13 Signs You'll Never Truly Be Argentine

1. You’re puzzled by the excitement such ordinary foods inspire in the locals.

You think alfajores are all right, but you’d rather have a Twix. You don’t have an irrational emotional urge to eat pasta every Sunday. Cremón cheese adverts anger you. “That’s not cheese!” you mutter at the TV. “That’s NOT cheese!”

2. You feel a twinge of anxiety when your taxi doesn’t have seatbelts.

3. Your poverty / crisis / quilombo threshold is too low.

Don’t get me wrong, you enjoy a good old cacerolazo as much as the next Recoleta housewife, and a severe devaluation of the peso would bring you and your foreign bank account nothing but joy. But your patience will prove short if the government keeps depriving you of iPhones and Sriracha sauce, and at the first sign of things really kicking off 2001-style you’ll be on the first plane to Barcelona (feeling no patriotic duty to fly Aerolíneas). Also, don’t all these poor people get awfully depressing after a while?

4. Your clothes are all wrong.

You think “elegante sport” is the Spanish for “show jumping.” You don’t know when to wear a tie or not (answer: never wear a tie). The only time you ever wore alpargatas was for a fancy dress party, to which you went as the world’s least-convincing gaucho. It’s even worse if you’re a foreign woman in Buenos Aires, enduring the third year of a gruelling buffing-waxing-shopping-dieting regime in constant fear that the slightest slip will result in being cast out from polite society.

5. You’re scared of the plug sockets.

6. You think people catch colds from coming into contact with what we doctors call the “rhinovirus.”

In fact, colds are caused by going out with wet hair and an exposed neck when the season changes. Also, it’s not a cold, it’s flu. Probably swine flu.

7. You don’t know the first thing about piropos.

You think it’s quite rude to shout out compliments and / or oral sex requests / offers at passing women. The most daring thing you ever said to a strange woman in public was when you asked a pretty girl at the bus stop the time. You’ve never had sex with a prostitute either. Maricón.

8. You’re too polite. You say “hola” when you walk into a supermarket.

You say “por favor” to the bus driver. You think the Spanish for “thank you” is “gracias,” when it is in fact “listo,” and you think the Spanish for “goodbye” is “chau,” when it is in fact a stony silence.

9. Paradoxically, you’re too rude.

You take your shoes off indoors. You eat lunch without using a napkin. Sometimes, you just can’t be bothered to kiss people goodbye. Ortiba.

10. That’s STILL not cheese!

11. You can’t make a drink in a bar last longer than 30 minutes without ordering another.

And you never cease to be amazed at how these people can jabber on until 6am with just a 7-Up for sustenance.

12. Your Spanish will never be good enough.

You could immerse yourself in a small village in Entre Ríos for thirty years, cut yourself off from all contact with the English language, and the locals will still think of you as a foreigner and comment that you’ve still got a bit of a “tonito inglés.” The bastards.

13. No matter how hard you try, you just can’t get that enthusiastic about Erasure.

Because they’re terrible.

This article was originally posted on DanielTunnard.com, and has been re-published here with permission.