attack in "la boca"!

Two weeks ago Steffi and I decided to go to "la boca". It's an district next to "San Telmo", where I live and there is one street called the "Caminito" where the houses are very colorful. All travel guides say that it's a very poor area with the highest crime rate of Buenos Aires and that you should never go by yourself, never go in any street that's not the "Caminito" or not turistic. Well, Steffi and I we went to the "Caminito" (see pics here) and went after to the famous "la bombonera", the soccer stadium of the famous team "la boca juniors", where also started playing "Diego Maradona". On the way back we had to walk on a little street that leads right to the "Caminito". Suddenly I young man came up from behind (maybe 18 years old), put out is pepper spray, put it into Steffis mouth and eyes! In the same time he tried to steal her camera. But luckily she hold her camera tight in her hands so he couln't grab it. She screamed and he ran away. First she couldn't really breath the first minutes and she couldn't see anything and her eyes hurted so much. We walked to the police (that was standing one block away) to tell them to help us find a taxi to go as fast as we could out of this area. Well, unfortunately we couldn't do anything, her and me we couldn't remember how the guy looked like, everything went so fast (maybe about 20 seconds). At least she still has her camera. One day after the "attack" her eyes stoped hurting and everything is fine now. What do we learn out of that?
That we will probably not return to "la boca"...

news from Buenos Aires part 2 - la UBA

Now I wanna tell you my experience with the UBA. Unfortunately I found out that my courses are not being held at my faculty but in another place pretty far away from where I live (it takes me about an hour to get there from where I live now). The building is even more dirty than the other building, a lot of waste on the ground, broken windows, shabby tables and so on... A few days ago I was sitting in a classroom with a lot of broken windows so that the wind could come through. We were all sitting with a warm sweatshirt and winter jackets and were still freezing... Well, I would say - different country - different conditions to cope with :-)
(You can see pics here).
I will participate in three courses which are called the following: "Taller de informática, telemática y de datos" (something like "Medieninformatik"), "Diseno gráfico" (graphic design) and "mujeres populares de la re/construcción de la nación argentina" (popular women of the re/construction of the Nation Argentina). Being a foreigner means you're "only" allowed to take 3 courses. But all Argentinian students I talked to have been chosing the same amount. They're not allowed to take more than 4, so that's not that a big difference. The courses themselves are splitted into two parts: one is a course "teorética" ("Vorlesung"), the other one is called "práctica" (with less people, like a "Seminar"). Both together are 4 hours, so I have 12 hours of studies in total. Many of the foreign students I met are taking less courses because they're pretty expensive. For Argentinians they're for free, but foreigners have to pay (this is only true for my faculty) 1200 pesos for one course plus 450 pesos for the immatriculation, so totally I paid 4050 pesos (900 Euro) from my own pocket. I'm hoping that "Auslandsbafög" will pay this for me but I still need to send them prove of my immatriculation which I don't have yet because here in Argentina everything just takes a lot longer than expected... To be honest I feel extremely happy lately if something really works out the way it was supposed to work out! No lie! It's like a miracle here :-)
Well, now I'm gonna tell you something of the courses. I will have college every Tuesday and Wednesday evening (from 15-21 o'clock) and Thursday morning from 9-13 o'clock. All courses are offered a lot of times during the week, the time span is between 9-23 o'clock! Seriously! Especially the theoretical classes are in the evening, especially for those students that work. And here are A LOT of students that work fulltime until 7 or 8 pm and go to college after. This is why you see a lot of man and women in working dress at the college.
Now a word to the language:
Of course I don't understand a word! Okay, it's not that bad, I would say I understood 20% of what the profs are trying to tell me. It's terrible. But I was prepared for that experience. What can I expect? It's a little sad, yes, after almost 8 years of trying to learn Spanish having this bad experience but hey - the Argentinian accent is very hard and I was very released when I heard that many other students had the same problem of understanding than me. I hope this will better very soon otherwise I will have a BIG problem. So far I can tell that most of my Argentinian study mates are very nice, most of them are positively surprised when I tell them that I'm from Germany. The funny thing is that many Argentinians are asking me, what the hell I'm doing in Argentina when I'm from Germany where I've got everything I need! For them it seems to be a crazy thing to do. In almost every course I seem to be the only foreigner, but in one course there are a lot of people from the United States. The courses are not very simular to German colleges I would say. Well, a powerpoint presentation, which is totally normal in at the college in Augsburg, here is a miracle. I only have one professor that's using powerpoint. So the professors tell us a story 2 hours and its on our turn to write everything down we find important to keep. We also have to read a lot. Every week we have to read about 100-200 pages for one course, so I really should get started to read... (at the moment I feel like I'm reading the amount of the whole KW-Eilders Vorlesung Reader of "Einführung in die KW" or "Medienwirkung" in only one week and it's all in Spanish so I need more time to understand! help!).
One thing more to mention I think is that I got the impression that both professors and students are more active and ambitious in discussing. Especially the professors are very motivated here.
Today also my Spanish class started. Actually I wanted to take courses at the so-called "laboratoria de idiomas" of the UBA, which is THE center of learning languages in Buenos Aires. But last week was the inscription and the test of level which I wanted to take part in. The test of the level of spanish started on monday at 9 o'clock so we thought it's good enough to be there at 10. Unfortunately the places for the test only were full and so I had to take the test the day after. By then most of the classes have been closed already (because they're have been full, many students already signed up for those courses) so I was only offered one course which I couln't accept because I have another class at the same time at the UBA. So I decided to ask my faculty (they offer language courses, too) if I could join them. That was not a problem at all so I had my first class today. I will have 4 hours of Spanish each week, we're only 3 Germans and one teacher, so that's great.
So, that's for now, next time I will tell you something why I will move out, why I will probably not return to "la boca" (district of Buenos Aires) and how my first "asado" (barbecue) with a lot of Argeninians was :-)
Un beso!

news from Buenos Aires part 1 - social life/acitivities

Hola chicos! News from Buenos Aires!

I'm sorry, I was supposed to write a little earlier but some things are going on here, I've been pretty busy lately...
First of all I have to tell you that I like the city from day to day a little more. I get kind of used to the chaos, I met more people and I find my way through the city without getting lost :-). Now I will let you know what happened the last week: Last sunday (a week ago) I picked up Steffi (a girl I know from the college in Augsburg, she will stay in Buenos Aires for 13 months) from the airport. She will stay here until she finds a nice place to stay for herself. Since then we have been doing a lot together (last weekend we've been to Puero Madero - the harbour - for example, you can see pics here) which is very nice because we both are new in the city and the city is full of things to discover! But unfortunately lately we haven't really had the time to enjoy the city because we're both looking for a new room (following soon on a separated blog entry). Anyway - we do our best :-) Within the last few days I also got in touch with a bunch of people, thanks to a language "tandem", I met some nice argentinian people but of course I also met people mostly from Germany (man, you don't believe it but Germans are just everywhere in the world...), most of them study at the UBA too and we met a few times so far to see some places together. Last Sunday for example we took the bus to "Feria de Mataderos" (see also pics here), it's in a suburb of Buenos Aires and it's a very traditional place with a lot of great food, traditional rope to buy and other stuff. It was a really nice trip!
I also got the chance to get to know to Argentinan night life!

You thought German bureaucracy was complicated? Well, it's nothing...

...compared to Argetinian bureaucracy! I my god! I tell you. I my god! Now I have to tell you my story about how trying to get my study visa. I didn't come further than TRYING. I still didn't get one and I wonder when and if I will really get one. Well, in order to get my visa, I needed a paper from the UBA that said that I was a student and that I would study. It also includes my date of arrival and the amount of time I will stay in this country. The woman from the UBA put a wrong arrival date on the paper accidently and also switched my 6 months stay to a 12 months stay. Well, at the beginning I though this wouldn't be such a big problem. Wrong guess. I somehow knew that this could be a problem, so I went back to the UBA to have this paper changed. Unhappily the woman from the UBA was out of office to make some copies. Unfortunately she didn't come back after 1 hour of waiting so I decided to leave and to try my best of the immigration hall. At the immigration hall - as I thought - they told me that I had to have these wrong details corrected. So I went back to the UBA (the woman who's in charge - wasn't there that day, so I had to return another day). There she gave me a letter that said that the details on the paper were wrong, that it was her fault and also she wrote down the real details. Back to the immigration hall they didn't accept the letter and told me to bring the original paper but corrected. I told the woman at the UBA that I needed the original paper changed which she was trying to do. First she had problems with her computer that refused printing out the corrected original. After having called the immigration hall for help she found out that she needed to come herself to the immigration hall PERSONALLY to correct the details because it was her fault and not mine... Honestly, I didn't know if it was better to laugh or cry. Unbelievable. This week she doesn't have time to go, maybe she's going next week. Anyway, she told me not to worry, she will let me incribe myself without this study visa (which was my only reason to obtain it). Lol. Fine with me. I wonder if I will able to get this visa at all within the time I spend here... Vamos a ver!

La UBA (Universidad de Buenos Aires) y el cementorio de Recoleta (tomb of EVITA)

Some days passed by so I got some new things to tell. At the moment I'm still trying to find my way through the city. From day to day I feel more comfortable taking the "colectivos" (buses) also knowing most of the time that I'll be missing the right stop. It's really hard to get off the right time, the bus drivers drive so fast that it's not only hard to follow their routes on the map but also to find the right bus stop on the streets. Mostly they don't have bus stops how we know them. It's more a kind of a sticker at a street light with the numbers that indicate which buses are passing by. Passing by doesn't mean they're really stopping! In order to get on the bus it's necessary to put your hands in the air so that the bus driver knows that you want to hop on the bus - which doesn't mean necessarily that he'll stop. Anyway - I'm glad I made it from my home to the UBA and back - by bus.
Today I went to another touristic attraction - to the graveyard of Recoleta, another part in the city. There the tomb of Evita - the famous wife of Juán Perón - can be visited at a very large graveyard. It was funny - even though many other important people from Buenos Aires have been burried there but everybody just seemed to pilgrim to her tomb which was full of flowers. You can see pics here. On this album you can also see my faculty.
PS: I found out that people could only leave comments on this blog if they signed up. I changed this feature now so anybody can leave a comment now even without being signed in.

First impressions of B.A. and first pics online!

hey there!

Yesterday my roomates took me to my first Tango lesson to the city center! It was a lot of fun even though I had to find out that Tango is very difficult. This class for beginners is every Saturday and costs only about 3,50 Euro. So maybe I'll continue dancing Tango and when I'm back I'm gonna be a Tango star ;-)
Today I took the chance to walk all the way through my quarter, the so-called "San Telmo" until I came to the government building "la casa Rosada" at the "Plaza de Mayo". Then I turned to the "Avenida Florida", a kind of a very long shopping street. After that I went to the widest street in the world with 21 lanes, the "Avenida 9 de Julio". But honestly it looks bigger on the pictures than it really is. Unfortunately it was a pretty cold day today and the weather wasn't that nice at all but still there were a lot of people in the streets. Especially here in San Telmo the market opens on Sundays and tons of tourists come to this part of Buenos Aires to buy things. To give you some kind of an impression how it looks like here, I uploaded some pics, you can see them here. A girl from Germany who's still looking for a shared apartment so far contacted me by mail through the International Office of the UBA (Universidad de Buenos Aires). She's also here with a German friend and they're studying about the same at the UBA. They arrived at the same time in Buenos Aires and are as much without orientation just as me. I'm gonna meet them next week. So far I get along with the "Subte" (the subway) but next week I will also try to get along with the "colectivos" (buses) here. They have thousand of buses here and they're said to be a better way to get through the city than by Subte because they reach more areas. But I'm not worried, I've still got enough time to discover the city!
That's for now! I hope you're all doing good,
A luego!

first night and first day in BA

I arrived at the B.A. airport at about 7 pm local time, it was a 14 hours flight so you can imagine that I was pretty exhausted! On my left sat a nice woman from Argentina who gave me her contacts within minutes when she heard that I was staying in B.A. to study and she gave me some good advice. On my right was a man from Uruguay but with German ancestors. Thanks to these nice neighbors I had the time in the plane went by pretty fast. But after about 8 hours of flying I got such a bad headache. Anyway - at 7 pm local time (midnight in Germany) I arrived, another 45 minutes later I received my luggage. Then the adventure began: I don't know how many people told me that I had to take an official cab within the airport rather than a cab outside. It's said to be more dangerous to take a cab outside because there have been a lot of kidnapping in the past with cabs that weren't real cabs... So I went down, took an official cab and the cab driver took me into the center of the city within 25 minutes and I arrived safely in San Telmo, which belongs to the historic part of B.A. Ruben, the owner of this shared apartment, was happy to see me and showed me my room and the whole house. Its hard to describe, later on I will take some pics and put them on this blog. Three other people are living with me in this apartment, its a girl from Germany (she studies at the same college, has already been here for 5 months) who's moving out at the end of this month, a girl from San Fransisco who's teaching English here and a guy from Italy whom I haven't had the chance to talk to yet. All of them seemed to be pretty nice and I think and I hope I will have a lot of fun with them. My room is devided into two parts. It has a small ledder to the top where my bed stands. On the ground I have a small table, some furniture where I can store my stuff and a big sofa which I already fell in love with because it's very cosy :-) I also have a small balcony but at the moment its too cold to sit outside (its winter here, about 5-10 degrees Celsius). We share the bathroom, kitchen and living room. Almost everything is a little shabby but the living room is very nice! It's very big as well, has a TV and big tables and it's just very nice to spend some time there. After checking out the apartment (don't forget - I have been up for 24 hours!), I was so tired that I just went to bed.

This morning I talked to the German and the American girl who explained me a lot and gave some good advice. Also Ruben (the owner) is very helpful and it's just good to know people especially at the beginning when everything is a caos anyway. Yesterday when I arrived it was dark already so I took the chance to start to discover B.A. this morning.
My first impression was that B.A. seems to be a mixure of all kinds of cities I've been to so far. It's shabby like Dublin or bad areas of New York, from the architecture it looks very European, but also a little American, its pretty dirty, a lot of waste is on the ground and the whole city smells like gas. But I also found some very nice houses and cafés so not everything looks bad here. It's only my first impression, let's see, maybe I'll change my mind when I've seen a little more of the city. This morning I took the subway to my college (here it's called la "SUBTE") which costs 90 centavos each way (!) that means it costs about 20 Euro Cents! That's really cheap! The university I'm going to is la UBA - Universidad de Buenos Aires. It has about 300 000 students and its faculties are all over the city center. My faculty is called "Facultad de Ciencias Sociales" and it's very close to the city center and about 20 minutes by subway from my house. When I saw the shabby building from the outside and inside and its bad condition I wasn't really suprised after having read a experience report from another student that studied some time at the same buidling. I gotta have to take some pics of that otherwise you won't believe me how dirty it is! The funny thing is - if you leave the bad looking aside - that the UBA seems to be a very taugh, recommended and honored university with a very good reputation not only in Argentina but also in whole Latin America. We will see. I went to the International Office and luckily there was a very nice woman who explained to me what steps I need to take to get my study visa. I came into this country by a tourism visa and I have to change it into a study visa. It's very complicated and I'm lucky that I'm already here to arrange all those things before my courses will start. They will begin in about 10 days and I'm very excited.
Next time I put some more pictures on this blog, this time I didn't take my camera with me after many people told me not to in order not to be robbed (I'm not kidding), it's better not to show how rich you are. I first want to get used to the city and to get to know how to get around here before I'll take the time to take some pics. Just be patient, they will follow soon.
There's a lot more to tell I don't wanna overwhelm or bore you with to much information. It's to be continued!
Hasta la próxima vez!

Here you see my first breakfast I had in Argentina!

last goodbye in Stuttgart and at Frankfurt airport

Last monday I took the train to see my sister Mel and her friend Leah in Stuttgart to spend some hours with them. So I had a chance to see her at least some hours before I disappeared to Buenos Aires (BA) and with the knowledge that I won't see her for at least the next 10 months (if we see each other more than once a year it's a kind of a miracle). Here you see some of the pics.

my sister Mel and me

















After meeting my sister in Stuttgart I rushed home to get all my stuff packed. Luckily I got everything on time. So last Tuesday I said goodbye to Augsburg, took the train to Munich to go to my brother's house and went to the Munich airport at 3 am on Wednesday morning. The plane flew to Frankfurt where I met my friends Hanna and Annika (thank you again!) because I had about two hours staying time in Frankfurt before my flight was about to go to BA.

4 days left to go...

Hey guys,

all my exams are over now, all my jobs have been finished, the goodbye party ended well but my bags are still unpacked! Theoretically I have 4 more days to pack but my sister Mel is on a race this weekend (German Championship of Mountain Biking) in Germany so I'm going to meet her in Stuttgart before I go to Munich to meet my brother Thomas who's taking me to the airport. This means that I only have tomorrow left to get all my stuff together. So this is my time to say goodbye from this point. Next time you'll hear from me hopefully from Buenos Aires, ARGENTINA!
Hasta la próxima vez!

Welcome to my blog!

Hi everyone!

Normally I don't count myself to those persons that like to get attention on the internet by publishing a blog. But I feel more and more comfortable with these new web 2.0 technologies and see their advantages: sharing information in a short time thanks to fast internet connection. I see this as a thankful medium to connect people - especially when they live far away from each other - like my own family and friends: My dad lives in the northern part of Germany, my brother Thomas in Munich, my sister Mel in Ireland and my sister Britta in Toronto, Canada. In a few weeks I will turn my back on Germany again and spend about eight months in Latin America. I will study "social communication" for one semester from August to December at the "Universidad de Buenos Aires" (UBA) in Argentina, Buenos Aires. After that time period I will try to find an internship at an international organization. In my last month (march) I plan to travel to the Caribbean. But who knows what will happen until then :-) In this blog I will try to keep you up to date and share my experiences. As I'm a student of "media and communications" I will also contribute some pictures and even videos if find a chance to put them on this blog to give you a kind of impression how life is in Buenos Aires, Argentina (or at least how I feel like it is)! Last but not least: I will keep this blog in English only because of the reason that some of my friends don't speak German so I want to give them a chance to take part in my blog as well. Honestly I'm too lazy to write two blogs and English is the most important language in the world anyway and most of you won't mind reading English (my English is simple anyway). So this shouldn't be a problem ;-)
I hope you'll enjoy my blog! Hasta luego!