The Nightlife Ain’t No Good Life, But It’s My Life


Note: I am short on pictures from here on out - sorry. No one is more frustrated by loosing my camera than me.


I woke up with a blistering hangover. Argentines are all night people and I am getting to old to be an all night guy. I stirred in my bed sweaty and wondering did I need to come all the way to the other side of the world to realize those out of control instincts within myself. My head is filled with thoughts of returning home and doing something productive with my time, but isn’t there productivity even in this experience.
We left the house early by Argentine standards, 9 o’clock. Tim and I headed for the condos and clubs of Nuevo Cordoba some 20 blocks away. The walk helps me to get my bearings in this large compact city. During my first few days here I had no sense if the streets are safe. New towns, even in the states, but especially if foreign countries, always carry a certain degree of intimidation for me.
“Just because you are paranoid doesn’t mean they are not after you,” Curt Cobain. As the days have passed though I have gotten a sense of how mellow, warm and inviting this big college town is.
We meet up with our housemate Will at a small bar catering to the local hip and foreign tourist. Foreigners are not very common here. Cordoba is a big city, but like Detroit or Atlanta in the states, it is not a place that draws tourists. It’s razon de ser (reason to be) is human utility; commerce, management, production, governance. There is a Lockheed airplane manufacturing facility. The large global concrete conglomerate Minetti
operates a large facility. Intel is setting up it’s South American headquarters here. The tourists go to Buenos Aries, Mendoza, Salta, Barioloche and Patagonia. Business comes here.
Cordoba was founded in 1573 as the cross roads between the precious metals coming out of Peru and the agricultural goods coming from central Chile both en-route to Buenos Aries. It quickly became a hub of commerce and one of the first colonial capitols of what is now Argentina. In the late 1800’s the British built railroad used it as the main hub north south and west for trains headed to Buenos Aires. It’s grip as a central center of commerce and power has been part of this city since the beginning.
In 1610 the Jesuits founded the second university in Latin America here, the Universidad San Carlos, now known as Universidad Nacionál de Cordoba. The city sports four large universities today and several smaller universities and colleges. There are more than 300,000 students living in Cordoba.
In 1918 student protests led to the ousting of Church control of the University and the opening of learning materials including Darwin and the growing field of physics. The protest so dramatically changed the institution that it spread across Argentina and over the next several years throughout Latin America liberating universities fro Mexico to Patagonia from church control. It was a radical transformation of education in Latin America and earned Cordoba it’s nickname, “La Docta (the doctor).”
I light up a cigarette while being introduced to Will’s girlfriend Emmy, an Argentine law student here. I meet a few of the local characters I will spend much of my time hanging out with here. There is Marcell, a sports writer for the local paper, charismatic talker and regular pot head. Silvina is a dentist who use’s puppets to calm the nerves of children patients at her practice here in Cordoba and an aspiring raiki therapist who’s boyfriend is my other housemate Chris. Chris is an Ausie just getting to the end of a two year walk about South America. He can communicate amizingly well through his gregarious gesturing, but I am shocked at how poor his Spanish remains after two years here. Will is a young college grad who is writing articles for his local paper back home in Charleston South Carolina and teaching philosophy at a local English language high school.
As I take in a few drags of my smoke the barkeep courteously let’s me know there is a smoking patio in the back of the little bar. The patio is new because the province recently passed legislation banning smoking indoors. I’d later find that this is weekly if at all enforced. It is, however, a statement about civic social awareness here. A country with a well established social system of medicine must surely be aware of the economic costs of the habit.
After a few beers Tim and I tip our way to a punk bar around the corner where the Ramons are loudly calling for sedation. Within this obvious cultural appropriation (or subjection) of the music of north America we run into a stater-hater. He accolades, or tortures rather, Tim fortunately more than I, with his contempt for our government, while sporting a Metallica t-shirt. His friends are open and warm, but as when the family farmer who lost his land meets the banker who took it at the town fair, his bitterness is inescapable.
Fortunately, to reduces the irony of the moment the music has shifted to an Argentine speed metal band. They sound remarkably like home towners of Seattle, Queensryche. The trade in the language of the lyrics softens it, but the irony remains. We move away from the angry fella and his diatribe for a more accepting crowd towards the front. Tim flirts with the young bartender as we settle our tab and hit the street.
We swagger on towards home stopping at the café bars on the beautiful cañada (canal) that splits downtown off from the west-side suburbs where we live. The canal once split Cordoba from the indigenous village that grew up next to the colonial post. The first bridge across was completed in the late 19th century and less for trade as much as the settlers intent on developing the other side. Now it is a wide boulevard that is one of the cities main arteries and most beautiful streets.
The canal runs in a stone tree lined culvert with bridges spanning it at every block. Stacked with mid rise condos up it’s banks, cafes spill onto the large sidewalks. One of which would become my favorite watering hole in this city. Horribly named, Bar X is one of the only places I found with an actual bar to sit at and meet the other drinkers of this town, most often everyone is given their own table. I will end up getting to know the bartenders by name here before I leave Crodoba.
I order a rum and coke and Tim calls for a fernet, o local liquor that tastes initially much like Listerine and then settles into a southing pallet once the mouth is sufficiently numb. The local patrons are laughing at us as much as with us as we stumble through our drunken second language greetings. As in most parts of the world many folks all around us speak English and here is no exception. We, for better or worse, keep things in Castellano (the local Spanish dialect).
As I order my first fernet and coke upon prodding from the other patrons and my barkeep, Mattio, I ask the time. It is 5:30 am. Shocked I take a good look around. Things are winding down, but there are still people sitting and being served at the cafes. The bar is still half to two thirds full. No one is acting like it is very late.
Now with my head splitting in two and the heat of the day drawing the alcohol through my skin I bemoan my ways and reflect on the wonders of the place I am living in and ask, "when do they sleep?"