Cordoba II

We woke late after a good nights sleep and took a long breakfast out on our giant porch. Afterwards, we headed out to spend the day in La Cumbrecita. La Cumbrecita is a small town at the foot of the Sierras de Cordoba (Smaller Cordoba mountains). No cars are allowed in La Cumbrecita which makes it comfortable to walk around without having to worry about being run down (a beautiful thing in light of its opposite in Buenos Aires). Unfortunately, the area has turned into a bit of a tourist trap. While it was once a village where a number of Germans settled after WWII, it is now inhabited Argentine entrepreneurs looking to make a buck off of small time tourism. Which is not to say that the area still isn't pretty. There are beautiful trails leading up into pristine mountains, bakeries that sell Stollen and other German treats, hotels that look like Swiss Chalets, and the people seem genuinely nice. All in all, it made for a pleasant day of ambling around, talking, enjoying the changing leaves, and hiking out to a beautiful waterfall.


La Cumbrecita was my chance to catch up with Dave. Dave was my professor, mentor, and close friend, but we more or less lost contact when he moved out to Los Angeles. Dave and I have great conversations and it's our talks that I've missed the most. In La Cumbrecita, we were able to start catching up in an ideal fall setting, much like the setting in Oxford, Ohio where we spent years rock climbing, running, playing frisbee golf, cooking dinner, and watching scary movies. I felt in my element doing what I love, hiking around in a beautiful setting while carrying on deep and meaningful conversation.

We ended the day by buying gifts of German sweet bread and chocolates for Marcelo's friends and family and afterwards took tea and coffee at a cozy faux German cafe. At the cafe, Marcelo and I carried on what has been a continuing errr friendly debate about Buenos Aires.

It all started on our first day in Cordoba on a hike outside of our cabin. I believe Marcelo asked me if it had been easy to find work in Buenos Aires. I think I responded that yes it had been easy and easy as well to get more work as I proved myself to my initial clients. I believe Marcelo asked why. And this is where I started running my mouth. This is where I should have just said, 'I don't know. I guess I'm just lucky.'

Instead, in keeping with the theme of needing to express myself and my feelings and making bold assertions based on my experiences-instead of telling people what they want to hear-I vomited a few crude thoughts about Buenos Aires. I think too, that I wanted to argue with someone about BA. With the exception of a few, I don't know most of my friends well enough to have a frank discussion about my observations of Buenos Aires. The problem is that nearly every Porteno to whom I've expressed my honest opinions of Buenos Aires has appeared hurt or turned defensive, however diplomatic I try to be. Sometimes they don't disapprove outright but instead through silence, if not a pained or frustrated face. So typically, I keep my mouth shut. But I knew with Marcelo that we could argue about this and could still be friends afterwards. So maybe that's why I took the liberty of going down the path of conflict with him.

When Marcelo asked why it was easy to get work in Buenos Aires, I said something to the effect of, 'I think that just because I follow the basic good business practices of the United States, it sets me apart from the average Argentine worker. That is, I come to work on time, I answer people's emails and calls promptly, I'm prepared, I try to have good customer service, I'm dependable, and I work hard'. Cue volcano erupting. Face anger red. Steam exiting ears. Sirens of intense Argentine national pride blaring from the tops of the Sierras! Cue me, gulping, realizing that I'd just intentionally stepped in the biggest and foulest pile of dog caca known to Buenos Aires sidewalks. And I would spend the rest of the trip and more stepping deeper....and deeper.... and then trying to clean it all off.

Game on.

I won't try to use exact quotes from here on out. It would be dishonest and I want to stay friends with Marcelo (As opposed to having fun misquoting him). The best I can do is give a summary of what was said.

Basically, Marcelo disagreed with me vehemently. He believes that Argentinians are very hard workers with good customer service skills. The concession he made was that Argentinians have a problem with being on-time. But as far as the rest was concerned, he was convinced that I was full of it.

To make my point, I cited my experience with my internet and cable service providers. How at one point after going without service for 2 weeks, having 2 separate technicians come to my apartment and then tell me they couldn't fix the problem, calling the office 5 times, and then going to the office two times, I was finally able to find one person who was able to solve what was a very elementary problem. This is not to mention the attitude I was given when I tried to get help at the office and the fact that the technicians made a huge mess of my apartment and one of them wound up playing solitaire on my computer when he couldn't fix the internet issue.

Marcelo's argument against these types of arguements was three fold: A. He has had more problems in the United States with customer service than in Argentina. B. I was generalizing based on one bad experience. C. He almost always had positive experiences with customer service in Argentina and was almost always able to procure a discount our something free as a result of his inconvenience.

I didn't buy it. I brought up another example of how when my wooden safety and sound buffering curtains broke I called 4 guys. 3 told me they would either call me back or come to fix my curtains and none of them showed up or called me back. It was only on the 4th try that I found someone who responded quickly and acted like he was interested in the fairly lucrative job that I was offering. (This guy is now my friend and English student, Esteban)

Again, Marcelo claimed that I was generalizing based on my limited experience. I went on to cite example after example of what I consider being mistreated by people from whom I've bought things in Buenos Aires, whether it be at the Fish Monger where a woman knocked on my head like Bif in Back to the Future when I didn't respond immediately to her question or at my gym where almost every morning the woman whose sole job it is to buzz me through the turnstyle always makes me wait until she's done texting or talking with a friend on the phone before she begrudgingly acknowledges me and presses the button to let me in (usually takes a minute or two or three). I pointed out how different people were on my recent trip home, how I thought people in the US were kidding becasue they seemed so nice in comparison to how I'm treated in Buenos Aires.

Marcelo countered with his own instances of mistreatment in Los Angeles and again told me that I was generalizing and that he hadn't had any of the types of experiences I'd had.

At one point, I realized that I didn't know if I truly believed everything I was saying to the extent that I was forcing it or if it was more that I had just become super defensive and was basically in a verbal fight. That is, whether I truly cared or not had gone out the window and instead it was all about defending myself from and then defeating my opponent.

Or maybe I did in fact feel very strongly about what I was saying, that it was important to me to have my version of reality validated. And when Marcelo challenged me so strongly, my sense of my Argentina experience had been challenged and instead of accommodating his opinions, I wanted to defend my own. It takes energy to change, to accept and accomodate differences into your worldview. And it's a challenge to the identity, since perception is part of identity.

When someone tells you that you're view of reality is much different than the truth, it's unsettling, shakes you up, and makes you wonder if much of anything you perceive is real. On top of all this, I had a vested interest in my criticisms of Buenos Aires. For one, I'm leaving and I've chosen to leave partly based on my view that it's a stressful and often times mean city. If I can't hold onto this view, then how do I explain yet another move to myself? Another issue is that I had a very serious relationship with a woman here that didn't work out. And I've needed for some ridiculous reason to dislike the entire city as a means of dealing with the breakup. Because I fell in love with the city at the same time as I fell in love with her. The two in my mind are kind of inseparable.

The argument morphed into a much more general one. Me: Buenos Aires Bad! Marcelo: Buenos Aires Good! I was convinced that the root of Marcelo's what I consider to be defensive posture was mostly the result of his national pride. And Argentine national pride is something I don't understand. In my opinion, it's been about as useless as US national pride. It's akin to the pride that people show for their favorite Sports team and rarely translates to progress. I also think nationalism in general is ridiculous. The idea that we should be proud of the country we live in. Why? What purpose does it serve? If anything, we should consider ourselves Team World. Borders are arbitrary lines that we imposed on the world. But the laws of nature and physics and the universe know no borders. And the longer that we feel the need to focus on national pride, the longer it will take to address the world's problems.

So in a sense, someone getting upset at my criticisms of THEIR Argentina is upsetting to me. In truth, Argentina is no more theirs than the US is mine as the world is humans. That we feel a sense of posession or attachment to pieces of land that we have claimed as our own seems a bit childish and egocentric.

Off my soap box....Anyhow, Marcelo claimed that it wasn't just about his pride for Argentina, that he defends any country or place or people that others try to unfairly generalize. And I have to agree that he's right about that.... But I countered anyway with the fact that a lot of my job as a psychologist is to make generalizations based on observations. I agree that it's a fine line to walk when you are making generalizations, but that if we are afraid to make them, we are denying the information that our senses and our brains give us and trading it for fear of offending someone. On top of that, we are ignoring valuable knowledge that can help us understand one another better. Again, this is against my recent self development of trying not to tell people what they want to hear and instead expressing what I think, observe, and feel.

The end of our initial argument came when we compromised on wording. Marcelo pointed out that he wouldn't have come back at me swinging if I hadn't stated my opinions so crudely, if I had instead said that 'Based on my limited experience in Argentina' or 'It has been my own personal experience in Buenos Aires that'. Instead, I said, 'I think that this is the way it is'. I wanted to respond initially that it is assumed that I am sharing my peronal perspective and not Encyclopedic fact when I say 'I think'. But, for the sake of putting the arguement to rest and in the spirit of compromise, I admitted that I stated my opinions carelessly and even in a mean way. And so fizzled out the fireworks of the first show.

Only to be reignited in the cafe in La Cumbrecita at the end of the day. Here's how it went down.
Nidia and Marcelo were excited about getting some type of torta or cake at the cafe. Upon asking for a specific type of cake, the waiter replied that they didn't have that type of cake. Marcelo then asked for another type of cake. The waiter again said that they didn't have that type of cake either. Nidia asked what they did have. The waiter responded somewhat testily that the woman who made all the cakes was sick and that they didn't have any except for chocolate. The waiter's responses seemed rude in general, like he was upset with us for even asking about the cakes or being in the cafe for that matter or having to deal with us. The way that he said 'No' really grated on me. I was a waiter and never treated people like that, even on my worst days in my worst moods. But this was exactly what I was talking about in terms of the customer service in Buenos Aires.

With my foot still in dodo, I decided to go ahead and sit in it. The words drool drivelled from the corners of my mouth about how this type of treatment was typical of my customer service issues with Buenos Aires. Then I followed it up by saying that I didn't know whether it was simply a cultural difference or a difference in my understanding of the language, but that from my perspective the waiter seemed rude. My point being that mabye Argentines are used to talking to each other in that way and it's not considered rude at all. It could easily have been chalked up to my different cultural upbringing.

Marcelo wasn't having it. It had nothing to do with cultural differences. It was instead again that I was generalizing one negative experience on the rest of Argentina. He first defended the behavior of the waiter, saying that the waiter's handling of the situation was justified and understandable, that under the circumstances it was ok for a restaurant specializing in cakes to be out of all of their cakes but one. He went on to point out an issue he has in the United States with treatment at restaurants. Marcelo still tends to eat at the Argentine hour, 10-11 pm or later, when he goes out to dinner. As a result, he typically has to call restaurants in LA to be sure they'll be open until 10pm. Often, he says he will call a restaurant to be sure they're open until that time and they wind up not being open when he gets there, even though they say they'll be open.

I agreed with him that while this is definitely wrong, it is understandable if there are no other people in the restaurant and the restaurant is losing money by being open for just two people. On top of that, almost no one in the US eats so late so it doesn't make sense to stay open so late. I went on to point out how our separate defenses were likely based on our cultural biases and upbringings. Not being open late makes all the sense in the world to someone raised in a culture where they eat dinner between 6-7. Not having certain foods advertised on a menu makes sense to someone raised in a country where it is common for restaurants to be out of or not have on that day items that are listed on the menu. Regardless, Marcelo was not satisfied.

He brought up again my poorly worded opinions about Argentine workers. And I brought up again his defensiveness and unwillingness to compromise and before I knew it we were practically shouting at one another and people in the restaurant were looking at us. At one point, the waiter, who may have been shocked and shaken out of his bad mood by our ferocity, came over to apologize about them not having any cakes (which Marcelo used as further evidence that I was more or less wrong in my generalization). But at that point, it wasn't about the waiter anymore, it was a primitive verbal brawl going from Spanish to English and back.

I can't say that there was any clear resolution to this particular argument. It was Mothers' Day and I needed to call my mom before the call center closed up. And our tea and coffee were done and we had overstayed our welcome in the little cakeless faux German cake cafe.

The end of the argument came down to me claiming that maybe I didn't even believe what I was saying but that I became super defensive when I felt that Marcelo was yelling at me. I told him in shaky Spanish that I don't like when people yell at me. He responded suddenly and caringly that he didn't feel that he was yelling, that to him this was a normal conversation, the type he has often. He then conceeded to have possibly gone from 0-100 in a second and that what seems like yelling to people in the US is a normal conversation level to Latinos.

There were less heated arguments the following day on the long drive back to downtown Cordoba. Marcelo expressed sincerely how bad he felt that I hadn't enjoyed my experience in Buenos Aires and that he wished I had instead stayed in Cordoba. I think he took my dislike and my negative experiences personally. I tried to tell him that he didn't have to take it personally, that it wasn't his fault, that he was in no way responsible for anything bad that had happened to me in Buenos Aires. I also explained to him that I didn't just hate Buenos Aires, that I both love and hate it. I also told him as I've expressed many times in my blog how important a learning experience living in Buenos Aires has been. I would have been more comfortable and happy in Cordoba but I wouldn't have learned nearly as much.

In the end, as I process our arguments, discussions, and disagreements, I see them in the context of the evolving me, the one who now expresses himself instead of telling people what they want to hear. And the result sometimes is the aforementioned. If you stick to your guns, you conflict and you'd better be ready for it. And you'd also better be ready for some damage or distancing from the person with whom you have conflicted. I think it can bring you closer, ideally, but it can also push you apart. And I don't think I know yet how to get closer with someone via conflict. But I'd really like to figure it out.

I guess one question that emerges from this trial of new behavior is, do I feel differently after having held my ground and supporting my view of reality? The answer is that I'm not entirely sure. I think one thing I may feel is a little reluctant to share the brute force of my crude opinions. I honestly don't like the way it makes you feel in the end, like you've showed someone a part of yourself better left escondido. On the other hand, I also feel a clearer sense of definition between my worldview and Marcelo's. The argument drew clear boundaries around us and made me understand and see myself and Marcelo better. In the past, when I simply went along with the opinions of others, I felt more formless, shapeless, without value, weak. And this firmer shape I think is something I need right now, something essential to knowing and being myself, which I think is one key to being at peace or harmony with the world.