"I just stepped out of a family dinner", he said, brushing aside my apologies for the late hour. From there, he escorted us to the crowded corner cafe, where Adi and I sat by a sidewalk table and decompressed from the long flight. When we left, patrons of all ages were still coming in.
The suspicion became stronger the next evening. At seven PM, the Tango dance hall was closed. The caretaker (slight limp, but no candles or long white hair) seemed a bit surprised to see us at the gate. He explained that despite what it says in the web-page, classes start at nine, and the general dance starts at eleven, or later. True enough, at nine, people began to enter the darkened ballroom.
Only the following morning, did we really grasp the extent of the phenomenon. We were downtown, ready to start our sightseeing, but the museums, as well as the shops and offices, were all shuttered. We concluded that the city is affected by a weird time-warp. Portenos eat dinner at nine, start dancing at midnight, and offices don't open till ten AM. How they manage to start work, even at this hour, I will need to investigate.
