Sundays are the best days in Buenos Aires (a declaration I may have already made in a previous post, but I'd like to reaffirm the idea), especially Sundays during a long weekend. Near silence replaces the typical honking horns, car alarms, police and ambulance sirens, truck and bus engines, and the general bustle of the city during the week as the city's residents, the porteños, self-loved but almost unanimously hated throughout the rest of the country, hide away in their apartments and houses and spend the day just being lazy and enjoying time with family while the most wealthy flee to their weekend homes.
Even along the commercialized major avenues, silence reigns. Almost everything is closed, the only stores which open regularly on Sundays, except in the shopping malls, are the supermarkets, the "chinos," (I know it sounds racist, but that's what they're called here) grocery stores owned by East Asians, and the "kioskos," which are essentially tiny convenience stores found on nearly every block throughout the entire city. The same sidewalks which during the week are so packed that it is nearly impossible to walk without bumping into somebody, especially if one is in a hurry, on Sundays are almost completely deserted and one can ramble along at one's own pace without worrying about upsetting a horde of pedestrians trying to get where they need to go.
Obviously, even on Sundays, in a major city like Buenos Aires, there are plenty of opportunities to be around crowds—soccer matches, along the river (on sunny days), and in other touristy areas—, but if one wants to enjoy the rare calm of one of South America's largest cities, Sunday is the best day to do so.
Few joys in life compare to waking up without an alarm clock on a Sunday morning to the absence of sound, silence, a rarity and a delicacy for city dwellers. The sound of an engine as a car or motorcycle passes along the street below or the low murmur of a family talking on it's way to morning mass will occasionally interrupt the otherwise complete silence, but the overall feeling of peace and quiet remains unbroken.
The peace found on Sundays is a small escape and distraction from the city, the country, and the world's problems. It's the day one can forget about issues at work, about terrible traffic and inconsistent public transport, about drug wars and rumors of wars in the East, about over-crowding and inadequate infrastructure, about corruption and inflation, and just enjoy the simple pleasures of a home-cooked pasta lunch or a barbecue, asado, with family and friends, of snuggling up on the couch alongside your family with a good book and a cup of coffee, of sitting on the living room floor with the kids and playing with building blocks or puzzles. Aren't these simple pleasures a glimpse at the essence of life? Why else go through the stresses of school, work, and taxes except to be able to enjoy time with those you love while having a place to live and food to eat? I love Sundays because they give us the peace required to rest and reflect on such things.
I'll conclude my ramblings with a quote from one of my favorite thinkers and authors, C.S. Lewis, who elaborated, much more elegantly than I, on this idea of life's simple pleasures but in the context of the simplicity of the purpose of Christianity:
"This is the whole of Christianity. There is nothing else. It is so easy to get muddled about that. It is easy to think that the Church has a lot of different objects—education, building, missions, holding services. Just as it is easy to think the State has a lot of different objects—military, political, economic, and what not. But in a way things are much simpler than that. The State exists simply to promote and to protect the ordinary happiness of human beings in this life. A husband and wife chatting over a fire, a couple of friends having a game of darts in a pub, a man reading a book in his own room or digging in his own garden— that is what the State is there for. And unless they are helping to increase and prolong and protect such moments, all the laws, parliaments, armies, courts, police, economics, etc., are simply a waste of time. In the same way, the Church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time. God became man for no other purpose. It is even doubtful, you know, whether the whole universe was created for any other purpose." (from Mere Christianity)
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