Yep. It really is that small. But have you noticed the adorable mini oven in the "kitchen"?

Would you like skip my rambling and just find out how to rent an apartment in BA? You don’t know what you’re missing, but OK. Click here. This is some quality rambling, though. Just sayin’.

I signed the rental contract on my new Buenos Aires apartment yesterday, and then I went to look at it again. To pace out the measurements, shoot photos, and see if there was wifi to steal borrow (there’s not).

It’s entirely possible that when I originally went to see the place I was so relieved to have not spent an hour on the subte to get there, or be standing in an airless space with no natural light, or have to imagine myself showering while standing on top of the toilet, that the walls actually receded as I stood, giddy and delusional, by the balcony door.

When I got there yesterday (having first spent a good ten minutes trying to open the wrong door, scaring my neighbour and thus getting off to a really good start) it was smaller than I’d remembered. Much smaller.

I’d imagined some kind of day-bed type thing – double, of course – facing the balcony and serving for sleeping and lounging. Yes, I would lounge. I would lounge the hell out of that apartment.

This would leave more than adequate space for a tall bookshelf and a spacious desk by the window where I would sip glasses of chilled white wine while turning out witty articles and insightful blog posts. My gauzy, rich orange drapes would blow gently in the breeze throughout this entire process.

Now I find myself wondering if beds come in a size smaller than “single”, and if the noise of the street would really preclude me from putting the desk on the balcony.

I also don’t have drapes yet. This is a problem, because my apartment is so small it can basically be seen in its entirety from the street.

But hey, its not that bad. See that? That’s my local park giant back garden. A giant back garden that comes with cute doggy friends for Manu, attractive boys on guitar or playing soccer football for me, and lots of sunshine and trees. Parque Las Heras justifies at least 50% of my monthly rent.

Apartment Rentals in Buenos Aires 

1. Type of Rental

Apartments in BsAs come in alquileres, your stock-standard long-term rentals and alquileres temporales, or temporary rentals. This may be my rental market naïveté, as I can’t remember the last time I actually rented a place in an actual city, but I read “temporary rentals” as being a couple of months, and definitely not what I wanted.

Not so. Rentals in Buenos Aires are, by law, for a contract of two years. Anything less than that is a temporary rental, and is noticeably more expensive. I get the impression the latter is the option most foreigners take. Guarantee (bond) requirements may be looser, and you are way more likely to find a furnished property. If this is the option you choose, your life will be simpler. Flick through the following points, just in case, then cruise on over to the links at the bottom of the article and start looking for your dream home.

2. Guarantee

I like to make life hard on myself. I also objected to the higher prices for temporary rentals, and decided that really, furniture wasn’t expensive enough to justify paying extra month after month. Goddamnit, I would have a proper rental and decorate it as I saw fit!

This is where I ran up against problems.

Most agencies require ownership of property in Argentina (sometimes it has to be in the capital) to act as guarantee for the rental. Maybe you have a really amazingly trusting friend here to volunteer, but nobody I know in Argentina owes me a favour that enormous. So I spent days calling up about properties, asking if there would be an alternative means – a cash bond of x months rent? – and crossing out address after address. It did save a huge amount of travelling time by cutting my list of potential apartments into about a tenth of its original size.

I’ve put down a 12 month deposit in cash on my new apartment. This is why point 3 is really important.

3. Contract

This is a lot of cash. This is also a long time – two years – to commit to an apartment. That’s quite a long time for me to commit to an entire country, come to think of it.

It is, therefore, hugely important to vet the agency you will be dealing with, as well as the contract you sign with them. Check out their certificates and offices. Ask around. Google them. They should be registered and have a government-issued number. Make sure there is a reasonable exit clause in the contract in case you don’t make it the full two years.

Do not sign the contract without reading it carefully (I shouldn’t really have to tell you that, should I?). I was given mine to review in peace and quiet several days before we actually signed it, which is always for the best. No matter how good your Spanish is, legalese in any language is tricksy, so have a local look it over for you as well, if you can.

4. Assorted money stuff

Like apartments all over the world, you will be responsible for costs, building fees, and so forth. Figure out what these are before you sign, and keep in mind that the government is considering reducing the subsidies on services. Inflation being what it is here your water bill might go up, considerably, in the next few years.

To my surprise, agent fees are paid by the tenant here. Be clear on what these are.

5. Finding a place

I was dying to live alone, plus its a little difficult to rent a room in a shared apartment with a dog in tow.

But if you want to skip all the aforementioned dramas, head over to MercadoLibre or Craigslist Buenos Aires and click on their “share” sections (both also advertise rentals for one person). Both entail the obvious risk of dealing with strangers in an unregulated online marketplace, so be careful. MercadoLibre is in Spanish, Craigslist a mix of Spanish and English. The latter is on the whole oriented to tourists or expats so the prices tend to be in dollars and rather more expensive than you would find elsewhere.

The quality seems to be quite high though, so for a comfortable, short-term rental with all the amenities and in a posh part of town, this may be the best place to look.

ZonaProp have both alquileres and alquileres temporales. Everything is in Spanish and it is a portal used primarily by real estate agencies. I found my apartment here.

Above all, and especially if you’re looking to share, ask around in hostels and restaurants. Some owners rent directly and leave signs up around the neighbourhood. Obviously this brings its own collection of risks and complications, but shouldn’t automatically be discounted. A group of Colombians – friends of a friend – met some guy on the street who rented them an apartment to share for a great price and with a tiny deposit. Lucky sons of bitches.

Provided he doesn’t kick them to the curb in a few months.

It’s 8 pm on a Monday night in Buenos Aires: the summer heat has finally receded and night is slowly beginning to fall. Enjoy that gentle breeze while it lasts, because the seventeen percussionists that make up La Bomba de Tiempo [sp] (Time Bomb) are just kicking off their two hour set and the crowd is about to, as we Australians say, go off like a frog in a sock (see Note 1).

Which means your hips will wiggle, and you’ll be grateful to have worn comfortable shoes.

Beyond the rave atmosphere, with its buena onda and affordable beer (25 Argentine pesos gets you 1L of Quilmes), the music is a revelation. These hugely talented musicians – and their weekly guest artists – play a different show every week: unrehearsed, and carried out through “directed improvisation”. The communication within the band is held together through the slightest of hand signals and some highly gymnastic leaps on the part of the director, and who-knows-what psychic forces. It’s a really cool way to start the week.

Note 1: Or at least as we used to say back when I was in high school. Is that still a thing? Because it should be.

Image: Sarah Twitchell via flickr

The details…

Where? Ciudad Cultural Konex [sp], Sarmiento 3131, Buenos Aires. (If you’re using ComoViajo [sp] to find the right bus, be sure not to confuse Sarmiento with with Avenida Sarmiento.) Konex is about four blocks from Subte B, Carlos Gardel.

When? Every Monday 8-10 pm. Doors open at 7 pm – get there early to mark your territory. They play rain or shine.

How much? Konex’s website lists prices as “from” 40 pesos; last night they were charging 50 pesos.

Image: Camden Luxford

I was on Craigslist Buenos Aires today looking for a job and I came across this little gem:

“Argentinean are just at the bottom of the bottom out of all the scumbags you can find in this world… THIRD WORLD COUNTRY like it or not… There are not jobs like in the US other than that enjoy the beauty of the people, the cheap meals, THE COIMAS the cheap drugs and also don´t forget

WE ARE FUCKING STARS DOWN HERE!!!!”

I’ll ignore the incorrect use of Argentinian instead of Argentine (which OK, I’ve been guilty of as well, probably on this very blog. Let’s all ignore the search box over there, shall we?).

Let’s also forget that he – she? – forgot to pluralise that same word, and forgive the slight overuse of capitalisation and explanation marks. This is the Internet, and at least its far more articulate than 90% of YouTube comments.

There is, and I think most of my readers will agree, something far more troubling: the content. To my judgement, this single paragraph is the perfect example of something that’s been bothering me for the last couple of days as I lurk on expat forums for tips on life in my new city.

Why are some of these people still here? Why do so many expats remain in a place they clearly feel deeply unhappy in, and towards which they harbour active resentment and disdain?

I’ve broadly laid out some of my concerns with the payment of coimas (bribes) before: corruption is a cancer that seriously undermines democracy and development in “third world countries” (by the way, my Craigslist friend, that term became obsolete with the end of the cold war – see Note 1). While I’ve never hidden the fact that I’ve paid bribes before and advised others on how to do it, it remains, for me, a morally grey area about which I have many conflicts and I would never – ever – list it among one of the awesome, bestest things about Latin America, worth putting up with everything else for.

If some of the more detailed posts I’ve come across in the forums these last few days (in threads such as: What’s wrong with Argentina?) can be considered representative of the opinions and experiences of that minority of unhappy expats here, no doubt corruption is a contributing factor to some of the things that piss our correspondent off some much. I wonder if she – he? – recognises the irony of celebrating one of the most toxic aspects of this society, before proceeding to complain bitterly about the consequences.

Cheap drugs. Um… controversial, and well beyond the scope of a blog post. I don’t condemn the consumption of drugs by consenting, adults who control their behaviour and intake. I do condemn glorifying an industry that is responsible for so much death and violence. Enjoy your cheap drugs, anonymous writer, while the high demand for the significantly more expensive product back in your country, along with your politicians’ misguided “War on Drugs”, devastates entire lives, economies, and societies “down here”… where you are the “FUCKING STAR!!!!!”

Sorry buddy. I’m not fucking impressed. And I don’t think too many others are, either.

Note 1. OK, I admit it. It’s totally passed into common usage, which even flies with the Oxford Dictionary, but “Third World” was technically used to differentiate the democratic US and its allies (First World), the communist Soviet Union (Second World), and those countries who were not firmly aligned with either great power or ideology during the Cold War. The Third World was the scene of many devastating proxy wars. Due in part to these proxy wars, many of these countries were kept, and remain, very poor, with significant social divisions and wobbly democracies. Cold War over, “First”, “Second”, and “Third” as terms to divide the world kind of lost their meaning.

So, what do you think?

I’m sending the link to this post to the person who left the comments on Craigslist. It seems like the right thing to do, and one of the things that made me so irritated with these comments was that they were made anonymously. If you can’t put your name on it, don’t throw it out there into cyberspace. You’re not a Syrian protestor, for God’s sake. If you read this, I would welcome a constructive response in the comments section. I reserve the right to delete abusive comments.

As for the rest of you, I’d love to hear what you think as well (please don’t flame the original poster). I was really shocked to read this, and, as an expat, ashamed. I was called out in the comments section once for complaining about Peru, but I stand by that post and maintain that it was a reasoned, considered criticism about a country I loved, but had a complicated relationship with, as I have a complicated relationship with my home, Australia, and will no doubt have with Argentina. I think we, as expats, have the right to comment on the societies we live in, as long as that criticism is presented in a reasoned manner that is sensitive to the political, historical, and cultural context. And as long as we are prepared to turn an equally critical eye on our home country.

Would you stay somewhere you were unhappy? What is an expat’s place in their adopted country? Is it OK to criticise as a guest in the country? To what point? And what responsibility do we have to understand the context, and impact, of our presence?

La Boca, Buenos Aires. Image: flickr via elNico

 … we’re in Buenos Aires, Argentina!

I’ve found an apartment, and should be signing the contracts this week. Manu, my dog, will have to adjust to city life in a shoebox size studio apartment; I’m just thrilled it’s mine, all mine, and after months – years – of living in hostels or out of a combi I’ll be able to leave my toothbrush in the bathroom and the dishes in the sink overnight, if I so desire.

I may also plant herbs on my balcony. And tomatoes! And become a domestic goddess overnight: baking, preparing elaborate roasts, making my own pasta!

… Except I don’t have a stove, or even a fridge at this point. Or bed.

But life post-Yamanyá is slowly coming together. I need a job, or possibly jobs, or maybe just a donate button… right? I’ve been studying a lot to get myself caught back up with university work after the stressful months finalising the sale and packing my life up in boxes.

And here I am, at last, in Buenos Aires. Even taking the subte (subway) in searing summer heat makes me smile. Hi city life, I missed you!

We will be turning to our regularly scheduled (HA!) programming later this week. This blog post is pretty much just going up to cure me of my fear of WordPress’s “New Post” and “Publish” buttons after such a long hiatus. And to see if anyone’s still reading…. hello? Are you guys still out there….?

Today, I’m running the seventeenth interview in my Adjusting to Expat Life series.  If you’re interested in being interviewed about your current or past expat experiences, please get in touch via the Contact page.

Marcel Krueger used to be a heavy metal singer, something I find delightfully in keeping with German stereotypes.  Then he moved to Ireland and became a writer, which is something less expected, but allows him to showcase the dry German wit that most perpetuators of stereotypes tend to forget about.  He’s been published in a bundle of travel and music mags, runs the blog King of Pain, and is the co-founder of awesomely niche documentary project Sonic Iceland, based on a journey into Icelandic music in 2010.

Marcel is also celebrating the launch of his book, Stop Coming to My House, a collection of stories.  Irish-based readers (I have Google Analytics, kids, I know you’re out there) can check out the official launch on Tuesday November 8, at 8pm.  It’s at the Loft Bookshop, 54 Middle Abbey St, Dublin.  There will be wine.  Wine.

So, Marcel, what drove the decision to move to Ireland?

What made me come here was a new job, quite simply. At the time, I had this stereotype image of Ireland being a completely rural country full of green hills, red-haired maidens on cliff tops, sheep and rain. I found out that the only thing they have in Dublin is rain, though. I never missed the sheep and the green hills are mostly just an hour away. Haven’t found the maidens yet.

Had you lived abroad before?

No, Ireland was the first foreign country I moved to. I had moved around Germany a bit before, but this was my first experience in diving headfirst into a new country and a new culture.

Were you part of a close-knit expat community, or closer to locals?

Bit of both, I’d say. My friends are from Ireland, both north and south of the border, Italy, France, Colombia, Vietnam and Spain. Dublin is a very international city, so whatever your preferred leisure activity, you’ll probably meet people from all over the world there. Those expat communities that do exist in Dublin are country- and location-based, so Italians meet in Italian restaurants, Brazilians in specific pubs for samba-nights and so forth. There is no German-expat community of any sorts, but then I don’t feel the urge to specifically mingle with Germans, and thanks to the web I’m still in constant touch with Germany anyway. My friends and I are all living and working here for years though, so we would not necessary meet travelers when going out.

What were the greatest differences you noticed when you first arrived?

The obvious small things first: bank opening hours, the fact that Dublin Bus in never on time (though they have improved over the years) and that the Irish really cherish conversation, so I end up having long chats with random people in the pub, a thing that would never happen in Germany. This led me to realise how hard it is to take Germany out of the German – even though I considered myself quite laid-back and almost socialist in my views of life, it took me a while to realise how different countries can be even when they are only 1.5 flight hours apart.

To what level did you speak the language when you arrived?

Fairly ok. I was working as a radio journalist mostly interviewing musicians from the US and the UK, and was also the main songwriter in a band, so I had no problem getting in contact with people.

How did the language differences affect you?  And how was the learning process for you?

I spoke English before I came here, but this was mostly the Oxford-English I learned at school and the US-influenced language of my interview partners. And I found out that the Irish do such fantastic things with (English) language! From local Dublin-patois ( for example adding “brilliant!”when expressing approval or enthusiasm) to all those Hiberno-English terms, so listening to the Irish and reading Irish literature was discovering a treasure trove for a language lover like myself. And I happily picked up some slang. I no longer say “No, thank you.”, I use “You’re grand!” instead.

Autumn in Dublin. Image: Steve-h via flickr

Was there a moment when you suddenly realised the extent to which you had integrated? To which you hadn’t?

Not sure if “integration”is the right term. But what I can do now is switch on a German filter whenever I interact with the Irish, and an Irish filter when I’m in Germany. So many particularities that both nationalities display and tend to get bothered by do not bother me at all. I love living in Ireland, and have become assimilated up to a certain point, for example switched from coffee to tea, love a good Sunday roast and heading to the pub to chat with people, but I’m not sure if I’ll still be here in 20 years. But I’m for sure not “going back”to Germany to start a family or anything either in the year or so. This is a thing many expat Germans I’ve met do – they clock up two years abroad for their CV’s and then return home.

I couldn’t pinpoint a certain moment in time, but losing my German World-War 2-movie-villain accent felt like a great achievement, haha.

I find that writing about my experiences as an expat helps me process the cultural differences.  How did being a writer shape the way you looked at Ireland?

Ireland actually made me pick up the pen, so to say. As I said, I worked as a journalist before, but that was mostly for radio. But my new job as a copywriter helped me enormously in getting a feel for writing in English. As I left my band in Germany to move here I had nothing to do in terms of a cultural outlet, so I started blogging and pitching articles to travel and music magazines. Being a German living in Ireland and writing in English is also not very common, as I found out. So this also helped in getting my first writing assignments.

Self-publishing my first book and being a member of the Irish Writers Centre, I got in touch with more and more contemporary Irish writers like Nuala Ní Chonchúir and Kevin Barry, and reading their stuff is an enormous help in trying to find my own voice as an expat writer.

It can be easy to fall into cliches or shallow observations when writing about other cultures.  Have you got any advices for writers who want to avoid these pitfalls?

I think it’s actually quite funny to play around with cliches and stereotypes once you do it consciously. So my preset point of view when writing travel stories would be that of the Goretex-clad German idiot tourist with guidebook and dictionary, but one that discards guidebook and idiocy at some stage.

You have to make sure that your readers understand that you are open for other cultures and constantly check if you pen your own experiences or if you write something you may have picked up in said guidebook, subconsciously. The easiest way to do this is to always avoid those jargon terms like “mind-boggling”or “must-see”. I have the following quote by George Orwell pinned over my writing desk: “Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.”

What advice would you have for new expats? What do you wish you had known before moving to your new home?

Research. Research some more. Some people argue that traveling to a foreign place knowing nothing is the best way to learn something new, but there’s always the danger of irritating and annoying the locals with our western ways, so the best thing to do is amass as much knowledge as you can and then check your theoretical knowledge against life.

I found out that most people appreciate an interest in their country’s history and politics way more than an interest in eating their sheep and looking for maidens on clifftops.

Film Night. Image: Adam Foster via flickr

This post is brought to you courtesy of the folks at Vacation Home Rentals.  Check them out for holiday rentals in the United States.

As part of my preparation for the upcoming DELE exam, I’m refreshing my familiarity with all of the different accents in Spanish – they draw the listening test samples from any Hispanic country.  The best (and most entertaining) way to do so?  Spanish-language film.  I keep the Spanish language subtitles on for a viewing or two, and revisit the movie later without them.  Here are five of my favourites, drawing on the accents and vocabulary of Spain, Peru, Chile, and Argentina.  Enjoy these films, and I’ll be back with another edition in a few weeks.

Rec (Spain)

I’ve always been a huge fan of horror films, and this is a cracker.  A TV reporter and her cameraman are following a squad of firemen on their nightly rounds when they’re called, along with a pair of policemen, to investigate screams coming from inside the locked apartment of an elderly woman.

The entire film is shot from the perspective of the TV cameraman, so it’s shaky and realistic, but without the seasickness-inducing handheld filming of Cloverfield.  You’ll learn to curse fluently as a Spaniard (while still using the respectful Usted form!) as the fragile cooperation between neighbours, police, firemen, and film crew disintegrates in the face of a terrifying threat inside the building, and mysterious official forces outside, keeping them all trapped.  Not the most dialogue heavy of the films I’ve included here, but too good to pass up – and once you can decipher the Spanish accent delivered in screams and sobs, you know you’ve made it.

Todo Sobre Mi Madre (Spain)

If you’re a student of the Spanish language and have yet to come across a film from acclaimed cult Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar, you need to fix that right away.  His films aren’t for everyone (especially his punkish, confronting early films), but they reflect important cultural moments in Spain, and are a vital part of that country’s film history.

I’ve watched Todo Sobre Mi Madre (All About My Mother) a million and one times and it never gets old; Almodóvar is a women’s director, and here he creates one of the most memorable “female” characters in modern cinema.  Agrado is a pre-op transexual, and her monologue on what it means to be an authentic woman is one of the best parts of the film (I’ve embedded the YouTube clip below).  Cecilia Roth also puts in an excellent performance, as does Penelope Cruz – I’ve always liked her much more in her native language – and the complicated relationship between the two, one as a grieving mother, the other as estranged daughter looking for a mother figure, is lovely to watch develop.  But the film is full of strong, unique characters, and I could rave about all day.  Watch it.

Amores Perros (Mexico)

The first full-length from the director of Babel and 21 Grams, Mexican Alejandro González Iñárritu, Amores Perros is as bleak and gritty as the bleakest and grittiest moments of these films.  It follows three lives that intersect in a car accident in Mexico City – and the lives of the characters’ dogs, which take on defining and symbolic roles in the film.

Rather too melodramatic at times – veering into telenovela territory – the film is, nevertheless, slick, entertaining, brutally violent, and surprising.  The characters are complex, the cinematography delightfully dirty, and the Mexico City street slang a nice challenge.  Also, Gabriel Gael Bernal can do no wrong, in my book.

La Teta Asustada (Peru)

Claudia Llosa’s La Teta Asustada, Peru’s nomination for the 2010 Foreign Language Oscar, is a beautiful, paced, measured film.  It follows timid, troubled Fausta as she battles with the sickness passed down to her through her mother’s breast milk:  a deep, pathological fear based in the terror her pregnant mother felt as she was gang-raped by soldiers during Peru’s horrific twenty years of political violence.

From the haunting opening scene, in which Fausta arranges the pillows around the fragile form of her aged, perpetually mourning mother, I was hooked.  Magaly Solier, as Fausta, is defensive yet vulnerable, eyes intense under a thick, dark fringe.  For me, she drove forward and held together a narrative that for many of my friends was too slow.

This film is an excellent introduction to the scars left in the country by the years of violence between the government and Sendero Luminoso, as well as its social divisions.  It was criticised by some within the country for presenting a too-critical perspective to the outside world, but I found it honest.  No film can hope to present the full story of a nation, and the damage done to women during the violence is a worthy story to immortalise.

El Secreto En Sus Ojos (Argentina)

This is the film La Teta Asustada lost out to in the Oscars.  Similarly, it deals with a painful period in Argentina’s past – a period of extreme right-wing politics leading to the commencement of the Dirty War a few years later – but this past contextualises the story rather than driving it, casting its oppressive pall over the action.

A complex love story, thriller, and film noir all at the same time, El Secreto de Sus Ojos is the story of Benjamin Espósito, a retired investigator for the Argentinian federal court system, who can’t forget the unresolved, brutal rape and murder of a beautiful young woman twenty-five years earlier.  Revisiting the case, he revisits an old love that never quite found its moment, and that has, deeply intertwined with the murder case, also haunted him for the rest of his love.

The acting is a revelation, the script complex, surprising, and intelligent.  The chance to practice what for the unaccustomed is one of the least accessible Spanish accents is just a bonus.

Machuca (Chile)

Another look at a time of political instability in Latin America, this time in Chile.  Machuca examines the 1973 military coup led by Pinochet, that overthrew the democratically elected Marxist government of Allende, through the eyes of two boys, improbable friends, from opposite ends of the social spectrum.

The relationships between the children in the film are tenderly dealt with, and serve as a metaphor for the greater social tensions in the background.  Stock up on tissues before you press play – I was, snotty nosed and red eyed, very grateful to be watching alone.

Another difficult accent, and another great film.

More Spanish-learning resources:

• 7 Bands and Artists to Help You Learn Spanish
• 5 More Bands to Help You Learn Spanish (Argentinian Edition)
• 5 Books for Intermediate/Advanced Spanish Learners

I’d love to hear your recommendations of great Spanish language films!  Dive in and leave a comment.

Terrifying Andean roads. Image: Thiago Jacomasso via flickr

I almost died on the way home to Cusco from Lima.

Maybe that’s a little dramatic.  But it felt pretty damn real at 4 am, when our driver took a little nap behind the wheel and we veered dramatically across the narrow Andean road before one of the wheels blew.  This was enough to wake him up, and we veered dramatically back in the other direction, until he finally regained control and slammed on the brakes to the desperate screeches of my fellow passengers.

It certainly didn’t help that in the 4 am darkness, we weren’t able to see the mercifully flat and chasm-free part of the mountain crossing we were currently traversing.  I was miraculously quiet and calm, sitting bolt upright, waiting for the moment in which we plummeted out over a cliff, to fly out into the night and plummet into the valley below.

But we didn’t.

As we spilled out of the bus one by one to stand shivering on the side of the road with no explanation, much less apology, as we bent over steaming bowls of sopa a la criolla in a nearby service station waiting for the bus to be repaired, as we climbed back on, to wedge ourselves into the narrow uncomfortable seats of economy-class Wari, all I thought was, man I’m sick of this country.

A friend of mine crows about how much he loves his patria, how he’d never leave Peru.  For its varied cuisine, its music, its traditions, its fascinating blend of cultures?

No.  The freedom.  He loves driving half-drunk or stoned, and making any policeman that pulls him over go away with a palmed S/.10 note.

We were ferried from the scene of the accident to the service station where we had breakfast by another Wari bus, this one of the luxury class.  They dropped us off, and instructed us to wait for our bus to be repaired.

“But there’s seats on this one…  can’t you just take us on to Cusco?”

“This is a different class of bus, señorita.”

“Look, I’m going to be late for my own birthday party, I’ll pay the difference when we arrive!”

“Oh, well, this bus actually only goes as far as Abancay.”  A town some four hours from Cusco, and an unlikely final destination for a luxury-class bus from Lima.

Over the protestations of my fellow passengers at what was, I’m certain, a filthy lie, they drove away less than half-full, leaving us, shaken and irritated, to wait.

Later, as our original driver pushed his foot down hard on the accelerator, as we lurched too quickly around tight curves on mountain roads, the people around me called out to him:  slow down!  There’s no hurry!  What’s wrong with you?  Be careful!

He turned the music up.

Occupy Wall Street. Image: David Shankbone via flickr

This isn’t so much a complaint against Wari as the expression of a general frustration with Peru.  For all the things I love about this country, I’m deeply tired of the corruption, of living in a place where threats to human life are brushed aside with a pathetically tiny bribe.

One driver for the 21 hour route between Lima and Cusco?  If that’s not illegal, it should be.  Not that it would make any difference, though: cheaper to bribe the relevant authorities than to pay two drivers, no doubt.

The ethics and morality of bribery are complex, and I’ve paid my share of coimas.  In the end it comes down to personal interest, and sometimes, frankly, you don’t really have much of a choice.  The corruption is so deeply ingrained into the daily workings of commerce and society that abstention is challenging.  Nearly impossible.

What’s more, it’s not just Peru, and as I follow the news from Occupy Wall Street, flick through articles on the Karachi scandal in France, and attach my signature to electronic petitions calling for greater media transparency in Australia, my general frustration with Peru broadens, deepens.  When did human life become so cheap, and when did respect for individuals as having moral value, as deserving respect and truth and fairness and justice, disappear?

Not that long ago I expressed my belief in the possibility of a just capitalism.  Today I’m feeling less optimistic.  How do we possibly untie the tangled webs of money and power that embrace the entire world?

On a more practical note, boys and girls, this is why you should think about paying a bit more for your bus travel in Peru.  I recommend Tepsa, Cruz del Sur, and TourPeru.

That’s right, a new language challenge!  I’m not sure if I’m excited or terrified:  Jose’s confident comment – “you’re more street than anyone, Cam, of course you’ll pass” – pretty much sums it up.  My Spanish is very barrio, and very barrio limeño at that.  My friends are all from Lima, and they’ve taught me a very specific slang.  I’m fluent, and talk fast, but sometimes too fast for my brain to keep up, and I don’t always catch my grammar slip-ups until they’re out of my mouth.

The Superior level DELE demands a broad vocabulary, an awareness of Spanish as it’s spoken in countries other than slangy Peru, and impeccable grammar.  The exam comes in the following parts:

• Use of the language, reading comprehension, and listening comprehension (90 minutes)
• “Integrated Skills”:  listening and reading comprehension, written expression (150 minutes)
• “Integrated Skills”:  reading comprehension, and oral expression and interaction (20 minutes plus 30 minutes prep)

I’m not too worried about the listening comprehension bit – travelling with Argentinians and Colombians this year, not too mention the trip to Cuba, have exposed me to the accents I was least familiar with.  I’m used to being around fast-talking limeños.  I’ll kick up my diet of Spanish-language films – what a hardship! – just in case, but this one should be a breeze.

The oral is my biggest concern.  Like I said, I speak fast, and I make myself understood without problems.  But my accent is… problematic.  In Australia we tend to drop our r‘s, and this has carried over to my Spanish.  It doesn’t help that I’m slightly tounge-tied, making the rolled r very difficult to achieve.  I make like Lenin(see note 1) and avoid words requiring that sound where possible, and around my friends it doesn’t bother me, but I am a little self-conscious about it.

Here’s hoping that self-consciousness doesn’t develop into some kind of nervous tic – or total silence – during the oral section of the exam.

The rest is just a matter of knuckling down and studying again.  I’ve got until November 19, and here’s what I plan to do:

• 

  Image: Zitona via flickr

  Look up a bunch of tounge-twisters and vocal exercises to fix my r‘s once and for all.  It’ll be like childhood Speech and Drama all over again!

• I already do a lot of reading in Spanish, but I plan to take myself off English-language books completely until the exam date (although I refuse to give up my English-language news).
• Kick up my diet of Spanish movies, music, and TV.  Again, what a hardship.
• Make a review of all my grammar notes, from the beginning.  This is where it gets less fun.
• Grammar exercises, ad infinitum.
• Make use of the collection of practice exams provided by Institute Cervantes, from the lower levels up.
• Revisit my thousands of Anki flashcards on a daily basis, and make new ones – no more guessing at meaning from context and reading on.
• Revise the structure of formal letters, and other possible traps in the written expression section.
• Remind my friends of the importance of correcting me!

Note 1.  Lenin apparently also suffered from this condition – rather unfortunate when you’re the leader of a country whose language contains the trilled r, and you’re expected to make inspiring speeches.  I read somewhere, ages ago (or possibly dreamt) that he avoided words with the trill like the plague).

Anybody sat the DELE exams before, or planning to sit them?  Do you have any study ideas for me?

Disclaimer:  I’m a Matador U affiliate, so if you enrol with them by clicking through on the links here I will earn a small commission.  This review is, nevertheless, my honest opinion.

Habana Vieja, Cuba... seen from the other side of the bay. Image: Camden Luxford

When I was in Cuba, MatadorU‘s lead faculty Julie Schwietert hooked me up with a sweet casa particular and a great on-the-ground contact to get me out of Havana Vieja and into the vibrant suburbs.

MatadorU editors and fellow students helped polish one of my assignments, Memories of Kosovo, which was later accepted for publication in The Expeditioner‘s compilation of travel writing, The Expeditioner’s Guide to the World: Intrepid Tales of Awesomeness from the Open Road.

And it was in the MatadorU forums that I met awesome fellow expat/writers like Mary Ann Oxendale (@koangirl), who keeps me sane and my Twitter feed interesting, and Abroad editor Heather Carreiro (@expatheather), who invited me onto the Abroad team for several months as a regular contributor.

I started the U’s Travel Writing program an embarrassingly long time ago, and, final editing and polishing of my short biography and portfolio aside, I’ve finally reached the finish line.

Is it worth the investment?

Travel Writing and Travel Photography programs are offered, both consisting of 12 modules or “weeks” (but you can take as long as you need).  The price is $350, but you can try it out for a week for just $10.

What do you get for your hard-earned?

The Content

This is not just a writing skills course.  Technical components of travel writing (structure, form, dialogue, etc) are addressed, but so are the skills you need to actually earn money.  Social media, branding, and pitching are covered, as well as the realities of life as a travel writer, such as budgeting, time management, and information storage.

Editor and Peer Feedback

Enrollment in the U gains you lifetime access to the forums, where you can workshop articles with editors and peers, especially in the weekly writing labs.  In these labs, you can submit one article a week to receive detailed feedback from two professional editors (Trisha Miller, publishing and managing editor from Travel Writers Exchange has been on board as visiting editor all this month).

I’ve been an infrequent visitor to the forums of late, but have still been impressed to note their growing vibrancy.  There’s a great community atmosphere, and lots of opportunity for networking.

Career Development

Students can access the Market Blog for job leads, and many have scored press trips or won awards since graduation.

Most of all, Matador (the largest independent travel magazine on the Internet) is a dynamic, innovative publication with a refreshingly ground-level approach to travel writing and photography.  MatadorU – a source of new talent “brought up” in this philosophy – can only stand to gain from its parent company’s reputation.

Keith Bellows of National Geographic Traveler had this to say:

So what’s wrong with it?

Let’s imagine this is a 12-week course with content only.  No forums, no lifetime access, no networking, no job leads.  Worth $350?  Maybe, maybe not.  The content is great, but a lot of it is available online for free, if you’re prepared to dig a little.

But MatadorU is not a course, it’s a community.  The content is valuable, but the connections are everything.   Budding travel writers will find it a very helpful jumping off point, providing them with the information and the contacts they need to get started.

Confident writers with a firm technical grasp of the travel writing genre, and with an already established online footprint, will probably find it quite basic, and should give it a miss.

Enrol now, and gain access not just to valuable information to develop as an artist and professional, but also to a supportive and honest community of editors, writers, and fellow students.

Mistura, 2011 is over.  I went twice.

Twice I fought the crowds outside to buy my last minute tickets at S/.25-30 (instead of the ticket office price of S/.20).

Twice I elbowed my way through the hordes to line up for delicious ceviches, anticuchos, and chicharrones, along with twists on Peruvian classics, like risotto de seco and gnocchi a la carapulcra.

Twice I sat in raptures, Pisco Sour in one hand, plastic fork in the other, raving about Peruvian food and oh my the flavours and this is, like, the best day ever, and oh my God we haven’t even made it to the regional restaurants yet!

And then I would jump up and down a little, excitement too much for me, and my friends would roll their eyes and complain that they were actually feeling a little full, and anyway, there were too many people here, shouldn’t we go find a bar somewhere, quiet, where it wasn’t like playing – and losing – and endless game of musical chairs?

They had a point.  The queues were ridiculously long at times, and by 3 pm on the final Saturday I was so overwhelmed by the crowds that we did, in fact, duck out, defeated.

But it wasn’t just the queues that had some people’s noses out of joint.

***

Misiura – a spoof festival – is a play on the Peruvian slang, misio:  broke, poor.  Its Facebook page declares it the “feria gastronómica mas importante de el pueblo,” the most important gastronomic fair of the people, unlike the real Mistura’s claim to be the most important in South America.

The organisers of Misiura, and other critics of Mistura, think the festival is elitist and hypocritical, claiming to be by and for all Peruvians, while charging prices well beyond the reach of many.

It’s an interesting debate, well summed-up by a selection of translated blogosphere, Twitter, and Facebook quotes over at Global Voices.

I’m fascinated by the controversy.  With the imminent deadline for the Millennium Goals shining a light on global poverty, spiraling food prices, and a whole lot of concern over population growth and limited resources, is it OK to run a pricey, fashionable food festival?  Is it OK for nine elite, wealthy, celebrity chefs, owners of pricey, fashionable restaurants, to sign a declaration – an open letter to the chefs of tomorrow – proclaiming their weighty responsibility to change the way the world eats, to sponsor sustainability, to be socially engaged?  To, essentially, change the world?

Well, yeah.  I kinda think it is.

Mistura gained international attention, helping cement Peru’s growing reputation as home to one of the great cuisines of the world.  While the so-called “trickle-down” effect isn’t really living up to its name in many – most – rural parts of the country, the fault lies with corrupt and inefficient government, not with tourism itself, nor the growth of the “gourmet” industry.  The money coming in needs to be better managed, and more fairly distributed, there is no doubt, but a well-managed, sustainable tourism, like a well-managed, sustainable gastronomy, can be a boon.

Meat on a stick shouldn't taste this good. Anticuchos in Mistura. Image: Camden Luxford

Perhaps Gastón Acurio and his fellow chefs’ declaration is a bit of cynical self-promotion, but even if it is, if the chefs of tomorrow really do find it inspiring, it earns value in that inspiration.

I, for one, think a creative, sustainable, accessible gastronomy is a huge asset to Peru.  Mistura may not have been accessible to all, but if it encourages the development of an industry that is, then it, too, finds value.

The industry is thriving, and it’s not all elitist or expensive.  If you’re in Cusco over the weekend, be sure to stop by Dulce Perú Sur, on Saturday September 24, in the Plaza Regocijo.  This is the second year in which this gastronomic tour will do the rounds of the country, seeking to rediscover – and publicise – traditional desserts.  The competitions are free for anyone to enter, from housewives to top chefs.  Unlike Mistura, there will be no entrance fee.

***

So, “let them eat cake”?  Not exactly.  Capitalism offers choice, and incentive, and this – when regulated effectively – is what drives competition, development, and innovation.

I’m not a wholehearted supporter of the free-market, but I do believe a just capitalism is possible, and I do believe a reflexive rejection of globalisation and supposed elitism is counter-productive.  Globalisation is as close to a certainty as we’re likely to encounter in the modern political system, and Mistura is part of that.  And it can, I believe, be productive.

Rawls, in his modern classic A Theory of Justice, accepted the necessity of inequalities to inspire competition and drive societies forward, to foster the innovation that is necessary if we are going to cope with the many global challenges we face.  He accepted these inequalities, however, on one condition: that they offered the most benefit to the least well-off in society.

Does Mistura benefit the poor more than the well-off that thronged its green spaces, enjoying live music and the talents of some of Peru’s best chefs?  That’s highly debatable, and based on comparisons of immediate gratification and long-term economic change that I couldn’t possibly address here, even if I were so qualified.  But it provided jobs, shined a spotlight on Peru’s potential as a gastronomic hotspot, and fostered unifying national pride in a country that is still highly divided and conflictive.

All the better if next year they really do move Mistura to a bigger venue, and bring down the prices.

Read more:

• Fancy a Peruvian? From the Guardian (UK)
• “Misiura”: el otro plato de Mistura.  From Siente Mag (Peru)

Did you visit Mistura?  What did you think?  Elitist and hypocritical?  Or a boon to Peru’s economy and society?  Or both?