Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Being lucky

The first half month in Valparaiso was spent in a colorful and ice-cold room in a house on the street Victor Hugo, right at the ascensor Cordillera (and accordingly, on cerro Cordillera). The artist couple Lorena and Andres, who rent out the place on Victor Hugo, have a café downstairs. they also have a tabby cat with the annoying habit to climb up and pee everywhere after searching through the garbage. We practically had the second floor to ourselves – the other guy who lived there studied and worked a couple of jobs and probably never slept. The only drawback of this was having to share facilities, and having only one bottle of gas for either cooking or showering.

After the guy stole my bag and his cronies threatened Rodrigo with a knife, I pretty much hibernated in that room on Victor Hugo, feeling safe there. Everyone seemed even stranger to me than normal and I felt extremely suspicious to the point of paranoia. The guy who stays in the adjacent room for one night seems aggressively friendly – "soy de campo" (I`m from the countryside - who is calmed by that information?!)He insists on giving us a tin with mussels, and then asks every day “did you eat them yet?” gave me bad dreams of fairy tales and scarecrows.

The idea was to change something. When we crept out of that room and visited other Cerros (there are at least as many as in Rome), it felt like breathing different air.
To me, Valparaiso is very much like Berlin in this sense of contrast: much art, much street art, many young people (a couple of universities), many colors; at the same time, much dirt, no jobs, poverty, and “te assaltan en todas partes.” There is both the gringo tourism and the romantic sense of artists’ living and scraping by: the French guy had been living off playing guitar in the street for months - although the whole being (and singing in) French in a lanky, slightly gay way certainly helped - before the girl broke it off and he cut his hair and went back to France.

On Cerro Alegre, there are expensive restaurants and cars and gringos around, the houses are beautiful, with vines and paintings and neighborhood watch programs, and I was immediately convinced anything here would be way too expensive. The few places available - dingy, overpriced and cold - supported my assumption. Then we came upon the first floor of a house that had just been vacated by a family: the kids would still come to the second floor (passing by the common gallery). Two rooms and a living room, a fully equipped kitchen and bathroom, all in excellent shape and quality (a functioning toilet flush, a faucet that is usable without flooding the kitchen or hurting oneself in gymnastic efforts; things I had almost forgotten). Señora Viviana, mother of the family and now my favorite person in Valparaiso, is a well-shaped 40ish dentist with a girlish air, very pragmatic, extremely friendly, and she talks nonstop. (Seriously. I caught myself reflecting whether this could be a dysfunction or something. When I met her husband – a very large barbed lawyer –, all he was able to squeeze in was “encantado”) She told me I looked “chicitita” - like 21 or something (I kid you not). But I doubt this owes to my youthful complexity. Either Chilean girls my age are married or at least pregnant, or it was my clothes, my tattered “pantalones de guerra” and hoodie.
From the moment I feel in love with the place and señora Viviana decided to rent it to us, the list of goodies went on and on. The place is ridiculously cheap, considering its qualities. There is a functioning phone line, so you can call me!
+56 32 22 22 784. please do, I’m missing my friends! Moreover, Señora Viviana decided to buy both a new bed and a fridge for us. She also left a number of beautiful furniture and plants, and lots and lots of useful bits and pieces. For about a day I was expecting the hitch, the payment of some form, the firma or mafia or “that’s US$ not Chilean$“ or similar. It feels like having a patron.

Recap: right now, in Santiago…

A roommate (or a guest or an amigo) is showering while Rodrigo is making eggs, with vapor only. There was a camping cooking set here but we took it to Valparaiso. I will start using it next time the French dreadlock couple with whom we share facilities, completely messes up the kitchen without cleaning up after themselves. The guys of this apartment don´t do cooking. They all work (and eat) in restaurants - with the exception of M., an unemployed actor who doesn´t live here anymore but who comes around when his girl goes to work and he is bored. I dislike his loud, vulgar, chain-smoking and game-playing way, but after all, I am a guest here myself. The other guys are: V, the oldest, a thirtish writer and supervisor in a fancy-schmanzy (Italian) restaurant, with a soft spot for things French and sniffable, extremely well-educated and funny. Kind of a Chilean version of the French comedian Gad Elmaleg.
Then there is C, a sweet guy around my age, who threw out his wife-and-children-beating father when he was 16 and built a house for his mother.
Finally, there is another guy, and there is his brother and I always mix up the two; when they leave separately in the morning, I always get a Groundhog Day – moment: Didn’t you just walk out that door..?
V,C, and M are not sure or decided whether this guy is gay or not, and I am not sure how much this matters to them.