Travel notes S2 E1: and so the journey begins
Originally published on Medium on September 27, 2018.
Can we get back to politics? Please, No….
Whilst #weeknotes was instigated in an effort to promote transparency in government, my habit of writing has become too much not to scratch it, so I hope you’ll forgive the continuance of my inane ramblings as I potter around South America over the next few months.
I finally (re)packed my bag for the last time a week ago to start my little vacation away from real life. I’d be lying if I was to say I wasn’t nervous; the closer I came to the date the more it dawned on me that I was going away for quite a lot of time, maybe not in the great scheme of things yet 1/60th of your life to date is not inconsiderable.
Solo travel in ways is a great leveller; living out of one or two bags, you can’t be materialistic. Relying on converting strangers to friends for social contact, you can’t be egotistical or aloof. Going without the structure of day to day working life, you can’t be insular.
It forces us back down our hierarchy of needs to consider on a daily basis; where are you going to stay, eat and do. Reminding us how little we actually need for our daily lives. It exposes you to ideas and communities which you’d otherwise have little opportunity to engage with. It forces you to learn and articulate who you are rather than just what you are.
So there I was standing in Pen station; awaiting my friends arrival. New York’s humanity flowing around, under and over me. A first step away from home, a first step away from structure, a first step away from decision making.
A tale of two cities
“If I can make it there,
I can make it anywhere,
It’s up to you,
New York, New York”
More than anywhere else in the world, these words ring true. All the opportunity, all the risk. Yet external to the rat race are the unique faces and places; a China Town which you could easily mistaken for being in Shanghai, Delhis straight out of Sopranos casting and an ever present sense of arrogance that New York and New Yorkers are special. If they deign to service you, it’s only on the understanding that they are doing you a favour.
The city ‘is a character in itself’ as the saying goes, and there is truth in that. Most outsiders have been exposed to its persona through accumulated 1000’s of hours of cop procedures, Teen dramas and big budget Marvel movies. We can name of the boroughs through their association to this character or that and its almost disappointing to find they don’t live up to their fictionalised namesakes.
With the fall weather well and truly turning in my last days in the big apple to Buenos Aries I’ve fled. Ive visited enough cities now to be unmoved by architecture on the most part (although Paris still has a place in my heart), you can transpose most major western cities onto one another with little difference (80/20 rule?).
Yet I was expecting something different of Buenos Aires; closer to my experience in Ecuadors Colonial past to the West of the Andes. What I’ve found is replica of anyone of a dozen major Western European cities; looking out from my Cafe’s window I’d be hard pressed to distinguish the city scape from that of Madrid or Nice, apart from perhaps the brightly coloured buses which epitomise South American travel.
This is emphasised even more by the ‘social contract’ of Argentina, so aligned to the mother continent; free education to all and a ‘healthy’ spirit of public speech, including to the anniversary of the Falklands/Malvinas conflict which on a fetes passing made me rather glad I was wearing a New York T-shirt and had no need to reveal my accent.
It is said that New York doesn’t sleep; if this is the case Buenos Aires has terminal insomnia. Partly down to the Latin culture of late mornings and late nights the whole day feels shifted to the right, with seemingly most of the cities residents embracing this to dance into the long hours (the party doesn’t really get going until 2AM it seems).
So I write this as a form of recovery from the morning after the night before; massaging my head back into some resemblance of normality before starting a’new in just a few hours. It’s a hard life….