Market, money and some Jetlag leftover

The longer I’m here in Santiago the more I realize how BIG this city really is. For a girl like me, that comes from a rather semi big city (300.000 inhabitants) and who lived in a pretty small city (100.000 inhab.)  for the past two years it is not really imaginable how a city of 7 million people would feel like. 

Slowly but steady I see different sides of the city and discover how awesome life can be here despite the sometimes pretty big differences to home (Europe in general :P ). On Wednesday me and Fabian (my best friend from Maastricht) went to La Vega – the food market here in Santiago that is basically open 365 days a year. As I said before, supermarkets are at least as pricy as German or Dutch ones, which shows that Chile is not the cheap Latin America one imagines. Anyhow on the market it is possible to find fruits, vegetables and especially grain and nuts pretty for a little less and fresher as well. I was surprised when I saw the price for Chia seeds and Quinoa and decided to buy that there more often. Further the scent experience was one of a kind. Especially smelling the fruits was amazing, even though the part of the market, where meat and fish was sold, was rather unpleasant – scent wise. Another thing that is very different here is the animals on the street. I’ve heard before, that there was a decent amount of street dogs around here, but seeing them for real is just a bit different. On that market we also found a lot of cats around and one in front of a grain stand was extremely adorable. Despite my urge to cuddle them to death I didn’t because you never know what hides in their fur. Something that is really nice is that none of them ever bothers you. Most of the dogs don’t even take a look at you.

So now – exactly one week in Santiago I will move to my room here, get to know my two chilenian roomies and continue enjoying life to the fullest. Yesterday I went out, and lucky as I am, despite the one of other pisco sour and piscola, I don’t have a hangover. Good thing about the night going out? I lack a bit of sleep atm so once I go to bed tonight I probably won’t be that tired in the early evening here anymore :P

But what do I do here despite going on partys?? A LOT! 

First of all we went on the hill Santa Lucia in the middle of Santiago. 

It is one of three spots in Santiago where you have a very nice view on the skyline. At the same time you get a bit of a feeling how big the city is, because despite the hight of the hill you can’t see the end of the city. One week in there is still so crazy much to discover and the more I visit friends in different districts the more I see the versatility of the city. Therefore I’m even more curious to get to know the whole county which is probably one of the most diverse ones in the world. After this little trip I went to an after office party with Tatjana and Julio – after office is a pretty interesting concept: around 7/8 pm you go to a rooftop club, get drunk and dance until like 1/2 am because you need to work the next day. Sadly it was pretty Europeanized, but as I’m here for like 6 more month there will me more than enough reaggaton parties I can go to. 

Thursday this week (28^th July) we had two introduction and Orientation days at the university. We learned about a lot about the country, university and in general about Latin America. We were allowed to learn dances from Peru, Chile and the Easter Islands. Most of the students being in my exchange program are from Spanish speaking countries, which if perfect for improving my Spanish. 

After all I can say, it’s not dangerous here. If you’re not acting stupid (like leaving your bag unwatched or not being a attentive with your stuff in general), nothing will happen, the most dangerous thing that could happen is pocket picking or stealing in general. Other Latin cities are a lot more dangerous, Santiago basically is “just” a big city with around 7 million inhabitants and districts you just shouldn’t go to (especially not when you’re obviously a foreigner).

No matter where you look you can't see the end of the city - not even closely

In the end I experience the different currency as a bit challenging still. 

1€ = ~700 CLP (Chilean pesos)

This rate makes prices here really big and also a bit hard to see how much you spend, because paying one Luca (1000CLP) it feels like 1€ even though it is like 1,37€. Further there is a pretty decent similarity with Euros in case of looks and sizes. The 500CLP coin looks like a 2€ coin and the newer 100CLP looks like a 1€ coin. The bank notes look really pretty, as they have Chilean nature on the back. As far as I know the biggest bank note you can get is 20.000 – that’s more or less 28-30€. Due to this it seems like everything could be cheap but as I said before it’s not even though going to the market makes a differences (price and experience wise).

For the rest I can't wait to explore the city and the country more soon, so there is more exciting stuff to tell then just everyday life. Conclusively – life here has been really great so far and it probably will be a bit difficult to go back to Europe in half a year. But also due to living in the Netherlands and not coming home often I figured there is something you will always miss in another country but even more you will adore in you new surrounding.

Muchos Besos,

Leonie

P.S.: more pictures will hopefully follow tomorrow - as I'm a bit spoiled with Dutch internet, my patients has reached a max and for now I really rather sleep than wait for pictures to load up with crappy internet :P

Two days of Santiago that couldn’t have been more different

Thanks to my current hosts Tatjana and Julio I could not just have an awesome welcome and dinner with a typical chelonian family but Tatjana also showed me the nice “Barrio” (= district) Las Condes in the east of Santiago. First we had a wonderful and really delicious breakfast in a cute café close to their appartment. We had bread, that here always sort of has to be toasted with scrambled egg and mashed avocado. That was my first time to taste avocado here, that by the way is called “palta”. It really tasted different than the avocados we have in Europe, but I’ve been told, that that might be because here they have like 5 different sorts of avocados here – all tasting differently, but delicious. Hopefully throughout these 6 months.

The big building in the middle is the Costanera Center

Next stop in Las Condes was the Costanera Center which is a pretty big mall that makes you feel like you never left Europe after all. Still it was a lot bigger than I’m used to from Germany or the Netherlands and reminded me a bit of my trip to Moscow (malls are huge there too). Around 4 we had Lunch – Sushi time – Hell Yes :) Again, avocado is everywhere, which obviously isn’t a bad thing at all!! My first grocery shopping tour was that night as well. I already knew Chile wasn’t as cheap as other countries in south America, but 1,50€ for some really basic oat meal is kinda much :/ Luckily I’ll visit a market soon, which is supposed to be a cheaper option (at least for fruit and vegetables).

Oftentimes cake here is called by the German word "Kuchen"

Biggest chelonian flag in the world

On my third day in Santiago I had a look at my room in the barrio Yungay. As Las Condes is one of the most wealthy parts of Santiago, it was a small shock coming into a more realistic part of Santiago, where there are some more street dogs, less glamour and graffiti on many walls. Despite the first little shock, this barrio (Yungay), counting to one of the oldest parts of Santiago, it is a district that really can have charm once you get to know more about it. 









The guy (Fabian) currently living in my new room was so nice to show me some parts of the city like the Central Station and La Moneda – the palace of the president with the biggest chelonian flag in the world in front of it. On the picture to the left it looks tiny but it seriously was HUGE :D

Central Station of Santiago (this is a panorama picture thats why cars are cut off)

La Moneda

Palmtrees can be found everywhere!!!

That day I also saw my best friend from Maastricht again, which was so weird. I couldn’t really process, that this person I know just from Maastricht is here with me at the other end of the world. Together we went to the barrio Bellavista – a more touristic yet not too typically pretty part of Santiago. In the morning the weather was really rainy, which is not really common for Santiago because of its geographical position. But lucky as we were, later that day we had perfect weather with some clouds, blue sky and a lot of sun. That moment I started to understand what people mean by that the sun here is very different. Due to the closer location to the Equator it is a lot stronger which is awesome when you have chilly winter temperatures.(probably I'll explain this a bit more once I had some days at uni and more save information about the city.

Barrio Bellavista

Barrio Bellavista

Today (26.07.16) is my third day here in Santiago and the first day that started so nice! The weather is awesome and today I’m going to explore the city a little more and hopefully go on some close mountain from where you can see the skyline so be aware of a bombardment with skyline pictures. To be honest, when I saw the Andes yesterday for the first time it was really surreal but true what people say: It’s really beautiful!!!

It's probably not easy to detect the smok on this one ..

Only one thing I still need to get used to is the smok, especially because the rain was one day ago it is building up again so at the skyline you can always see a brownish steam above the city.

Thursday and Friday will be the first introduction days at Uni and I’m really excited how it will be. More about that in the weekend.






Oh and hereby a little shoutout for my lovely friends Tatjana and Julio for being so generous to give me a couche for the first days before I can move into my own room. (which is also to thank for this amazing views!!!)

The beautiful Andes (and some smok just above the houses...)

Muchos Besos,

Leonie

25 hours later… finally arrived in Santiago

So where do I begin.. I am in Santiago de Chile, kinda tired of the 25 hour trip, the new surroundings, all the palmtrees, the winter, the language almost everything, and, obviously, a bit of a Jetlag. My Laptop still tells me the Amsterdam European Time ( 1:00 am) even though here in Santiago it’s just 7pm. Because were on the southern part of the earth it’s winter and with this the sun sets pretty early (around 6pm), which does not really help overcoming my jetlag.
 

Let’s start at the beginning…

Latam godess airplane for my 12,5 hour flight :)

The night before leaving I had a nice dinner with friends and an unexpected meeting with a friend I hadn’t seen in a while. Leaving later then intended I figured doing an online Check-In would be a good idea, next to organizing all kinds of last minute stuff I thought still would have time to be finished. But as my flight was overall organized by LATAM but the flight from Frankfurt to Milan was organized by Air Berlin and carried out by Alitalia I could not check in at any of the websites. Despite this dilemma (which in the end wasn’t a big deal after all) I had to arrange how to get from one airport in Milan to the other as it wasn’t just a carryover. With a Shuttle just driving until 16:30, which was useless as we arrived at 16:15, and I still needed to check out my luggage etc and very unclear information on the internet about other ways I kinda had a mental breakdown, tried not to cry and wondered why I was even doing this crazy journey. In the end I couldn’t have thought how great and already enriching my trip would be like.

The next day, after like max 2,5h of sleep and nerves that were almost unbearable and which made it almost impossible to eat I was driven to the airport by my lovely aunt and a very close friend I know since we’re little. My first experience with the flight personal was really nice, a stewardess which probably also was an awesome mom took away most of my worries by confirming, that I will do fine changing airports and that there is almost nothing to go wrong. Further she told me about a very awesome marked at the foot of a volcano where it was possible to get almost everything, which made it a bit easier to look forward to come here.

On the plane to Milan I already had my first two enriching experiences: First I was lucky to have a nice business man sitting next to me telling me all about his exciting travel experiences due to work and which way would be the easiest from one airport to the other. In addition to this, after landing we figured that me and another girl BOTH had to switch airports and… who had thought so.. both had to go all the way to Santiago de Chile.  If that wasn’t enough we both love Latte Macchiato (basically milk with an attempt of coffee :D ), traveling, talking and we kinda also just had the *CLICK*. Caro and me could share a cap from one airport to the other and from there on go through this first Chile adventure together. 

After a good while of sitting and waiting at Malpensa airport we couldn’t believe what we saw when we entered the plane. Even though the first thing you see is a business lounge, also the economy class was enlightened by a nice violet indirect shine. This later turned out to come in handy when starting to adjust to the new time zone you’re flying into, because the served dinner at 12:00pm ( so like 6pm in Chile)  the lights were dimmed a bit later and we found ourselves sleeping around 1-2 am (Amsterdam time zone). I must admit, food from LATAM was great and in general I can just recommend flying with them considering service.

5am on the plane – DESAYUNO No 1 – after a night of more or less sleep I’m again surprised by the quality of food they have on the plane and that it might have been an really good investment I did, when buying the not really cheap ticket to Chile. A bit later we had a stop in Sao Paulo which let us feel the Winter for the first time. I guess I didn’t really remember how cold 12°C can be and that in Latin America almost no place (also not the airport) will be heated. Prepared as I was I took my nice read winter jacket and my scarf and built almost a tent around myself. People knowing me will recognize this as I am cold like all the time and additionally I started with 29°C in Frankfurt and Milan. In my last flight from Sao Paulo to Santiago I had another breakfast "Desayuno 2", that was a weirdly sweet tasting croissant (which had more the consistency of German "Butterhörnle") with ham and cheese. To be honest, in the end it didn't matter what it was they served - I was hungry so I ate it and my plan was anyways to eat a lot of food I just don't know yet.
All in all  the whole trip went awesome and like 1000times better than expected. From in seat entertainment to spa like lightening there was nothing to complain about (except of the Asian people next to me making weird movements while sleeping maybe :P ).

Just before arriving in Santiago Chiles Nature shows it best side

In the end I was picked up by a friend of a friend who is so friendly to let me warm her Couche for my first days. Due to this I didn’t have to organize a taxi adventure and get lost in this enormous city. I guess I’m still not totally aware of the dimensions of this city and country, but all I saw on a documentary (thanks to the in seat entertainment) and the great Andes I could enjoy from the window of the airplane, already show me that 6 month might even not be close to the time I’d need to truly discover this diverse country. Yet I will have enough time for the most important things to discover.

 


Oh I almost forgot – I had my first PISCO and typical chilean dinner – what Pisco is, and why I should extremely careful with it I’ll tell another time. For now my Jetlag sadly is killing me but probably tomorrow it will be a lot better already. 

Muchos Besos,

Leonie

PS. Considering my earlier post - there was no problem with the VISA yayyy! Probably they thought I just have a good face creme so I do not look that old :P