Bye Guay

"I've never heard of anyone going to Uruguay.  That's a pretty aggressive move."  That's what my buddy Sam said to me back in Costa Rica, about a week before I headed south to Montevideo.  I definitely felt the same, except that for me it was a bit more of a concern, because I was the one who would be heading off into the unknown.  I could not have hoped for a better experience.  Having finished my three week stay, I can unequivocally say that I am smitten.

I absolutely adored Montevideo, its people, and the Uruguayan culture in general.  To some extent, this was a function of fortuitous timing.  I managed to arrive right as the summer was cooling down a bit, so it was warm but generally not unpleasantly hot, and smack in the middle of the Carnaval season--which gave me the opportunity to see two Murga shows.  I also arrived just in time to attend the inauguration of the new president.  In a lot of ways, however, this was a near-perfect match of tourist and culture.  For a winter-hating, ex-musical-theater-camp-going, city-dwelling, political wonk, it's hard to think of a better place to be than an urban center with temperatures in the mid-70s, passionate political involvement and a rabid scene in support of what amount to local musical theater sketch groups.  And I haven't even mentioned the copious amounts of delicious steak and ice cream*.  Top it off with some of the more consistently outgoing people I've ever met, and you get a pretty giant smile on my face.  Outside the city is lovely too, as Colonia offered a connection to the region's history, and the eastern shore has some breathtaking natural landscapes (even if I did find the scene at Cabo Polonio a bit irritating).

I came away thoroughly impressed by the political involvement of the Uruguayan populace.  I thought I had a pretty decent handle on it, but yesterday's trip to Mujica's inauguration really drove home just how sincere it is.  In part, it may just be easier to keep everyone involved in a country of only three and a half million people.  But the rabid fandom persisted well past Mujica's official assumption of office, into chants for every member of the cabinet.  Can you imagine legions of people going nuts for Janet Napolitano?  The spectacle of the thing was truly impressive, with flags and patriotic fervor everywhere, and people overcome with happiness.  A taxi driver the other day told me "I'm going because I feel like this is the first time it's really my president."  Given that I cast my first presidential vote in 2000, and watched the next eight years thinking "not my president," I can certainly relate to that sentiment.

The one other thing I can't seem to stop thinking about is the remarkable nature of the many stories I heard about Uruguayan history.  Given its location stuck between the two regional superpowers, Uruguay is often completely neglected by the rest of us, and so its history is just completely unfamiliar.  Plenty of people could tell you at least one thing about most of the other countries in South America.  But we know very little of the Uruguayan history.  The thing about it is, even just the recent history is completely enthralling.  I've talked about about the political upheaval of the 70s and 80s, the Punta Carretas prison escape, and Pepe Mujica's fourteen years in prison and six bullet wounds.  These stories are amazing.  And they're just completely not a part of our world knowledge.  What's particularly odd is that even when Uruguayans mention these things, a lot of it is presented as a throwaway fact, e.g. "oh, yeah, 111 inmates escaped from Punta Carretas."  The details are just skipped.  My guess is that there's an assumption that as an American, I wouldn't really be interested.  So I personally am extremely grateful to have had the opportunity to come into contact with this history, and to learn about it up close, and I hope you've enjoyed hearing about it.

Obviously, there are downsides to Uruguay, as there are with any country.  The conspicuous absence of green vegetables is a pretty noteworthy issue.  Sure, one could get eggplant or squash, or any number of things on the starchy side of the spectrum.  But leafy greens, green beans, asparagus, and their ilk were pretty tough to come by.  Cilantro is also, as far as I can tell, nonexistent, which I consider to be an enormous drawback.  If you ask for cilantro, you get coriander, which is the same plant, of course, but a very different life stage (and flavor).  The dearth of vegetables is a health issue too, obviously, as it makes it pretty tough to have anything but an extremely protein-and-fat-heavy diet.  I love steak more than any reasonable human being should, but the first week of the Uruguayan diet left me googling "angioplasty" on a daily basis.

All told, Montevideo is the first city I've been to where English is not the native language in which I could honestly see myself living.  That's not to say that I'll likely move there--the odds of the opportunity presenting itself seem a bit long.  But it is pretty remarkable to visit a place where you only understand about half of what is being said to you (on a good day), and still feel so completely at home.  Last night I was talking with my buddy Matt, who also took classes at Academia Uruguay, and we agreed that Montevideo was an extremely comfortable place, and it would have been easy to extend my stay such that it took up the bulk of this journey I'm on.  But the purpose of my trip is to see and experience new things, and, frankly, to keep moving outside my comfort zone, so I think to stick around for longer would be selling myself short, as lovely as it might be.

And so it is that I find myself in Buenos Aires after a three hour boat ride, preparing to eat still more steak, and to continue pronouncing my "y" sounds as "sh."  I'm very much looking forward to exploring the vast range of experiences this city and this country have to offer.  I walked around for a few hours tonight, and it's clear that I'm not going to get bored any time soon.  I'll check in at some point in the next few days, once I get my bearings and have a few new experiences.  Until then, hasta luego.

Saludos,
Seth

*neither sold nor consumed simultaneously, to be clear.




Fotografía:

Montevideo

Mujica Inauguration

Uruguay, I'm a guay cinco - Todavía más notas

I've been running around the last few days trying to get in my last fill of fun before I leave for Buenos Aires tomorrow, so I don't have much to report outside of "I did this cool thing and then I did this cool thing."  But in the interest of keeping this up to date, I thought I'd check in with a little summary of said cool things.

• On Thursday, I went to Castillo Pittamiglio, which is a house built by the extremely eccentric architect / alchemist Humberto Pittamiglio.  I had no idea there were practicing alchemists in the twentieth century, but apparently there were.  The place is full of Masonic symbols--circles, squares, and the like.  It has a number of odd things like doors, windows and staircases leading nowhere.  My personal favorite thing was the sign indicating that Pittamiglio left the house in the custody of the city of Montevideo upon his death, to be given back to him upon his return by reincarnation.

• Thursday night, I attended a tango concert at Teatro Solís, one of the oldest and most beautiful theaters on the continent.  The concert was a bit odd, in that the three singers never sung together, but rather did five songs each.  Something else that seems fairly uncommon about tango is that when the songs ended, there wasn't really a clear ending with a final note, so much as the musicians would just sort of stop playing in turn, and the song would die out over the course of a second.  It sort of has the feel of "I've been playing this entire song for five minutes, but actually never mind, I think I'm done."  The songs all seemed to be standards, because the audience would start applauding moments before the songs were done. My favorite piece of the night was actually an instrumental, Adiós Nonino, which came during the break between the first two singers.

• I twice went to Estadio Centenario, one of the world's great soccer stadiums, and host of the original World Cup in 1930 (Uruguay won, defeating Argentina in the final).  The first trip, on Friday, was to the Futból Museum.  The second trip was on Saturday, to a game between River Plate and Peñarol.  Peñarol is probably the most popular team in the league, and is also currently the best, at 6-0-0 on the season.  It was a pretty crazy game, with Peñarol scoring twice in the first 10 minutes, losing a player to a red card in the second half, giving up two goals to let River Plate tie it up, and scoring on a free kick in the last ten minutes to win 3-2.  It was also just amazing to see a soccer match in one of the game's cathedrals.

• Yesterday I went to the Feria de Tristán Narvajo, a public market that stretches across about ten square city blocks on Sundays.  It is a completely crazy affair, with people selling pets, vegetables, home improvement dvd's, clothes, antiques, bootleg clothes (Gioven Kelvin underwear?) and other stuff.  My friends Matt and Liz went a few weeks ago and saw a bird vendor selling, along with several canaries and parakeets, an owl and a falcon.  The Feria is probably the closest thing I've found here to a Walmart, one-stop-shopping-wise.  It is definitely a preferable experience to Walmart as well, although it is a bit overpriced.

• Last night I went to another Murga show at Cine Teatro Plaza, an indoor theater.  It was a very different way of seeing Murga from my experience at Teatro de Verano, which is a large outdoor amphitheater.  We went primarily to see Agarrate Catalina, one of the most popular groups in the city, and the favorite to win this year's competition.  They put on an incredible show, and featured two of the most stellar tenor voices I've heard in my life.  I now know a bit more about Murga, so I think I'll take this moment to elaborate on it a bit.  The season lasts through all of Carnaval, which is from mid-January to mid-March.  The Teatro de Verano is the big venue, and each of the groups take turns passing through to be judged.  There are three rounds there, so the winners will perform three times at the largest theater.  However, there are also theaters and tablados (makeshift stages, often with pretty cool scenery made by the local community) all over the city.  Each group will perform their forty-five minute show several times in a given night, taking a rented coach bus from venue to venue.  Last night, Agarrate Catalina performed their show seven times.  If you're wondering, that amounts to five hours and fifteen minutes of performing.  And they do that more or less every night for two months.  It's really nothing short of incredible, particularly considering the precision of everything--from the singing and choreography to the costume changes and lighting.  In the second group we saw, El Gran Tuleque, there were a few performers who were no younger than sixty.  What's also remarkable about it is that it is almost impossible for all but a select few groups to make any kind of profit on it.  In fact, El Gran Tuleque had some lyrics about how they're so in debt that last night's show was just paying for the show on February 17th, and tonight's will pay for the show on the 18th.  Though this was intended to be tongue-in-cheek, there is a good deal of truth to it.  So it really is just a labor of love.

• Today is the assumption of Mujica to the Presidency.  Hillary Clinton is in town for it, and visited with Mujica this morning.  Interestingly, Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales are also here.  Ceremonies kick off at about 2pm, in the Palacio Legislativo, house of the Uruguayan Congress.  Then there is a parade down to Plaza de Independencia, where, for the first time in Uruguayan history, the handing over of the sash--the formal act of changing presidents--will occur outside.  I'm planning to head over at about 2:30 or 3, in the hopes of getting close enough to see it.  Avenida 18 de Julio, the main commercial street through Montevideo, has several barricades and large video screens set up to handle the crowd.  I'll be coming from the opposite direction though, so hopefully that will help.  I definitely saw a lot of security last night around the plaza, including U.S. Secret Service agents.

Tomorrow I'm off to Buenos Aires, and I suspect I'll have some closing thoughts on my time here, as per usual.  For the moment though, I need to get ready to head to the Plaza, so that's all I have for now.

Saludos,
Seth


Fotografía:

Cine Teatro Plaza Murga Show

Peñarol Game

Estadio Centenario Museum

Castillo Pittamiglio

Montevideo

Uruguay, I'm a guay cuatro - Más notas

The concert at Teatro Solís turned out to be sold out, so I got tickets for tomorrow's tango performance instead.  In the meantime, I thought I'd check in with some general musings and observations about Uruguay, Montevideo, and my time here.

Graffiti reading "Mujica is a murderer," painted over with "Mujica is President."

• I've become completely fascinated with one particular moment in Uruguayan history.  During the late 1960's and early 1970's, President Jorge Pacheco Areco, amid a labor and economic crisis, suspended many constitutional protections and instituted military rule.  The primary opposition came from the Tupamaro movement, a group of leftist guerillas looking to emulate the still-recent Cuban revolution.  Among other things, Areco's government tortured its opponents, and threw many of them in jail, often without due process.  Specifically, dissidents were imprisoned in the Punta Carretas prison.  However, in September 1971, 111 political prisoners (including the new President-elect, Jose Mujica) escaped through a tunnel they had dug under the wall.  Remarkably, there's a story of someone calling the police precinct to report the escape, informing the officer on the other end of the phone that 100 or so prisoners had just dug through his floor and left.  The officer responded that none of the guards had seen anyone trying to escape, and admonished the citizen not to waste police time with any pranks.  Presumably the officer was later fired.  Punta Carretas, it's worth noting, is now one of the nicest neighborhoods in Montevideo.  In one of the stranger metamorphoses I've heard of, the prison has been converted into a shopping mall.  As you can see from my pictures, Punta Carretas Shopping ("shopping" is the word for "mall") still retains a good deal of the original prison architecture.  At any rate, the story of the escape has grabbed my attention, so I've picked up a copy of Fuga de Punta Carretas, a book written by Eleuterio Fernández Huidobro, one of the escapees.  I intend to make it the first book I read in Spanish, after I finish the book I'm currently reading in English.  And for any of my friends in the film world, I am certain that this would make an excellent Hollywood screenplay.

• I've decided to stay in Montevideo through Tuesday.  Not only will this give me the opportunity to see what Montevideo is like on a weekend, it will also allow me to attend Mujica's inauguration, which is at Plaza Independencia, a short walk from my school.  Apparently Hillary Clinton is expected to be in town, which should be cool to see.  From what I've heard, there are also likely to be a large number of parties and performances, something akin to the dozens of inaugural balls in the U.S.  To me, however, as well as to a number of Uruguayans, the most fascinating thing is that Mujica has managed to be elected at all.  It is important to note that the Tupamaros weren't political prisoners of the Nelson Mandela variety.  As a group, they were rather violent.  Many of them killed people.  Mujica himself was convicted of killing a police officer.  Moreover, the Communist dreams of the Tupamaros were never realized.  Instead, they become more moderate, and formed a legitimate political party on the left side of the spectrum.  So Mujica's election isn't the inevitable result of some steady stream of leaders forced on the country by the victors of the war.  In that light, I find it truly remarkable that Mujica was elected, by a 9 point margin no less, to represent many of the same people with whom he was once at war.  This is not, to be clear, a matter without controversy (as the picture above indicates).  There are plenty of locals who are uneasy with Mujica's progression from guerilla to statesman.  But on the whole, everyone I've met seems very excited about his potential as President.  As a side note, after his escape from prison, Mujica was shot six times by police and taken back into custody.  He was held for the next fourteen years.  Two of those years were spent at the bottom of a well.  As though that were not enough, I've also been told that the bullets were never removed.  So I think he's probably earned his new job.

• One of the results of the success of the Tupamaros (now part of the Frente Amplio or "Broad Front" party) is that a lot of Uruguay's policy has something of a leftward lean.  The primary example of this is the significant role of the state in many aspects of the lives of its citizens.  Sometimes this shows up in ways that are somewhat expected--e.g. that Antel, the energy company, is state owned.  Sometimes the effects are more subtle, such as in the case of Montevideo's lone amusement park--a river-side Coney Island type affair with some truly rickety attractions--which is state-run as well.  The thing that I find most impressive, however, is that every student in a public Uruguayan elementary school is given a state-issued laptop.  In addition to the usual hardware, the laptops are equipped with LoJack, which addresses any concerns of rampant theft that might otherwise spring up.  The first group of students are entering middle school with their laptops this year, and the program has been an overwhelming success.  Though it's obviously much easier to have government-mandated computers in a country of three million than in a country of 300 million, the United States could stand to take a lesson from Uruguay's efforts to ensure that its children aren't lapped by competetors in the internet age.

• As I've mentioned, the two major soccer teams here are Nacional and Peñarol.  As opposed to just saying "I'm a Nacional fan" or "I'm a Peñarol" fan, the fans of the two teams have special nicknames.  Fans of Nacional are "bolso," which stems from the pocket ("bolsillo" in Spanish) that historically adorned the Nacional jerseys.  Peñarol fans are "manya," which actually stems from the Italian word "mangiare," which means "to eat."  Peñarol fans were referred to by rivals as "manya mierda," which is a colorful term for people who eat excrement.  The Peñarol supporters decided to reclaim the term, and now proudly wear shirts declaring "soy manya."

• This isn't a particularly Uruguay-specific thing, but last weekend in Cabo Polonio marked the fifth different incorrect spelling of my name I've come across in this trip.  Spanish speakers have a really tough time both hearing and pronouncing the name Seth.  I'm not too bothered by it, having grown up with grandparents who called me "Set," but it is amusing to see the wide range of ways there apparently are to butcher a one-syllable name.  I'd already been Sef, Set, Sez (because in Spain, the "z" is used like the "th" in English), and Sed.  In Cabo Polonio, I received my newest moniker, Serth.  It's important to note that the pronunciation is using the Spanish version of the letter R, so it's not quite as far out there as it looks.  Still.  I'm excited to be at 5 names and still counting.

• I'd often heard that it was fairly easy for Portuguese speakers to learn Spanish and vice versa.  I have learned that this is pretty true.  In a very large number of cases, Portuguese sounds very much like Spanish with slightly different consonants.  On the trip to Colonia, most of our tour group was Brazilian, so the tour guide spoke in Portuguese much of the time, and I found that I could follow a lot of what was being said.  That said, Portuguese, to an English speaker, is a pretty bizarre sounding language.  There are a lot of "sh," "zh," and "ch" sounds.  I gave my Brazilian friends a hard time by claiming that I could translate Black Eyed Peas's "I Gotta Feeling" into Portuguese as follows: "I gotta feelin / that tonightch gonna be a goodch nightch / that tonightch gonna be a goodch nightch / that tonightch gonna be a goodch goodch nightch."  I also learned that the Portuguese word for iPod is spelled the same as in English, but pronounced, as you might expect, "i-potch."

• I've been spending a lot of class time lately practicing the subjunctive, which is a tense that doesn't really exist in English.  Or, to the extent that it does, we certainly don't have specific verb conjugations for it.  Subjunctive is used, among other things, to express a desire or a wish, and one of the forms of doing that is to say "Ojala que [subjunctive form of thing that you want to happen]."  This roughly translates as "I wish that [the thing will happen]."  Interestingly, however, it comes from Arabic, from the phrase "Inshallah," praying that a certain event will come to pass.  I had always noticed that Spanish contains a number of words that have a somewhat Arabic sound to them (e.g. the word for "carpet," which is "alfombra") but never managed to put together the fairly obvious fact that the Ottoman occupation of Spain influx of North African immigrants into Spain starting in the 8th century* had a significant linguistic impact.  For that reason, Spanish includes a number of words that are completely distinct from other Romantic languages--with the notable exception of Portuguese, because the Ottoman rule Arabic influence covered the entire Iberian Penninsula.  This was all explained to me last night by my friend Liz, so I thank her for that excellent contribution to my ever-expanding knowledge of random stuff.

• I'm hoping to get to one last murga show before I head off to Argentina, probably on Friday or Saturday.  If you're interested, I tracked down the website of the excellent murga group I saw perform two weeks ago, Queso Magro.

Tomorrow should be fun, as I'm hoping to explore some fun stuff down along the Rambla, including the state-run amusement park, before heading over to the tango show.  I suspect I won't have time to check in tomorrow, but I'm sure I'll be back before too long.  Until then, hasta luego.

Saludos,
Seth

* My father corrected me on this. Knowledge of random stuff expanded further.

Fotografía:

Montevideo

Uruguay, I'm a guay tres - Cabo Polonio is duned

I spent the weekend in Cabo Polonio, an isolated beach town along the eastern coast of Uruguay that is renowned for its sand dunes and laid-back style.  Because it's so far out on the coast, with dunes that get as high as some New York City brownstones, Cabo Polonio can only be reached by large 4x4 shuttles that run between the local bus stop and the town itself--normal cars can't traverse the road.  The isolation also means that the town is almost completely off the grid, in a literal sense: the lone electrical line powers the lighthouse, and nothing else.  As a result, it has developed into something of a hippie commune, where there are no schools or government services, and people go to live a life apart from the rest of civilization.

I should note at this point that Cabo Polonio was the first place I've been on this trip that didn't leave me thrilled and amazed, which might bother me some if it didn't also connote an absolutely stellar batting average in terms of (places I''ve visited that are jaw-droppingly awesome) divided by (places I've visited).  On the plus side, the natural beauty was spectacular, and it was pretty amazing to spend two nights in a place that is largely untouched by technology.  On the other end of the spectrum, I think that, between summer camp and college, I've seen enough drum circles to get me through a lifetime, so I didn't feel like the cultural experience offered me much of anything new.  So I left Cabo Polonio feeling pretty ambivalent--I was certainly glad I'd come to see what it had to offer, but at the same time thrilled to be heading out of town.

I traveled up to Cabo Polonio with my friends from school Adrian (from Switzerland) and Elisete (Brazil), and we were met the next day by Tuanny (Brazil), Pepe (Spain--he's not a student, just in Montevideo for work), and Hedda (Germany).  The night we got in, I actually loved the place.  First off, the truck ride out was a pretty uncommon experience, topped off by the last 10 minutes of it spent driving along the beach.  Moreover, we found a really lovely place to eat some dinner, and had quite an adventure finding our way around what pass for roads--really just paths of sand that don't have grass growing on them--with my tiny pocket LED flashlight.  The whole atmosphere of the place was as serene as could be, and I was pretty thrilled, notwithstanding the frankly unreasonable prices of the hostel we stayed at.  When we visited the lighthouse the next morning and looked across the water to a rocky island that was covered in sea lions--which were, unfortunately, more easily heard than seen--I started to understand the uniqueness of the place.

The dunes, which stretch for miles from the coastline, give one the feeling of having suddenly left the fairly developed comforts of Montevideo and arrived in the middle of the Sahara.  For no particular reason, I felt a burst of energy as we approached these massive mounds of sand, and took off running for the top of one.  Once my friends made their way to where I was--mostly confused by my reaction to a large plot of empty space--I sprinted off again to the next peak, just a bit to the West, and at a slightly higher elevation.  Crossing just over the crest, I found myself in a spot where neither my compatriots nor the ocean were visible, and where sand stretched out in every direction, patches of grass springing up in places, and the hazy outline of civilization painted on the horizon to the South.  The only clear evidence of human presence was the line of footprints that ended exactly where I stood.  The ocean was still audible, though not much more so than what you hear when you put your ear to a conch shell.  The experience left me with the feeling of an almost hyper-awareness of my surroundings, stemming from the total isolation of the place.  I'm not a particularly meditative fellow, but if ever there was a place to go and just exist, this was almost certainly it.

The illusion was unfortunately shattered for me when I began the walk back to my friends and I came across a large plastic crate sticking out of the sand.  If this were an isolated incident, I could have written it off, or at least let it go.  But it quickly became one of those situations where noticing one example of a thing attunes your senses to other examples of that thing, and I found myself coming across discarded sandals, containers, and even a glo-stick.  At this point I started to process the fact that Cabo Polonio, in spite of being so naturally unspoiled in so many ways, was at the same time one of the most neglected and exploited places I've been on this trip.  I had already picked up on what was quite frankly the foulest odor I've come across in a long time.  The infrastructure is just not set up to handle the sewage of the crowds that descend on the place for the music festivals and hippie vibe, to say nothing of the town's few thousand permanent residents in their shacks (with only rudimentary plumbing in the best cases).  The result is a distinctive stench evocative of a mountain of week-old dead snails.  And that, in combination with the truly pervasive issue of litter on the ground, led me to the realization that the culture that has sprung up in Cabo Polonio appears to be completely unsustainable. 

There is certainly something fascinating about witnessing a group of people espousing a lifestyle unaffected by social conventions, a lifestyle that is purportedly pure and unblemished, and being able to see clearly how blatantly hypocritical the whole operation is.  Cabo Polonio has the feel of a Bob Marley poster in a Wesleyan dorm room.  There were Jamaican flags all over the place, and our hostel proudly displayed red, green, and gold over its roof.  But as one sees all too often in the states, the embrace of Rastafarian culture is really just an excuse to smoke pot.  If that's your cup of tea, it's well within your rights--philosophically, if not necessarily legally.  But it has always rung hollow to me, sort of along the lines of claiming to be Jewish because you like to eat knishes.  I don't know a whole lot about the Rastafarian faith, but I'm fairly certain it gets sold short by the denizens of Cabo Polonio, who have created an entire community out of a characature of a legitimate religion.  As a result, the whole town feels like one big excuse to rail against society, smoke a bowl, and throw trash on the ground.  I realize that you can find this type of thing pretty much anywhere, and that I'm likely to encounter no end of it when I move to Berkeley in the Fall.  But to me, the issue isn't so much that this culture exists in Cabo Polonio, as that it is the only culture that exists in Cabo Polonio.  Moreover, it is a culture that is not only destructive to its habitat, but unlike what I saw in Costa Rica, for example, it is a culture that seems blissfully unaware of just how destructive it is.  As such, the situation seems unlikely to resolve itself anytime in the foreseeable future.


So, at the end, I came away from this excursion feeling completely astounded by a landscape that was unlike anything I've ever seen before, but utterly infuriated by its treatment at the hands of its inhabitants.  I do think that it was good for me to finally travel somewhere on this trip that I did not love, both because I always enjoy (ever so slightly) having something to complain about, and because it is, of course, important to remember that, even in the middle of the adventure of a lifetime, things don't always turn out as you hope.  The lesson, I suppose, is to take away the good things: a completely new experience, an excellent time with friends, and a little more knowledge about what's out there in the world.

Tomorrow night I'm going to a show at Teatro Solís, one of the oldest theaters in South America, to see a concert of Uruguayan folkloric songs performed by two singers and the Montevideo philharmonic orchestra.  From everything I've heard, it should be a pretty remarkable experience, so hopefully this time I'll manage to check in without letting two or three days slip by.  In the meantime, it's late here, even by Urugurayan standards, so I'm off to sleep.

Saludos,
Seth

Fotografía:

Cabo Polonio

Co-lo-ni-a, Co-lo-ni-a, You border on the Rio de la Plata

I spent the weekend traveling to Colonia del Sacramento, generally just referred to as Colonia.  Colonia is the closest Uruguayan city to Buenos Aires, and is positioned right at the point where the Rio de la Plata starts to open into the ocean, so it was a desireable territory for much of its colonial history.  The Portuguese founded Colonia in 1680--the first European settlement in what is now Uruguay.  Due to its strategically advantageous location, Colonia spent the next 150 years as a colonial ping pong ball, changing sovereignty as follows: Portugal, Spain, Portugal, Spain, Portugal, Spain, Portugal, Spain, Liga Federal (a liberated region which would mostly eventually become Uruguay), Portugal, Brazil, and finally, in 1828, Uruguay.  As though this were insufficient evidence of its historical value, Colonia is also a UNESCO world heritage site.  So I was obviously excited to spend a day there and get a sense of the place.

Although a modern city has sprung up alongside the Barrio Antiguo (Old City), the original colonial pueblo maintains its historic charm.  Cobblestone streets wend their way around a series of low, old buildings, everything pulling you downhill towards the coastline.  The streetlamps are tinted with yellow glass, presumably intended to retain the feel of the oil lamps that used to light the passageways.  One thing that's sort of interesting about it is that you can tell whether a road was build by the Spanish or the Portuguese, depending on the layout of the cobblestone.  The Spanish cut stones into little cubes and rectangles that could easily fit together, making foot and carriage traffic a lot easier.  The Portuguese, it seems, just threw a bunch of rocks on the ground, maybe raked them a little, and said "Behold, a street!"  Seriously, the old Portuguese streets are comically haphazard in their construction, as you can see from some of the pictures.

These days, Colonia remains an object of much desire, except that it's sought by tourists instead of imperialists.  Seriously, the place was so packed to the gills with Argentines and Brazilians that prices at stores were listed in Argentine Pesos and Brazilian Reales before they were listed in Uruguayan Pesos.  When I tried to find a place to get some dinner on Saturday night, there were almost no tables available anywhere, because everyone had come into town for their Carnaval vacation--the weekend before Ash Wednesday is a four day weekend here, extending into Monday and Tuesday, although many people take the entire week off.  I did ultimately find a place to sit down and have some pasta* and a couple Pilsens before shuffling back to my quarters for the night.  Unfortunately, the table where I ate happened to be on the mosquito superhighway.  So, as I'm sitting in my room writing this, my legs are so thoroughly spotted with pepto-colored calamine lotion that they give me the appearance of a cow that almost certainly produces strawberry milk.

Colonia's history as a tourist mecca is almost as old as its history as an object of Iberian dispute.  In 1910, Argentine shipping magnate Nicolás Mihanovich set up a sort of Argentine equivalent of a Catskills retreat.  Real de San Carlos, in the northern part of Colonia, included a luxury hotel and casino, a horserace track, a bullfight ring, and a jai alai court.  As it turned out, though Mihanovich may have made the right gamble, he made it at precisely the wrong time, as bullfighting was banned by the Uruguayan government only two years later, and World War I left the entire operation bankrupt by 1917.  The Plaza de Toros still stands on the outskirts of town, an impressive piece of urban ruin, with its steel arches and girders visible through the crumbling brick.  The racetrack, as it happens, is still in use, although I did not make it there.  But, as anyone who watches Mad Men knows, jai alai remained "the next big thing" for at least another fifty years.

On the way to Colonia, our bus stopped briefly Nuevo Helvecia, known locally as Colonia Suiza ("Swiss Colony").  The name comes, as you might expect, from its origin as a Swiss colony in 1862.  For this reason, you get such comical street names as Calle Frau Vogel.  We did not see much of the town, but we did stop for about 20 minutes at the Granja Arenas collection museum, which includes the world's largest keyring collection, world's largest pencil collection, world's smallest pencil (which, not joking, I managed to miss), and some other world record that I didn't catch.  It was incredible, primarily because it's the sort of crap that you expect to see when you pull off at a highway rest stop in eastern Indiana.  It's really not what you think of when shuttling around such far-flung locales as the Región Rioplatense.  So, just as an anthropological experience, it was fascinating.  I will also add that, for a room with 13,600 keyrings, there were surprisingly few from professional sports teams.  I noticed, for example, that he did not have the Mets bottle-opener keyring I have in my room.  This strikes me as a good opportunity for expansion.  Similarly, he was lacking in keyrings associated with professional music acts, as I did not spot a single Meat Loaf key ring, like the one I used to have, but which I sadly lost to the ages.  On the plus side, they have a nice little gift shop, where they sell local cheeses and jams (Colonia Suiza is, not surprisingly, known for its cheeses).  I got a really nice block of a cheese that's somewhere between Swiss and Gouda, and some fig jam.  The gift shop also sells keyrings--presumably only duplicates of keyrings that already in the collection--so I picked up a Nacional keyring to keep my archaic Uruguayan keys on.

So, now I'm back in Montevideo, having enjoyed my trip and enjoying the fact that there seem to be fewer people here right now than there were in Colonia this weekend, even though this is a much bigger city.  But everyone has left for Carnaval, leaving the streets delightfully free for romping and roaming.  So I'm going to take my pink-tinted gams over to Punta Carretas, a lovely little neighborhood by the water, and eventually (probably closer to 9 or so), get myself some dinner.

Saludos,
Seth

*I've generally been of the opinion that eating Italian food as a tourist in any country other than Italy is cheating.  I'd thought it to be depriving oneself of a good local experience in favor of something both familiar and, generally, not as well-prepared.  I then realized that Uruguay has an extremely large Italian immigrant population--a lot of the same immigrants who fled Europe for the USA in the 19th and 20th centuries also had family who ended up here or in Argentina.  Once I embraced a willingness to try the pasta here, I discovered that it's actually incredible.  So I've now had pasta for three out of my last five meals.

Fotografía:

Colonia de Sacramento

Murga, She Wrote

As I mentioned at the end of my soccer post, last night's excellent adventure also included a trip to a Murga performance.  Murga is a Uruguayan style of theater that is performed during Carnaval.  The performers consist of a large group of singers--generally a chorus of about 20 people, usually men--and three drummers.  One of the singers also jumps out and conducts from time to time.  The groups are generally not professional performers, and are usually just a collection of people who know each other, often from the same neighborhood.  Each group writes an original piece--about 45 minutes in length--focusing on a general theme, and offering humorous commentary on the last year's events, and numerous inside jokes.  The music is original (although sometimes borrowed for humorous purposes), and there are short scenes sprinkled throughout.  For those of you who attended summer camp with me at French Woods, this is just like the Sing skit, but on a massively impressive scale.  In the month-long Uruguayan Carnaval, these groups perform their shows several times, and they are ultimately judged at the end, with one group being crowned the winner.

You may have noticed that the list of performers did not include any musicians other than the three drummers.  This is because, aside from the very occasional mixing in of a lone acoustic guitar, the singers perform with only percussive accompaniment.  This means that, for 45 minutes, the singers need to rely only on each other and themselves to maintain the proper pitch.  If this doesn't sound impressive, consider that they're also singing in at least two and often three-part harmony.  Moreover (for the musically-inclined among you), they regularly drop in really unexpected chords, Augmented 7's and madness like that.  I tried to catch some of it in the videos I shot, so hopefully they can give you some sense.  But, just in musical terms, the performance was one of the most impressive things I've ever seen.  I definitely recommend scanning through some of the pictures and--especially--videos of the performance.  It doesn't quite do it justice, but I think you can get a feel for how remarkable it is that they can put this all together.

Perhaps equally impressive is that the groups manage to be funny, even to those of us who don't speak Spanish particularly well.  We saw two groups, both of them incredible and hilarious.  The second one in particular really managed to get its jokes across.  Their theme was "aquello," which roughly translates as "it," but is a general pronoun used to refer to something very far away.  It followed a group of people desperately searching everywhere (including in heaven) for aquello.  This seemed to be a significant part of the plan, as the trip to heaven set up a series of Michael Jackson jokes.  Lewis Black once said that Michael Jackson is a punchline, and you don't even really need a joke before it.  Any set-up will do (e.g. "two Jews walk into a bar." "Michael Jackson.").  This group made excellent use of that strategy.  The premise of that section revolved around Michael Jackson meeting someone in heaven--no one in my group was particularly sure who the other person was, but the logical guess would be a famous Uruguayan who died in the last year.  Although someone else thought it was old Michael Jackson meeting young Michael Jackson.  Hard to say.  At any rate, the jokes were still often clear and the performances (right down to the moonwalk) were excellent.  I also felt a nice little surge of glee when they started singing about Jackson to the tune of "New York, New York:"  "No es de New York.  No es de New York.  Es de Los Angeles...."  The other group focused its theme on "Secretos," including one character's particularly shameful admission that he wasn't planning to vote (voting is mandatory in Uruguay, punishable by a large fine).  So, clearly we managed to get a lot of the jokes that were made.  But even during the parts on which we were less clear, there was so much else to pull you in and invite you to listen.

In addition to the tremendous work that clearly goes into writing, rehearsing, and incorporating the often complicated choreography, the groups had stunning costumes, as you can see from the pictures above.  Both groups that we saw started the performance in one set of costumes, and then changed further along to set up for the big finale.  The finales seem to warrant very flashy costumes, as one group was sequined and rhinestoned to the point of nearly blinding the audience.  The second group elected to go with Sgt Pepper style satin military suits with epaulettes.  The word "finale" isn't really appropriate of course, because the show ends with the entire group continuing to sing their final song as they march off the stage and into the audience, where they walk around singing for another five minutes or so.

Another amazing thing about all of this is that these groups assemble their performances on a very limited budget.  Throughout the year they hold local fundraisers to get the costumes together and cover whatever other incidentals they might need--for example they show up for performances in buses.  Fortunately, the thing that really brings it together, I think, for the performers, is the crowd.  This was a Thursday night, albeit one during the summer, and the show ran from about 8pm to almost 2am.*  And the audience, in spite of all that, was completely into it from start to finish.  They got all the inside jokes we missed, and when each group finished, they went absolutely nuts.  The concession area--where the actors ended up once they stopped singing--was just mobbed with people wanting to talk to the performers, get autographs, take pictures, or just be part of the scene.

These performances take an entire year to put together, and countless hours of writing, creating, and rehearsing.  In the end, there is little reward but the pride in a job well done.  This entire Murga style is clearly a labor of love, brought about by a deep connection between a group of people and the culture that unites them.  Getting to witness it, even as an outsider, was a pretty incredible experience. 

With that, I will bid you goodnight, as it's after 1am here, and I have to get up early tomorrow to catch a bus to Colonia, an adorable historic down a couple hours west of here.  I'll have a post on Colonia in time.  Meanwhile, have a wonderful weekend.

Saludos,
Seth

*We arrived late because of the soccer game, and left at 12:30, which is why we only saw two groups perform.

Fotografía:
Murga Show

Center holds it. Holds it. Holds it.

Yesterday was one of those days one only really has while traveling in a foreign city.  I was originally expecting to write a post about the one incredible thing I had planned.  But, as happens sometimes, I stumbled into yet another equally-if-not-more incredible thing, so it looks like it will take two posts to properly address the awesomeness that was my Thursday night in Montevideo.

After morning classes, Liz, Matt, and I took in a nice shwarma lunch made by some very pleasant Armenian Uruguayans and then hopped in a cab to head over to Parque Central.  Unlike the Parque Central in Granada (or New York for that matter), this Parque Central is a soccer stadium. 

I have the good fortune to be in Uruguay for the start of the Copa Libertadores season.  Libertadores is the South American champions league, which has a structure that is likely familiar to those of you who know much about professional soccer.  For those who don't, the way that it works is this: Each country has its own league, and each league has several divisions (first division, second division, etc.).  At the end of a year, the top few teams in the lower divisions get to move up to a better division, while the worst teams move down.  So, if you imagine a universe in which the Nationals got moved down to the International League and the Durham Bulls moved up to the Majors, that gives you some sense.

The league champions from each of the countries--along with various runners-up--get to play in the Libertadores, which includes a total of 32 teams.  What's particularly interesting is that the leagues vary greatly in terms of quality.  Some leagues have excellent professional caliber teams (Brazil and Argentina, of course, among them).  In other countries the leagues might be won by a University team, as is the case in Chile, whose representative in Libertadores is U of Santiago.  Nacional, which won the Uruguayan Primera División last season, is one of three Uruguayan teams in this year's Libertadores.  Historically, they've also been one of the most successful teams, having won Libertadores 3 times.  They've also played more games in the league than any other team, due in large part to their 11 Primera División titles.

Uruguay has a very strong soccer tradition, including having both hosted and won the first world cup ever, in 1930.  In addition to Nacional's three Libertadores championships, Peñarol, the Yankees to Nacional's Red Sox--or maybe vice versa, depending on which league you're thinking about, has won Libertadores five times.  For this particular game, Nacional was hosting Deportivo Cuenca, from Ecuador.  It was Nacional's first game of the season and the fans were stoked.  So, needless to say, the experience was absolutely crazy.

First off, despite soccer's ho-hum reputation in the U.S., it is an extremely exciting and action-packed sport.  We managed to get seats in the second row--higher is often considered better, because the view from down in front is obstructed by a fence topped with barbed wire.  The players do not stop running the entire time, and the ball is literally constantly in motion.  Of course, the real action is on the short sides of the rectangle, behind the goals.  I have been to NBA playoff games, NFL playoff games, and World Series games.  I've watched a lot of sports on TV.  I have never seen fans as crazy as the Nacional fans behind the goals. 

The most obvious difference between sporting events I've attended and this one is the singing.  The fans, especially those behind the goal, spend literally the entire game--all 90 minutes of play, plus halftime, plus a decent amount of time before and after, singing team fight songs.  Half of them aren't even watching the game--they're just jumping around, playing drums, and going nuts.  Almost as impressive is the endless array of songs.  I lost count around 20.  I take some pride in knowing all the words to "Meet The Mets," including the verses ("Oh the butcher and the baker and the people on the street, where do they go? To meet the Mets!").  But these guys make me feel like I just learned a limerick only to see someone else reciting the Iliad in the original ancient Greek.  The singing doesn't die down for anything--even a goal by the opposition.  In the U.S., when the home team's pitcher gives up a home run, the crowd might go silent for a bit before regrouping.  Here, the singing just got louder, the fans either oblivious to the negative result, or just pushing right through it.

If that's the reaction to something bad, you can just imagine what happens when Nacional scores.  I managed to see this happen three times.  Some people light road flares (in the stands).  Others light fireworks (again, in the stands).  Some climb up to the very top of the 20-or-so foot fence behind the goal and scream with what I assume is excitement, but might well be an adverse reaction to rusty chain-link.

An additional interesting note is that there did not appear to be a scoreboard anywhere in the stadium.  I realize that soccer is an inherently low-scoring affair, but I'm impressed that they can genuinely rely on the crowd to keep track of the tally.  When the game ended with a 3-2 score in favor of Nacional, no one had to ask their neighbor what the result had been.  Granted, the scoring of one game matters a bit less in champions league soccer.  The concept is probably a bit strange to those of us who are accustomed to more common American sports, but the score from this match will be added to the score when Nacional visits Cuenca, and the combined tally will determine the winner.

The food (of course I have to mention it, even if just briefly) was also delicious.  There isn't really such a thing as an orderly line down here, so I had to elbow my way past at least one child and one elderly gentleman, but I got my chorizo on a bun, and it was completely worth it.  Add to that the churro I got from a vendor walking around, and I was in ballpark food heaven.  They don't sell beer at the stadium (a good idea, believe me), but one can easily swing by a nearby parilla for some Pilsen or Patricia before the game. 

So, we left the game at about 9, satisfied with the awesomeness of the experience (I mean that in the traditional sense of the word "awesome," as in "awe-inspiring").  We had a bit of trouble making up our minds as to what to do next, but ultimately settled on a trip over to the Teatro de Verano (Summer Theater) at Parque Rodó for a murga show, which might have been even cooler than the match.  More on that later, though, as right now it's 8:30, the sun will be down inside of an hour, and I need to find something to eat for dinner.

Saludos,
Seth

Fotografía:
Montevideo Soccer Match

Uruguay, I'm a guay

Well, it's 10pm here in Montevideo, and the sky has been dark for about 45 minutes.  Time just exists in a different way here, and it's a thing I'm still trying to wrap my mind around.  In a place where you eat lunch at 2:30ish, dinner after 10, and where the sun sets around 9, I think the entire thing would make a lot more sense if everyone would just agree that it's two hours earlier than we're claiming.  Unfortunately, I seem to be alone in that idea.  Seriously, I'm getting up at the exact same time as I was in Costa Rica, but here it's called 4 hours later.

 
I didn't really know what to expect when I got here.  I'd only ever met one Uruguayan person, a Spanish teacher I had when I went to Peru for two weeks in March of 2005, and took classes there.  I took it as a good sign, however, when I woke up for my first morning and encountered Claudia, the very same Spanish teacher, who in the last five years has moved back to Uruguay and taken a job teaching Spanish here.  Seriously.  The only person I've ever known from this country happens to work at the very school I'm attending.  It's downright ridiculous.

It's a nice change of pace to be back in a real city, and all the more exciting that it's one in which it is summer and there are palm trees.  I have to say though, I have absolutely no idea how all of these people are not only alive, but apparently healthy.  The local specialty food, the chivito, is the kind of thing a cardiologist might dream about a few days after contracting malaria.  It consists of meat wrapped in ham, cheese, and bacon.  The entire thing is sauteed in either butter or olive oil, and served with an absolutely necessary side of greasy french fries.  More often than not, dinner is a steak.  Just a steak.  For what it's worth, I have seen vegetables.  I just haven't seen anyone eating them.

As with neighboring Argentina, almost everyone here drinks mate, almost all the time.  Mate (pronounced "MAH-tay") is a tea-like beverage made from a South American plant.  They fill a mate cup--usually a hollowed out gourd--with hot water and powdered mate leaves.  They then drink through a special straw called a bombilla, which resembles a hollow spoon with holes at the bottom.  The holes allow the water to seep through while filtering out the chunks of mate, thus letting the drinker imbibe only the tea.  It's a nifty little thing that I have tried before in the states, but have not yet gotten to test out here in actual mate-drinker land.  Oddly, they don't serve mate at restaurants or cafes.  People just bring their gourds with them wherever they go.  Today, however, I got a gourd, so tomorrow I'll be mate-ing it up, and I'll let you know how it goes.

I haven't gotten to explore the city a ton, but I've walked around a few areas and it's really nice.  There are parillas all over the place, which are restaurants where basically all the food is slow-grilled with indirect heat from a charcoal flame.  "Parilla" literally translates to "grill," so that makes sense.  One really cool thing here is the Mercado del Puerto, the port market, which is basically a shopping mall of parillas.  I had only been to the touristy outside, but today I took a pass through after lunch and it's amazing.  I was too full for anything other than a beer (the main local options are Patricia and Pilsen), but I expect to eat there more or less every day between now and when I leave.  In addition to fairly decent beer, the Uruguayans make some reasonably tasty red wine (I'm currently drinking a glass of Tannat-Merlot blend) and a concoction called medio y medio--literally "half and half," consisting of half white wine and half sparkling muscadine wine.  Medio y medio is possibly the sweetest thing I've ever consumed, but it's quite refreshing when it's 80 degrees out (apologies to my friends and family snowed in in the Northeast corridor).

Something I always enjoy noticing in other countries is what kind of businesses tend to combine in ways that we don't expect.  In the states, it's Pizza Hut and Taco Bell.  In Nicaragua it was hot dogs and coffee.  Here, it's pastries and liquor.  Yes, I've seen three different pastry shop / liquor stores here, with every indication being that there are others.  It's nice to be able to grab a dulce de leche filled croissant and a bottle of dulce de leche liquor at the same time.  In fairness, I haven't tried either yet, out of concern that all my teeth would spontaneously dissolve.  But it's good to know I have the option.  Of course, I've been spending those same calories on two ice cream cones a day, so maybe I'm not gaining a whole lot.  The ice cream here is incredible (although I've heard Argentine ice cream is even better).  Yesterday I had mascarpone ice cream.  Today I had breadfruit and something that was a swirl of cream, dulce de leche, and chocolate pieces.  Win.

I suppose I should also talk a little bit about the challenge of learning Spanish in the Rio de la Plata region (which is basically Uruguay and Argentina).  If you've ever heard an Argentine speak spanish, you know it's quite different from other types of Spanish.  It actually sounds beautiful, almost like a cross of Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish, which makes sense given the immigrant backgrounds of the region.  The "ll" or "y" sounds, which in other places are something of a cross between an English "j" and "y," are instead pronounced the way we'd pronounce "sh" or even the "zh" sound, like the "j" in "Jacques."  So it's extremely difficult when you're accustomed to "Yo me llamo" being pronounced "jo may yah-mo" and instead hearing "sho may zhah-mo."  Moreover, Rioplatense Spanish uses the "Vos" form, and does so with much greater frequency than I found in Nicaragua.  "Vos" is used almost exclusively, with "tú" showing up in occasional formal circumstances, and "usted" largely reserved for VIPs.  The conjugations of most verbs are completely different when using "vos," so it's not an easy adjustment, and something I've never really learned before.  On the plus side, it's a fairly easy conjugation, as there are almost no irregular verbs (for those who speak the language, the verb "tener," for example, goes from "tu tienes" to "vos tenés."  The accent moves to the second syllable, but it is otherwise almost completely straightforward.  That said, one of the challenges I'm encountering is the incorporating and applying all the various types of Spanish I've been learning.  It's not really a big deal so long as one stays consistent, but it's tough to do that when you've gone from "tu" in Nicaragua to "usted" in Costa Rica to "vos" down here, so I frequently find myself botching pronouns.  In the long run I do think it will be better for my language skills, but for the moment it's a bit of a challenge.

Politics* here are also worth talking about.  I've been told by multiple people that Uruguayans are deeply passionate and interested in national politics.  The incumbent liberal party is very popular here, and their newest candidate, Pepe Mujica, was recently elected to the presidency (the incumbent, Tabaré Vázquez, can't run again for another five years, according to term limit laws).  Voting is mandatory.  If you do not vote, you are taxed.  In all honesty, this could make a very interesting subject should my graduate research take me more towards comparative politics.

Montevideo is sort of a hard city to pin down, although I've done my best here.  I've encountered a pretty broad range of opinions, pretty quickly.  Initially I met a number of people who mostly seemed to bash the city.  The primary complaint seemed to be that it has less to offer.  This strikes me a bit as choosing to go to Charleston, SC over New York, and complaining that Charleston isn't New York.  Certainly it's true, but that doesn't mean Charleston isn't a wonderful city in its own right.  It is, in fact, one of my favorites.  So I've withheld criticism of Montevideo, and I'm starting to think that was wise.  I'm really enjoying this city.  It doesn't have the bustle of a major city, or the active nightlife scene.  But it's a really pleasant and relaxing place with a lot of cool cultural traits and really beautiful areas.

Anyway, with that, I'm off to watch last night's Lost episode, and then head to bed.  Tomorrow, I'm hoping to make it to a soccer match.  The South American champions league is going on right now, and Nacional, one of the Uruguayan teams, is taking on Deportivo Cuenco, from Ecuador.  I'm planning to go with my new friends Matt, Liz, and Sam (a different Sam from the one in Central America), so hopefully we'll be able to get in and avoid any damage at the hands of riotous South American soccer crowds (note to my mother: don't worry, it's no more dangerous than a Mets game).

Saludos,
Seth

*For those who are wondering, Laura Chinchilla won the election in Costa Rica, and will be Costa Rica's first female president.

Fotografía:
Montevideo