One of Miki's main goals in coming to Buenos Aires was to meet one of the Montenegrins (or descendents of the Montenegrins) who apparently immigrated en masse at the beginning of the 20th century. (Miki's family is from Montenegro.) She emailed the listserve of a Montenegrin affinity group and arranged an ill-fated meeting at a cafe in Palermo. No one showed. But some people did email her to tell her they would be singing in the choir at a Russian Orthodox Church on Sunday morning. So the day Miki left, we trekked to San Telmo and ascended into a church with brilliant blue onion domes, hoping to spot one of Argentina's elusive Montenegrin specimans.
I had never been to an Christian Orthodox service of any kind and was both a little nervous and incredibly curious as we walked through the elaborately painted lobby and in up to the main sanctuary (is it called a santuary in Christianity?). We were handed skirts to put on over our jeans and when we were properly garbed, we entered - and gaped at our fantastically painted surroundings. Within 30 seconds, a man in has mid 30's approached us. Was she Miki? Was I her friend? (I guess we stood out.) It was the Montenegrin man Miki had been emailing with. Mission accomplished! They arranged to meet after the service (he was in the choir).
The sounds that echoes through the halls and the domes were a mix between choral music and the deep baritone of the priest which strangely resembled the chanting of the Jewish Kippur liturgy. For Miki, the experience was surreal as well . . . she's in the choir at her Serbian Orthodox Church in Chicago, and she walked in to hear identical music - just in Spanish, with occasional phrases of old Slavonic thrown in for good measure. Not exactly on hte regular tourist itinerary, but definitely one of the coolest things I've seen in Buenos Aires.
Miki left us to return to work in Chicago and Elisa headed back to school during the day, so that left me and George to explore the city together. Our first stop was the Recoleta Cemetary, which George dubbed the Beverly Hills of Death. It's where Buenos Aires' deceased elite make their homes, and really is prime real estate, an extravegant city of the dead complete with apartments (moseleums), boulevards, blocks and streetlights. And if a family can't continue to pay rent on their space, they sell it to someone else and move their ancestors out of their marble resting places (to be burried who knows where.) There is a saying here in BsAs that its cheaper to live extravegantly than to die and be burried at Recoleta.
Now Darin would find this ostentatious display of wealth quite disgusting, but George and I prefered to think of the decadence as a tribute, not to those who died, but to the incredibly talented workemen and architects who built this place (none of whom whom would have rated a burial here.)
That interpretation seemed fitting as we made our pilgrimage (with the hordes of the rest of the tourists) to visit the comparatively utilitarian resting place of Evita, chamipion of Argentina's poor and working class. The anniversary of her death (which, strangely, Argentines celebrate instead of celebrating her birth) had been only 2 days before, so the moselum was positvely decked out with flowers. All in all . . . fascinating.
