Argentina

She's told me her name about 20,000 times, but I still can't remember it: I think it's something like "Shasti". This blonde, beautiful, and incredibly friendly girl is from the wonderful nation of Sweden, and she's part of the crew here at The Clan in BA. We've come to refer to her simply as "The Swedich chick". Anyway, Swedish Chick is in town for a few weeks, and we see her at the bar on most nights, and sometimes she heads out with us to the clubs as well.

I spent the second day of Rosh Hashanah much as I did the first: that is, praying and eating (and plenty of both) at "Chabad La Metayel", here in downtown Buenos Aires. We did a lot better with getting a minyan this morning, which was good: the service had already started when I arrived; and we had time to do it properly, with all the singing and the joy that really (in my opinion) makes a shul service special. And as with yesterday, we had plenty of shofar sounding interspersed throughout the prayers; and a long and cosy (and totally over-catered) lunch in the afternoon.

One of the very few South Africans that I've met in the Latin World, Ari is a veteran backpacker who, like myself, is down in Buenos Aires for Rosh Hashanah. He's a real character: he's been travelling the globe intermittently for about 10 years; and he's really into music, especially some of the more alternate local music that they have around here. He's lived in Israel before, so he's fluent in Hebrew; he's also working on his Spanish at the moment. He's hanging round the Chabad House for the new year, keeping the rest of us company.

As I've already mentioned numerous times lately, Argentina has fabulous wine, and it's available here in ridiculously cheap abundance. Today, at the Chabad Rosh Hashanah first day lunch, I tried some kosher Argentinian wine for the first time. Sorry, but I can't remember the brand (can't find it online, either). The verdict? About what you'd expect. It was the best kosher wine I've ever had. And the worst Argentinian wine I've ever had.

I continued celebrating Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year) today, with first day shul services and communal meals. I spent the day at "Chabad La Metayel" (run by my mate Menachem), which is conveniently located about 3 blocks from Hostel Clan, just a 10-minute walk down the street for me. Unfortunately, when I got there (at 11am) the service still hadn't started; and we had to sit and wait until 1pm, when we finally got a minyan and could start doing shacharit. This forced the rabbi to jam the service into a mere 2 hours, at the expense of all singing, and through some serious (true Chabad-style) rapid-fire prayer. However, we still managed to fit in all the soundings of the shofar, which ushered in the New Year with a bang.

Menachem is the Rabbi in charge of the tiny "Chabad La Metayel" ("Chabad for the traveller") synagogue, here in downtown Buenos Aires. Originally from Israel, he's now living down here, along with his wife and his new-born son. He's a very friendly guy, and he's also fluent in English, Spanish, and of course Hebrew (he prefers the latter two). He's been very welcoming and very hospitable to me, during my stay here for the New Year.

Sunset this evening marked the start of Rosh Hashanah, and also the start of the Jewish year of 5768. To begin the New Year's celebrations, I went to a communal dinner this evening, organised by Beit Jabad (known to us English-speakers as Chabad House) of Buenos Aires. The event was held in the function room of a big hotel in the middle of the city, and it was set up primarily for all the Jewish travellers who happened to be in town. No surprise, then, that the dinner consisted of the Rabbi, myself, 4 other English-speakers, and around 150 long-haired hippie Israelis.

I would like to take this opportunity to wish all the readers of my blog a Happy and a Sweet New Year. Shana tova, and gemar chatima tova. May you all be inscribed in the Book of Life, and may you all find somewhere to celebrate the New Year, as I have, no matter where you happen to be on this planet for it.

At about 5:30pm this afternoon, I realised that Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year) was starting in about an hour's time, and that I had no decent shirt to wear for it. I had a half-decent shirt — but even that was off getting washed. So I madly rushed around town, looking for a clothes shop and a nice white shirt. Managed to find myself something: not exactly my style, but it fits OK, and it's white, and it'll do for celebrating the New Year in.

Yesterday, Chris, Oly and myself celebrated our re-uniting, with some burger munching and rugby watching. Today, the reunion party continued, with my first visit to one of the many fine parrillas (you should know this one by now, guys: it's a steak house!) in BA. We had a good 'ol gorge on some juicy, medium-rare dead cows. Need I mention ye obligatory bottle of red? Seeing as I was so deprived of steak in Bariloche, I think that this was massively overdue, and totally well-deserved :P.

Victor is an IT guy, who's originally from the UK (grew up in the US), and who's been living here in BA for almost 30 years. Over the past year or so, he's been getting into the Drupal development and consulting world, and he's lucky enough to be attending DrupalCon Barcelona 2007 next week. When I told Victor that I was in town, he invited me over to his apartment for dinner — so tonight, we met for the first time, and had a nice geeky old shmooze.