The plot you need to know: a French grad student (Romain Duris) spends a summer in Spain & ends up living in a shared apartment with a microcosm of the E.U.: a prudish British girl, a fun-loving Italian guy, a Spanish girl and her Danish boyfriend, a Belgian lesbian, a German mathematician. The refrigerator is divided 7 ways, with juice and milk shoved in sideways. Beer and wine bottles litter the living room and terrace. They all go out for British girl's birthday and get wasted in Barcelona, helping each other get home. And as the sequel shows (Russian Dolls, 5 years later), they all know each other forever and ever.
I first saw this flick, L'Auberge d'Español (2002), as part of a film class spring semester of my junior year of undergrad and immediately I wanted to be that guy. I wanted that apartment. Since then, I'd been imagining a move to Europe or South America to find my own Spanish Apartment. All of my preconceived ideas about living abroad have been shattered by my first 2 real weeks in Argentina, but the joke is, the Spanish Apartment does exist. 40 blocks south on Yatay, there is a house shared by a girl from the UK, a French girl, a South African, a dude from Virgina. It has a big shared room with wood floors and 2 single beds. The terrace is high-walled & sunny. The shelves of the pantry are labeled with each roommate's name. But we can't live there. At least not until January 1.
This, after being denied a loft room in a shared house in San Telmo with 2 Argentines, a Brit, and an American writer. The Spanish Apartment exists---but it doesn't want two Americans and a dog.
Today Jess and I embarked on a long walk* to Congreso barrio (almost downtown---50-minute walk) in the pouring rain with Luna, the dog, to see 3 apartment possibilities. It was obvious none of them would be Spanish Apartments, but maybe they could hold us over until January---and at least we wouldn't have to sleep in the street in a week. Arriving at the first place---1905 Hipolito Yrigoyen---at noon, wet and tired, we found that there wasn't a 1905 Hipolito Yrigoyen. 1937, 1929, then a restaurant, and suddenly the neighborhood gave way to the back side of the Congress building. I would live there---it's a huge, ornate building like the gray and copper cousin of the US Capitol---but that's the 1800 block. The next appointment wasn't until 2:30. We had the dog with us so we couldn't sit in a restaurant or waste time in a store. Neither of us has a cell phone---what the fuck would we do for 2 hours?
We got ice cream. On Rivadavia, an ice cream shop had a canopy over its outside seating, and we demolished a 1/4-kilo of raspberry sorbet because it was better than spitting English curses at the imaginary address 2 blocks over. That took 10 minutes. Across the street, a restaurant sported more covered seating, and we decided to empty a bottle of wine while we waited with low expectations for the next apartment.
At apartment option #2, we were greeted by a short Hispanic-looking woman around 35 or older. She speaks almost no English---which isn't an issue, I want to learn---so the Colombian student whose room is up for rent showed us around. In the living room, an old woman sat watching the news. She did not acknowledge us when we toured the room. The Colombian told us she was the aunt or mother of the apartment owner and that she would be living there through December. A smaller bedroom is up for rent also---who knows what person will move in. The room we'd take is big, with a long table---ample workspace for 2 writers. The middle-aged woman lives in the master bedroom down the hall. There are 1.5 bathrooms and also a garden. It's cheap and they don't mind the dog, but where in the fuck exactly would we be living? In a lame neighborhood, in a house with an old woman?
Apartment #3 went like this: it's one extra bedroom in this middle-aged woman's apartment. She rents now to a Chinese student, who leaves next week. She looked sideways at Luna as soon as we entered, and I knew she didn't like the idea of a dog roaming her home, lying on her couch, sniffing the plants on her terrace. She offered coffee, and because I was wet and cold, I accepted. Jess and I sat awkwardly on the couch while the woman clanked around the kitchen at the back of the house. We were only warming up---all three of us knew we wouldn't live there.
What happened to the Spanish Apartment? It's here---students and artists and young, interesting people are living communally in Buenos Aires. And I could be, too, if I could afford a room by myself, if they hadn't posted signs on all the doors announcing No Dogs Allowed. Looks like I will be living the next two months with some old woman. Que rico.
*A note on the walk: Mannequin Street. About halfway through the journey, I noticed a mannequin shop on the corner of the next block. Whatever---it was weird, all those blank silver heads and naked plastic bodies, but mannequins have to come from somewhere. Then the next shop was also full of mannequins. Then across the street: more mannequins. Some were shiny silver or red and faceless. Many were lifelike, with hair and facial expressions. There was a fat man with a hanging plastic gut. There was a svelte green man's body with a Shrek head. There were naked girls with purple pigtails. And---no joke---a man's body with a dog's head.
After 3 blocks of mannequin stores, we entered the textile section, a meter of denim for $25 pesos.
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