Here I am back again after the small detour of the previous
weeks. Uruguay is the
destination, and if you enjoyed my trip to Argentina, you must love Uruguay.
Montevideo is the capital,
and you can consider it as a little brother of Buenos Aires, resembling it in
quite many ways. In fact, if we think about it, it couldn’t be otherwise, as both the
countries, besides being neighbors, they
share a lot in terms of history and heritage.
If you are visiting Argentina, there are many ways to reach
Uruguay, either by plane or by ferry (or if you can afford it a private yacht).
What I could notice as the first
impression by walking the street was that Montevideo doesn’t seem to be off with the challenge with
Argentina. If in the latter you were impressed by the amounts of street art, in
Uruguay, you will find as much as there.
All of them were very pleasant and colorful to give a touch of personality to the walls and to the
city. Nevertheless, immediately after, we noticed that there were so many
beautiful buildings, which were left carelessly aside. Nobody was living there, and only some of them were
for sale, and our curiosity started to increase
because I would never let something this beautiful get destroyed by the action
of the time. We needed to ask to know what was going on.
In every trip, there
are a few people that you can for sure ask if you need some information. If the
information concerns the latest gossip of the town, you go to a hair salon, the hairdresser knows everybody and
everything. However, if you need to know something about the lifestyle, routes information, facts about the
city that do not include gossip; you ask
the bartender.
And so we did, we went to a promising bar and ordered a
couple of beers. By chatting with the bartender, we understood the reason why
those buildings were left just get destroyed that way.
It seems that when the owner of the house dies, the heirs
can decide what to do with the house, but since the inheritance taxes are quite
high, they do not claim the property back. The municipality should be able at
that point to reclaim those properties and put them for sale, but by the terms
of the law, until the heirs are alive,
they cannot expropriate the house and sell it.
For this reason, only after the death of the last heir, the municipality
takes over and sells the houses, which are in a very poor state.
I personally would have bought one of them and moved
directly to live there, the place is great, the cost of living is reasonable, the pace of living is relaxed, the food is
great and the people too!
The rest of the city is an amazing blend of the old and the new, even if in some cases
the old is in bad shape, it keeps its romantic and melancholic beauty that will
make you stop thinking about its history. I have myself stopped many times
thinking about the times when in those old building there were people; when those broken windows were adorned with flowers or lovely curtain. Perhaps, time
by time, someone was looking through it, waiting for someone else to come, or just
curious about what was happening in the streets…
I kept wondering…
There is a lot to see in Montevideo,
but as usual, I think that the best is just walking around, trying to be part
of that population that makes the place “alive.”
From the small markets to the people passing by, from those
who are running to work, and those who take it easy enjoying the spring sun.
And the sunset at the harbor becomes suddenly like poetry.
Greetings,
The Wandering Writer
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