First Date Ideas For The Over 60s In Argentina

The first meeting has one job, and it is not to impress anybody. It is to find out, in an hour or so, whether you want a second one. Everything else follows from that, including the two rules that matter most: keep it short, and keep it cheap.

Short, because an hour that goes well can easily become three, whereas three hours booked in advance with somebody you have just discovered you have nothing to say to is a long afternoon for both of you. Cheap, because the moment real money is on the table somebody starts feeling they owe something, and that is no way to begin. Here are six that work.

Un café

The obvious one, and the obvious one is obvious for a reason. "¿Tomamos un café?" asks for an hour of somebody's time and nothing else, which is exactly the right amount to ask for. Nobody has to dress up, nobody is committed past the second cup, and if it is going well you simply stay.

Pick somewhere you already know. The advantage is not the coffee, it is that you will be calmer in a room you can picture beforehand, and you will know where the bathroom is and whether you can hear yourself think. If you are in the Ciudad, one of the bares notables is a good choice, because the surroundings do some of the work and there is always something to talk about on the walls. Check it is still open before you suggest it. A confitería is the other good option, and for a lot of women of our generation it is the more comfortable one.

La merienda

Better than lunch and much better than dinner. Somewhere around five or six in the afternoon, a coffee and a couple of medialunas, and the whole thing has a natural ending built into it: people go home for dinner. Nobody has to invent an excuse to leave.

It is daylight, which matters for a first meeting with somebody you have not met. It is cheap. And it is the most ordinary thing in the world here, so neither of you is making a statement by suggesting it.

A walk somewhere with people about

Walking is easier than sitting for some people, because you are side by side rather than face to face and the silences do not feel like silences. The costanera, the parque, the sendero by the river, whatever your town has.

Two things worth doing. Pick a route with other people on it rather than somewhere quiet and pretty, at least the first time. And agree where it ends, so the walk has a shape and neither of you is wondering how far this is going. A café at the end of it is a good arrangement, because it lets you extend things if you want to.

The feria

An hour wandering a feria de artesanos or the Sunday market gives you something to look at, something to talk about and a reason to keep moving. If conversation stalls there is a stall in front of you. If it does not stall you can walk the whole thing twice and then sit down somewhere.

It also tells you a fair bit about somebody. What they stop at, whether they talk to the stallholders, whether they are in a hurry.

El cine, or a cultural centre

An afternoon showing, or whatever the municipal cultural centre has on. Most run something free or nearly free, and a good many cinemas and museums have a reduced rate or a free day for jubilados.

The usual objection to the cinema is that you cannot talk during it, but that is rather the point on a first meeting. You get ninety minutes where neither of you has to perform, and then a coffee afterwards with something to discuss already sitting there. Look at what your municipalidad has on this month. In the Ciudad the Recoleta and the San Martín usually have several things running at once, and in the interior the centro cultural is often the busiest building in town.

Unos mates in the plaza

The cheapest date there is, and for a certain kind of person the best one. A thermo, a bench, an hour in the afternoon. It is easy, it is unpretentious, it is what people here have always done, and passing the mate back and forward does something to a conversation that sitting across a table does not.

One caution. Offering mate is warm and ordinary, but going to somebody's house is not a first meeting. Keep it in the plaza, where there are people around, and save the kitchen for when you know each other.

A few practical things

Suggest daytime. It is easier to get home, easier to see, and there is less pressure on both of you.

Sort out your own way there and back. Do not depend on a lift from somebody you have not met. If you have the SUBE discount for jubilados y pensionados, this is what it is for.

Tell somebody where you are going and roughly when you will be back. Argentines are already good at this, more than half of people meeting somebody from an app tell a friend or a relative beforehand. Do the same. It is not dramatic, it is just sensible.

Say at the start that you have something on afterwards. It gives you a clean exit if you want one, and if you do not want one you can always drop it.

Do not aim for Sunday. Sunday belongs to the family lunch for most people here and asking for it puts a weight on a first meeting that it does not need.

And keep the money simple. Offer to split it, or take turns. Grand gestures on a first meeting create an obligation, and nobody wants to start out owing.

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