Flying to Argentina for sizzling spit-roast barbecues, tango along the bohemian boulevards of Buenos Aires, and beach days with whale watching to boot? Once you’re all buckled up and ready for take-off, turn that phone to airplane mode and prep for the trip in the best ways possible: a podcast, a movie, and a good, old-fashioned book. Here’s what to read, watch and listen to if on your flight to Argentina.
What to read
“My soul is in the streets of Buenos Aires,” are the opening words of legendary Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges’s first poetry collection, Fervor de Buenos Aires, published in 1923. As a prodigious urban rambler—so much so that there are contemporary walking tours inspired by his verses—much of Borges’s poetry was born on the streets of Buenos Aires. There is a legitimate “fervor” in his words, a whirl of imagery and scenes—drawn from loafing around the city’s Art Nouveau avenues to sauntering through the lazy streets of the suburbs, his verses provide an arresting sense of place even a century on, immortalizing its grand gardens and sprawling plazas. If a copy of the collection proves difficult to rustle up, settle for another wonderful entry from Borges’s oeuvre—Ficciones, surrealist short stories, might bear the closest resemblance. There’s also the crackerjack novel The Invention of Morel by Argentine Adolfo Bioy Casares for anyone seeking something (marginally) narrative.
What to listen to
In Spatchcocking: Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend, an 18-minute podcast, comedian Conan O’Brien speaks with his fan, Florencia, a native of Mar De Plata, a beach city just south of Buenos Aires. Steering through zany tangents and cheerful bickering, the two chat about Argentina’s unbelievable whale watching, out-of-this-world glaciers in Patagonia, and asados—12-hour spit-roast barbecues with butchering techniques that leave O’Brien a little squeamish. Like listening to friends chat in a bar, listeners learn about Argentina in an easy, breezy manner.
What to watch
Director Matías Piñeiro’s Viola is an art-house romantic comedy, one that sets its lens on a young Buenos Aires-based theatre troupe rehearsing a production of William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. The movie follows an amorous experiment of sorts with the actors’ friend, Viola, who delivers DVDs as part of her boyfriend’s pirating business. But beyond the Shakespeare-inspired entanglements that push the plot, the film takes viewers through the breadth of Buenos Aires, tracing the city’s bohemian bones—from its boulevards to its bedrooms.
A version of this story originally appeared on Condé Nast Traveller India.
