Sarah and I spent the last week bumming around Buenos Aires, eating an unholy number of empanadas and pastries, watching tango and generally livin’ it up as turistas in Argentina’s biggest city. The title of this post is kind of a misnomer because I’m not actually going to talk about the tango or the boliches although we did both. (Okay, we didn’t really tango. But we’re going to learn! Honest!) For this post, I’m going to focus on our hostel experience which was very hostel-ly, and therefore, my favorite.

We stayed at one of those uber-youthy youth hostels with weird cartoons painted on the walls, a full bar and a kitchen where you have to write your name 80 times on your food and even then it will still probably disappear. It was the kind of place that organized everything from Spanish lessons to historical tours to getting hammered, with group outings to a different boliche every night of the week. Obviously, it was not the kind of place to stay in if you wanted sleep, but hostels almost never are. The great thing about these places is always, first and foremost, the company. I swear, people at hostels walk right off the pages of edgy post-modern novels and suddenly become real. I find this fascinating.

On our first night in the city we met a guy from LA in the hostel bar. He will be hence-forth known as LA-Guy since we never caught his name. LA-Guy informed us, in a mysterious Eastern European accent which disappeared after this first encounter, that he sold his business in the states and moved to Argentina in 1999. “I was in cosmetics,” he told us. “Haven’t you ever heard of Hard Candy? It’s nail polish, I made nail polish.” After covering these basics we moved on to discussing the bartender who was from Estonia. “Ask her where she’s from,” LA-Guy said, “it’s a country no one has ever heard of, it’s called Estonia. I thought that was where Stonehenge was, but apparently, it’s like, by Denmark.” The nail polish magnate story seemed slightly plausible until the next morning when he started serving breakfast. Neither of us had the heart to ask if he’s been working in the hostel since ’99.

And then there was Peanut-Butter-Lady, who tortured us each morning by bringing a jar of peanut butter down to breakfast. I have yet to find peanut butter here in Argentina and this was driving me crazy. On our last night, we finally engaged her in conversation, which we knew at the time was dangerous, but we had bets as to whether she was from Vermont or California so we had no choice. Turns out she’s from Canada, loves horses and is, in her very humble opinion, really really really good at tango. I made the mistake of asking her why she came to Argentina and I’m pretty sure she sniffed at me and said “everyone comes to Argentina for tango.” Kay, thanks, good advice.

And then there was Didn’t-Like-the-Fan-Girl, my bunk-mate and arch-nemesis. We got off to a really good start when I dropped my purse off the top bunk. This is a problem I have with top bunks and it’s especially problematic at hostels, when your bunkmate is fast asleep and the item in question wedges itself under her bed. It usually results in awkward questions like “what are doing slithering under my bed?” Things went from bad to worse because Didn’t-Like-the-Fan-Girl really didn’t like the ceiling fan. In my mind, the fan was an absolute necessity. It was hot and stuffy and loud and sleep was not going to happen for me without it. Unfortunately the lower levels of the fan didn’t work so we were at an impasse. I would turn the fan on and she would wait until I left to go to the bathroom and turn it off. It took awhile for me to detect the pattern and by that point the situation had escalated to a veritable battle of wills.

Lastly, Slasher-Music-in-the-Shower-Guy and Epic-German-Poetry-in-the-Shower-Guy. I don’t think these need a whole lot of explanation. As for the former, it’s pretty unsettling to hear death metal coming out of the shower at ten in the morning, especially when it’s played at such a low volume that the screaming sounds like creepy, hissing whispers. And as for the latter, I don’t speak German so I can’t say for sure if it was epic poetry or not, but it was certainly an impressive recitation and I like to think it was Beowulf.