CAST your mind back to school. A hot summer’s day, a stuffy classroom, the
sound of a lawn mower interrupted only by a droning teacher as your mind
escapes to the long holiday just weeks away.
“Please, Miss, can’t we do this outside, it’s such a nice day?” you’d ask,
only to be rebuffed with a first conditional and a withering glance.
Thank goodness, then, for the 26-year-old Argentinian Paula Capodistrias, who
seems to have had the same school experience as me. In January she started
her company Español Andando, giving Spanish lessons “on the street” in her
native Buenos Aires.
The four-day courses are part language tuition, part introduction to Latin
America’s hippest city, which, since the devaluation of the peso in 2002, is
also ridiculously cheap for British visitors. A set two-course menu ejecutivo
lunch in a decent restaurant, for example, will give you change from £2.50,
a ride on the underground is 14p and a taxi across town seldom tops £3.
“I thought there was a more enjoyable way for people to learn Spanish,”
Capodistrias says in flawless English polished in London. “There are so many
resources on the street. Why learn about buying bus tickets in a boring
classroom when the sun’s shining outside and you can actually go to a bus
station and put it into practice there and then?”
Which is why, after an introductory chat at a pavement café in the bohemian
district of San Telmo, we — Paula, computer programmer Greg, 29, from
Seattle, Aussie backpackers Kenny and Bree from Melbourne, and I — set off
for the bus terminal at Retiro.
We practise our directions to get to the bus stop, gingerly ask the driver for
a ticket (only 16p) and then, once there, are given exercises to see which
bus companies go where, for how much and how often, making us ask questions
in Spanish and listen to the sing-song patter of the locals.
It’s an immediate introduction to the Argentine accent and the local
vocabulary.
While you might “coger” (catch) a bus in Spain, doing that in
Argentina would get you arrested for public indecency, so best to tomar
one instead. And ask for “manteca” locally and you’ll get
butter for your toast — try that elsewhere in Latin America and they’ll
bring you lard.
But in general most things are the same. Buenos Aires is also a good place to
immerse yourself since few people outside the tourist industry speak
English, so it’s sink or swim.
On day two we met in trendy Palermo Viejo, formerly a tatty neighbourhood now
bursting with smart restaurants, designer shops and boutique hotels centred
on Plazoleta Cortázar.
The area hasn’t sold its soul in pursuit of the tourist dollar, however,
managing to retain many long-time residents who still meet in the same parillas
(steak houses). But the eateries now find themselves cheek by jowl with
wifi-enabled cafés and all-night bars serving cocktails and — most
definitely an acquired taste — the preferred local tipple, Fernet Branca
liqueur mixed with Coke.
We poked our noses into chemists, candle stores and fruit shops on Calle Jorge
Luis Borges, picking up vocab as we went, before arriving at the Jumbo
supermarket, near Avenida Santa Fe. Here we split into teams to question
staff about various products.
The next day we assembled at a café off the Plaza del Congresso, where the
tattooed waitress hovered between amusement and indifference about our
informal class. We dissected the daily newspapers, Clarín and El
Nacional, and chatted about gossip mags such as Paparazzi and Gente,
although the latter’s headlines — “El Topless de Susana!” — needed little
translation.
Lessons for the first three days start at 2pm, a good thing in a city that
stays up late, where only tourists eat dinner before 10pm and where no
decent Porteño (Buenos Aires resident) would think of going to a club before
two in the morning.
We wondered along Avenida Corrientes, browsing in bookshops, past the Obelisk
on the 20-lane Avenida 9 de Julio and on to the wood- panelled Café Ideal on
Calle Suipacha, where time, and white-jacketed waiters, seem to have stood
still since the 1950s and where the sad strains of local music drifted from
a milonga (tango party) on the first floor.
The course gave me the confidence to strike out on my own, which is how I
came, the next morning, to have my hair cut (for £1.80) by Señor Luisito in
his barber shop opposite the apartment in Colegiales where I stayed. With
the radio turned up full blast and peering over his thick glasses, Señor
Luisito — who must have been close to 80 — was obviously bamboozled by my
fluency.
“I came from Italy in 1931 and I’ve been cutting hair ever since. I used to do
Juan Perón’s,” he shouted. “The best president we ever had. Do you
understand? They bombed him, you know.” He then went on to tell me, four
times, his opening and closing times before gelling my hair into a
Hitler-style side parting.
Our final class started at 8pm the following day and moved back to Palermo
Viejo, to Acabar on Calle Honduras, a funky restaurant and bar with an
interior decoration resembling an Oxfam shop on acid — low lighting, mosaic
mirrors, neon signs, a multicoloured sofa, cheap and cheerful tables, and
random paintings on the walls.
We played games translating the menu (most dishes are about £2) while sharing
large bottles of cheap, cold, Quilmes lager and talking about the week — in
Spanish of course. “I didn’t want to sit in a classroom and conjugate verbs
on a blackboard,” said Greg, who was about to head to Uruguay before
travelling to southern Argentina.
“My Spanish has improved three times as fast as I thought it would, plus I got
to learn a lot about the city from a local.”
We bar-hopped around Palermo until, at 3am, Paula decided it was a suitable
time to head off to Club 69 on Calle Niceto Vega. I admitted defeat and
grabbed a taxi home. In Spanish I instructed “straight on please, till you
get to the corner of Santos Dumont”, not something I would have considered
trying four days earlier.
Never mind that I didn’t understand the driver’s reply as he babbled over his
shoulder, switched lanes like Michael Schumacher and single-handedly
attempted to light a cigarette. It had been a fun course, spurred me on to
take my Spanish to the next step, and shown me sides of a great city that I
wouldn’t have seen otherwise. So, Paula; gracias boluda. Que
linda!
NEED TO KNOW
Español Andando (00 54 911 6117 4452, www.espanol-andando.com.ar) has four-day
courses (three hours each day) starting every Monday which cost for £20
(NOTE, ie that is in total for all 4 days). You pay for drinks, snacks and
transport.
Getting there: Journey Latin America (020-8747 3108,
www.journeylatinamerica.co.uk) has returns from Heathrow to Buenos Aires
from £562
Staying there: Will Hide hired an apartment with BYT
Argentina (00 54 11 4821 6075, www.bytargentina.com), which has one-bedroom
flats from £90 pera week. Home Buenos Aires (00 54 11 4778 1008,
www.homebuenosaires.com) in Palermo Viejo, a new, Anglo-Argentine boutique
hotel, has B&B doubles from £82.
Reading: Buenos Aires (Time Out, £12.99).
Useful websites: See also www.bue.gov.ar and
www.turismo.gov.ar.
TONGUE TWISTERS
Want to learn another language, but don’t want to spend hours in a classroom?
Caledonia Languages (0131-621 7721,
www.caledonialanguages.co.uk) offers a fortnight in Pisa that combines
learning Italian in the mornings with cookery classes in the afternoon.
Other options include art history classes and wine tasting. Two weeks,
including half-board family homestay but not flights, starts at £790.
Cactus Language (01273 725200, www.cactuslanguage.com) mixes
French classes with golf lessons in Biarritz. Two weeks’ half board with a
host family, excluding flights, is from £1,369. A programme of French plus
surfing tuition starts at £989.
Teaching English as a foreign language — better known as TEFL
— is big business in Japan, where thousands of English speakers base
themselves. The Japanese Government runs the JET programme
(www.jetprogramme.org), which is operated by local authorities throughout
the country. The website www.japan-guide.com has details, including private
language schools, some of which have recruitment fairs in the UK.
