When I moved to Buenos Aires at the ripe age of 23, fresh out of college, mostly (read: completely) skill-less and ready to drink as much fernet and coke as it took to transform into a porteño, I was above all things, poor.
My first real apartment was a two bedroom in Abasto that came adorned with a leaky faucet, broken kitchen window, questionable stains on the walls, and a furnace that por suerte didn’t explode. There were four of us crammed in there. We slept on the cheapest mattresses we could find (on the floor) and “decorated” the place with furniture mostly made of things we found in the street (tied together with string from Ugis) and a couch that smelled like a wet dog, all working whatever jobs we could get to scrape together a minuscule amount of money for rent (and a little extra for said fernet). But we made the best of it: we covered the nail holes with wall to wall art, danced at home rather than go out, and threw monthly bring your own bowl stew parties for our like-walleted friends.