Buenos Aires 2

Argentine National Congress

My room had a TV and there were a couple of decent channels such the Latin American music one. Must buy some CDs at the end of the trip, I decided. There was also a TV España channel. Still looking towards Europe it seemed.

Breakfast at Coto was American: bread, jam, butter, eggs with ham, coffee with milk, orange juice and dulce de leche. The locals like the last, but I will never get used to it; too sweet and gooey. It's essentially caramelised condensed milk. My diary records that breakfast cost me the princely sum of 1 peso, or 1 USD. I think that was no mistake because Coto could sell those meals cheaply.

I found the porteños cordial. Once a couple of women offered to take my picture. But they seemed to be always on the move. I had to walk just as fast or I would get trampled, or so it seemed to me.

I noted that João Gilberto was playing on Sunday night so I decided to attend. The box office had a manual but effective booking system: a pegboard recorded which seats had been sold.

For lunch I had a couple of empanadas, of pollo and carne (chicken and meat). Not bad. Before I set out my ex-colleague whose family had migrated from Baires to the US when she was a teenager gave me a list of nostalgic food I should try, and I was going to work through the whole list. Dulce de leche was one, already did that. Sandwiches de miga were essentially the same as English tea sandwiches. I had one of jamon and huevo (ham and egg). Ok, they get a pass mark. I couldn't find bananitas de chocolate, which I suspect are these: bananita dolca. Must have been a childhood treat for my friend. Alfajores were too sweet for my taste. Like everywhere else in the world, French croissants and baguettes had conquered patisseries.

Bookshops were well-stocked. Besides Spanish, I found English, French and Italian works. The antiquarian bookshops had a lot of ancient stuff. Porteños read really esoteric stuff; at a magazine vendor in the underground I saw titles such as Journal of Mass Transit!

Lagos 2

In the middle of the night one of the (probably drunk) Aussie boys climbed up the roof to bother the girls in the next dorm from the window. They got rid of him after some altercation

In the morning I felt listless and unmotivated to do anything after the tumult of the night before. To misquote Sartre, company is hell, but no company is also hell. But I had to make an effort so I walked to the bus station and checked the schedules to Sagres. I walked to the eastern beach, Meia Praia, took some photos and had an orange juice. I returned to the town by crossing the narrow channel on a ferry.

I had been moved from dorm 9 from dorm 7. My roommates were one Argentinian and later a few Brazilians. The place had quietened a lot since most of the girls (and boys) left. 


At 1500, S finished work at the restaurant and showed up at the cultural centre while I was examining a poster for a concert that night. She had been a lawyer but had abandoned that career to devote herself to painting and sculpture. She was petite, with combed-back hair, and green eyes. We walked and talked on the beach. She said that her dream was running a cafe by the sea. She thought Portugal was being "taken over" economically by the powerful nations of the European Community, e.g. Germany. Maybe that explained the anti-Nazi graffiti, e.g. Nazis are no fun!, I had seen on sundry walls. Not anti-fascist but anti-foreign ownership. But she also thought that the Portuguese were lazy. We agreed to meet again on Sunday.

I felt chirpier after an afternoon nap. The world feels better after a rest; I must remember that. For dinner I tried an East Timorese restaurant, whose staff looked authentic. The Pãu Kukus turned out to be a Chinese pork bun. The Chao Meng de Gambas was exactly that, fried noodles with prawns, only the noodles were flat rather than square, as is normal. The chilies in the condiment dish were fiery and mixed with salt. C had expressed an interest in joining me for the concert, but as the time drew close she was still talking on the phone, to her boyfriend, as it turned out later. So I went by myself. Perhaps it was just as well: the price, 1000 escudos, was ok for me, but might have been a bit pricey for a backpacker like her.


I felt a bit formal in my long sleeved shirt and dark trousers. The players were the Medici Ensemble, comprising graduates of the Porto Conservatory, with a substitution of the pianist Rui Soares da Costa. Some of his vocal compositions performed in the first half were lovely. In the second half, they played lighter pieces by Berlin, Kern, Porter and Gershwin. I was transported to a higher world for a while and forgot my fatigue induced melancholy. Music goes straight to the heart, no matter what style.


I realised that the diary I wrote, the postcards I sent, and the promises I made for later, were all links to my other life, the one back home. What would it be like, I wondered, to be totally cut myself off from that "normal life", say to put my affairs on ice for a year and travel. Was it possible to cut all ties like that?