Days 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, & 79 – Monday 11.01.2010 to Wednesday 11.10.2010
AN EMBARRASMENT OF STAYING PUT
(Buenos Aires and its surrounds)

This period of our trip may appear an anomaly in the midst our busy laundry list of cities, hostels, borders, bus rides, mountains, etc. For one brief, shining moment, after our arrival in Buenos Aires, we found ourselves in the midst of a small army’s worth of Victoria’s family and friends, all wanting nothing more than to sit down with us, place food and drink in front of us, and have multi-hour conversations with us. This one brief, shining moment then repeated itself over and over for the next 9 days, until family members ran out of things to feed us and had to start taking us out to restaurants.

Returning to Buenos Aires after a 4-year dry spell allowed Victoria to spend some quality time with the people who had defined her childhood and teenage years – close high-school friends, all-those-guys-who’d-had-crushes-on-her-in-high-school, family friends, her sisters and her cousins and her aunts, etc.

Since these nine days revolved around the good folk who took turns entertaining us and picking up the tab, we will report on this not with a chronology but rather with highlights of our time spent with these folks. Namely:

Adolpho & Luc. By some wonderful stroke of luck, our time in BA coincided with an extended visit by Victoria’s uncles Adolpho and Luc, all the way from Paris. They have this really weird habit, whereby they drop everything they’re doing when they see you and force you to come over and drink their champagne and never let you leave. It must be a French thing. We were fortunate enough to get to spend hours and hours of uninterrupted time with them. They are excellent uncles.
Luis & Liz. Providence also shone on us in that we overlapped in I-want-to-be-a-part-of-B-A-Buenos-Aires with Victoria’s brother Luis and his wife Liz (totally out of his league, by the way). As fellow NYC residents, Luis and Liz are forced to see us quite often in the real Big Apple. Even though they are snobby Manhattanites, we still like them.

Jacob, little bro to Joseph. A herbivorous curse in a meat-loving city. Here for a semester study-abroad program, Jacob introduced us to all three restaurants in the city that serve vegetarian food. He also gave us a home base for our operations in the “Reco-lermo” area (that’s the border of Recoleta and Palermo), lent us his computer from time to time, and schooled Joseph in a Saturday “jog” (i.e., all-out-sprint). A brief plug for Jacob’s blog.

Aunt Sofia, cousins Maki & Fran & wife Juli. We spent a wonderful evening at the home of Victoria’s paternal aunt, who is about to become a grandma. When we weren't stuffing delicious homemade empanadas into our mouths, we were admiring the bulge that is soon to be Fran & Juli's first son.


The Lantos family. Recipients of the 2010 Nobel Prize for Hospitality. We mentioned Irene and Ignacio in a post a few days ago. (As you may have guessed, we failed to vacate their apartment, and occupied half of their living space for a full 10 days.) Irene is cut from the same cloth as her parents, who routinely go out of their way to make our lives better. Aside from inducting Jacob into their family during the last few months, they have served as our free travel guides, personal chouffers, and cooks. Victoria got the chance to reconnect with -- and Joseph got the chance to finally meet -- the extended Lantos family at the asado (BBQ) Irene & Ignacio threw on their roof deck.


La Famiglia de Gonnet, i.e., the 1 billion members of the Alvarez Gelves family. Victoria´s cousins who reside in and around Gonnet, near the city of La Plata. Asado-throwers extraordinaire (see Day 69), this branch of the family is world-reknowned in Joseph´s mind as the embodiment of the various fanaticisms that make Argentinian culture so incredible. They are fanatical about hospitality, fanatical about family, fanatical about their meat consumption, and, of course, fanatical about fútbol. Their fútbol drug of choice is the beloved Estudiantes de La Plata. Cousin/uncle Luis Alberto graciously took Victoria and two very-foreign-looking young Nussbaums to the Argentine equivalent of Friday night lights, a match between Estudiantes and Lanus. Between the crowd, the songs, the cursing, the fireworks being thrown onto the field, and the lines of riot police (just in case), the experience was unforgettable. Estudiantes 3, los villeros de Lanus (who, according to an oft-repeated cheer, ¨no tienen gas, no tienen luz¨) 0. Mazel tov as well to the Estudiantes, who have since gone on to be Pincharata Campeon. Gggoooooooooooooooooooooolllll... Btw, that´s Victoria´s cousin hanging on to the fence: