Montevideo: A tale of one city

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It was the best of times, it was the worst of times... though not necessarily in that order. I had really only come to Montevideo to duck into the Brazilian consultate to arrange my visa, but I foolishly hadn't factored in the 'fatneck time premium' one must consider when dealing with bureaucratic pencil pushers and paper shufflers. Thankfully, the visa processing time was only two working days, and not the 'four to six weeks' of the good old Tax Office.

There was little to remark of my time in the city, except for the events of one day which started off slow but turned out noteworthy, for good and bad reasons. The city itself is pretty small, so I set off on a walking tour to take in the sights, if there indeed were any worth seeing (which there probably weren't). I think one would have to see Montevideo before they saw Buenos Aires to really warm to the place, because it is really just like a mini version of the latter minus all the good stuff. It's not a bad place by any stretch. It's just not that good.

It was a 35 degree day (I shudder to think what it might be like in the height of summer) so during my 6 hour stroll I took in, amongst other things, the sights on the boulevarde which runs around the Rio de la Plata and passes the city beaches. As I passed the first one and contemplated the strangeness of a white sand beach lapped by water the colour of the Yarra, I heard a noise and turned around to see a motorbike wrapped around a street sign and the rider careening across the footpath no more than 10m from where I was standing.

As there was no-one else around in the immediate vicinity it was pretty scary. The guy's helmet had come off at some stage during the fall but luckily it was late in the piece so he didn't have any head injuries and was conscious. It was a long time ago that I learnt about first aid at the Lorne Surf Lifesaving Club, I didn't have my phone on me, and I can't speak Spanish anyway. Thankfully a car came by soon after so they could call in help. While the helmet most definitely saved the bloke's life, his cotton pants hadn't yielded so much protection for his leg. To avoid gratuitous detail, i'll just say that I saw a lot of things below his knee that I'd never seen before. Picture the Nathan Brown injury with lots of blood, bone and raw flesh and you're pretty much there. I hope he can one day walk again but I imagine it will take some time.

That night I was planning on heading to Colonia (a small town 2 hours away on the Rio de la Plata) for one night. As I walked back to the hostel I was however presented with a dilemma when I saw a billboard advertising a Jethro Tull concert that night at the Montevideo Municipal Velodrome. After a brief deliberation, rock and roll (or progressive art rock as the case were) won out.

I got the cheap tickets and was in the nosebleed section (I didn't get a nosebleed though) and was therefore too far away to take any good photos, or shout out track names (a favoured practice of myself and fellow live music devotees Matt Dunshea and Andy Tam) to any great effect. Nonetheless, the sound was great, it was a fantastic show and there were no regrets for staying in town for it.

If I was to nitpick, it seems that over 40 years of playing has affected Ian Anderson's sense of balance, as he didn't stand on one leg as much I would have liked. On the flip side, the 40 odd years of practice meant that his flute playing was quite incredible. I briefly pondered why the flute hasn't been used more in rock music history, but the answer is pretty obvious: there is only one Ian Anderson. He is a true musical artist - some of the melodies and strange time signatures (who writes songs in 5/4 time!?) were truly amazing. The band played quite a few instrumentals, but also classic favourites like 'Thick As A Brick', 'Living In The Past', 'Aqualung' and the one song encore, 'Locomotive Breath'. It was great to get a live music fix.

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Photos

Plaza Independencia
The statue is of Jose Artigas; his ashes are guarded by 2 soldiers in a huge underground mausoleum under the statue

White sand, brown water
I´d sunbake here but I don´t think I´d be too tempted to swim

It´s a long way to the top if you wanna...
...play orchestral/flamenco folk

Sitting in the bleachers at Jethro Tull
Despite being open air and a long way away, the sound was great

Comments

[MSD]

It was the best of times...
It was the blurst of times?! Fantastic stuff HJT.