first uruguayan impressions

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On my 4th day in lovely Montevideo, I finally feel like I have (almost) gotten over the jetlag. Which is a pity, since it's actually quite nice to get up early in the morning.....but then in the evenings I feel like a party pooper. Yesterday we went to a fantastic, free, open air concert in a park, but even before the clock struck midnight, I headed home to the comforts of my bed, while everybody else probably partied on until 5am (which is the time my internal clock told me it was at midnight....).

Anyway, here is some info, pick the headings you are interested in:

where I live
In a little room situated on the terrace of a flat shared with for other, positively lovely people - one of them my collegue at REDES Carlos - and a wonderful cat called Boris.

what I do
I hang out in the offices of REDES (Friends of the Earth Uruguay) and drink Mate. Oh, and work, of course.

prejudices that turned out to be true
"All Latinos are very friendly" - indeed, they really are. Lovely.
"Uruguayans drink 137 liters of Mate per day" - yes, they really do. I can't count the number of people walking around with a hot water bottle and mate all day long (Carlos even had one when he picked me up from the airport!), being filled and refilled and passed on to everybody who remotely looks like he would like to sip a bit of mate. I already got used to it and will definitely take a mate home.

prejudices that turned out to be untrue
Well.... haven't found any yet. I didn't have too many prejudices before I came here. I think. Alright, we all have them...let's wait and see.

facts of the week
*REDES (Friends of the Earth Uruguay): They have less office space than we have in our Brussels office, but roughly the same number of people work there. SIC! Good thing I brought my laptop, as the safest bet seems to be to arrive, grab a space where you find it, and have your own computer to work with. (Unfortunately, the first thing my computer did was die on me. Again. Fortunately, there are some Linux geeks at REDES who happily fixed it. For now.)
*ATALC (Friends of the Earth Latin America and Carribean): For their AGMs, one older person and one young person goes. To bridge the gap, or make sure none comes up. I'm not entirely sure about the definitions of young and old though - I think I might pass as young.
*Montevideo: I thought it's only on the riverside, but it's actually on the sea-side. Ok, the Rio de la Plata is a river, but since it's 200km wide, the beaches here feel like seaside. So does the wheather - it's warm enough to walk around in a T-Shirt :-)
*Argentina: even though it's 200km away on the other side of the Rio de la Plata, the smoke from their fires arrives here. The smoke in Montevideo is so thick you have a vision of about 10 blocks and no danger of getting sunburned. I might as well start smoking again.

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Comments

[Raoul]

Glad to hear you're safe
Hey Chrissi, Its great to hear that you've arrived safely and seem to be enjoying it already. Hope that keeps up. Don't breath in too much smoke, and don't bother taking up smoking again lol, its not worth the hassle, trust me. What's mate? I'm assuming its alcoholic, like all the palinka we were exposed to in Budapest, but maybe that's cos I've got booze on the brain! I've subscribed to your blog, so am on tenterhooks for the next Episode Pohl! :-D R

[Susiiiiiiiiiiiii]

what happens here in Brussels...unbelievable
Hi Chrissi, seems that you have a nice time. Great. Here in Brussels many things changed: *we have no government anymore in Brussels, Brussels decided to have now 50 districts instead of 19. *at first your desk was occupied very fast, your identity was erased - apart from your email address, because you need it. *then: the balcony of our FoEE office burned again so that we decided it is too dangerous to stay there - we moved out on Friday. Only people who were there and were fast enough to move to the new building are now working for FoEE further. And you know only few people were working on Friday. *In our private house: I moved to your room, put David on our roof and put all your staff I don't need on the street. And amazing how fast people grab things they could need potentially. *and the last: I am going to New Zealand in July, I got a nice job offer from my uncle - the captain of the oil tanker, you know - to work with the biggest oil companies to be his advisor. That are the main important news, I believe. SUSI

[Jelle]

Looking for a job and a country.
Helloo Chrissi, good to see you are picking up your smoking habit. Looking forward to sit on some (not the FoEE) balcony and have a brandy and a cigar. As you can read from Susi's reply I (yes of course it was me :( ) set the downstairs neighbors roof on fire so even though I was the first in the new office Magda sacked me. (Probably mostly because I tried to putt the blame on Paul, but she could see right through me) And as if that was not bad enough !!! By some miraculous accident some sparks of the office fire landed on the Brussels parliament/Reichstag.....well you see the picture. This off course had to be celebrated by a big Belgian Beerfest, which in turn of course triggered this whole discussion on whether they needed a government anyway. So you can imagine these funny talking people (especially after they drink to much) over here did not want to see my face for some time (except for on a stick maybe) when they found out it was me. So I decided to get out of here......you know a nice friendly country made out of fireproof materials by any chance?

[Reinoud]

Enjoy ...
Hello Little Chrissi !!! How are you doing ? I hope everything is fine and that you enjoy your stay in Montevideo. By the way, the smoke comming from Argentina is a punishment for the installation of the paper fabrics along the frontier (is it going to happen in the end ? I haven't heard of it anymore for a while ...). Big kisses from Ailin, (unbourn) Naira, Pato and myself.