This set of photos is interesting in a sense that when I was growing up® nothing like this was left in existence in the majority of the country. The stores were stocked with a scarce selection of products and no need for visual advertising remained:anything that was slightly above the horrible level of the Soviet consumer products was swept off the shelves without hesitation; many times the lines were so long that people in the end didn’t know what was being sold, they figured anything worth buying will find some use at home or would be appreciated by other family members. Sometimes after hours in line, the supplies ran out and disappointed people were off to try their luck elsewhere.
With empty shelves, long lines and sad-looking products around me, it was hard to believe my parents’ stories about many things being plentiful in the late 50’s and 60’s. Grocery stores filled with caviar and various delicacies seemed impossible to me. Not that I was deprived of good food and dressed in garb; we had more or less of everything from good food to decent clothing but most of it wasn’t purchased in the regular retail establishments. From black market to bribery, there were other ways to acquire things.
Note: the prices you see on some storefronts are in pre-1961 rubles, in 1961 they were exchanged 10 to 1.
Picking the right time of the the year for your trip is probably even more important than learning the native language. Even if you graduated from an unaccredited school district you probably know that Argentina is located in the Southern Hemisphere where the seasons are opposite to ours and people are walking upside-down at all times. Going during the South American summer will probably not be so pleasant if you are visiting Buenos Aires and areas to the North, where it gets pretty hot; at the same time Southern Argentina won’t be frozen and snowed in. Going during the winter, like we did, is likely to be the the most pleasant time in Buenos Aires but you are gambling on being rained on for days in-a-row. During our visit the day temperatures in Buenos Aires were around 65-70F and 35-40F at night. Beautiful, sunny weather was a huge factor in our enjoyment of the city, made long walks and sightseeing pleasant and refreshing, considering the heatwave that was hanging over Kansas City at the same time. During our 10 day visit it rained only once and not for long. At the same time, our trip to the Cataratas del Iguazú fell on three most coldest, rainiest, foggiest days in the history of the waterfalls, not what we expected in the tropics even in the wintry August. It was so soggy and chilly that the hotel personnel started a fire in the lobby fireplace. Sitting near the fireplace and seeing palm trees in the window is something you don’t expect to go together.
If you are to inquire about the must-see wonders of Argentina, the Iguazú Falls will probably be at the top of the list, and deservedly so. Competing with the world-famous Niagara and Victoria falls in beauty and size, Iguazú (which most of the time in Argentina is referred to as “cataratas” , meaning “waterfalls”) should be on your itinerary if your time and finances allow. However, despite what your travel agent might tell you, you can accomplish this trip in one day. Leaving from Buenos Aires around 7am will put you in Iguazú little after 9, which will give you all day to explore the waterfalls and return to Buenos Aires late the same evening. Granted, it will be one long day, but unless you are a waterfalls connoisseur and would like to see every inch of the natural wonder from every possible direction (including Brazilian side, requiring a visa which costs $140 per person), you will have a sufficient look of the waterfalls and be back in Buenos Aires for your morning cafe con leche. We used a local travel agent and got stuck with a 3-day trip. Little town of Puerto Iguazú where you’ll be staying is nothing to write home about, where numerous hotels, restaurants, souvenir shops and a bus station compete for your attention with the omnipresent red mud. Besides the waterfalls, the only other attractions in the area are the precious stone mine and a place called Tres Fronteras, where one can see both Paraguay and Brazil while standing in Argentina.
Just in case you don’t know what to do with your time but want to save some money, you can take a bus from Buenos Aires to the cataratas which is said to be super-comforable and takes about 17 hours.
Seeing the waterfalls on the grayest day ever probably wasn’t as impressive as it should have been; even the parrots that are rumored to live there were gone and the tourists had to take photos of a lone bird who was too lazy to find shelter. I am saying this to preface my mediocre photos and a short video.
Every child in Johnson County, KS knows that bus is bad. Our relationship with the bus service ends on the first day we are able to get a driver’s license and our fine-leather-clad feet never step through a bus door again. From there on, our asses are firmly planted in the leather seats of overpriced imported cars which are mandatory in Johnson County. Once in a while we see a bus on a street or a highway and we give its invisible passengers the same look a person gives to a plumber who is about to go elbow-deep into a full toilet bowl. We distrust party buses, avoid shuttles, shun trolleys and only begrudgingly use charter buses but only when no one we know can see us.
All that said, why are we investing over $50 million into improving the bus service?
Due to my bad memory I now have to write down the things that grind my gear-skiy, which grinds my gear-skiy even more. So lets just get to this month’s edition:
Any business with the words “granny” or “grandma” in the name should immediately be shut down by authorities for not passing the “stress test”. There is some mortgage company whose radio commercials start with the words “Kids? Granny!”. This is one granny I can’t wait to see dead.
People who list every ingredient in their meal adding the word “organic” to it, something like “I got two slices of organic whole grain hand-ground bread, one half of an organic free-roaming hormone-less chicken breast on top, with an organic home-grown tomato and topped it off with an organic, non-GM slow-mixed dressing”. Makes me wanna eat something with a good helping of fertilizer and die.
White people who accentuate their super-correct pronunciation of Spanish words and names. Something like “Viarrrragosssssssa“. Concentrate on the other 4 Spanish words you know: taco, burrrrrrrito, cerveza and “¡Yo quiero Taco Bell!“.
Have you ever walked into a grocery store to the smell you imagine to be the smell of hell, where the combination of fire, brimstone and sinners being fried produce a distinct unbearable stench? Then you have witnessed a food demonstrator who can’t cook. It’s hard to believe what one (old) person with an electric skillet can do to stink up a store the size of a football field. This doesn’t apply to food-sampling people at Costco who only demonstrate the foods with pleasantly delicious smells.
Have you seen these electronic billboards along the highway that seem to change every 30 seconds? Sometimes it takes me 3 days to get the whole ad; most of the time I catch the beginning, middle or the end of the display in random order, not that it matters – most of them are for either Dane or David Cook (I’ll have to drive by few more times to see which one for sure). By the way, if you paid for tickets to see Dane Cook, I don’t mind losing you as a reader.
People who put bible verse numbers on their license plates. Let me get my pocket reference bible out to find out which verse you are quoting – about the “eye for an eye” (EX 21:23-27) or about not eating pork (Leviticus 11:7-8). How about just sticking with generic state-issued numbers or something less cryptic like:
And now, since we are on the photo portion of this post, here are a few more:
If you visit The Pitch’s website, this picture is probably very familiar to you, it was their illustration to the article about people who overcame the rickets.
Lastly, I am a big fan of all things multitasking, like this new supplement which can help you eliminate two opposite conditions – constipation and diarrhea, not to mention urgency. To that I say: genius! Next in the pipeline: drugs that simultaneously cure baldness and excessive hair growth, reduce and increase appetite, and always popular supplement to treat insomnia and help you stay awake at the same time.
Once, while I was walking somewhere with my Father, we met one of his patients. The guy had a pronounced limp. “He damaged his leg parachuting into Hungary in 1956”, my Dad told me when the guy schlepped away. For a long time this was all I’ve ever heard about the Hungarian Uprising of 1956. Hungarians tried to overthrow the communist regime years before a similar event happened in Czechoslovakia, and were just as brutally run over by the Soviet tanks. Over 2,500 Hungarians and 700 Soviet troops were killed in the fighting.
Due to my bad memory I now have to write down the things that grind my gear-skiy, which grinds my gear-skiy even more. So lets just get to this month’s edition:
