Day2Day

Carolyn and I took a hastily booked flight to Buenos Aires in late June. After twelve years of owning our beloved house in Buenos Aires, Casa Palermo, we came to the conclusion that it was time to sell. We engaged Lujan, a friend of our friend Maria, to be our agent. She teamed up with her cousin, Alejandro, and they brought us an offer within two weeks. Whoa! We didn’t expect that. We thought (hoped) that it would take a year or more to sell. The reality hit hard, but on July 14, we officially became homeless in Buenos Aires when we handed our keys to Dolores, the new owner. It was bittersweet, of course, but the timing was right and we intend to return in the future. Nonetheless, it feels like the end of an era. We’ll be back, of course, but we will no longer enjoy our status as neighbors. Fortunately, we’ll still have our friends.

South of the Equator

Carolyn and I landed in February, 2005 at Ezeiza International Airport in Buenos Aires on a warm, humid Sunday morning, our first time south of the equator. The atmosphere at the airport was chaotic and most of the cars were older and smaller than those we had left behind. The long ride into Buenos Aires revealed a lush, sub-tropical landscape that soon changed into a dense, urban city. When we did our research for the trip, we had a difficult time choosing a location because there were barely any pictures to be found on the internet in those days. In the end, the Barrio Norte neighborhood proved to be a good location from which to explore the city. The taxi dropped us off at the recently renovated Art Hotel, where moody, but hip neo-tango music played in the background. The manager and staff were welcoming and friendly. In no time at all we were in a taxi again, headed to the flea market at Plaza Dorrego in San Telmo. A baptism into Argentine culture!

Sunday market at Plaza Dorrego (2005). Notice that there isn’t a single cell phone in sight.

The manager of the hotel, Eduardo Cassaza, a man in his late 30’s, was warm and gregarious. A couple of days later he asked what we had visited Palermo yet. “There you will know the real Buenos Aires!” He arranged for a taxi that evening and made reservations at La Cabrera, among the best known parilla’s in the city. The host promptly led us to a reserved table the moment I uttered our name. We were treated to a feast. Afterwards, as we waited for the check, I said, “It’s strange that a place like this would use napkins from another restaurant,” pointing to the embroidery that read, “Lo de Jesus.” When the check arrived we realized that the taxi driver had dropped us off at the wrong restaurant. I asked where La Cabrera was located and we walked over two blocks to see what we had missed. Meanwhile, we liked the neighborhood, which had a residential scale, compared to the tall buildings in Barrio Norte and decided to return the next day; to explore the Palermo that Eduardo spoke of so fondly.

Palermo was bustling with boutiques, bars and restaurants. We wandered around the area called Palermo Soho for hours and eventually came upon a freshly completed condo building at the corner of Goritti and Aráoz. We noticed a sign with balloons and deduced that it was an open house. Anxious, as always, to look, we rang the bell. A friendly woman greeted us and immediately embarked on giving us a complete tour of the building. The apartments, the garage and even the roof, which cleverly provided a private deck, parrilla and a cooling pool for each unit. She talked )in Spanish) the entire time, opening doors, closets, cabinets; showing us everything. We murmured “Si” and nodded appreciatively at everything. She concluded the tour in the living room of one of the units, which she had outfitted as her sales office. We all took a seat around her desk and she said something, in Spanish, equivalent to, “So, what questions can I answer?” I told her, “No habla español.” She looked at us for a second and burst out laughing. We all did, recognizing that she spoke so much that she never noticed that we were “Yankees.” I scribbled on a piece of paper: $ ? She nodded knowingly and slid a price sheet across her desk. We studied it for a long minute, not fully comprehending. I pointed to the price of a 2 bedroom unit and asked, “U.S dollars?” She nodded with a smile. Later, after leaving, we discussed our incredulity that a 2 bedroom condo with indoor parking and a roof terrace could be had for under $70,000 USD. A similar unit in Chicago would cost $300,000 or more in a neighborhood like this. Standing across the street, dreamily looking back at the building, we heard chickens clucking on the other side of a fence. Hmm.

The condo building that caused us to search for property in Buenos Aires (a current Google Maps image).

The following morning, I went downstairs to the hotel restaurant, where Carolyn was to be waiting, but she wasn’t there. A few minutes later I found her at the guest computer station in the lobby. “Look at this!” she cried. I guess I should have known. She was already looking at real estate. We had talked about the idea of one day retiring to a place in a warmer climate. Here, summer takes place during our winter. This was perfect! We could spend 6 months in Evanston and the other six in Buenos Aires, missing winter entirely. So we began looking at real estate in earnest.

The hotel staff helped contact real estate agents and scheduled tours. We saw some incredibly awful places. In one case, advertised as “muy luminoso” (lots of light), the interior was as dark as night in the middle of the afternoon. The walls had wide cracks and the plaster was puffed out from moisture. We asked Camila, one of the desk clerks, to call the hotel in Santiago and cancel our reservation for the first night. We looked at more possibilities. The following day we asked Camila to cancel all our reservations in Chile and extended our stay at the Art Hotel. After looking at countless places we decided that the very first place that Carolyn had discovered on the hotel computer offered the best value and potential. It had a secluded patio, a roof terrace, two bedrooms and bathrooms, 16 foot ceilings and was, in fact, “muy luminoso.” Of course, it needed rehab, but that didn’t dissuade as at all. This is the sort of thing we were looking for!

Eduardo provided us with invaluable guidance about purchasing real estate. He was a fountain of information and help. As a first step, he instructed Camila to take us to the local police station to establish our temporary residency. This involved filling out a simple form and paying five pesos, which at the time was about $2 USD. The following day a policemen stopped at the hotel to examine the hotel register. Satisfied that we were “living” there, he signed a piece of paper, officially establishing our temporary residency. Yahoo! We told Sergio, the real estate agent, that we were prepared to make an offer. A low offer, but not too insulting. The seller, a prominent doctor,had bought it years ago for his son, but his son had moved to Spain in pursuit of a career as a rock star. We were somewhat surprised when he promptly accepted our offer, which was accompanied by a mere $500 USD deposit. We were nervous and elated. Sergio, cautioned us, “You will have to find the humor in everything that you encounter in Buenos Aires. If not, you will go crazy.” It didn’t take too long to learn what he was talking about.

I returned to Buenos Aires a month later to attend the “escritura” (the closing) and to take possession of the property. Closings in Argentina are done quite differently than in the U.S. For one thing, you have to pay cash; in U.S. dollars. This involved transferring our money to a currency exchange house in Buenos Aires. Sergio wanted to hold the escritura in his office, but I told him to arrange for it to take place at the exchange house. He said that the exchange house doesn’t provide office space for this purpose and insisted that we do it in his office. He suggested that I could hire some guards is I was nervous about walking around with nearly $70,000 in cash. I wrote back, “Sergio, I am not going to hire people who have guns. it has to be in the exchange house or we retract our offer.” Fortunately, he made the arrangements and the escritura took place in the posh penthouse headquarters of the exchange house. There were fresh flowers on the sideboard and coffee and medialunas appeared within minutes. The good doctor, nattily attired, arrived with his elegantly dressed wife and an attache case. Minutes later a young man came in with a stack of U.S. dollars. Jorge, an architect who befriended us accompanied me to watch my back and to translate. Someone read the entire document in Spanish. At the end Jorge nodded his approval. I pushed the stacks of cash across the table to the doctor. He and his wife counted the money. Once satisfied that it was correct, the money disappeared into his attache case.

I asked Eduardo for the name of the architect, Fernando Calvo, who had been responsible for rehabbing the Art Hotel and soon we were in constant communication, collaborating about the design, materials, etc. Fernando spoke just enough English to make it feasible to communicate, although we did have some difficulties because the materials and methods are quite different than what we are accustomed to in the U.S. In addition, we asked the young woman, Camila, working the front desk at the Art Hotel if she would be willing to manage our house. She agreed and has been with us through thick and thin to this day. Carolyn and I returned in September, 2005 to inspect the progress and again in December; this time to shop for furniture and everything else needed for the house. We settled on calling our house Casa Palermo, made a website and listed the house on VRBO for rental. Our first guest arrived in January, 2006.

Eduardo Cassaza, the helpful manager of the Art Hotel, eventually moved on, taking a job at another hotel. We lost touch with him, although Camila remained connected with him via Facebook. We were deeply saddened to learn that by shear coincidence Eduardo passed away July 9, 2017, one day before our closing; a victim of cancer. R.I.P Eduardo.

Following are some before and after photos.

Day2Day

Buenos Aires – July 2017 Part 2

The End of an Era

Buenos Aires – July 2017

Full Moon

A Walk In The Woods – May 2017