Where I live

This post is especially for you mum, because I promised to show you how I live.

The room I rent, which includes a bathroom, is in a former hotel on the Avenida Santa Fe, one of the the main arteries of Palermo. All the rooms, about ten in total, are on the first floor and connected by a long aisle, part of which is open to the elements. The rooms on either side have white walls and very high ceilings. At the end of the aisle there's a rather primitive communal kitchen and stairs leading up to the roof. The roof terrace is huge, but only has sun in the morning because an adjacent apartment building towers over it.

My fellow 'guests' are diverse bunch. There's a big Ecuadorian of about my age. He's a doctor and here to specialize in cardiology, which is apparently impossible in Ecuador. He has a wife and two babies in Ecuador, so he spends a lot of time worrying about them. He's a jolly individual otherwise and has adopted the Argentine habit of mistaking cooking for throwing about five kilos of assorted meats on the stove twice a day.


Then there's Ophelia, who's lived in this hotel for the past 40 years. She works as a concierge somewhere. She's all get and go. She asks me what I think of Argentine girls and then before I've even had a chance to answer, she'll start on about what prudes they are, and that anything the youth may do now pales in comparison the things she used to get up to in her day. And she kindly lends me her pots and pans to cook with.

There are also three Colombian students here who arrived a week after me. They share a room and all study journalism. They come from Medellí­n which by there description sounds like the best place in the world. We greet each other by closing our finger tips and thumb together, holding them in front our faces and saying "Que paí­s de miééééérda" in a bad imitation of the average Argentine.

Apart from them there's another Colombian of my age who has a beard and smokes a pipe, there's a lady who works at a launderette and doesn't believe for a minute I can cook. There are a one or two strange old men who never say a word and an entire family who live in two rooms. All very interesting.

The neighbourhood has anything you could possibly want. As you can see in the photo I live above a Chinese owned supermarket. It's pretty dicey, but luckily there are 3 other supermarkets within 200 metres of my front door. Next to my house is an cyber café which opens at 9 and closes at 3.30 am. There's a kiosk that sell cards for my mobile, a grocer, four butchers, two kiosks that sell the papers and the best baker of empanadas in town, all on my block along Santa Fe. Across the street there's a launderette that does all my washing and irons my shirts.

All in all, it's a nice place to live, although I still haven't found a café, a stamkroeg, to call my own. I'm writing this post in the studios of my local radio station, Radio Palermo.

It's all white walls and cream leather and, the reason I'm here, with wireless internet. It's about 8 blocks up from where I live within walking distance but to far to forget anything and have to go back.

I'm off now, Boca-River is about to commence and I don't want to miss it.