanding the words as pronounced in English.

To imagine their accent, look no farther than the movie Borat. One night while watching the movie with an Argentine friend, I look to him and say, “Whoa, I can barely understand him!” My friend looks at me rather surprised and says, “Rrree-lay? I cahn understand heem pearfectly.”

I live near the streets Monroe and O’Higgins. To give directions to my house I say, “Mon-ro-ay” with a rolled r and “O heens” with a throaty Yiddish “h”. There is a beautiful rose garden in Palermo with over 1,000 different species of roses. It’s called the Rosedal, pronounced “ro-sey-dal.” And the newest addition to this pronunciation party is Facebook. If you want to talk about Facebook, just saying “fae boo” will do.

Finally, you’ll know you’ve really integrated yourself into the culture when you introduce yourself, butchering your own name so that locals can understand and say it with some resemblance to it’s actual sound.

“Hola, soy Ma-Thee, un gusto.” (Hi, I’m Madi, nice to meet you.)

Vocabulary

carne (n): meat, the body of God
Maradona (n): soccer legend, God
cachetazo (n): a slap across the face
asasdo (n): BBQ
asador (n): person (man of the house) who diligently prepares the asado
chorizo (n): sausages, usually the first piece of carne ready off the grill
mugre (n): dirt that accumulates on any given surface

Madi Lang
LPBA Staff