Our first taxi ride was to La Boca, a neighborhood famous for its colorful buildings and its futbol team. An AR$20 drive to La Boca from the Mircrocentre turned into AR$30 when Megan gave the driver a AR$100 bill and he gave her AR$70 back. She didn't figure this out until much later. In her defense, all either of us had were AR$100 bills because that's what the ATM spat out at us. It was our understanding the team in La Boca would be playing at home. After walking around for 20 minutes trying to figure out where at the stadium tickets were sold, we were told La Boca was not playing that evening. We were sure they were and it took several more chats with people to find out they were in fact playing, but it was away. We were given the neighborhood of the away game and hopped into the next taxi to go to La Recoleta.
I don't speak much spanish and the spanish I do speak isn't very good. When I told the taxi driver we wanted to go to the stadium in Recoleta, he obviously thought I said cemetary because that's where he took us. When we pulled up to the cemetary, I stressed FUTBOL stadium. He said, "Ohh!" and dropped us 3 blocks away from the cemetary and pointed towards an imaginary stadium. We walked in that direction and several other directions hoping we would see a large stadium-like building to guide us but never came across one. We stopped in a restaurant to ask for directions and after making a spectacle of ourselves trying to communicate our destination, we were finally headed in the right direction. Well, for the most part...
We found the right bus, but went the wrong direction. Luckily, the waitress at the restaurant wrote on paper the stadium name we wanted to go to and the neighborhood it was in. When we showed the paper to the bus driver, he told us to get off and take the bus going the opposite direction. Disaster averted once again. We rode the correct bus for quite some time. I was getting antsy at how long we had been on the bus and did my best to ask the woman behind me in spanish what stop we needed to get off for the neighborhood of the stadium. She was very eager to help but did so in words I could not understand. Megan managed to get her to tell us how many more stops we needed to get off of the bus. When our stop came, the woman rushed us off and pointed in the direction we should go. We took a few steps in that direction, but something felt wrong. We were walking down a neighborhood street and all I could see in front of us were houses. No stadium. I turned back to where the bus had dropped us off and asked a policeman where the futbol stadium was. He pointed in the direction our bus had driven towards and sure enough, not more than 5 blocks down was the stadium...and our bus driving towards it. Of course, I immediately realized my mistake. I had asked the woman where the neighborhood of the stadium was, not the stadium itself. Doh!
We had two hours to kill before the futbol match began with nothing to do and nowhere to go. The stadium was in an area with no shops, just one tiny corner market and a local's restaurant, if you could call it that. The place consisted of a very large grill with various asado (meat) on it and 8 tables, half of them occupied by policia (Futbol matches get very rowdy, so the police are EVERYWHERE with dogs, barricades, and riot gear in case it gets too out of hand). It was already a very warm day, but walking into a small brick and corrugated metal building with a grill occuping one wall made it feel more like a sauna than an eatery. I asked for a Coca Cola and Megan asked for a cerveza. With no menu of any sort, neither of us wanted to attempt to order anything to eat. We sat at a corner table and kept to ourselves. We were obviously out of place and definitely felt that way. Two women next to us were enjoying tapas which seemed to be bread and marinated eggplant. It looked good. Megan and I asked what they were eating, "Que?" *while pointing.* She said something neither of us understood and we shook our heads in agreement, "Ohh. Yes." I'm sure she knew we were oblivious to her words because she then offered us each a piece of the eggplant on bread. Delicious! It was Megan's first taste of eggplant and she also liked it a lot. After looking around the room to see what everyone else was eating, I eventually got up the nerve to order the eggplant (by means of pointing and for me and Megan to share), fritas (fries for myself), empanada con pollo (chicken empanada for Megan) y una cerveza (another beer for Megan). That's mostly what we were served. I guess I pronounced empanada con pollo wrong because a thin cut of breaded steak with a lemon slice came out. I passed it on to Megan (who said it was really good) and enjoyed the eggplant and fries.
The futbol match was an amazing experience. For anyone who might follow Argentinian futbol, it was La Boca vs Huracan. As to be expected, people here are incredibly passionate about futbol, especially La Boca fans. They brought their own flags and banners to decorate their side of the stadium and a band that played non-stop from 20 minutes before the match began until the very end. Being a fan is a sport itself. You must be able to jump up and down and chant and sing throughout the entire match and call the refs and players all kinds of names. Unfortunately the match ended 0-0 so we never got to see the crowd's reaction to a goal.
We ended the day with a proper meal in a restaurant that had pictures on the menu and a Tango song and dance show. It was quite an eventful day with many memorable learning experiences.
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