It’s fair to say that my new life has substantially changed my outlook on the world in which I live. For one thing, I feel more connected with this country, with this city. The office environment I used to inhabit was fine, up to a point, and the perspective and objectivity I learned while working there will be invaluable to me for the rest of my life. However, my office colleagues, with their wildly contrasting beliefs and ideas but ever-present respect for the opinions of others, would have long debates about things to do with this culture that I could never fully grasp. The argument itself, fine; but as I had no connection with what they were talking about, did not understand the basic facts, I could not offer an opinion and was therefore isolated. Again I learned that my understanding of this country and this people would always be limited – detailed, but still superficial.
My new job not only expects that I lack knowledge about a lot to do with this city and this country, but it demands that I work hard to learn. To fill in my own gaps. This is a fantastic experience for me. I’m told to cover a story, and I realize that in order to do so effectively I have to understand more about where the parties involved are coming from. I am forced to expand what I know about pretty much everything. The difference is that in my previous job there were buffers, cotton wool walls that allowed me to bounce gently off ideas; in my new place of work, opinions have to be formed and facts have to be learned in the blink of an eye in order to be able to work effectively.
There is also a great deal of focus on individuals and what they represent. No politician is just a politician – they are the current incarnation of an ever-changing thought process. Each person that we write about is important because of what has come before them and what they might do in the future. Our trade is the present, but the present is only given as much value as we put into it.
I have also found myself learning things that nobody would ever have thought to tell me. This week I have learned a lot about brutal murders. The reason for this is simple: an individual who has spent a lot of time in the news for a lot of reasons (the list includes potential money laundering, which bounces into state responsibility of public funds, the role of civil rights movements in contemporary Argentina, and so on) is also a convicted murderer. Nobody seems to care. This may be an indictment of the dark past that is sometimes eluded to in shadowy references, a past that nobody wants to talk about because touching on it produces such a confused explosion of emotion – but that’s nothing to do with this one individual. He and his brother were convicted of a horrific murder, and a murder of no less than their parents; last week he ‘resigned’ as the funds manager for a massive civil rights organization. One simply couldn’t make this up.
Last week an elderly gentleman was being interviewed by one of the major TV stations, so I enquired as to his identity. Who’s the gent in the specs? Ah, that’s what’s-his-name, the dentist who got so fed up of living with his wife, mother-in-law and nagging daughters that he blew them all away with a shotgun. He’s just got out of prison. I saw him the other day buying a newspaper, pipes up a colleague.
[That sound in the back of your mind is your mental jaw dropping. I know what it sounds like, believe me.]
And there he is, on TV, breezily chatting about what it feels like to be out and how he’d happily have done the same thing again. There is nothing terrifying about him as a person, except for what he’s capable of and has done as a person. It’s hard to fear him; many people empathize with him. I can’t, just yet.
And then there were the two boys who… Actually, as I’m starting to discover, the list is endless. And each case individually reveals particular aspects of Argentine society that you won’t see written about in guidebooks or even talked about in films or on TV. This is an extremely complicated country. I feel like I’m just scratching the surface.
On a final note, this morning I was in a shop, when I saw a little old man with specs walking by clutching a document wallet. From the back he looked identical to the killer dentist. Without realizing what I was doing, I was suddenly following him, walking behind, trying to guess where he was going so I could get in front of him, and when I did, what I’d say to him. And I stopped. Of course I had nothing to say to him. I just wanted to see, to touch him, to make sure that he was real.
2/6/11
19/4/11
Alem y San Martin 6:05 pm Monday
Buenos Aires is the city where I have lived longest. As such, it will always be alive to me. It is beautiful, sexy, glorious, dishonest and filthy. The concept of truth is cheap and mercurial here: everything depends on the eye of the beholder and whether the beholder is having a good day. The city and its people are by turns welcoming and unforgiving; this is a city that hates and loves in the same breath, but it breathes, it moves and it is alive.
My bus on the way to work passed an olive green 1970s Ford Falcon, broken down in the middle of a busy road. The sight of the car still makes me shiver.
From the tenth floor of an office building on the corner of Plaza San Martín, one can see a snapshot of Buenos Aires resplendent, particularly in the glowing twilight of early evening. To the left there is Retiro, almost invisible, obscured by the politely dominant clocktower. Built by the British when the British were still openly respected (but never loved), its four faces are vital yet often disagree. The tower stands surrounded by a quaint little fence in a pleasant square and although it is passed by hundreds of thousands of people on a daily basis, it is probably the monument in Buenos Aires that has been least-defiled by graffiti. The graffiteurs, strangely, respect the fence.
To the right, Alem, the business district avenue, stretches into the middle distance, flanked by tall, proud office buildings that are only remarkable because they are set against the wide horizon of the river behind. The towers themselves seem dated, and have no bearing on the lives of the antlike beings scurrying at their feet. In the distance, new monuments are rising in Puerto Madero, designed for gawping rather than inhabiting. Glass pantheons that will stand in tribute to an imagined progress that has yet to materialize – a testament to a city that often forgets itself, stretching beyond the present to a projected future that may never make it.
And in the center of the frame, beyond the depressingly predictable Sheraton, lies the river. The ‘silver river’, as the Spanish first called it, and which for decades has been nothing but brown, thick like Willy Wonka’s chocolate river – except that isn’t chocolate. Two centuries of overuse and under-cleansing have left it tired and worn.
And yet…
When the sun is setting...when the sky is so clear that the casual observer can see Uruguay on the far bank…when the storm clouds have turned the sky to pitch and a small sliver of light penetrates the dark to cast a silver line across the moody surface…The river is Buenos Aires, and it is beautiful.
My bus on the way to work passed an olive green 1970s Ford Falcon, broken down in the middle of a busy road. The sight of the car still makes me shiver.
From the tenth floor of an office building on the corner of Plaza San Martín, one can see a snapshot of Buenos Aires resplendent, particularly in the glowing twilight of early evening. To the left there is Retiro, almost invisible, obscured by the politely dominant clocktower. Built by the British when the British were still openly respected (but never loved), its four faces are vital yet often disagree. The tower stands surrounded by a quaint little fence in a pleasant square and although it is passed by hundreds of thousands of people on a daily basis, it is probably the monument in Buenos Aires that has been least-defiled by graffiti. The graffiteurs, strangely, respect the fence.
To the right, Alem, the business district avenue, stretches into the middle distance, flanked by tall, proud office buildings that are only remarkable because they are set against the wide horizon of the river behind. The towers themselves seem dated, and have no bearing on the lives of the antlike beings scurrying at their feet. In the distance, new monuments are rising in Puerto Madero, designed for gawping rather than inhabiting. Glass pantheons that will stand in tribute to an imagined progress that has yet to materialize – a testament to a city that often forgets itself, stretching beyond the present to a projected future that may never make it.
And in the center of the frame, beyond the depressingly predictable Sheraton, lies the river. The ‘silver river’, as the Spanish first called it, and which for decades has been nothing but brown, thick like Willy Wonka’s chocolate river – except that isn’t chocolate. Two centuries of overuse and under-cleansing have left it tired and worn.
And yet…
When the sun is setting...when the sky is so clear that the casual observer can see Uruguay on the far bank…when the storm clouds have turned the sky to pitch and a small sliver of light penetrates the dark to cast a silver line across the moody surface…The river is Buenos Aires, and it is beautiful.
18/2/11
Adventist
The lady who comes to clean my flat twice a week handed in her notice via SMS at 11:30 pm the other night. She’s a hard worker, and in the almost three years that we have been in our particular commercial partnership, she has had to put up with a lot, including hoax (but no less terrifying) kidnapping threats, living with a dog for a few months (a new experience for both of us) and a lot of cleaning up on mornings after. I have absolutely no complaints: she has been loyal and dependable but now wants to spend more time looking after her children. I wish her well.
Now the search starts for a replacement. In other cultures this might be viewed as an entirely pointless exercise: why looking for a cleaning lady when by doing so one is admitting that one cannot clean up after oneself? In Latin America, however, the opposite is the norm: one leads such busy lives that one simply cannot be expected to clean up after oneself. A little lazy, perhaps, but it has worked fine for me.
The problem is finding a person one can rely on. This is an employee, about whom one normally knows the bare minimum, who will be working in one’s house while one is at work. There is hardly ever any personal interaction: I think I saw my previous cleaning lady about ten times in person over something close to thirty months. Every month I left her payment on the kitchen table, and when I came back from work it was gone. I never saw her, but I knew when she had come: my floor was clean, my dishes washed, my clothes ready to be worn, my bed made. This is a person who exists in spaces that are to me entirely intimate and yet I never see her. Trust is therefore paramount: she is an almost total stranger and she knows more about my daily life than most of my closest friends.
One often hears tales of things going wrong with such employees. A friend of mine came home early once to find their employee going through the belongings of someone who was on holiday in the belief that because they had left the country, they wouldn’t be needing their snail shell facial cream; another had a pair of crutches disappear for a week or so only to just as mysteriously reappear; one friend became so convinced that his employee was taking money from him that he set up a hidden camera to catch her unawares.
A colleague recently told me about one of the strangest reasons I’ve heard to dismiss a cleaning lady. His had been working for him for over ten years, was reliable and cleaned very well – a total professional. Once he came home early for a doctor’s appointment, and opened the door only to walk in on a meeting of about fifteen Adventists, bibles in hand. His flat had become their meeting hall; the employee had to go. Cleaning and religion just don’t mix.
Now the search starts for a replacement. In other cultures this might be viewed as an entirely pointless exercise: why looking for a cleaning lady when by doing so one is admitting that one cannot clean up after oneself? In Latin America, however, the opposite is the norm: one leads such busy lives that one simply cannot be expected to clean up after oneself. A little lazy, perhaps, but it has worked fine for me.
The problem is finding a person one can rely on. This is an employee, about whom one normally knows the bare minimum, who will be working in one’s house while one is at work. There is hardly ever any personal interaction: I think I saw my previous cleaning lady about ten times in person over something close to thirty months. Every month I left her payment on the kitchen table, and when I came back from work it was gone. I never saw her, but I knew when she had come: my floor was clean, my dishes washed, my clothes ready to be worn, my bed made. This is a person who exists in spaces that are to me entirely intimate and yet I never see her. Trust is therefore paramount: she is an almost total stranger and she knows more about my daily life than most of my closest friends.
One often hears tales of things going wrong with such employees. A friend of mine came home early once to find their employee going through the belongings of someone who was on holiday in the belief that because they had left the country, they wouldn’t be needing their snail shell facial cream; another had a pair of crutches disappear for a week or so only to just as mysteriously reappear; one friend became so convinced that his employee was taking money from him that he set up a hidden camera to catch her unawares.
A colleague recently told me about one of the strangest reasons I’ve heard to dismiss a cleaning lady. His had been working for him for over ten years, was reliable and cleaned very well – a total professional. Once he came home early for a doctor’s appointment, and opened the door only to walk in on a meeting of about fifteen Adventists, bibles in hand. His flat had become their meeting hall; the employee had to go. Cleaning and religion just don’t mix.
4/2/11
Brontosauri
Every morning I am greeted by a familiar sight that reminds me exactly what my journey to work means. I get to the street corner, the sun hits me and washes me in heat and light, and the buses rumble past. Hundreds. Each clad in its own distinctive, often garish colours. They move like a confused pack, each individual unit with its own thought-processes and desires bubbling beneath the surface, forced to follow the same path as the others by the herd mentality (otherwise known as ‘traffic’). When the light goes green, these lumbering beasts charge forward, stumbling at speed, like a pack of brontosauri thundering across a prehistoric plain towards water. These ancient beasts breathe smoke that taints the air and stains our lungs; without them, we would never get to work on time.
The late ariser or lazy commuter is sometimes forced to take a taxi for expediency’s sake. The taxis are nimble, as they must be, for they are forced to travel in the wake and very thoroughfare trodden by the larger beasts. The taxi sees things from the ground level; the bus driver cannot. They are never friends. The amount of near misses alone between these two species alone contributes to the general chaotic atmosphere in the streets of our great city. We would be lost without either of them.
This week, the government of the City of Buenos Aires, in its infinite wisdom, changed all the bus routes. It happened on a Wednesday, for reasons that are not clear. The change also coincided with the return to work of several thousand holiday-makers who had fled the punishing summer heat. In short, it was timed to cause maximum chaos, and it succeeded. Literally thousands of people headed to where they normally caught their bus home, only to find that the bus stop no longer existed. Directions were given to a new stop, which in many cases was up to five or six blocks away, and never in a straight line. The bus routes were altered completely; the commute had been permanently affected.
I waited for my particular bus, but it was clear that the people in charge hadn’t counted on a) +30 degrees in mid-summer and b) the fact that their drivers were also intensely confused by the changes. After waiting at what seemed to be an improvised bus stop but could easily have been another lane on the busiest avenue in the world, burning gently in the afternoon sun, a bus finally arrived. We climbed on, fighting our way through the already cramped space with our heads held high like divers struggling for air.
The man in charge with steering our particular dinosaur was having a tough time from the off, as we sailed past streets that used to be bus stops to be greeted by furious demands by passengers which he could only counter with ‘but it’s not a stop anymore…’ Moreover, the way he was driving and the route he was taking heavily implied that he had no idea what he was doing, or in fact was making it up as he went along – a supposition that was not removed as he drifted from the uttermost right-hand lane to the extreme left of a seriously busy avenue as if he had just learned to drive. All around one could catch glimpses of similarly confused pedestrians and bus-drivers, as the brontosauri launched into new adventures praying that they wouldn’t hit anyone or each other. Once the journey got going, the new route was actually much quicker than the old, but the great plains of rush hour Buenos Aires were briefly filled with the tuneful moans of irate motorists pounding horns, a sound that seemed as old as time.
The late ariser or lazy commuter is sometimes forced to take a taxi for expediency’s sake. The taxis are nimble, as they must be, for they are forced to travel in the wake and very thoroughfare trodden by the larger beasts. The taxi sees things from the ground level; the bus driver cannot. They are never friends. The amount of near misses alone between these two species alone contributes to the general chaotic atmosphere in the streets of our great city. We would be lost without either of them.
This week, the government of the City of Buenos Aires, in its infinite wisdom, changed all the bus routes. It happened on a Wednesday, for reasons that are not clear. The change also coincided with the return to work of several thousand holiday-makers who had fled the punishing summer heat. In short, it was timed to cause maximum chaos, and it succeeded. Literally thousands of people headed to where they normally caught their bus home, only to find that the bus stop no longer existed. Directions were given to a new stop, which in many cases was up to five or six blocks away, and never in a straight line. The bus routes were altered completely; the commute had been permanently affected.
I waited for my particular bus, but it was clear that the people in charge hadn’t counted on a) +30 degrees in mid-summer and b) the fact that their drivers were also intensely confused by the changes. After waiting at what seemed to be an improvised bus stop but could easily have been another lane on the busiest avenue in the world, burning gently in the afternoon sun, a bus finally arrived. We climbed on, fighting our way through the already cramped space with our heads held high like divers struggling for air.
The man in charge with steering our particular dinosaur was having a tough time from the off, as we sailed past streets that used to be bus stops to be greeted by furious demands by passengers which he could only counter with ‘but it’s not a stop anymore…’ Moreover, the way he was driving and the route he was taking heavily implied that he had no idea what he was doing, or in fact was making it up as he went along – a supposition that was not removed as he drifted from the uttermost right-hand lane to the extreme left of a seriously busy avenue as if he had just learned to drive. All around one could catch glimpses of similarly confused pedestrians and bus-drivers, as the brontosauri launched into new adventures praying that they wouldn’t hit anyone or each other. Once the journey got going, the new route was actually much quicker than the old, but the great plains of rush hour Buenos Aires were briefly filled with the tuneful moans of irate motorists pounding horns, a sound that seemed as old as time.
25/1/11
Morel
A conversation I just had with a colleague has revealed something to me that I find a bit disturbing but recognize I am powerless to change. Social media and an online presence is all very well, and in fact entirely unavoidable in a world that depends on the internet, but who turns off the switch when you ‘leave the room’?
‘La invención de Morel’ (The Invention of Morel), written by Adolfo Bioy Casares in Buenos Aires in 1940, is a short novel that describes a man alone on a desert island who sees and falls in love with a mysterious woman who appears to him at certain times of the day but disappears and will not speak to him at others. I won’t spoil the book for anybody who wants to read it, and I recommend that everybody does, but suffice to say that in ‘La invención de Morel’, which Borgés himself qualified as ‘perfect’, Bioy Casares foresaw an aspect of the new age of post-reality that we currently inhabit, in which through the compilation of images and actions we create an online presence that we bring to life but will not die when we do.
Recent deaths of either people I know or people who acquaintances of mine known have seen their Facebook profiles turn into shrines, where ‘friends’ or connections can place endless tributes - some of which are truly touching, and some of which venture beyond the limits that physical reality places on us. Let me explain. A friend of yours dies; you leave an emotional message to that friend the same way you would leave any message on Facebook, communicating directly with that friend although that friend will never read it or be aware that it exists and will certainly never respond. If someone else is to come across the friend’s Facebook profile, the profile will be just as alive as it ever was when the friend was, because nobody dies on Facebook – your profile never disappears, or at least not up to now. Without ever knowing it, your presence will exist forever, and, although the interaction will be one-way, the people that inhabit the world you already left will be able to ‘communicate’ with you as if you never had. Over this, like death, you have no control.
Bioy Casares in ‘Morel’ wrote “I believe we will not gain immortality because we have yet to evolve our resistance to death.” Facebook, and the world of online presences and profiles, where children who have yet to be born (let alone aware of conscious thought) have profiles and people who are long departed will never fade away, is taking us as a society one illusory step towards such a resistance. It will remain illusory though – like everything online, your presence is only as real as you believe it is.
‘La invención de Morel’ (The Invention of Morel), written by Adolfo Bioy Casares in Buenos Aires in 1940, is a short novel that describes a man alone on a desert island who sees and falls in love with a mysterious woman who appears to him at certain times of the day but disappears and will not speak to him at others. I won’t spoil the book for anybody who wants to read it, and I recommend that everybody does, but suffice to say that in ‘La invención de Morel’, which Borgés himself qualified as ‘perfect’, Bioy Casares foresaw an aspect of the new age of post-reality that we currently inhabit, in which through the compilation of images and actions we create an online presence that we bring to life but will not die when we do.
Recent deaths of either people I know or people who acquaintances of mine known have seen their Facebook profiles turn into shrines, where ‘friends’ or connections can place endless tributes - some of which are truly touching, and some of which venture beyond the limits that physical reality places on us. Let me explain. A friend of yours dies; you leave an emotional message to that friend the same way you would leave any message on Facebook, communicating directly with that friend although that friend will never read it or be aware that it exists and will certainly never respond. If someone else is to come across the friend’s Facebook profile, the profile will be just as alive as it ever was when the friend was, because nobody dies on Facebook – your profile never disappears, or at least not up to now. Without ever knowing it, your presence will exist forever, and, although the interaction will be one-way, the people that inhabit the world you already left will be able to ‘communicate’ with you as if you never had. Over this, like death, you have no control.
Bioy Casares in ‘Morel’ wrote “I believe we will not gain immortality because we have yet to evolve our resistance to death.” Facebook, and the world of online presences and profiles, where children who have yet to be born (let alone aware of conscious thought) have profiles and people who are long departed will never fade away, is taking us as a society one illusory step towards such a resistance. It will remain illusory though – like everything online, your presence is only as real as you believe it is.
22/12/10
Frankfurt
Depressed, genuinely depressed, not because of the ordeal, the waiting, the frustration – no, depressed because I’ve just been reminded what Christmas is supposed to feel like, by tasting a sip of a Starbuck’s Toffee Nut Latte™ in Frankfurt airport. An American woman and two German ladies (all white) nearby are in frantic agreement over immigration and the nationalization of immigrants: “they sweep in and take our jobs” etc. Everywhere in this airport travelers are weeping, employees are shouting – and someone from Maintenance is doing laps on a bicycle while I sip Starbuck’s Christmas Cheer™. Is this the world you were dreaming of, Walt Disney? Look what we’ve become. I hope you’re turning in your grave/fridge.
The last few days, if nothing, have given me ample opportunity to witness something I have never seen before: the Germans in action, for better or worse. What is most surprising is their ability to communicate, their communication skills, which are truly woeful. No, that’s not fair: their communication abilities are entirely efficient. If they can’t help you, they won’t try. If you can’t ask the right question then you clearly don’t deserve the effort it takes into producing the right answer, or the answer itself. Not a word wasted. Efficient, and infuriating. In Buenos Aires, we queued for two hours to be told our flight would be delayed by six; in the end it was delayed by seven. Why, we were not told.
The flight was, surprisingly, incredibly painless. I hadn’t slept the night before and was out like a light. The plane was old enough not to have screens in the back of the seat in front of me, ridding me of a major distraction. The food offered looked exactly like economy class fare is supposed to look like but was actually very good. Everything about the trip itself reassured me that, on the continent, in civilization, all would be well. Lufthansa’s trans-atlantic crossing was the scene of my return to innocence and naivety as I left the New World and returned to the Old.
It was on the flight that I saw several further examples of German communication: often firm, always polite. When the food cart was being wheeled up the aisle in-flight, a woman tried to get past. The Valkyric attendant didn’t budge. The woman tried harder but Brunhilda stopped her with a staying hand and said, smiling brightly as one does to the deranged: “it weighs 90 kilos”… so good luck chum, she didn’t have to add.
When the plane crossed France I opened the window a crack and saw green below. Where was this snow that was causing so many people problems? And then I opened it fully and saw white. Everywhere was white. Endless fields, a la The Snowman, coated in white. And it was beautiful. From here one could appreciate the majesty of a world covered in a delicate spray of icing. This is Winter as seen in postcards, Narnia and Coca-Cola adverts. Two and a half decades of almost entirely snowless childhoods gave way to a squeal of delight that I kept deep inside but harkened to a part of me that had always dreamed and known that this is how the world should be.
All it took was our arrival in Frankfurt to remind me of how it actually is.
The 1st Officer started jabbering away on the speaker as we approached our descent, before stopping abruptly: “New information has been received!” he barked and promptly disappeared. The new information, it has to be said, was a surprise for all concerned: Frankfurt was closed. Like a shop or a bar. Except we were in a plane hovering above the airport, and couldn’t get in, which was the equivalent of being left out of a lock-in, only several hundred feet off the ground. I had already missed my connecting flight to Kuwait so I had absolutely no idea what would happen next when we arrived on the ground – it could only be a new adventure. We circled Frankfurt for a while, and I chatted nervously with the Swedish ball bearing salesman to my right, desperately trying not to look out of the window to my left – because there was nothing to see. Clouds swirled around and below us, small lights twinkling somewhere on the ground, impossible to tell at what distance. I have never been in a snowy landing before, and had no idea what to expect, but luckily my over-active imagination was providing me with some suitably disturbing thoughts.
After a while the plane descended. The window became covered in tiny icicle snowflakes, beautiful in their intricacy yet unnerving in their promise. Clutching my chair and by now talking utter gibberish to avoid the “OH MY GOD!!” thoughts running merry havoc in my brain, which I get every time a plane lands but were multiplied tenfold by the current situation, I occasionally glanced out. We had by now broken the snow clouds. The trees, unmistakably German snow-covered pines, grew closer and closer, the tires grunted below us, the buildings became bigger … and then we landed. And the landing was perfect, perhaps the best I’ve ever experienced. Smooth. No twisting and sliding at all. Spontaneous applause burst out around the cabin. Why? I thought. What has the pilot done? The plane is designed to land; he is employed to land it. Just because he does it every day normally with the minimum amount of fuss, why should he be applauded when he does it when it’s difficult? I realized that I was tired, angry, unsure of what was going to happen next, and that the plane was full of Argentines, who sometimes clap when they don’t know what else to do, and always applaud landings.
A semi-elderly Russian gent got up straight away; a torch beam shot out from the Valkyrie to my right: “Sir! You must please sit down!” came the command across the cabin. The man continued, oblivious, and another beam shot out like a bullet. Caught in the headlights, the Russian gave in and meekly sat down like a chastened schoolboy.
When we eventually got onto the ground, everything was chaos. Nobody had the first idea of what was going on. This was the end of Day Two of a continent-wide natural disaster, not volcanic ash but snow, possibly the most pathetic and debilitating natural disaster since the former, and nobody in ‘busy international hub’ Frankfurt had a clue about what was happening. We wandered hallways, sometimes in packs, sometimes alone, occasionally snatching at pieces of information that we thought, we believed, assumed was useful, because it came from someone in a uniform, but nobody was useful, nobody had the answer we were looking for and the uniforms were empty, devoid of authority.
Where can I get my bag from? I asked. “Yes, you must get your bag,” nodded the woman of African descent in a Lufthansa uniform. From where? “I do not know,” she shook her head, mournfully. An Israeli man had found an attendant that spoke his language – were they fighting or agreeing? Easily could’ve been either.
And nobody cared.
I’ve just crossed the Atlantic and I don’t speak German. “Um…would you like a medal?” No, I’d like a flight, my bag and a shower, in the order. “You can share a shower; you’ll never see your bag again; I can’t help you with your flight.” What level of Hell have we been flown into?
I started to follow an American tour guide, partly because there was a chance he’d know or be able to find something out and partly because I needed a Mother Goose. He was utterly useless, but he was wearing a pretty red jacked so at a pinch he could pass for Santa Clause; my brain was really very tired.
After some false starts down cavernous and deserted hallways, we found a queue. A queue! That most international of symbols! If people are queuing, there must be a reason – there must be something at the end. A pot of gold; a flight; a Kit-Kat. Whatever. So I joined the back with Mother Goose/Santa Clause. However, a well-coiffeured and impeccably dressed little German whose eyes darted and mouth rattled as if he’d just taken a line of speed was decimating the queue from the back with a clipboard.
“You!” he barked at three tall blond lads. “Going to Norway? Go to Gate 67B this instant. Your flight will be taking off shortly.” The three Scandinavians hadn’t really registered what had hit them but off they scurried.
“You!”
“Yes?” I offered meekly.
“Where you going?”
“Kuwait.”
“Ha. No, you’re not.” I blinked at this response, unsure as to how to react. Is this German customer service?
Mother Clause started to remonstrate with this communications guru in what seemed to be a jokey way for our benefit (not in front of the kids, darling) but was layered with vicious meaning:
Mother Clause: Ha ha, wouldn’t it be nice if you told us what was going on.
Communications Guru: Ha ha, wouldn’t it be nice if you got off my back, rolled into a cave and died, ha ha.
MC: Ha ha, leak me some information, think of yourself as Julian Assange for Frankfurt airpot, ha ha.
CG: Ha ha, look where Julian Assange is now, accused of rape and locked up on the behest of the Americans, he’s lucky he’s not in Guantanamo, ha ha.
MC: Ha ha, go **** your ******, ha ha.
CG: Ha ha, I would do but I was busy finishing up with your…
And so on.
But I looked at Mother Clause in light of this new information. He had no idea what was getting on and was getting in the way. This coiffeured coked-up Kraut (with a peculiarly South African English) had all the information I needed and was prepared to give it to me. I ditched the red-jacketed buffoon and started firing questions at Lufthansa’s finest.
1. What happened to my flight? “Cancelled.”
2. Where’s my bag? “You won’t see it for five days.”
3. Why not? “Because it’s being held where we wash our luggage carrying buses. Along with thousands of others. You think you’re in the shit, take a look around. You’re just a number, a statistic in a news story.”
4. So what do I do? “Take this voucher, get in a taxi, they’ll take you to this hotel. On the house. When you get there, call this hotline. They’ll re-book your flight. Good luck.”
He may have been an odious little prick, but I entirely appreciated his honesty: efficient, no-frills, take-it-or-leave-it communication. I took it, suddenly less angry, bewildered or confused than I had been when I got off the plane, and jumped into a cab.
The cold outside the plan was unreal. I had no clothes apart from what I was wearing, what I had been wearing since Friday night (amid those distant steaks and wine on a hot summer evening with friends in Latin America – had it only been two days?) and only had a coat. The snow was falling thick and fast, and was not attractive as it had been from the plane, but dirty and corrupted. I got into the taxi and zoomed into the night.
The driver was jovial and slightly chatty. I thought the hotel would be in Frankfurt itself but it was actually about 70km away, in a small town called Bingen. The snow was thick on and off the road, and several times the driver lost some control over the car and you could feel the tires sliding. Luckily this was happening to everyone so everybody on the road was aware and attentive to each other; considerate Germans.
The hotel was located at the far end of a pier in Bingen, a small industrial riverside town. The only guests in the hotel were stranded passengers, courtesy of Lufthansa. On the final approach to the hotel my taxi got stuck. Another taxi driver stopped and got out to push; after a while I got out as well to help, my Converse gently absorbing the snow caused by two days of solid snowfall. All to no avail. My driver got out and found a rubber sheet which he placed under a wheel to give it grip; the first time he started the car after this the sheet spun out from under the car and struck the assisting taxi driver on the shins. He hobbled off into the night, cursing. Someone came dashing out of the hotel with a shovel and got to work on the front wheels; at the same time, my driver got out and started spanking the back of the car with the rubber sheet to get the snow off. The sight was ridiculous beyond belief, like some sort of taxi-related bedroom game. Eventually, the taxi was freed and rolled off into the night.
The hotline to Lufthansa was engaged all evening. My hotel room looked disconcertingly like [the artist’s impression of] a cheap whore’s boudoir, right down to the plastic sheets. The ‘meal’ provided by the hotel and paid for by Lufthansa was disgusting and insufficient. I met some former US military lads (now civilian ‘contractors’ – euphemism for ‘hired killers’? One never knows…) on their way to Iraq or ‘Afghan’ via Kuwait, we started on the beers and Johnnie Walker, and that pretty much saw off the rest of the evening.
The next day I rose to a breakfast that was just like a boarding school Sunday breakfast – lavish, fantastic, excessive. I ate too much, but in my mind I justified it easily – after a night of watching BBC and CNN reports in which I had, as the Lufthansa man had predicted, become a number in a news story, when would I next be eating a meal like this again?
On the trip back to the airport, Germany was stunning. The countryside was lent an air of beauty by the snow that almost served to wash away my irritation at having been stuck and with little idea of how I would get out. But I was tired, and wanted to leave. This was my holiday. Frankfurt was just as crowded as it had been the day before, the people just as useless. But at least it wasn’t snowing anymore. I waited to get a new ticket, and suddenly everything was fine – flying out in the afternoon, with my bag. Success, at last.
Which was when I headed to Starbucks, took a long drag, and realized: this is Christmas, for everyone. The reason why this snow has caused so much chaos is that, at this time of year, people care in a way they simply don’t at other times. At this one point, on a hard day at the end of a hard year, we are all just trying to get home. I can’t believe it took me a sip of Starbucks to make me realize how important that is. What’s next? A sip of Coca-Cola and I’ll suddenly believe in Santa Clause again?
PS: It seems I was wrong – it isn’t just Maintenance that cycle about in Frankfurt airport, it’s everybody. Gotta love the Germans.
The last few days, if nothing, have given me ample opportunity to witness something I have never seen before: the Germans in action, for better or worse. What is most surprising is their ability to communicate, their communication skills, which are truly woeful. No, that’s not fair: their communication abilities are entirely efficient. If they can’t help you, they won’t try. If you can’t ask the right question then you clearly don’t deserve the effort it takes into producing the right answer, or the answer itself. Not a word wasted. Efficient, and infuriating. In Buenos Aires, we queued for two hours to be told our flight would be delayed by six; in the end it was delayed by seven. Why, we were not told.
The flight was, surprisingly, incredibly painless. I hadn’t slept the night before and was out like a light. The plane was old enough not to have screens in the back of the seat in front of me, ridding me of a major distraction. The food offered looked exactly like economy class fare is supposed to look like but was actually very good. Everything about the trip itself reassured me that, on the continent, in civilization, all would be well. Lufthansa’s trans-atlantic crossing was the scene of my return to innocence and naivety as I left the New World and returned to the Old.
It was on the flight that I saw several further examples of German communication: often firm, always polite. When the food cart was being wheeled up the aisle in-flight, a woman tried to get past. The Valkyric attendant didn’t budge. The woman tried harder but Brunhilda stopped her with a staying hand and said, smiling brightly as one does to the deranged: “it weighs 90 kilos”… so good luck chum, she didn’t have to add.
When the plane crossed France I opened the window a crack and saw green below. Where was this snow that was causing so many people problems? And then I opened it fully and saw white. Everywhere was white. Endless fields, a la The Snowman, coated in white. And it was beautiful. From here one could appreciate the majesty of a world covered in a delicate spray of icing. This is Winter as seen in postcards, Narnia and Coca-Cola adverts. Two and a half decades of almost entirely snowless childhoods gave way to a squeal of delight that I kept deep inside but harkened to a part of me that had always dreamed and known that this is how the world should be.
All it took was our arrival in Frankfurt to remind me of how it actually is.
The 1st Officer started jabbering away on the speaker as we approached our descent, before stopping abruptly: “New information has been received!” he barked and promptly disappeared. The new information, it has to be said, was a surprise for all concerned: Frankfurt was closed. Like a shop or a bar. Except we were in a plane hovering above the airport, and couldn’t get in, which was the equivalent of being left out of a lock-in, only several hundred feet off the ground. I had already missed my connecting flight to Kuwait so I had absolutely no idea what would happen next when we arrived on the ground – it could only be a new adventure. We circled Frankfurt for a while, and I chatted nervously with the Swedish ball bearing salesman to my right, desperately trying not to look out of the window to my left – because there was nothing to see. Clouds swirled around and below us, small lights twinkling somewhere on the ground, impossible to tell at what distance. I have never been in a snowy landing before, and had no idea what to expect, but luckily my over-active imagination was providing me with some suitably disturbing thoughts.
After a while the plane descended. The window became covered in tiny icicle snowflakes, beautiful in their intricacy yet unnerving in their promise. Clutching my chair and by now talking utter gibberish to avoid the “OH MY GOD!!” thoughts running merry havoc in my brain, which I get every time a plane lands but were multiplied tenfold by the current situation, I occasionally glanced out. We had by now broken the snow clouds. The trees, unmistakably German snow-covered pines, grew closer and closer, the tires grunted below us, the buildings became bigger … and then we landed. And the landing was perfect, perhaps the best I’ve ever experienced. Smooth. No twisting and sliding at all. Spontaneous applause burst out around the cabin. Why? I thought. What has the pilot done? The plane is designed to land; he is employed to land it. Just because he does it every day normally with the minimum amount of fuss, why should he be applauded when he does it when it’s difficult? I realized that I was tired, angry, unsure of what was going to happen next, and that the plane was full of Argentines, who sometimes clap when they don’t know what else to do, and always applaud landings.
A semi-elderly Russian gent got up straight away; a torch beam shot out from the Valkyrie to my right: “Sir! You must please sit down!” came the command across the cabin. The man continued, oblivious, and another beam shot out like a bullet. Caught in the headlights, the Russian gave in and meekly sat down like a chastened schoolboy.
When we eventually got onto the ground, everything was chaos. Nobody had the first idea of what was going on. This was the end of Day Two of a continent-wide natural disaster, not volcanic ash but snow, possibly the most pathetic and debilitating natural disaster since the former, and nobody in ‘busy international hub’ Frankfurt had a clue about what was happening. We wandered hallways, sometimes in packs, sometimes alone, occasionally snatching at pieces of information that we thought, we believed, assumed was useful, because it came from someone in a uniform, but nobody was useful, nobody had the answer we were looking for and the uniforms were empty, devoid of authority.
Where can I get my bag from? I asked. “Yes, you must get your bag,” nodded the woman of African descent in a Lufthansa uniform. From where? “I do not know,” she shook her head, mournfully. An Israeli man had found an attendant that spoke his language – were they fighting or agreeing? Easily could’ve been either.
And nobody cared.
I’ve just crossed the Atlantic and I don’t speak German. “Um…would you like a medal?” No, I’d like a flight, my bag and a shower, in the order. “You can share a shower; you’ll never see your bag again; I can’t help you with your flight.” What level of Hell have we been flown into?
I started to follow an American tour guide, partly because there was a chance he’d know or be able to find something out and partly because I needed a Mother Goose. He was utterly useless, but he was wearing a pretty red jacked so at a pinch he could pass for Santa Clause; my brain was really very tired.
After some false starts down cavernous and deserted hallways, we found a queue. A queue! That most international of symbols! If people are queuing, there must be a reason – there must be something at the end. A pot of gold; a flight; a Kit-Kat. Whatever. So I joined the back with Mother Goose/Santa Clause. However, a well-coiffeured and impeccably dressed little German whose eyes darted and mouth rattled as if he’d just taken a line of speed was decimating the queue from the back with a clipboard.
“You!” he barked at three tall blond lads. “Going to Norway? Go to Gate 67B this instant. Your flight will be taking off shortly.” The three Scandinavians hadn’t really registered what had hit them but off they scurried.
“You!”
“Yes?” I offered meekly.
“Where you going?”
“Kuwait.”
“Ha. No, you’re not.” I blinked at this response, unsure as to how to react. Is this German customer service?
Mother Clause started to remonstrate with this communications guru in what seemed to be a jokey way for our benefit (not in front of the kids, darling) but was layered with vicious meaning:
Mother Clause: Ha ha, wouldn’t it be nice if you told us what was going on.
Communications Guru: Ha ha, wouldn’t it be nice if you got off my back, rolled into a cave and died, ha ha.
MC: Ha ha, leak me some information, think of yourself as Julian Assange for Frankfurt airpot, ha ha.
CG: Ha ha, look where Julian Assange is now, accused of rape and locked up on the behest of the Americans, he’s lucky he’s not in Guantanamo, ha ha.
MC: Ha ha, go **** your ******, ha ha.
CG: Ha ha, I would do but I was busy finishing up with your…
And so on.
But I looked at Mother Clause in light of this new information. He had no idea what was getting on and was getting in the way. This coiffeured coked-up Kraut (with a peculiarly South African English) had all the information I needed and was prepared to give it to me. I ditched the red-jacketed buffoon and started firing questions at Lufthansa’s finest.
1. What happened to my flight? “Cancelled.”
2. Where’s my bag? “You won’t see it for five days.”
3. Why not? “Because it’s being held where we wash our luggage carrying buses. Along with thousands of others. You think you’re in the shit, take a look around. You’re just a number, a statistic in a news story.”
4. So what do I do? “Take this voucher, get in a taxi, they’ll take you to this hotel. On the house. When you get there, call this hotline. They’ll re-book your flight. Good luck.”
He may have been an odious little prick, but I entirely appreciated his honesty: efficient, no-frills, take-it-or-leave-it communication. I took it, suddenly less angry, bewildered or confused than I had been when I got off the plane, and jumped into a cab.
The cold outside the plan was unreal. I had no clothes apart from what I was wearing, what I had been wearing since Friday night (amid those distant steaks and wine on a hot summer evening with friends in Latin America – had it only been two days?) and only had a coat. The snow was falling thick and fast, and was not attractive as it had been from the plane, but dirty and corrupted. I got into the taxi and zoomed into the night.
The driver was jovial and slightly chatty. I thought the hotel would be in Frankfurt itself but it was actually about 70km away, in a small town called Bingen. The snow was thick on and off the road, and several times the driver lost some control over the car and you could feel the tires sliding. Luckily this was happening to everyone so everybody on the road was aware and attentive to each other; considerate Germans.
The hotel was located at the far end of a pier in Bingen, a small industrial riverside town. The only guests in the hotel were stranded passengers, courtesy of Lufthansa. On the final approach to the hotel my taxi got stuck. Another taxi driver stopped and got out to push; after a while I got out as well to help, my Converse gently absorbing the snow caused by two days of solid snowfall. All to no avail. My driver got out and found a rubber sheet which he placed under a wheel to give it grip; the first time he started the car after this the sheet spun out from under the car and struck the assisting taxi driver on the shins. He hobbled off into the night, cursing. Someone came dashing out of the hotel with a shovel and got to work on the front wheels; at the same time, my driver got out and started spanking the back of the car with the rubber sheet to get the snow off. The sight was ridiculous beyond belief, like some sort of taxi-related bedroom game. Eventually, the taxi was freed and rolled off into the night.
The hotline to Lufthansa was engaged all evening. My hotel room looked disconcertingly like [the artist’s impression of] a cheap whore’s boudoir, right down to the plastic sheets. The ‘meal’ provided by the hotel and paid for by Lufthansa was disgusting and insufficient. I met some former US military lads (now civilian ‘contractors’ – euphemism for ‘hired killers’? One never knows…) on their way to Iraq or ‘Afghan’ via Kuwait, we started on the beers and Johnnie Walker, and that pretty much saw off the rest of the evening.
The next day I rose to a breakfast that was just like a boarding school Sunday breakfast – lavish, fantastic, excessive. I ate too much, but in my mind I justified it easily – after a night of watching BBC and CNN reports in which I had, as the Lufthansa man had predicted, become a number in a news story, when would I next be eating a meal like this again?
On the trip back to the airport, Germany was stunning. The countryside was lent an air of beauty by the snow that almost served to wash away my irritation at having been stuck and with little idea of how I would get out. But I was tired, and wanted to leave. This was my holiday. Frankfurt was just as crowded as it had been the day before, the people just as useless. But at least it wasn’t snowing anymore. I waited to get a new ticket, and suddenly everything was fine – flying out in the afternoon, with my bag. Success, at last.
Which was when I headed to Starbucks, took a long drag, and realized: this is Christmas, for everyone. The reason why this snow has caused so much chaos is that, at this time of year, people care in a way they simply don’t at other times. At this one point, on a hard day at the end of a hard year, we are all just trying to get home. I can’t believe it took me a sip of Starbucks to make me realize how important that is. What’s next? A sip of Coca-Cola and I’ll suddenly believe in Santa Clause again?
PS: It seems I was wrong – it isn’t just Maintenance that cycle about in Frankfurt airport, it’s everybody. Gotta love the Germans.
28/10/10
Nestor
Wednesday was a peculiar day. It was the day the National Census was carried out, so we all had the day off, provided we stayed at home all day waiting for the 'censista' to turn up. In order to ensure that everyone was in the right mental shape for the exertions, all bars and restaurants were shut at midnight on Tuesday. However, one or two bars worked out a cunning way of getting around this problem by holding private parties - it was illegal for a bar to be open, but there's no problem if it's a private party in somebody's 'house'. So that's where I was until 5 or 6 am on Wednesday. It felt like a Friday night, although it was a Tuesday.
I had set the next day aside for cooking and cleaning, but naturally woke up in the afternoon. What actually woke me was a call from a colleague informing me that Nestor had died. It is hard to accurately describe the thoughts that rushed colliding into my head at that precise moment. It felt like the suspension of reality, mixed with the coincidence that everybody in the city was at home to grieve in silence. My censista turned up shortly afterward to take my details. A sample of the questions: "Do you own a fridge? A laptop? A cellphone? A landline? Can you read and write?", in that order. The Census was also declared to be 'obligatory' but 'anonymous'; how any process can actually be both is beyond me.
After responding these questions, I went to the park to meet my friend Trevor, his girlfriend and their dog. I have never seen a space so devoid of mourners. Not one in sight. Nobody was wearing black; a lot of people were wearing barely anything at all. Music, sun, alcohol, dancing... Reality was clearly still suspended. And then I returned home, switched on the tv: the Casa Rosada, silent, deserted, and the only people walking in the Plaza de Mayo are Brazilian and/or Japanese tourists who haven't read or understood the news or participated in the Census and are bemused by the lack of people in the central square in a busy capital city. This changed, of course, over time, as people returned to the streets. But nothing was open until 8 pm, so that was when the mourning began in earnest.
The President declared three days of mourning; what that means is apparently not a national holiday until Monday, as we believed at first, but flags at half-mast and a lot of wearing black. Latin American heads of state have been rolling in over the last 24 hours. The talk in the streets and in the office is about what she will do next, whether she is strong enough politically or emotionally to run again in the elections next year, or whether it's time to step down and let somebody else take control. The next few weeks will be crucial in terms of defining her decision. Vultures/sharks are circling, depending on where one is standing. Regardless of personal opinions about the man himself, it is clear that, in the last decade, he has changed Argentina forever, and it is possible that in dying he has done exactly the same thing again. We shall see.
Palermo last night was full of life. I met up with a friend in a bar to watch part of the World Series, a sport I do not understand. In the packed bar, there was not one Argentine in sight. I wonder how many of them in there knew what was going on in the outside world. For them at least, reality was and is still suspended.
I had set the next day aside for cooking and cleaning, but naturally woke up in the afternoon. What actually woke me was a call from a colleague informing me that Nestor had died. It is hard to accurately describe the thoughts that rushed colliding into my head at that precise moment. It felt like the suspension of reality, mixed with the coincidence that everybody in the city was at home to grieve in silence. My censista turned up shortly afterward to take my details. A sample of the questions: "Do you own a fridge? A laptop? A cellphone? A landline? Can you read and write?", in that order. The Census was also declared to be 'obligatory' but 'anonymous'; how any process can actually be both is beyond me.
After responding these questions, I went to the park to meet my friend Trevor, his girlfriend and their dog. I have never seen a space so devoid of mourners. Not one in sight. Nobody was wearing black; a lot of people were wearing barely anything at all. Music, sun, alcohol, dancing... Reality was clearly still suspended. And then I returned home, switched on the tv: the Casa Rosada, silent, deserted, and the only people walking in the Plaza de Mayo are Brazilian and/or Japanese tourists who haven't read or understood the news or participated in the Census and are bemused by the lack of people in the central square in a busy capital city. This changed, of course, over time, as people returned to the streets. But nothing was open until 8 pm, so that was when the mourning began in earnest.
The President declared three days of mourning; what that means is apparently not a national holiday until Monday, as we believed at first, but flags at half-mast and a lot of wearing black. Latin American heads of state have been rolling in over the last 24 hours. The talk in the streets and in the office is about what she will do next, whether she is strong enough politically or emotionally to run again in the elections next year, or whether it's time to step down and let somebody else take control. The next few weeks will be crucial in terms of defining her decision. Vultures/sharks are circling, depending on where one is standing. Regardless of personal opinions about the man himself, it is clear that, in the last decade, he has changed Argentina forever, and it is possible that in dying he has done exactly the same thing again. We shall see.
Palermo last night was full of life. I met up with a friend in a bar to watch part of the World Series, a sport I do not understand. In the packed bar, there was not one Argentine in sight. I wonder how many of them in there knew what was going on in the outside world. For them at least, reality was and is still suspended.
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