Discover the heart of the country that gave us the Tango with The Real Argentina culture guide. Argentina is a rich cultural melting pot — a unique mixture of European and Latin American influences which are reflected in its innovative music, literature and lifestyle.
The friendly and passionate people are what make Argentina such a warm and welcoming place. The combination of urban glamour, underground traditions, and vast wilderness give vibrancy and character to the country’s cultural landscape.
Argentine culture caters to all tastes: take in a game of football at the famous La Bombonera stadium, peruse the modern art at MALBA, or dance the Tango at a milonga in Buenos Aires.
At times, the pace of life in Argentina can be a little hectic. Buenos Aires especially moves at just one speed – fast forward – and while that is part of its charm, there are occasions when one needs to step away from the urban rat race and, say, spend a few hours walking around in the great outdoors pursuing a little white ball. A round of golf is the perfect antidote to inner-city blues…
In the booming Argentina of the 1920s, the hip place to look to for ideas if you were an artist or intellectual was mother Europe. Jazz had just become all the rage over there, and hence arrived in Argentina not via the United States, but rather from the likes of Paris, London and Berlin. As the ‘new’ music began to take off in Buenos Aires in the ‘30s, it met with some resistance from certain quarters who viewed it as too foreign, and a threat to traditional types of music such as folklore and tango.
Here’s a sign of the times: type ‘Why is Argentina so…’ into Google and one of the auto-complete options it offers is ‘expensive’. It’s the question on everyone’s lips, and one we can’t really answer in a short blog post, so let’s just stick to the basic facts: soaring inflation has left the prices of 2002 far behind. Here are The Real Argentina’s tips for following in their trend-setting footsteps when shopping in Buenos Aires.
This year Los Pumas, Argentina’s celebrated national rugby team, will end one chapter of their history and begin an exciting new one. Their gruelling quest for international recognition as a true rugby power will finally be completed in Cape Town on August 18 when the Argentinian rugby team takes on South Africa’s Springboks in this year’s edition of The Rugby Championship, the Southern Hemisphere’s elite annual tournament. A week later, on August 25, history will be made again as Argentina play their first home game of the competition in Mendoza.
The Argentine football league varies in quality from entertaining and unpredictable to scrappy and, well… unpredictable. The one thing for which it can be relied on, however, is its ability to produce a seemingly endless stream of talented youngsters – the best of whom inevitably end up moving to Europe’s richest leagues and quite often, to international superstardom.
An Englishman, two American women and an Argentine of uncertain gender (their words, not mine) walk into a Buenos Aires bar… and take to the stage for a night of rip-roaring comedy and gags in English. That’s right, folks – the city that is home to the Tower of the English People and British-built railway tracks now hosts a weekly comedy night in the very same English language…
We take a look at Argentina’s runners and riders (and fencers and hockey players and judoists…) for the London 2012 Olympic Games. In a measure of just how low-key Argentina’s Olympics build-up has been, it took a slick piece of political agitprop to get locals talking about the Games, due to start in London on July 27…
If you’ve ever been to an art gallery and thought “this is the life” as you chugged back a glass of bubbly while gazing at a curious new installation, you’ll be interested to know that the opening-to-end-all-gallery-openings is about to begin in Buenos Aires. From Friday 18 May until Tuesday 22 May, arteBA 2012 dusts down its canvases to begin the 21st edition of the art collectors’ fair that gets Buenos Aires, if not Argentina and Latin America, buzzing…
Although movie-making may not be the first word beginning with the letter M to be associated with Argentina (take Malbec, Maradona and Messi for starters), cinema is big business in terms of the number of foreign and Argentinian films produced here and festivals held around the country each year. It’s no fluke that the country has two Oscars to its name…
It’s the sport of kings, a playing field for the super rich, a game where the world’s most proficient horse riders get to show off their skills. Polo is surely not for any old day-tripping horse botherer. Or is it? Around Buenos Aires, an increasing number of estancias are offering “polo days”, where even novices can get in the saddle and start swinging a mallet. One such place is…