Tango House
As I am travelling alone to Buenos Aires on a shoe string budget for potentially 3 months, I have decided to stay in a Tango House, which is a rooming house for visitors who come here for Tango.
The standard features of Tango House are bedrooms for the individuals, some with attached bathrooms. For those rooms without bathrooms, the guests will share a common bath and toilet facility. There is a kitchen for everyone to use. Whether the Living Room is indoor, or if there is a practice dance studios, Laundromat etc. will depend on the Tango House.
Tango houses are usually owned and managed by the people who live on the same property, and who are interested in Tango as well. They tend to have a wealth of knowledge of the tango scenes, in additional to the common tourists' information. Some of the owners are very enthusiastic with the social events of the tango communities, and may come along to the milongas with the guests. As tango houses usually are not large, each house may have 3 to 7 guestrooms. It is common to see guests also socialize among themselves, eating dinner, attending milonga or doing other things together.
When I first looked into tango houses' availability via internet, I received a very prompt response from Ms. L. Impressed by her professionalism, I stayed at her Tango House.
It is located at the San Telmo area, a Bohemian area with lots of old elegant buildings. You can still see old butcher shops, shoe shops, vegetable shops, and the cost of living is lower here.
| The narrowest lot with the "casa chorizo" (sausage house), only 2 metre wide. | Typcial row houses in San Telmo. | A produce and general market inside a Victorian Style steel framed warehouse. |
Much like the Uptown in Chicago, this area is quite run down. When I first arrived from the airport, I was quite shocked: there are many empty lots, graffiti on the walls, and broken pavements everywhere.
During the weekends, the area is filled with local and foreign visitors at the Square Dorrego lined up with antiques shops and vendors. There are artists in the streets, vendors selling fruit tarts, monkey and his owner doing tricks etc. I presume pick-pockers are busy at work at that Square too. During the nights, tango dancers start to come out to perform. They lined the floor with cardboard or some heavy plastic sheets. Some would even educate the spectators on what tango music and dance are about. Of course, much like any street art, at the end is always concluded with a hat being passed around for donations.
In my first week there, I was trying to understand the city by taking the Subte (underground train) around during daytime, but when it comes to night time to go to milonga, I always relied on the house owner to call taxis for me. Stranded with my linguistic barrier at that time, one night I had to hail a taxi by myself off the street as the house owner has already retired, it was quite a scary moment.
Living at L Tango House is far from being luxurious. The Room is dark and small. There is no window in the room (common in tango houses); the French door opens out to an outdoor courtyard that acts as the only shared living room area for the guests. It was cold when I first checked in (later I realized because one of the glass pane at the French door was missing), everyday I huddled in front of the electric heater. There is a dog kept by the owner, which assures us the safety inside the house because it will bark at any strangers.
My life style reverted back to the campus era. At their shared kitchen, I whipped up instant soups, pastas with tomato sauce and cut up hotdogs. Then I carried the food into my room to eat in front of the heater. I minced past the outdoor courtyard to use the common bathroom. Spartan lifestyle it was.
After 7 days of that, plus being less than impressed by the depressive tango house environment, not to mention the unstable neighborhood, I moved to a much better area called Recoleta, close to Palermo.
This second tango house is owned and managed by Jessica and her mother, a dance teacher and dance therapist. It is a side-by-side two-storey high Rococo style townhouses, where she kindly offered a room with an attached bathroom to me. There is a covered courtyard where I took my Spanish class 3 times a week, an eat-in common kitchen, a large dance studio where I could practice, plus Jessica even offered her fax-answering machine to me. The nearby Santa Fe Avenue is always busy with shoppers. It also gives me the comfort and safety when I walk around in the neighborhood.
This is a major step up in lifestyle. I started to cook at home, invited friends to dinners and chats, and bought some clothing items from the neighborhood... I am happy to report that I am happily settled now.
