My landlord will be here in exactly half an hour to collect my keys, inspect the apartment, and refund my security deposit. After this, I’ll embark on my final ride on the Subte, up to Retiro to catch an overnight bus to Cordoba.
It feels strange to be leaving. I’ve only been here for a month, but never before have I felt so at home in a foreign city. Although I do tend to form strange attachments to pretty much everywhere I visit (in particular I remember wondering to myself while eating breakfast at a little cafe in Hope, British Columbia whether I’d ever be in that particular town again), this is the longest I’ve spent in one place without actually full-on living there. It’s a strange feeling to be able to give directions to tourists, call out a cab driver on trying to take a bullshit route to up the fare, be on a first name basis with the lady that sells you orange juice in the middle of the night, and run into people you met weeks prior on the other side of town, all while in a city that you really have no ties to. I can say with almost one hundred percent certainty that I will never again set foot inside my apartment at 1186 Corrientes, but much like the apartment in which I grew up on Oakley in Chicago (which I’ll also never be inside again), I’ll always remember strange little things about it, like the bathroom that floods everytime I shower and the futon that doesn’t quite fold up all the way, as well as the doorman who tries to teach me a bunch of crazy old phrases in Castellano.
Trying to organize and pack up my apartment.
My life in one bag.
My ticket out of town tonight.
I’ve been hoarding one peso coins for the bus. I won’t need them anymore, so I’m gonna make someone’s day at the bus station when I buy snacks with them.
Landlord is here. Time to go.
This entry was written by , posted on March 29, 2009 at 5:06 pm, filed under Buenos Aires, Travel. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.