A xenophobe's guide to the Porteño people

How to travel in a Porteño style

Getting to know Buenos Aires is not as simple as taking a sightseeing tour and visiting the hot spots in the city. If you really want to know BA, you have to know it “the Porteño way”, you need to travel as Porteños do. This article will tell you all you need to know about travelling as a true Buenos Aires citizen.

Most Porteños hate the subway. However, it is the only way in which they can get downtown unless they want to spend 3 hours on a crowded bus. The reason why Porteños hate the subway is because it is so Porteñoish. Subways are very unreliable. Although the TV on the platform announces a train every three minutes and a half, you will inevitably have to wait at least seven minutes until the train finally arrives packed with downtown workers. However, one can never be sure whether the train is in fact packed or it is just people who refuse to give up their comfortable spots using much more room than they actually need. That is using the subway as a Porteño.

More often than not, subways are delayed or cancelled. If this happens and a Porteño is getting late, s/he will take a taxi. You would expect people to hail a taxi at a corner, or wait until the traffic lights go red. But no, Porteños are in such a hurry that they will not care whether the other 3.050.727 citizens are also in a hurry. Porteños hail their taxis in the middle of the street, and even prefer to do so if there are at least three cars waiting behind the taxi. Porteños also like to end their trip where buses pull in, in front of a garage exit or they force the driver to double park.

If you are not wealthy enough to take a taxi, you will probably have to take the bus. In order to do this, you will have to queue up. Porteños have designed a whole new concept of queuing. In BA, Porteños respect the queue and wait at the bus stop as long as necessary. As soon as the bus arrives, everyone dashes towards the bus, no matter what or who they are stepping on. This is my piece of advice: once you are on the bus, you should do your best to get to the rear of the bus, otherwise your physical integrity cannot be guaranteed.

All in all, you might have noticed that the wildest thing about travelling in this beautiful city is not transport itself but Porteños. You might find this way of travelling a bit stressful, however, once you have mastered it, you may call yourself a real Porteño. Just do not forget to push someone every now and then and if you feel like it, insult the first person you come across.