Big cities should be a worker’s paradise with good wages because there is too much construction and maintenance needed to match equally with people who will work a long hard day for little pay and no recognition.
Walking near Constitution Plaza, on Sarandi street, Gustavo, a fellow painter, is working in a doorway. He has applied paint remover and is scraping softened varnish off a door jamb with a scraper that won’t damage the wood.
Gustavo’s next step will be to take sandpaper and smooth the wood surfaces. Then, after cleaning, he will apply a thinned down undercoat of polyurethane, lightly sand and wipe everything down with a tack cloth, and finish the project with two full strength coats of exterior polyurethane with a flourish of his three inch sash brush.
Painting is not without honor but, at the end of the day, it was, for me, always a relief to clean my brushes, fold drop cloths, seal up paint cans and load the van.
New doesn’t last long in a city of several million and paint makes glamour girls out of a lot of plain Jane buildings, offices, kitchens,bathrooms and bedrooms.
Working men keep this world operating.
It takes an even bigger crew of painters to keep the stars sparkling.
Next to the farmacia is a door that leads to an upstairs apartment that leads to a family that leads to a mom and dad that leads to a warm place for kids to grow up. When you look at a street of closed doors, faded or chipped or cobbled together, one never knows what is behind them. It is hard to guess what this schoolboy will see when the door to his home opens and he walks into his family bosom.
Kids don’t ask for a lot but they need a home, kind words and behaviors towards them, security, love, and a sense of belonging. These youngsters are brothers and sisters and they are, this afternoon, busy turning back into kids after school has spent all day trying to civilize them.
This afternoon this little boy knocks, peeps into a little slot where mail is dropped, yells out if anyone can open the door and let him inside?
He is excited and ready to dump his school stuff on his bed, then go out into the streets to play soccer with friends.
School isn’t for little boys anymore, but they still have to go.
When visitors get off cruise ships at the Port of Montevideo, one of the first places they visit is the Mercado Del Puerto, a collection of steakhouses, gift shops, and art galleries under one big tin roof.
Uruguay is famous for wine and steaks and inside the Mercado you have multiple choices in a meat lover’s paradise. Early in the morning, around nine, chefs load firewood into their ovens and by lunch the smell of cooking meat says to ” come on in.”
This afternoon chefs are grilling, a girl markets wine from Uruguay to tourists, waiters scribble orders on small pieces of paper. Talk fills the place with large and small groups enjoying the Mercado’s savory ambiance.
From the Mercado a visitor can fan out into commercial and residential side streets and find boutiques, art galleries, neighborhood restaurants and local stores that depend on residents more than tourists. This port area, neglected, is slowly being reclaimed by a new generation of entrepreneurs.
Later in the day, I too enjoy an enormous steak with fries and a beer, for dinner. Sailors at the next table talk loud in German and drink prodigious amounts of beer with their brauts.
Food, eating, and drinking are some of man’s fondest activities.
Uruguay steaks don’t have to apologize to any chef and I recommend the Mercado as a good place to meet a steak in person, cooked any way you want.
Living just down the block, I would be negligent not to eat here as often as possible.
One of the joys of travel is meeting foods you have never tried before, and enjoy foods you love cooked better than you can cook them yourself.
Regardless of where I travel, one of the most asked questions I get is – “Do they have a McDonald’s?”
There is a McDonald’s in Montevideo, Uruguay. It wasn’t sought out, isn’t on my list of important things to do, but it is a cultural landmark that marks the landing of American habits to every corner of the world.
This McDonald’s is not flashy but the familiar arches beckon me to come closer. Employees wear uniforms just like they do at home, freshly washed and ironed. Coffee is made in an expresso machine and costs two dollars a cup, cheap for Montevideo.
Sitting outside, at one of the benches under a grove of trees, I feel right at home.
We Americans have landed and planted our flag.
Wherever I go; There we are.
In worn areas of most world mega-cities, there is street art, some commissioned, some spontaneous.
This art can occupy an entire wall like our sixteen foot lady. It can be part of a series of images on a parking lot wall like our two faced head. Street art has no pretensions. It doesn’t care about frames, security guards, tickets or reviews.
Street art is a delight. Street music is a delight. Street food is delicious. Street people are full of edges and angles. Street talk is coarse and poetic.
Art and artists fight around the world to move into public places so the public can enjoy their muse. Gallery walls are too small, too exclusive.
What is sad is so few of these people walking and driving past pause and admire the images, touch them,or have arguments about them.
You can look at this street art for free, as long as you want. You can linger. You can scratch your head. You can laugh at the boldness.You can even write your name on the wall if you wish.
Why are people, these days, too busy to stop and look at what is right in front of them?
When you are looking for produce in the Port area you are not near the grand shopping palaces you visit in the United States.
Groceries in the U.S. display well groomed produce as you walk down waxed shiny floors,choose fruit and vegetables from clean bins with sprinklers that mist to make sure the product always looks fresh.There are plastic bags to wrap your choices and stocked product is carefully unpacked from boxes and inspected with blemished items thrown out. You would never suspect vegetables came out of the dirt, or fruits came off trees from the way they are lovingly presented.
In Montevideo, around the Port, there are small fruit and produce stands on the streets. Tourists and residents buy out of these wooden boxes under tarps that protect from too much sun and rain.
Uruguay is famous for wines and beef production, and has one of the world’s largest underground aquifers, but citrus, fruits, and other vegetables are shipped in from Central America, South America and beyond.
This stand has basics – cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, chili’s, lettuce, potatoes.
There is something comforting about buying bananas, apples, carrots and lettuce out of beaten up, chipped, scarred wooden boxes. The beauty is you only have to walk a block to buy what you need.
I’ve been told that you should, in foreign places, eat only things you can peel so I’m careful about my purchases.
Time, that moves too fast the older you get, slows to a more comfortable clip when you have to walk to do your shopping.
“We were in the eighties last week,” Jesper tells me, pouring us a Monday afternoon cup of coffee at his desk in a Ciudad Vieja office close to the Port. He talks about the old city versus the new city, how he and his wife are now moving into commercial sales in addition to property management.The studio where I stay for this journey is owned by one of his clients and Jesper manages it as a favor.
The old city of Montevideo, he says, is a hub of economic activity, a place where ships bring goods, government buildings abound, museums are on most every street and lawyers, accountants and young professionals snap up every place that is renovated. This Port area has been neglected but his investment group is bringing people and business back to the neighborhood.
“I am from Denmark,” he continues, “and my wife is from Argentina. She is in New York on business …”
The office is spacious. There is art on the wall and Gabriella told me, when I walked in, in English and Spanish and hand gestures,that a woman will be in to clean my rented studio on Friday, the 7th.
I pay my rent and settle in for this piece of my journey, get a receipt, and catch my bearings.
Travelling and weather hold hands like high school sweethearts.
” Call me if you have any problems, ” my new landlord says.
I leave feeling like he really means it.
Money might not make the world go round, but it provides lubrication .
Looking for an ATM to get cash to pay for my rented vacation studio in Ciudad Vieja, I have apprehension.
Banks and credit card companies have been told Scott will be out of the country. They have been given names of the countries I will be visiting and have authorized the cards to be used. ATM’s are blood transfusions to the withering traveler. If you don’t have money, you are going to the mat in a place where you have no friends, don’t speak the language, can’t read the street signs.
This machine asks what language I prefer, asks whether I want dollars or Pesos, asks whether funds are coming from savings, checking, or credit card.
I go through each step but the transaction is cancelled. People are in line behind me so I take my card and myself for a walk. Why is this not working?
It hits me like a brick that I wasn’t prompted to enter my card’s password.
This next try I punch in my password before I hit ” continuar ” and follow instructions, to the end.
It is the right solution because the machine spits out hundred dollar bills that are so crisp that Ben Franklin must be printing inside the ATM,as I wait.
ATM’s are a three letter word I like. It is amazing that a machine in a foreign country will give me money even though it doesn’t know me from Adam..
ATM’s are as close to a money tree as us guys are likely to get.
After an eight hour wait at the Miami International Airport, I board a plane this Saturday evening and safely get off the ground for Montevideo, Uruguay.
Scheduled to arrive Sunday around eleven, our plane does, and we leave our transport this morning and form yet another line to go through Customs.
This night flight has been a mix of crying babies, lights going on and off, flight attendants moving up and down the aisles passing out pillows and eye shades. One guesses any group of people can be difficult and flight attendants are needed because there are hundreds of passengers on this red eye flight from Miami.
Customs in Montevideo goes rapidly. All you need is your Passport. They don’t ask for proof of a return flight, only ask how long I will be here and where I am staying. Getting checked bags is a breeze. Having to register my I Phone is a bit odd, but I do it.
Uruguay is now more than a shape on a world map. It is not a country on the tip of everyone’s tongue and is near the bottom of the alphabet, not far from Zimbabwe. Uruguay sounds like something you can catch in Africa, but I didn’t need shots to get in and the country comes well praised.
Without a flag to plant, or anyone to meet, I have arrived.
Weary, I will curl up in the crook of the U in Uruguay and hold the letter tightly till sleep covers me like a warm blanket.
South Beach is like beaches in the Caribbean.
The sand is white and grainy and blue beach umbrellas blow in the wind like the tops of stir sticks in one’s Pina Colada.
Some brave souls wade in the water even though it is cold this time of year. Bodies are spread under the sun trying to become a different color than they were born. This Saturday afternoon there is plenty of beach to occupy and lifeguards are so nonchalant that one has his feet up in the window of the lifeguard shack, his eyes looking at the plywood ceiling instead of the ocean.
A walk on the beach hooks me up with couples, kids, turistas, gawkers, and local vendors like Dave the water guy making a living off strangers who have washed up on shore and have credit cards and cash stowed away in their socks and bras.
It is a festive scene, and, as a small plane pulls an advertisement in the sky behind it, I trek up and down the beach in levis and a pair of hiking boots – feeling a little overdressed.
There are photo op’s galore.
The one, not taken advantage of, is a Latina sprawled on the beach, topless, tanned, not at all worried about nipple burn. She is bold and is probably one of the few to have a good enough physique to get away with wanting the world to see all of her. Her girlfriend, tanning next to her, looks mean enough to scare the junkyard dog.
Walking this afternoon, I have come, have seen, and have been conquered by narcissism bleeding like a cut finger.
I am a tourist with no responsibilities, no ambitions, and no agenda except blending in like the ingredients of your favorite margarita.
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