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Every sunday morning takes place the largest flea market in Uruguay, named after the street where it's located.La feria de tristan narvaja is the kinda place where you can find everything, ranging from tarantula like spiders, parrots, old comic magazines, groceries, books, arts & crafts, old vinyl records, old tv and radio sets, antiques, to the latest pirate piece of software. I guess, "eclectic" is the most suitable word for the place.
It's the land of the collectionist and the pick-pocketer, a place where you can find the neighbor buying the week's stock of groceries, the ocassional madman shouting, the street beggar begging, and the reseller looking for some undervalued item. A human zoo of sorts, a uruguayan gallery of sights, sounds and scents. It's in some way the negative of a shopping center.
The market is placed all along the tristan narvaja street, which is about one kilometer, and extends to every crossing and paralell street. While the backbone of the market takes place in tristan narvaja st, it is in the periphery where it is more likely to find hidden "treasures", laid on blankets on the street. It is also in the periphery where is less secure, and is a more fertile ground for street scams.
There is even one uruguayan urban myth that talks about one "torres garcia", a painting from one of the most famous uruguayan paintors was actually found and bought here for nothing. There is also another myth about an stradivarius being found here, but the latter I find harder to believe.
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Sunday, November 13, 2005
Tristan Narvaja, the largest uruguayan flea market
Saturday, November 12, 2005
Football, don't be a kangaroo
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Football is the opium of uruguayans, and this is one good example of it.
Right in front of the school of engineering of the university, I came across this banner. Translated it reads something like:
"Garat: Don't be kangaroo, and change the exam's time.
Your students"
Today, uruguay plays against australia for the world cup classification finals. When the national football team plays for the world cup the country freezes, everybody watches. It's kinda an unwritten law. Seems that some bitter college teacher, named garat, is taking exams at the same time as the match, and students don't take it at all well. They are right to complain!
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Tuesday, November 08, 2005
Truco, the most uruguayan of card games
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The most emblematically uruguayan card game is called "truco", or "uruguayan truco" to be accurate. Truco means something like trick, as in: to trick someone in doing something. It's played by four or six players, in two teams of 2, or three players, with a spanish deck without the 8's, the 9's and the wildcards.
Three cards are handed to each player, and one card is left upside down under the deck, this card is called "la muestra", which would be something like "the shown" (don't worry; it makes as much sense in english as it does in spanish ;). Every player plays one card at a time in three "rounds". The game is based on betting points on each hand, and the team who wins two rounds out of three wins the hand and the pot of points of that hand (well, sort of, it's a bit more complex than that). The team to reach 40 points first is declared the happy winner.
Every card in the game has a value assigned to it, and one of the cool things about truco, is that most of the cards in the deck have one or another value depending on the "shown". All cards are given a value, some cards don't depend on "the shown", but the most valuables are the ones which do depend. This set of most valuable cards is called "las piezas" (the pieces). Remember I said it was played in teams, well, one of the funniest things about truco is that there is a language of facial signs meant to communicate what cards you have to your team mates. And part of the game skill is to communicate the cards you have without being watched by your opponents, you will try to cover your face with your arms, or wait till no one’s watching to make the signs.
Good players, and good teams are those who make the most out of the cards they have, and when they don’t really have valuable cards, they act, and trick the other team into believing that they do, and when they do have good cards they act as if they didn't laying out a trap for the other team to fall into. So there's a lot of acting involved, I guess while in poker is more natural to stay calm, and not to show emotions whatever is your hand, in truco there's a lot of team acting and outspoken speculation of the cards the other team might have. Add a bit of alcohol to the situation and you will get Shakespeare like interpretations.
The betting mechanism is based on a set of reserved words: "truco", "retruco", "vale cuatro" to raise the bet one point, and "envido" to make a special bet, or "flor" if you have a certain combination of cards. All these reserved words you just can't use them in your conversation, which sometimes does happen, being the name of the game one of the reserved words, if you do say any of them your opponents may hold the bet as made, and you will have to prove the worth of your hand of cards. One very common act is to say one reserved word and pretend it to have been a mistake, good acting is required. Another thing that is cool is to say some kind of poetic verse ending with the reserved word, to anger the opponents, typically used with the "flor" (flower), which informs the opponent team that you have a certain combination of cards that entitle you to 3 points per se.
There are a lot of subtleties to the game, like the fact that you can say any of the reserved words if you place your hand or one finger on top of the deck (for the deck not to listen), or traditions like carrying the score on a napking using squares, where each line is a point, or carrying the score with beans, and using beans to represent the amount of points in the pot of the current hand, or like licking your fingers, and wetting your forehead to place one card on it when you won the hand with the most valuable card, and fooled the other team into believing you were out of good cards, like some kind of "in your face" sort of thing.
The game is played also in argentina, the uruguyan version of the game is called uruguayan truco, or truco oriental, while the argentinian version is called "truco ciego" or blind truco, since they dont play with "la muestra", much simpler, all cards have the same value always, also much boring if you ask me.
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Thursday, November 03, 2005
Horse Carts
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This is a very common sight in Uruguay, that I did not see elsewhere. Horse carts marching with the most modern cars in the city side by side. In Uruguay horse carts like the one in the picture are used as a means of making a living, by the lower classes in Uruguay. They are used to carry out activities like: garbage digging, or cardboard recolection, or wood transporting. It usual to see them followed by one or two dogs.
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Montevideo, Places, Palacio Salvo
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Finnished in the year 1928, this building is one of the most emblematic ones in Montevideo. It's set by the "plaza independencia" square, at the heart of Montevideo's downtown. With it's 120 meters it was the highest building in South America when inaugurated. The thing has a personality of it's own, I like it, but im not sure the reason is esthetics or the unavoidable association with home it represents to me. There are those who say it's a midget with a hat.
I learnt here that it was built on the same spot that used to be the very same cafe were "la cumparsita" (the first tango ever) was composed.
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Wednesday, November 02, 2005
Fiesta X
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Last saturday took place one of the national megapartys, called "La Fiesta X" (the X party), which summoned around 80.000 persons, or so they say. When you live in a country of 3 millions people, believe me, that's a lot! You had in one spot in the city every uruguayan music band of every genre and style possible playing on several stages along with some really big tents for electronic music. It must have been a human zoo of sorts. Check out the complete list bands that were there.
I wasnt there but the word is that the organization turned out to be kinda crappy, food stands ran out of food around 11pm (here in uruguay, partying is something that goes on until 5-6am). And they were very short on chemical toilets, bad for the women, huge queues.
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Montevideo, city buses
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Among the downsides of living in uruguay there definitely is urban transport. In Uruguay the time spent waiting for buses it's like some patience endurance test run by the goverment in cooperation with the transport companies. Seems to be part of long term goverment policy for raising buddas among the population. There is no such a thing as bus schedules on the bus stops, and if you by some mysterious means come to the possesion of one, any coincidence with reality is an event comparable to planets aligning, or eclipses. You see, here in uruguay, if the thing's supposed to pass by 5:00 chances are that it may pass 4:50 or 5:10, if not worse. But I guess the whole uruguayan punctuality culture could be a post on itself.
Finally when the bus does arrive, you are so happy that you dont mind sharing a box intended for 32 seated passangers with 60 persons more, like some weird solidarity movement with canned sardins. What's the choice?, keep on waiting?
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Friday, October 28, 2005
Uruguay, the legend of Maracana
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There's an uruguayan legend that goes that once upon a time a football team coming from little little Uruguay had to play the final of the football world cup championship against big big favorite brazil, in brazil, in the brand new stadium Maracana, specially built for the world cup.
The story tells the stadium was full of brazilian green and yellow (verdeamarello;) supporters, for the final match. Brazil beign big time favorite scored, and the first half of the game ended up 1-0, brazil above uruguay. The brazilians were so confident that they took the match for granted, even when in the second half the little uruguayans scored, and the match got even. This was no real stress for the brazilians since a tie was enough for achieving the championship.
Until suddenly...little uruguayan team, coming from nowhere scored for the second time. The story goes that the time froze, and around 200,000 brazilian supporters got real quiet, that you could actually hear a small bunch of uruguayan supporters screaming fanatically.
Despite all the efforts made by the big shot brazilian team, the match remained as it was, and little little uruguay took the world cup home, leaving a big country openjawed.
This is a bedtime story that pappas tell their sons in uruguay. Scholars cannot achieve consensus on whether this actually ever happened, some say it took place in brazil in 1950.
I understand that brazilian pappas don't ever tell this story to their children. Nowadays noone in brazil knows the story of little david uruguay, who beated big goliat favorite brazil in the football world championship of 1950.
Sad side effects of this spell is that a big part of little little uruguay's population got stuck in time when that happened, remain there, and lost the hability to look forward in time.
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Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Montevideo, sights
This are some typical sights of Montevideo's downtown.
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This is a picture of the statue of Gral Artigas, in Plaza Independencia. There is a mausoleum beneath the statue, with the rests of the national hero.
This is Plaza Cagancha, also called plaza libertad, with our uruguayan version of the liberty statue, kinda new york's statue after the flu. Check out the anarchism graffiti at the bottom.
This square has a nice hippie and naturist market.
This one's infomally called "Plaza del entrevero" which means something like square of the mixed up, after the statue in the middle representing several horseman in the heat of battle, where they are all kinda mixed up. Actually noone remebers it's real name which is plaza fabini i believe.
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Sunday, October 23, 2005
Montevideo
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Montevideo is the capital city of Uruguay. The story goes that the word montevideo comes (at least that's what they teach us in school) from one portuguese expeditionary who saw the hill by the area known today as montevideo, and said something like: i see a hill, which in portuguese was something like monte vide eu and sounds like montevideo.
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Friday, October 21, 2005
Hornero
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If you are roadtripping in uruguay this is a very common sight. It's the house of a bird that goes by the name Hornero (Furnarius rufus). Builds his own place, about the size of a basketball ball and seems to have a thing for telegraph posts.
As a kid I used to think that it had a complex internal rooms distribution, with a tv room (electricity and telephone wire access is not the problem ;), and a bedroom, the whole bird family thing. Dumb kid.
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After the storm
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The 26th of august Uruguay went through the worst storm in it's history. There were winds of about 160km/hour. 7 men died, around 50 injured. This is not normal in this part of the world, here we dont have hurricanes, we are not prepared for this type of thing. There were lots of families without electricity or water for a couple of days. I've friend who took showers on cold water for a week.
About five blocks from my place there is a wood of eucaliptus, that covers one full block and has survived urbanization in the area, It was cool. This are post storm pictures of my neighborhood's wood. I used to play there when I was a kid. Very sad sight.
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Colonia do Sacramento
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Located at the south west end of the land, Colonia do Sacramento is the oldest city in Uruguay or err... mmm, maybe the oldest city in Uruguay, or one of the oldests cities in uruguay, anyway. The fact is that in 1680 the portuguese founded this city, and that's prior to the foundation of our capital Montevideo, in fact Montevideo was founded as a countermeasure of the Spanish empire (not darth vader's one) to stop the portuguese advance. The history of Uruguay's colonization is a continuous struggle between the spanish forces against the portuguese, with some intrusion of the british (when not?) to take over this chunk of land in the world. Colonia went from portuguese creation, to spanish domination, then back again to portuguese or brazilian, depending on the year, and back again, times N, until Uruguay as an indepenant country was born. This is why the historical part of the city has blend of spanish and portuguese architectural styles which is kinda nice.
The historical parts of the citiy were declared common heritage of the human kind by the unesco, some time ago, and it's right now one of the turistic spots of the country.
The historical part of the city it's small, you can make it by feet, it keeps it's original disarranged cobblestoned streets, and houses.
It's a good place for example to spend a weekend in couple, as it's beautiful, quiet, and there lots hotels in the whole area, some of them reasonably cheap and good. Let's put it this way it's not famous for it's wild night life.
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Sunday, October 16, 2005
Food, bakery
As americans have donuts, and french have croissants, we have bizcochos. Lazy cops here dont eat donuts, no, they eat bizcochos. They are made mainly out of flour and grease. There are salad and sweet ones, the salad ones are filled with cheese, or bacon, and the sweet ones with...guess, yes, dulce de leche, or dulce de membrillo. It's typical to have them with breakfast or tea (mate actually). You buy them by the kilo, and you usually eat it with friends or family. I guess it's not very healthy but tasty ;)
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These ones are called "Alfajores de maizcena", like little cakes, with a thick layer of "dulce de leche" in the middle, and coconout in the borders, if you like really sweet stuff (which i do) you can't miss them. Enter into any baker's store (panaderia) and pronounce: "alphajores", then thank me.
These ones are called "ojitos" (little eyes), dont know how they make them, dont really care, I think it involves grease and some sweet red stuff that goes in the middle, im crazy'bout them, always been.
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Food, dulce de leche
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Dulce de leche is a creme, made with milk and sugar (hence the name), with kinda caramel flavor, but better ;) You can find it everywhere in Uruguay's sweet food, cakes, everything. I guess it's part of the uruguayan culture. As a kid I thought all the world had dulce de leche, and that all the world eated it as much as we do. To my surprise little is known of dulce de leche outside the river plate zone. I have concluded that for mysterious reasons the uruguayan population has developed an addiction to this stuff, I know I'm on it. It's one of the things uruguayan's living offshore miss the most. It's also one of the many things uruguayan's and argentinian's debate on who invented it, I say Uruguay :)
It's not a dish on itself, as it supposed to be eaten along with other things, bread, in cakes, you name it, but the chubby uruguayan won't doubt to grab a spoon full of dulce the leche lick it like there's no tomorrow, and when finnished, go get some more.
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Food, Asado
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Barbecue, or "asado" as we call it's the national dish, if there's such a thing. Uruguay's meat has very good fame, and for good reason. The conditions for cattle growing are ideal in this part of the world, or so they say. History goes that, a long time ago (in this galaxy;), one spanish guy, called Hernandarias, brought around 100 cattle heads to the land, that would later become Uruguay, and in a matter of years they had reproduced big time. Land and weather natural conditions turned out to be real good, as well as the lack of any kind of predators, including human populations. So we could say that Uruguay's territory was populated extensively first by cattle, then by humans.
Asados are social activities, instead of charcoal the meat is roasted by making a fire from wood, and using the embers (is that the word?) to cook the meat. It's a time consuming process, but all for the better, because while someone is preparing the fire (el asador) everyone else get's to eat snacks, and play cards ("truco" typically). It's typical to put some parmesano provolone cheese on the grill, and to serve hot cheese as entrance, along with the snacks. The meat is placed in a big, big grill, called "parrilla", expected to support considerable amounts of meat, and sausages ("chorizos").
Typically if the asado turns out to be good, the responsible cooker (el asador), get's an applause from everyone. Actually "el asador" always gets an applause, unless the asado is real bad, and you have a trust relationship with the person so you can tell him the awfull truth, that his asado sucks. Luckily this is not often.
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Thursday, October 13, 2005
Uruguay's beaten Argentina 1-0
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Do you know the phil collins song titled: against all odds? Phil's should have dedicated that song to uruguay's football team, after yesterdays match. It won after 16 years of not winning to Argentina, anything but a win would have lefts us out of the world cup. Do you know what are the odds of pulling a win after 16 years? It was insane.
Some observations:
Once again Colombia beated Paraguay, in Paraguay, when paraguay is known to be very hard to beat playing at home. Monkey business.
Once again colombia didnt make it to the world cup thanks to Uruguay ;)
Once again Uruguay will be playing Australia. People are talking here that kangaroos seasons is open, and about top ten ways to cook a kangaroo ;) Yet this time, they have the last leg of the match, it'll be hard. It would not be fair to loose with Australia after beating Argentina, but who said football is fair anyway? Oceania should have one assured place for the world cup, but not at the cost of one place less for South America.
Once again it's impossible to watch a Uruguay's team football match without suffering.
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Monday, October 10, 2005
Uruguay's flag
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White background, sky blue stripes, with a sun in the top left corner. The strange thing is that the sun has a face, with eyes, mouth'n stuff, just weird. I've heard somewhere that is some sort of masonic symbol, I understand that masonry is strong in uruguay, brazil, paraguay and argentina. Urban legend, who knows?
Anyway, beautiful flag, isnt it?
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Wednesday, October 05, 2005
Countryside
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Populated mainly by cows Uruguay's countryside is a green and flat meadow. Very, very quiet. This are typical sights of Uruguay.
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Mate
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Mate is the name of a typical beverage of the river plate zone, shared with south of brazil and argentinians. It's an infusion of a weed named "yerba" (wich actually in spanish means weed), like tea, but the weird thing is that it is drinked (sipped actually) in a special recipients made out of a dried, hollow "fruit" (it's kinda small pumpking) called mate, wich names the whole thing. You sip it with a metal thing called "bombilla". There I've said it. It's like coffe, some sort of stimulator, very popular among students to start the day, and to stay awake until late.
Half of the population or more are on it, people carry their own "mates" to work, and it's also a social drink, it's unpolite to have mate and not offer, and if someone requests "a mate", while you are having it's almost illegal to deny it.
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