La marcha del orgullo gay/La noche de los museos

Friday was an interesting juxtaposition of two somewhat different cultural offerings: Buenos Aires' Gay pride march and the night of museums. I thought it was interesting that the events happen simultaneously; a friend told me that he thinks the government is attempting to split the population. Hmmmm...

At first, the celebrations seemed quite tame. I was watching the crowd and thought to myself "Okay, this seems like San Francisco...on a tuesday" but later that night, things got a lot more exciting. 

Crowds and crowds of gay men, trannies, pretty girls in high-heels, goths, attractive bearded dudes, porteños and everyone else just kept coming and coming. The march was literally that: a giant stream of people chanting and dancing and playing music. It was definitely the most interesting people watching spectacle I've experienced in Buenos Aires. 

After that, we went to the night of the museums, which was essentially a network of free museum activities open to the public all night. The thing that I enjoyed the most was that every exhibition or showing I went to included some kind of  music.

Here is a baritone singing a lovely collection of songs written by Latin American and Spanish composers

The offerings were spread throughout the city, and although I was VERY tired from the night before, I managed to get to see a few museums before heading home around midnight

Here I am looking thrilled at the Argentinian center of culture

I have to say my all time favorite moment of the evening was when we went to a church that happened to be featuring a chamber vocal ensemble. They sang a lot of works that I hadn't heard before but right at the end they closed with Haydn's "Abendlied zu Gott". It was such an emotional rush to remember singing that with both the SFSU chamber singers and The Camerata Carolina in Heidelberg. This small group sang it very well and the acoustics were excellent. It was quite a sweet moment to end a long and eventful day.