Buenos Aires - the Paris of South America

Text | Anninka Kraus
Photography | Tobias Kraus

Argentina Buenos Aires

I had no specific ideas about what Buenos Aires would be like and at first thought it may resemble a larger scale Santiago, the only other South American megacity I have set foot in. But after chilly Patagonia I was happy to go anywhere as long as it averaged 30 degrees Celsius.

When Tobi told me on the plane that Buenos Aires has been named the Paris of South America, I envisioned elegant white Haussmannian buildings with delicate cast-iron French balconies and sloping grey mansard roofs, snatched right out of a beautiful Parisian arrondissements, and dropped into the place that gave birth to the Tango Argentino. This dizzying concoction of temperaments swirled in my mind as we descended towards Buenos Aires.

Our bed & breakfast Le Petit Palais was managed by Gilles, a French emigrant, who five years ago fulfilled his dream of running a guesthouse in Recoleta. Our dream of a South American Paris started on its sunny terrace with fresh croissants for breakfast, and continued on our excursion through the neighbourhoods of Recoleta, San Telo, La Boca, and the wealthy suburb Palermo. Here Buenos Aires displays a mind-blowing and in my opinion unparalleled architectural diversity encompassing many different eras and cultures.

It seemed everybody with money, and more or less good taste, had created their own piece of art – truly eclectic buildings inspired by blueprints of European neoclassical mansions, but with influences from Uruguay and even Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy. The Palacio Barolo on Avenida de Maya divided into the Divine Comedy’s hell, purgatory, and heaven is surrounded by a hodgepodge of similarly peculiar buildings in unique styles, thus creating a wonderfully puzzling urban landscape.

All my preconceived notions of what European architecture in a typical European setting should look like went out the window. Where else would one find the Galerias Pacifico, a shopping centre based on Le Bon Marché in Paris, amidst tango schools and empanaderias? It’s not Paris, it’s the Paris of South America. Though hardly surprising, it was intriguing to hear that our local tour guide perceived this patchwork cityscape as commonplace and hardly exciting.

We felt safe to freely roam the central neighbourhoods while keeping our whits about us. In terms of cleanliness and also liveliness it compared better to Berlin than Switzerland. In Berlin you can picture yourself stumbling over dog poop (an ever-present nuisance) not just once a day but with every other step, yet feeling the liveliness and presence of human imperfection. In Switzerland, you’ll be dazzled by its striking perfection of cleanliness but may be haunted by a mounting sense of living in the confines of a sterile test tube.

When we lived in Berlin we jogged regularly in Volkspark Friedrichshain. On most Sunday mornings the metal rubbish containers were still smouldering, their content reduced to an indefinable lump of what looked like molten plastic, or overflowing with rubbish. In summer the lawns were littered with broken grills, discarded empty beer cans and an abundance of plastic bags.

After four and a half years I moved to Switzerland (the repugnant and plain sad littering of all public spaces didn’t factor into that decision). The first time I saw a cleaner solemnly polish a rubbish bin by hand in Lucerne main station during rush hour I stopped so abruptly that a guy following bumped right into me. I was blinded – this rubbish bin sparkled! Did Swiss education institutes teach courses in the fine arts of bin polishing?

I learned that the biggest dilemma after spending a few hours at the lakeside on a Tuesday evening is your empty magnum bottle of Champagne not fitting through the wastebin slot. But that would be very naughty anyway, because glass shouldn’t go in the wastebin! If you neatly place it on top, the cleaner will be so nice as to deposit of it the next morning before anybody has time to notice.

The Swiss, I believe, are world champions in genuinely caring for their environment, which is certainly one of their most endearing qualities.

Back to the orderliness of Buenos Aires – one should picture oneself in Berlin rather than Lucerne, stumbling over marginally less dog poop but plenty more loose tiles under ACs dripping from above.

During our short stay we found the people of Buenos Aires to be very friendly. Conversations with locals are always a rare treat when you don’t speak the local language, and we thoroughly enjoyed our exchange with a taxi driver who eagerly practised his English vocabulary with us. Yet all throughout our stay, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the city was seething with passion and underlying tension. Our guide explained that many Central Europeans have the same impression.

He put it down to the Argentinians’ fondness for showcasing their political views and efflux of emotions in public, their recent history of political turmoil, and discontent at the poverty affecting a third of the country’s population. And yet scattered throughout the city was an abundance of bookshops, some extraordinarily grand and beautiful. I couldn’t help but feel that this public and boisterous expression of emotion stood in broad contrast to the abundance of bookshops in the city, some of extraordinary grandeur and beauty.

Quite unlikely, I thought, that one would shout out one’s raging anger in a violent demonstration in political chaos, then saunter along to El Ateneo, browse the contemporary fiction and happily gaze at the ceiling fresco, before curling up with Isabel Allende or Ken Follett on the sofa at home.

Restaurants in Buenos Aires appear to specialize in one dish – steak – and what proved to be Tobi’s culinary heaven promised to be my daily plight. So was the speed at which plates with colossal steaks were plunked down on tables, that I pictured the entire production chain at the back of the parrilla: happy, smiling cow; butchered dead cow; dead meat on grill; dead meat turned bloody steak gobbled down by happy, smiling diners.

Thankfully cows are herbivores and the notion of them ever showing interest in reversing roles is implausible. Once I realized that we would not stumble upon a vegetarian food haven by chance, I consulted the trusty tripadvisor app but … nothing! In a city of three million inhabitants there were no vegetarian options. You can have Minority Chinese for dinner, or Swedish (maybe at Ikea?), Polish, Dutch or even Afghani, but wherever you go you will eat meat!

Despite this overabundance of dead meat I still loved Buenos Aires for its dulce de leche ice cream. Whoever had the glorious idea of combining dulce de leche and gelato and insisted on three gelaterias per crossroads selling this caramel-flavoured sugar overload, I salute them.

The concept of puerta cerradas, a closed-door restaurant, was entirely new to us. Most restaurants I know would go out of business within a month without walk-in customers. Intrigued, we made reservations for Cocina Sunae and were sent an address in Palermo. The taxi dropped us off in fading daylight on a quiet, deserted street in a residential area that showed no signs of life.

Just as we started looking lost in the absence of the restaurant we had expected, a man stepped out of the shadows and walked towards us. Clipboard in hand, he found our name on the list of reservations and admitted us to what seemed a most ordinary private home from the outside. Once inside, it turned out to be a cosy, nicely decorated intimate restaurant serving incredible Southeast Asian food. It was my favourite dining experience in Buenos Aires.