It all started on a sultry
January evening in Buenos Aires’ Ezeiza airport. I was standing in front of a rundown
Coke vending machine, trying to extort some mineral water out of it as it was
the only thing at the airport that had cold water for an agreeable price. I was
anxiously entering torn and less torn 2 peso notes into the machine that
rejected the majority of my notes but took some on a completely random basis.
You might wonder why I entered torn notes, but anyone who’s ever been to
Argentina can tell you that by a still-to-be-solved miracle of modern
engineering even new notes in the country are already produced torn. Although
most vending machines are torn, too, they still want only new notes. Talk about
supply-demand discrepancy. Suddenly, as drips of exasperation started to
materialise on my forehead, the resolution struck me like a thunderbolt: I want
to write a blog about all this madness and punish the world with reading about
my (mis)adventures.
The steely resolution brought a
change of mind and I started kicking the machine with amazing gusto but the
bastard still wouldn’t give me any mineral water of course. My swearing and
kicking (which by the way was nearly not as spectacular in BA as
let’s say it would have been in London) amused a whole high school class and
some apathetic by-walkers, but nobody was really shocked or moved by it. My
insistence on the other hand proved quite surprising and a lazy security guard
from a neighbouring store showed up with a bored face that has seen many people
kicking the poor machine. When I tried to explain my story in a strange language
composed of Spanish, English and other words, all he could say was that “yeah,
bad luck amigo, machine’s a bastard”. Since I was left with no other choice, I
had to buy mineral water for 21 pesos instead of 12 pesos from a store nearby.
At least I got a nice smile from the girl in the store.
