I have never loved as much as hated something till I found Buenos Aires, or I should say until Buenos Aires found me. That kind of monster, angel or god, that created me to its own image. It was a strange possession, starting with huge doses of brilliant light, the harmony between sun and sky running through the open spaces, which were my veins too. I did not need to eat something sweet for breakfast, I could wake up my stomach with a "milanesa" fillet with tomato and cheese sauce, as - I would know it later- the city devours sweethearts.

Before travelling to Buenos Aires, I just knew three sights: 9 de Julio Avenue and Obelisk, Plaza de Mayo and the Casa Rosada (Government House), and the bookshop El Ateneo Grand Splendid (considered the second most beautiful bookstore of the World for the British newspaper The Guardian). Just with these three images and the poetic sound of its name I imagined the city as the South American Paris. And if my entire trip had lasted just a few days and I had been a regular tourist, I would have come back with that idea again. However, I made my trip with a local friend, thus being almost a local, and my dream went, day by day, falling into the dark side of the “porteña” soul.

After a week, the need of taking two or three different combinations of public transportation and spending minimum an hour to arrive anywhere with a bunch of angry people made me feel not so lightening. Besides, when I though it was time to party –after dinner- and my body was anxious for discovering the metropolis at night, I got to know that there was a time of several hours to sleep or relax between both activities, because people do not go out until one or two a.m. For me, that was nothing but a boring and unnecessary transition that frustrated all my desire. Whether I wanted to go to a place or get a situation, I had to pass for a tunnel without adventure, incompatible with my hungry spirit.

Meanwhile, the urban landscape started to talk to me about laziness and neglect, and the neighbourhood could only help to keep the most irritating flaws of the metropolis -stress, arrogance, frenetic rhythm and bad-manners- in an almost bearable level, that got madly on my nerves. They also come the days when the supermarkets ran out of food due to the farmers’ strike, and the rural fires’ smoke covered the city, killed the light, stained my lungs and soul, and burnt my eyes, which could not see the capital shining anymore.

In every person I met, I discovered a kaleidoscope of Buenos Aires, the good and the bad moving confusingly: the decadence moves them to shady emotions, the pride in controllable doses pushes them to be go-getters, the light rescues their bodies from being silence, the contracture of time and space on the savage streets leads them to the point where poetry and philosophy make a revolution in every word.

I have to remember my time in La Paternal living with a family, living with their troubles, their struggles, their illusions, their confusions, their hugs, their smiles and all the days watered with mate. I have to remember my time in San Telmo: the beers in a shady corner of an old bar while making a thesis about the art of flirting in Spain and Argentina; the surrealism of the antique shop windows, the cat sleeping over a bunch of vintage clothes or the old couple who sold match boxes at the local market. I have to remember my time in Recoleta, the smell of money in the air, the house where I was lost looking for the bathroom and the tea was taken at 5 p.m. in porcelain cups. The smell of death in the cemetery, surrounded by deformed cats that seemed to place me in the pages of a gothic comic. I have to remember my time in Pompeya, the man listening to a communist radio station with a pot of coffee for hours, the three friends on the roof taking a bath in a tiny plastic swimming pool, under a storm, under the most playful sky that I have seen in my life, while they sung:

I have to remember my time in Belgrano, an hour in a car with the “Groove Negativo”, or which is the same, four man without destination, including the one who said: “El reggaeton… culturalmente no nos interesa”. I have to remember my time in La Boca, the contrast between the sickening smell of the “riachuelo” and its spooky boats with children crossing and the colorful houses and passionate tango making a theater of the neighborhood. I have to remember my time in Palermo: my friend, his friend and I, wearing sneakers, loose jeans and pullovers, in one of the city’s most expensive and trendy restaurants, Casa Cruz, where people arrive with all the opulence they can. I was an unrecognised Alice in front of its giant polished-brass doors, penetrating into a lavish burgundy and black wood, feeling the climax of champagne and crème Brule in my palate, watching the bartenders changing their labor look for a punk one when the lights turned down for the public and on for the creativity of a private photography session. And I have to remember my time in Puerto Madero, the night melting my heart, the river melting the lights, even when I should not remember so sweet moments with a hungry soul right now.

How could I not love and hate it? And when I told to my friend that I was mistaken considering Buenos Aires the South American Paris, maybe he was right when he told me: It is the South American Paris. Or a friend of him that said: This is London without “plata”. Or maybe all of us were right.