If you decide to take Spanish courses before you travel to Argentina so you’ll be fluent when you arrive in Buenos Aires, you’ll need to learn from an Argentine, as the language in the country is peppered with so much Italian slang that it isn’t recognizable to some other Spanish-speaking countries like Spain and Colombia.
Buenos Aires is a café society and it has a distinctive coffee culture. Purchasing a single cup of espresso or a cafecito gets you a table for as long as you care to sit there. It’s rare—regardless of the time of day—to find a B.A. café empty.
The city is a hotbed for advocates of civil rights. One of the most famous pot-banging protests—the Cacerolazo—in 2001 brought down the president of the time, and the march of the Madres de Plaza de Mayo has been going on every Thursday at 3:30 p.m. for 33 years.