Argentine Dilemma

I have been in Argentina, and specifically Bs.As. (I still can't reliably spell the name of this town. ¡Puta!) for quite awhile but only recently have I noticed the change this stay has wrought in me.

Before I left Australia I would find myself on the outside of many a laydeeez circle where everyone else would talk about how much they loooved sweet things and how none of them could ever say no to chocolate and I would find myself examining my shoes and wondering if I had accidentally smuggled an Y choromsome in on them because I felt nothing for sweet things and could say "no" to chocolate on a pretty regular basis.

But that was then.

Now, after just over a month in this bitcharse cold town, I find myself not just embracing the dolce but inviting it home on a regular basis. It started with slices of cake being served with coffee. Initially I thought 'wtf do I want with this day old cake, pah?!' and then I found myself here where, for 40 centavos one can buy a chococalte coated wagon wheeled sized sweet except that it is twice as thick as any wagonwheel and it is just...so...damn...sweet. But one ceases to notice anymore. After free pouring sugar into coffee, after eating the "special breakfast" (which equaled sweet pastries) at various hostels it is impossible to pretend that The Change has not occured. So the dilemma I dedicate this particular post to is not one I thought I would ever encounter but there you go.

The other day, weakned by flu and poverty I found myself in the local supermarket, thiking vaguely that I hadn't eaten anything of substance for awhile, I found myself 'out the back' with the small goods section. And yet... "nah, I can't be bothered with the blue cheese... its almost a whole AUD$1, I think I'll just take that packet of chocolate coated donut shaped biscuits instead."

And I was happy to have to break a note to get change for the bus the other day - it meant I got to bite into a stupidly sweet-upon-layer-of-sweet chocolate, coated around a crumbly chocolate cakey centre (that was also lined with caramel dulce de leche) alfajore because it was the cheapest thing in the kiosko and, surprise, the sweetest.

Most recently I found myself with a severe attack of Argentine specific bronca (this is a type of furious anger that can sweep over you only in Argentina after hours of confronting services that wilfully withold the service they are meant to provide, and smug cashiers that reject your cash) which, I discovered, could only be soothed by buying and consuming in less than one minute, the most ridiculously outsized alfajore I have ever seen.

So it looks as though the Argentine dilemma of sweet vs sweet is now no dilemma at all. Forget superpanchos, I´m off to find an alfajore