The Friendliness of Rome and Buenos Aires

   Friendless in both Rome and Buenos Aires, Argentina (our next stop) were uncommonly good.  In Italy, folks stopped us in the street when we looked lost and pulled out their GPS to direct us.  Our Ph.D. tour guide in Italy showed genuine thankfulness for her tip.  And although the idea of being vegetarian hasn´t really seaped into these destinations, we still appreciated the efforts of waiters to accommodate us: for example, once our question for vegetarian entrees,¨"vegeteriano?", was met with "Yes...salad", and a few seconds later, excitedly, "With Chicken!").  Beyond common politeness, people truly were nice.  One late night we left our ATM card with the code still entered in an ATM (the ATMs in Buenos Aires do not spit them out as easily as elsewhere).  The people behind us in the ATM line followed us for at least 10 minutes before catching up to us and giving us the card that they collected.  They then turned and had to walk the other way.  Truly special.

   In Argentina, people are nice even to animals.  We watched a stray dog sit outside a small bakery and try multiple times to come in before being shooed away.  Then, finally, the baker came out and handed the dog an empanada.  The dog happily trod off to find a quiet place to eat.  Busses in Argentina stop pretty much any where to let you off.  Sometimes, this is not a welcome stop as twice we stopped in the middle of no where (after 6 hours of being in a bus passing only a dozen or so vehicles) and waited for another bus to pull up so that two passengers could transfer.  Another time our bus pulled over to pick up some extra passengers as we were going from a town to a national park.  Apparently our travel companions had taken a different taxi that was transferring his clients to our bus and this exchange was done like I would imagine a drug deal on the open highway would go down on the side of the road.

This was the dog waiting for his empanada.

   Friendliness sometimes even required lots of effort.  When Michelle´s birthday rolled around while we were camping at the Southern tip of South America, the camp cook made a huge cake with candles for her and our tour leader organized our singing of happy birthday (too bad the rest of the day was horrendous rain...see later post)! 

  Finally, I appreciated the sentiment, although it probably isn´t friendliness, but the poor beggars of the country don´t just panhandle.  On trains they enter a car and throw things that you can purchase onto your lap.  You have no choice and if you don´t buy it, they quickly come yank it from your lap.  One time it was cards with Jesus on them.  Another time it was a subway map.  Another time it was gum.  Much nicer than being asked to put money into a Styrofoam cup!