dédé

my paternal grandfather died today 17 years ago. he was 88 years old. i used to call him dédé. that wasn´t his first name. i don´t even how and why i started calling him but i did. he died a month after i saw him in the late 80´s. he was born in istanbul, turkey but had to escape when he was 21 years old because of the armenian genocide. his parents were killed and he when on a ship with his 2 brother to south america. on his passport it says that he was on his way to buenos aires to stay but he told us stories that he wanted to go to brazil which is where he wanted to move to, he changed his mind because there were too many black people. i don´t know which story is true. he had no money when he moved here. he had to sell his shirt to buy 2 bananas! he didn´t know a word of spanish and he never really spoke it very fluently even when he got old. he married 6 years after he moved to montevideo and he opened a shoe stores and started making shoes and he did really well. his 2 brother´s also married and had kids and when i get back to montevideo i´m going to see all of them. my aunt almost started crying when she told us that today was the anniversary. she had to take care of him when her mom died at a young age and she had to work in the shoe store. she closed the store 2 years ago after it became too dangerous to work there alone. there´s a lot of crime and poverty in the neighborhood that i grew up in.

 

on the news today they showed the free stones concert in rio at coppacabana beach. a million people showed up. they´re going to broadcast the show this week. there was a rio at the buenos aires show yesterday. lots of people went in without tickets and there was a lot of pushing and people getting hurt. they got in at the same time that the handicapped people had to go in and all these handicapped people got injured. it´s been on the news today and yesterday. did anyone hear about this?

 

on ftv they showed this really amazing fashion illustrator born in uruguay. he grew up in barcelona. his name is jordi labanda. i´ve seen his work before in wallpaper magazine. it's really good.

http://www.art-dept.com/illustration/labanda/

 

i went on a very old train yesterday from the 20´s. it´s not longer functioning and there aren´t any trains here anymore. it´s like a museum now. it was francisco piria's idea to have a train here. he founded this city and built the first 2 hotels. the first one is now a school but the 2nd one is hotel argentino and it used to be the biggest hotel in south america in the 30´s. construction on the hotel started in 1910 and  it was finished in the 1920 and since the movie whiskey came out lots of people are coming here and staying at the hotel after they´ve seen it in the movie. the 3 pools in the back have ocean water and all the rooms look almost the same as it used to.

 

i want to write more but i have to go to some talk at that same hotel about uruguay.