On Sarandi Street are groups of people, dressed to the nines, standing in my way as I pass on a sidewalk past a woman’s fashion store,
Happy couples exit a bland doorway, into the sunlight. They are jubilant.
When more smiling couples come out and take photos, throw rice, hug and toss flowers to the next lucky man or woman, it is certain this extravaganza is about marriage, a traditional and good institution, if there ever was one.
A closer look at a little bland sign on the bland building confirms that this office, next to an upscale clothes retailer, is the City’s Office of Matrimony
As brides and grooms pose outside for their wedding pictures, some with professional photographers, others with friends or family who have phones or fancy cameras, some couples do dramatic hugs and kisses. Others are subdued.
On this occasion it would be a sacrilege to remark that not all of these newly joined couples will be together in five years.
The search to find someone who will live with you, for better and worse, is worth the effort no matter how it ends.
The next historical development in weddings will be to get married at a drive up window, in street clothes, with a cooler of beer in the trunk and passes to the opera in the glove compartment.
Most marriages begin happy but their success rate is still only fifty percent, regardless of who marries you, where you get married, how much money you have, what God you worship.
Odds, as Las Vegas knows, are hard to beat, but odds don’t stop people from getting married.
This grocery is a find – the Frog Maxishop. It is on the Peatonal Perez Castellano, a pedestrian walkway that connects the Montevideo port on one end and the Montevideo Rambla on the other. When cruise ships are in port, it is on this street that most cruisers shop.
Doing little cooking, it has become my custom to browse the neighborhood Frog for microwave meals and deli items. More discriminating diners eat steaks in the Mercado, or the Parrillada Bar and Restaurant where locals watch soccer games on a small flat screen TV, mounted on a wood shelf in a corner, near the ceiling, secured with a bungee cord.
This afternoon the Frog’s lunch special is Pollo a la Portuguese dishes that are pre-cooked and only need to be warmed before enjoying. The dish comes with rice and veggies and chicken, a nutritious meal.
It is busy in the grocery this morning and many in the neighborhood walk here to shop. Turistas, as well as locals, browse the aisles, price checking and reading labels.
I take a couple of the dishes home with a six pack of bottled water.
Shopping beats cooking, any day, and finding what I need, this easy, is a major coup.
Shopping local makes the city start to feel like a home away from home.
Walking the streets of the port district, you find hotels you might have stayed if you hadn’t rented a studio. It is human to comparison shop, wonder what that place or this place has to offer at what price.
The two hotels within a block and a half of my studio are the Don Botique Hotel and the AK Design hotel.
According to TripAdvisor, both establishments are clean, safe, well rated, offer free internet. The Don offers a regular breakfast while the AK has a Continental breakfast. Both places get good marks and both hotels have websites with visitor reviews. For the time I have been here, moving into high season, the price for a room for one adult for one night at the Don is $168.00 U.S. A night at the AK is $70.00 U.S. My studio is less than $30.00 U.S. per night.
When I throw open shutters and walk out onto my little balcony, I can see the Don.
For price,privacy, quiet, and flexibility, I like the view better from where I am standing.
Turning a corner off Colon street, near Roberto’s antique store and studio, I happen upon a sleeping man in an alcove. He is out of the way of pedestrian traffic, looks comfortable, isn’t causing trouble. There are no wine bottles. There is no cart packed with clothes and bags of groceries to show he has been on the street a long time. His clothes aren’t pressed but they aren’t dirty.
His chest moves as he breathes.
There are similarities between sleep and dying. One you wake from, the other you don’t. One is temporary and the other is permanent.
I debate taking his photo. If an awake person doesn’t want their photo taken they can shake their finger or say no. He has no say in his present condition.
If you snooze, you lose.
Being able to sleep on the street in board daylight, in the middle of a big city, shows a level of trust I don’t have.
Surrounded by dogs, all on leashes, this long hair consults his map.
It isn’t certain whether this group is going on a field trip, going to relieve themselves, headed for a romp on the beach, or just following their leader, who holds their leashes. They are stopped and the dog walker takes out a plastic bag and picks up a present left by one of his charges. It is certain he is the only one doing this nasty chore in this port district because you find dog presents on most streets and are surprised there aren’t more.
The sun is going down and it would be unexpected that all these dogs belong to this young man. Whether they have to be registered and need checkups and shots is an unknown but a vet supply place is near so there is a need here that someone is making a living catering to.
Putting his map away, the dog whisperer clutches all the leases in one hand and strides away, a pied piper.
Animals love their people.
This pack knows who their lead dog is even if they don’t know where he is taking them, and don’t care.
What I’m asking is – why would you have a dog if you don’t want to take it for a walk?
Tango began in the early 1900’s in Buenos Aires and Montevideo.
Beginning in brothels, like American jazz, it was refined and adopted by middle and upper classes, cleaned up and turned into a respectable music and dance form.
Dance competitions usually contain the tango, a sensual dance with complicated movements and hypnotic music.
In front of one of the cafes near my studio, there is a demonstration of tango with a lady who is much older than her partner. She is dressed in black with net stockings and clipped black hair. The couple move over rough tiles as music plays loudly from a little black speaker.The traditional tango is played by an orchestra that has a piano, two accordions, two violins and a double bass. This recorded music is just violins.
For an entire song, we in the audience watch the pair move in ever widening, and then contracting, circles in front of the restaurant. She makes most of the movements, dipping her shoulder, lifting her knees, tossing back her head, letting the young man lead.
The themes of Tango are unrequited love, betrayal, the passage of time, and death.
A famous local poet, Enrique Discepolo, called tango “the sad thought that is danced.”
Tango came from poor neighborhoods in Buenos Aires and Montevideo where money runs short and emotions run high.
Cutting edge art flows from those who live closest to their emotions and have empty wallets.
There are plenty of dogs in this city, but thousands of cats too.
Cats don’t make a lot of noise, take up a lot of space, or make crazy demands. They live as they have for thousands of years – hunting, sleeping, making reproductions of themselves, adapting to human civilization for which they have no interest or care.
Walking the area around Independence Square, close to an area called The Centro, this gato catches my eye.
He is stretched out on a window ledge with bars on one side of him and closed windows on the other. It is certain he is asleep and his owner has closed windows before leaving the house. When this guy wakes and sees he is trapped he will just turn over and go back to sleep. For this moment he is in cat dreamland where cats have all the mice they want and are always successful in the hunt.
In the city, dogs and cats live with humans and have adapted. Now, dogs don’t do much hunting. But cats, when push comes to shove, can become fearsome predators. Whether they love the little tuna bits their owners spoon out of a can into a little dish for them is likely. Whether they like a fat mouse or a big bird is more than likely.
I don’t know where this big boy was all night, but this morning he isn’t going anywhere. When his owners return they will open the window. He will jump down and brush against their legs.
They will laugh and pet him and let him out into a little back yard in the middle of a big big city where he will wait in a corner for something flying, creeping, or crawling to come close enough, so he can appropriate it.
On my way to a lavenderia, electricians are installing a new electrical service to the front of a residential/commercial building on Main Street.
Like most of the homes in this neighborhood, there is a retail space on the bottom floor. Atop the retail space,accessible by a door and stairs, is an apartment.
In this refurbish, the retail space serves as a staging ground for conduit, PVC pipe, bags of mortar, tools and lunch boxes. In our modern times,all buildings have to have water, sewer and electrical capabilities meeting city codes. These building exteriors, protected by Historical Site designations, are brick or adobe plastered with a cement veneer and will stand for another hundred years if they are kept repaired.
Electric was provided, up to now, through the splicing of two large thick wires joined and carelessly wrapped with electricians tape dangling down the front of the building. After the new panel box is anchored and wire pulled through legal conduit, power will be reconnected.
Inside,new occupants will be able to power more gadgets from more places in each room, have power to run things that weren’t even imagined in the days this building was first built. When these buildings were built people were heating with fireplaces, lighting with candles. Horses and carriages were the rage.
It is a simple job, this installation of a new electrical service box.These guys have tools ,wear hard hats, and act like construction guys anywhere in the world.
Working construction for decades, it is hard for me to watch other people work without wanting to lend a hand.
Retirement is difficult if you are used to doing things.
The sun drops dramatically.
In America, kids would be throwing a football. Here, the big dream is to play professional soccer and let your papa sit in a bar with a cerveza and cheer as you make a goal that wins an important game. It is a Sunday and there is, at the moment, on television, a game with the National team of Uruguay playing an opponent from Columbia. Mortal enemies on the playing field, the hollers from the bar became more pronounced as a goal is threatened or a player is cut down to size with a totally illegal trip, block, or kick.
These two little kids are playing catch and kick.
One kicks the ball to the other and the receiver steps into his return kick and sends the soccer ball screaming back to his friend. Tourists have long ago gone back to their ships and are now enroute to other ports on their itinerary. The sun is disappearing and these two boys will be going inside soon to have dinner, maybe do homework – their sisters having already diligently finished their assignments.
The soccer ball takes off the instep of one of the boy’s foot like a rocket. It is an old beat up ball with threads coming undone from caroming over these rough paving blocks. It is dirty and knocked out of shape. You can hear it cry when it is kicked. Still, it is good practice for these two future players on the Uruguay National team who will one day be lining up for a foul kick and remember what they practiced when they were so little.
Whether it is a soccer ball or a football, the dreams of little boys are not different.
Competition is important, team play is important, winning is important, friends are important.
There isn’t anything new about pizza.You find it all around the world. What is refreshing about this pizza is that it is made outdoors, you watch the guys prepare it, the ingredients are natural, the taste is great, the price is a bargain.
“What would you like,” my personal chef asks?
I spot a toaster oven with a miniature tomato and cheese pizza on its top cooling. On a linen tablecloth, on the folding table in front of me, are bowls with fresh cut ingredients. There are chili’s, peppers, tomatoes, ham, onions. lettuce, cheese, and other typical choices.
“What are you making, ” I ask?
“We are making you a special pizza,” the young man dressed in black says, “you pick your toppings.”
“How much?”
“60 pesos.”
That is about three U.S. dollars which sounds pricey but yesterday a pollo sandwich with bacon cost six dollars U.S. at McDonald’s with no fries and no bebida.
Elias, the brains behind this operation, scoops his starter pizza off the toaster top with a spatula and puts it on a piece of wax paper on the tablecloth in front of me, then loads on the toppings I tell him I want. It looks like a salad by the time I am through and he finishes by slicing the pizza into fours for me.
This pizza stands up to my taste test.
I get lunch plus entertainment for three dollars.
Small cheap surprises are some of the best.
Recent Comments