First stop, Buenos Aires

After a long and troubled journey, I finally made it to Argentina. We were stuck for 4 and a half hours at Heathrow Airport after interrupting the take off procedure twice. We had several technical anomalies, including some petrol leak (fire brigade had to come, empty the tank, have it repaired, fill it again) and two passengers in a panic, one of whom jumped out of the plane leaving her luggage behind (and which of course had to be removed). And finally, to make the trip longer, we made a stop over in Sao Paulo, a fact of which I was not aware.
Anyway, I'm in Buenos Aires now, and I had the chance to walk around the city centre -"minicentro"- for a few hours. My first impressions, after a short visit, are the following: Argentinians are noisy, at least much more than the Belgians. But that is not difficult, is it? A lot of things reminded me of Spain. Maybe is the language, the Telefonica logo everywhere, some street and houses, ...and definitely the cafes. There are as many as in Spain, they have a similar look, and they make the same kind of noises (dishes, waiters talk, coffee machine...), and I could even order a "cortado".
Anyway, other things I didn't like: the pollution caused by a lot of old cars and buses (by the way, one third of the taxis seem to be the old Peugeot 504. Remember them?) I also saw a lot of old and new things coexisting not necesariously in harmony, and I got the impression that salaries must be pretty low here. All businesses seem overstaffed. You simply could not afford it in Belgium. In the evening I also saw a lot of people opening the trash bags in the street and looking for some stuff. Not very nice.
Ah yeah, and two more things. I saw a surprising number of bookshops (although books are not that cheap), and there are many more men wearing a beard than in Europe. I must say I liked that.
Well, that's enough for today. Tomorrow I will take a boat to Uruguay, where I'll continue my trip. I hope to spend some more time in Buenos Aires in September, and discover other parts of this lively city.