a dog in montevideo

i took this photo in 1988. from the balcony of our old apartment in la teja.

flower tree in piriapolis

what type of tree is this? it's gorgeous. i have a picture of myself by this tree and the pink of the flowers reflected on my face and made it look pink!

Colonia Escolar de Vacaciones

this buidling used to be the first hotel in piriapolis. built in 1905 by francisco piria. it was called Hotel Piriápolis and it's now called colonia escolar de vacaciones. it's an elementary school. in front of the school is the beach. how can you concentrate?

next to the school is the argentino hotel which is still a hotel and was once the largest hotel in south america. the construction took 10 years to complete from 1920-1930 at a cost of millions of pesos.

this picture was taken on the far left side of the argentino hotel.

francisco piria in 1900

argentina and uruguay stop sending troops to u.s military academy

guardian.co.uk

on my last day in piriapolis

it was about to start raining. if you look across the street, all the cars that are normally parked are gone. a few hours later they were about to start the carnival parade and all morning they had the motorcycle guy ride around with his loud speakers telling everyone to remove their cars. i missed the parade.

uruguay travel journals

i just found this excellent site for trip journals and here's a link for all the uruguay journals. go to best sites and then scroll down to uruguay.

humberto pittamiglio

i've seen the castillo pittamiglio before on previous trips but never tried to find out about the person who designed it. then last january, after doing some research on what do do in montevideo, i made sure that seeing this castle was on my itinerary. it's in pocitos across the street from the sea wall. there was a sign on the door that they have guided tours on thursday's at 4 and it seemed that i was always busy during that time so on the last thursday that i was in montevideo, i went but got consused about the time and got there too late. i was so angry at myself for missing this. you can't see it unless you go on that tour. so now i'm trying to find out more about humberto pittamiglio. he was born in montevideo in 1887 and became an architect and alchemist. francisco piria, the founder of piriapolis was his alchemy teacher. pittamiglio died in the 60's. he was single and had no kids. in his will he left this building to the municipality of montevideo to turn it into a cultural centre. there's no information about him in english which is too bad if you're trying to be a culture centre and attracting people that would like to see it and a lot of them are probably tourists. i did find this review from a traveller:

"Among dozens of new and modern buildings, at the seaside, you can find an odd construction: El castillo Pittamiglio (Pittamiglio Castle). It is not a real castle, but a strange house easily recognizable by the Victory of Samothraki it has at the frontage. The "castle" was built at early 20th century by Humberto Pittamiglio, an architect and alchemist. The house is full of mystery, hidden charms and strange rooms; it houses the Asociación de Promotores Privados de la Construcción (an association), a cultural center and museum. You can visit this building with a guided tour."

i found this wikipedia page about him and it has more links about him but it's in spanish.

and this is the cultural centre. it belongs to the appcu which is the asociacion de promotores privados de la construccion del uruguay (the association and promotion of uruguayan construction).

he applied a lot of what he learned in alchemy in the construction of this castle. he used a lot of octogonal shapes which represents the 4 dimensions of the power of the sky with the 4 dimensions of the power of the earth. i'm translating this from a site and i don't think it makes much sense in english or maybe i'm a horrible translator. he designed 2 other castles: one in las flores (maldonado, uruguay), and the other in la quinta de la villa colón (montevideo).

la pasiva

this picture was taken while i was standing by the doorway of la pasiva, a restaurant chain in uruguay. this one is on 18 de julio and it's the oldest one. i think this location is at least 60 years old. the light fixtures look like they're from the 40's (or maybe earlier). that's why i took the picture. i really love the way they're designed.

archival footage of uruguay from 1949

http://www.archive.org/details/Uruguay1949

teatro solis

i went on a guided tour of this beautiful theatre. it was founded in 1856 and it's the biggest theatre in uruguay. they stage operas, ballets, concerts, plays, and musicals. what's so great about it now is that they've made huge improvements to it to make it more modern. a fire almost destroyed it in the 90's. it was closed for 7 years for renovations until they reopened in august 2004. they changed all the seats to add materials that aren't flammable, new emergency exit doors to make it easier to leave if there's a fire, everythig back stage is computerized so that you can change scenes much faster and stores things in a more compact way, the fabric in the ceiling was cleaned up, all the carpets were changed so that it's quieter if someone's late and so much more that i can't think of right now. all the changes are there for a reason and they were really smart things to do. now they're trying to make the theatre more accessible to people with lower incomes. on weekends it's very cheap. i haven't been to a show here but i noticed that all the plays going on while i was there were sold out.









and i just found a great uruguay diary that i added on my blog section. i haven't read too much of it, but it looks like they've gone all over the world and travelled for months. i'm going to spend more time reading it tomorrow and live vicariously through their travels.

mujeres uruguayas

in montevideo, they don't let you borrow books from the library. so you always see these great used/new bookstores everywhere. i wanted to buy books all the time! but they weigh so much. after moving so many times, you realize that books and records, what i love buying the most, are the heaviest boxes to lift! i was looking for a book to read on my flight so i bought a book that i saw someone read in a bus, then kept seeing it in a lot of bookstores: mujeres uruguayas, el lado femenino de nuestra historia (uruguayan women, the feminin side of our history). i still haven't finished it. it takes so much more effort to read in spanish. the book deals with the real stories of 11 women artists from uruguay who lived in different periods in history. some are from the 18th century others from the last century. it's about their lives and what it was like to be a woman and an artist in those times. each story is written by a different woman journalist, writer, and professor. this is the first volume that came out in the 90's. this is the 2nd volume it's too bad these books aren't translated in english. it's really incredible how much information is lost and unavailable to most people.

rompan todo (break everything)

denis from the site ururock sent me an email a few days ago that he was going to have a radio show on a uruguayan online radio station based in atlanta, georgia called rompan todo. click on "schedule" for the programming. most of the people are uruguayans and i think the station is only in spanish. his show's called ururock and he plays 60's and 70's uruguayan music. you can hear it on saturdays with a repeat on sunday and monday. if you live in the west coast it's at 4pm on saturday's. i heard the show last weekend and it was great. lots of bands that i've never heard of. here's the tracklisting:

01 Los Mockers - Paint it Black
02 Rubén Rada - Malísimo
03 Kano y Los Bulldogs - Sobre Un Vidrio Mojado
04 Psiglo - Gente Sin Camino
05 Los Moonlights - Cuna De Mi Muerte
06 Cold Coffee - Volando Alto (Flying High)
07 Elegía - Destema
08 Días de Blues - Esto Es Nuestro
09 OVNI 87 - No Tengo Valor
10 Danger Groups - Tu Nombre
11 Los Killers - Superstar
12 Opus Alfa - Calma De Un Día
13 Totem - Orejas
14 Montevideo Blues - Chamarrita El Chiquero

and right after ururock on saturday, i heard the show El Cuarto Oscuro (the dark room) and they played really good music. not uruguayan but it was really good 80's new wave and some not so good metal.

kamchatka review and whisky screening in vancouver on april 5th!

if you live in vancouver, don't miss the screening of the uruguayan film whisky at the jewish film festival. you can buy tickets here. at first, i couldn't figure out why it was in a jewish film festival, but then i remembered that there's 2 characters in the movie who are jewish. it's worth seeing if you're in town. you'll get to see lots of montevideo and piriapolis.

i went to see the argentinian film kamchatka last weekend. it's playing until april 9th at the vancouver film centre. the movie takes place in 1976, and it's about a family trying to run away from the military dictatorship. they hide in a house by the country and change their names. it's a story about how the family stays together more than it is about the politics. i was expecting and wanted to see something more political. i wanted to find out why they were hiding but they didn't provide much of an explanation. the plot was more focused on their 2 young sons and their perspective of what was occurring. the acting is amazing and if you've seen almodovar's films you might recognize the main actress, cecilia roth. it was nice to hear the spanish spoken there and see some of the argentinian landscape but overall i was disappointed. i was expecting something really great after hearing that it won the audience award for best foreign film at the vancouver film festival and reading all the great reviews on imdb, but i'm more critical than most people when it comes to films.

new pictures!

here