Pepsi Music Festival -A Sobering Experience

I’d been looking forward to the Pepsi Music festival since deciding to come to Buenos Aires. The prodigy on Friday night followed by Faith No More on Sunday night. When they played in Dublin the ticket prices were unreal and would have been over a hundred Euro for both and I was going to see them for about fifty. But as with so many things in Argentina things were not as they seemed.

On the Friday morning I had discovered that somehow we purchased four tickets instead of two. Yet again my lack of Spanish has cost me, and this time it was actual pesos. I decided to forget about it as seeing the Prodigy was going to be great. We decided to leave early and soak up the sunshine and listen to some of the local bands. As still relatively rich people here we decided that paying for overpriced beer would be a pleasure in this sunshine.

We arrived in the area around five o clock. The music had started at three. It was eerily quiet. Too quiet in fact. We approached the security gate and all was fine. A small search of body and bags- the norm for any event you can’t bring your own drink into. It was very exciting walking through a Pepsi decorated tunnel with metallica blaring. First thing on the agenda was to get a drink. We approached the usual looking stands to be told no. We eventually found out that there was no alcohol inside the venue at all. Okay no reason to panic. We have the other two tickets. We decided to leave and get a little bit drunk and come back in to enjoy The Prodigy.

Out on the street again, we searched and searched. We finally found one place with Heineken but the man behind the bar would not serve us. At this stage I’ve given up trying to figure out the whims of the Argentineans. We kept searching. We walked for over 45 minutes and finally came to a nice restaurant. We sat down and the waitress came over. 'Comida o Tragos?' She asked. Tragos please. This was met by an apologetic face that I quickly recognised from my own experience behind the counter selling wine after the licensing laws changed. She couldn’t sell us alcohol.

There was a massive supermarket across the street. At least we should be able to buy a bottle or carton of table wine and drink it on the side of the street. That’s what we had been reduced to. However, they couldn’t. An order from the council of BA had decided that no alcohol could be sold in the area.

No else seemed to find this odd or perplexing; the people in the venue or the people in the areas who were losing sales. It goes without saying that there was plenty of pepsi on offer though. No matter how much caffeine we consumed I don’t think it would make us feel in the right kind of mood for The Prodigy.
We resigned ourselves to our fate and trudged our way back the venue. We were about to see The Prodigy. Stone cold sober. The Argentineans seemed to have fun but that was more than likely because of the drug taking that we witnessed. Maybe that was what the city council was trying to encourage. Somehow I don’t know if I’ll ever find out why they kept them sober…

Spanglish Language Exchange

If you’re a foreigner in Buenos Aires you’ve heard of Spanglish. It is an English-Spanish exchange/intercambio. It works like kind of like speed dating. Well I’ve never been to speed dating but that’s what the flyer says. There are about ten or twelve tables and you switch around every ten minutes. For the first five minutes you speak in Spanish and the second you speak in English. It’s not as simple as the flashy website and flyer make out, but there is a free drink.

My Spanish was terrible so as you can imagine I was dreading my first encounter. It was a lovely man from Chile. He was very helpful and corrected me when necessary and really helped me along. That was for about three minutes. Then two other people sat down at the table. First was a guy from Montana - he didn’t know what language they spoke in Ireland (English). The second was a girl from Sweden who asked if I spoke any other languages- I said a little bit of German and some Irish. She informed me that she thought the Irish language was just English spoken with and accent. She was quite shocked to hear it has different words and everything. It truly turned out to be a cultural exchange.

Aside from being quite, shall me say, misinformed the two of them were excellent at Spanish. And of course they had only taken one week of lessons. I don’t believe that for a second, unless the ridiculous amount of money that language schools here charge goes towards some kind of newly discovered Spanish language implant chip.

The next few experiences were just as daunting and very exhausting. All in all I got mistaken for an English person, made a joke about cultural imperialism that fell flat and learned probably about two new Spanish words.

That is the problem with Spanglish. Unless you are an overconfident genius, if you are a beginner things just overwhelm you. Not to mention that it ends up being like an job interview or on some terrible occasions vigorous questioning by a local about why you are in Argentina. ‘I thought it seemed like a nice place’ is met with rolling eyes and an end to the conversation.

Spanglish summed up in one word-awkward.