Buenos Aires

The boat trip from Colonia to Buenos Aires took a bit more than an hour. It is really impressive when the skyscrapers of the puerto madero come closer and closer. Buenos Aires is the most 'European' of all cities I have seen so far. Many buildings from the 19th century are strongly influenced by french architecture. I found an inexpensive hostel in the city center which was, however, pretty noisy. At the first night I went to a Tango show of the Complejo Tango, which also included some tango classes. I learned the Cruzada, the Ocho and how to pose with a 'Tango face' :-) The subsequent show was fun with good music and excellent dancers, however a bit too touristic, not as natural as the people you see occasionally dancing tango in the streets.
In the hostel I met more chilean people, Gabriel and Carla from the La Serena region...that's great, more people to visit during my trip to Chile in April :-) We spent an afternoon together in Recoleta and the beautiful parks of Palermo.
Unfortunately, the 4 days in Buenos Aires went by way too fast, I could have stayed one or too weeks more. On my last day I did a historical walking tour through the center of Buenos Aires. Two political science students brought tourists to historically important places of the city.
The Plaza 25 Mayo, where the 'Madres de Plaza de Mayo' - mothers whose children disappeared during the military dictatorship in the 70ies - have been meeting every thursday, from 1977 up to now, to commemorate their children and claim to know what was their fate,
the Casa Rosada, the pink hous, from where Eva Peron was talking to the people in the 1940ies, or some courtyards in San Telmo, where European immigrants were the first to dance Tango, back in the 19th century. A really informative tour, I learned a lot about the last 70 years of Argentinean history...