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13 reasons you’ll never be Argentine

By Daniel Tunnard On
August 29,
2013 · 23
Comments

Photo: Only
J.

So you’ve lived in Buenos
Aires for three years. You’ve roasted beef over hot coals, you’ve overpaid for
tango shoes and even used them occasionally, and your accent is so convincing,
you could make a viral YouTube video out of it. Argentine friends tell you
“sos más porteño que el Obelisco” and “estás más acriollado que el
dulce de leche,” just because you drink fernet
and end every sentence with “boludo.”

But as you watch them link arms and jump up and down to some dreadful
Argentine ska-punk band from the early 1990s, you begin to doubt that you’ll
ever really be one of them. Cultivate that doubt. You will never truly be an
Argentine. Here’s why.

1. You think people catch colds from coming into contact with what we
doctors call the “rhinovirus.” In fact, colds are caused by going out
with wet hair and an exposed neck when the season changes. Also, it’s not a
cold, it’s flu. Probably swine flu.

2. You’re puzzled by the excitement such ordinary foods inspire in
the locals. You think alfajores are all right, but you’d
rather have a Twix. You don’t have an irrational emotional urge to eat pasta
every Sunday. Cremón cheese adverts anger you. “That’s not cheese!” you
mutter at the TV. “That’s not cheese!”

3. You feel a twinge of anxiety when your taxi doesn’t have
seatbelts.

4. Your clothes are all wrong. You think elegante
sport is the Spanish for “show jumping.” You don’t know when to wear a tie
or not (answer: never wear a tie). The only time you ever wore
alpargatas was for a fancy dress party, to which you went as the
world’s least-convincing gaucho. It’s even worse if you’re a foreign woman in
Buenos Aires, enduring the third year of a grueling
buffing-waxing-shopping-dieting regime, in constant fear that the slightest slip
will result in being cast out from polite society.

5. You’re scared of the plug sockets.

6. You don’t know the first thing about piropos. You
think it’s quite rude to shout out compliments and/or oral sex requests / offers
at passing women. The most daring thing you ever said to a strange woman in
public was when you asked a pretty girl at the bus stop the time. You’ve never
had sex with a prostitute either. Maricón.

7. You’re too polite. You say “hola” when you walk
into a supermarket. You say “por favor” to the bus driver. You think the
Spanish for “thank you” is gracias, when it is in fact listo, and
you think the Spanish for “goodbye” is chau, when it is in fact a stony
silence.

8. Paradoxically, you’re too rude. You take your shoes off
indoors. You eat lunch without using a napkin. Sometimes, you just can’t be
bothered to kiss people goodbye. Ortiba.

9. That’s not cheese!

10. You can’t make a drink in a bar last longer than 30 minutes
without ordering another, and you never cease to be amazed at how these
people can jabber on until 6am with just a 7-Up for sustenance.

11. Your poverty / crisis / quilombo threshold is too
low. Don’t get me wrong, you enjoy a good old cacerolazo as
much as the next Recoleta housewife, and a severe devaluation of the peso would
bring you and your foreign bank account nothing but joy. But your patience will
prove short if the government keeps depriving you of iPhones and Sriracha sauce,
and at the first sign of things really kicking off 2001-style you’ll be on the
first plane to Barcelona (feeling no patriotic duty to fly Aerolíneas). Also,
don’t all these poor people get awfully depressing after a while?

12. Your Spanish will never be good enough. You could
immerse yourself in a small village in Entre Ríos for 30 years, cut yourself off
from all contact with the English language, and the locals will still think of
you as a foreigner and comment that you’ve got a bit of a tonito inglés.
The bastards.

13. Finally, there is one watertight indicator of your
inherent un-Argentineness: no matter how hard you try, you just can’t get that
enthusiastic about Erasure.

Andy Bell from Erasure. Photo: Wikimedia

* This post was originally published at The
Argentina Independent and was reprinted here with permission.

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About The Author

Daniel Tunnard

Daniel Tunnard is a British
writer and translator living in Buenos Aires. His hilarious first book "Colectivaizeishon",
about his quest to take all the buses in Buenos Aires, is out in Spanish now
from Reservoir Books (Random House Mondadori) and will be out in English in
2014. He does stand-up every Tuesday at Café
Rivas in San Telmo, Buenos Aires

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view all → Daniel
Tunnard

xenothaulus

The not cheese looks a lot like cheese…

Zak

That one is a variety of cheese. Here in argentina you can buy different
cheese classes. That one called cremon, is a kind of “queso fresco”, or
“fresh cheese”. It’s an unaged cheese (that’s why it’s called fresh) and
it’s It’s creamy and salty. The creamy factor depends of the cheese
age.

Here the people uses it on pizzas, instead of mozzarella, because its
salty flavor and in the traditional “empanadas”, as well on other
dishes.

maria

What would anyone want to be Argentinian anyway?

Meme

Well… you clearly don’t have what it takes to be a brit
anyway…

gtfooh

dont like cheese here, just dont eat it
next time you are in a taxi ask
the driver for the seat belts, are always under the seat because nobody use
that
you dont have to know where to wear a tie, just have to know if you
want to wear it
we dont have enough money to get a drink every half hour
from midnight to 7am, if you pay we drink
i recommend chile as a country
for you, here you will never get it no matter how many buses you
ride.

Daniel Tunnard

Calm down, love.

colindoc84

Just so you know, he’s writing about people’s reactions to Argentina, not
Argentina itself. So by taking it personally, it proves that you completely
missed the point.

Dahlia

You are the reason why we’re perceived as jerks and stuck up,
darling

Lucila

I’m with you.

Lucila

he doesn’t miss the point,daniel wast reposting something without knowing
anything from Argentina.”Daniel Tunnard is a British writer and translator
living in Buenos Aires.”(Daniel is british) He looks eveything from his
point of view,he can’t see from the point of native argentinians.It has
nothing to do writing bad about argentinians people.Hey I have something to
say to you, we’re not all same.Maybe you get in touch with the bad example
of argentinian people,the worst of the society.And about the taxi’s belt,
you have to ask(here in the driving class for take the driver license
instructors says :if you are taking a taxi and it hasn’t the security belts
you have to ask or non taking that taxi).

Patrick C Patrick

I have never been to Argentina so its hard for me to understand #6

compliments I can understand but sex requests at passing women
?

okinawa_g

I’m from argentina, every time a girl walks by a construction site/ taxi
driver/ bunch of guys/etc. they’ll shout things at her like: “Nice ass!” “Oh
the things I’d do!” “you’re gorgeous bebe” and others that I can’t really
write… It can be cute some times but most of the time it’s disgusting and
offensive.

Silvia

Hilariuous. And there’s only one reason: you didn’t born here. Regardless,
trying to be argentine is like a rollercoaster, even for us, but if you like
adventure maybe you’d like to try.

Tyler Muse

Hahaha “you think the Spanish for “goodbye” is chau, when it is in fact a
stony silence”… not if you smile!!!

gb

jajajja… cultural guide!!!! me haces reir!!!! para empezar tienes que
viajar y leer un poco mas acerca del mundo… y luego preguntarte porque tienes
tantos huevos para criticar lo que no conoces… quizas encuentres la respuesta
en que tienes mucho miedo de conocerte a ti mismo!!!!!
vete a pensarlo y
practicarlo un poco, bajo la falda de tu reinado…
y agradece mucho a la
vida por darte de comer, de escribir pendejadas!!! jajajaja cultural
guide…!!!! no te puedes guiar ni a ti mismo!!!!

Ricardo

Your Spanish will never be good enough.

I don’t agree with this one. I’ve met Aussies and Americans with an
excellent Spanish with a foreign accent, of course. That is perfect!. It
happens the other way around, I will never speak like a native English speaker
because I have an Argentinian accent and that’s alright.
The rest was good
and I think you missed one:
“You need to sleep during the night instead of
going to parties”

Elizabeth Maiuolo

I am argentinian who’s been living abroad for 12 years now and I agree with
everything you say. And to tell you the truth, I don’t think it’s worth the
effort to fit in. And I am from there!!!!

Lucila

A, ver no me gustó nada esta nota,yo soy Argentina y muy pocos de tus
puntos me convencieron,me pareció una falta de respeto.Me identifico a mí y
mis amigos,familiares en muy pocos de estos puntos,como para que digas que eso
es ser un argentino y que un extranjero no puede sentirse un argentino porque
no cumple con lo descripto en los puntos.Indignada.

pilar

You forget that you can spent 30 years in that small village in Entre Ríos,
but you will never really understand the “Peronismo”

Maru

No one does… even some of us: educated argentineans

Noelia

Ortiva va con V!!!!!

(Ortiva is spelled with a V!!!!)

Pri

Ortiba va con “b”, como bien escribió el autor. Viene de “batidor”. Hay
que investigar antes de corregir. Beso

cintia

Wow, really, a brit critisizing food…That´s a new one, I bet you have
thousands of cheese types there, just like here…Twix before an alfajor???!!!!
we are not polite?????? I think you´ve been to another country. Better go
back to your bubble of a country, where people didn´t have to go throgh
economic crisis every 10 years. Really, this piece is just a completely
superficial view of a complex society… not insightful at all. But I agree in
one point: you´ll NEVER be an argentinean.

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