On Monday, Gunnar Wolf had to go to the airport and I went with him because I wanted to go to Santiago anyway. I wanted to do some sightseeing there and I had also previously mailed Sebastian Silva who was looking for someone to sign his GPG key. I said I could meet him once I'm in Santiago and Sebastian kindly offered to let me stay at his place. On Monday afternoon, I went to Cerro Santa Lucia which is a hill right in the middle of the city with nice gardens. In the evening, I met Sebastian and we went out for dinner.
On Tuesday, I spent a few hours reading e-mail and answering some interview questions a German computer magazine had sent to me. It's really funny… when I write in English, I sometimes look up words in German; but when I write in German, I typically look up words in English because I cannot immediately think of the German words… Anyway, in the afternoon, I finally managed to leave the house and go to Cerro San Cristóbal. I enjoyed the view of the city (with the Andes in the background). I later went to the zoo where they had zebras, giraffes (jirafas!) and even kangaroos. Afterwards, I went to Pablo Neruda's house La Chascona which again was pretty impressive. I wish I would have had time to visit his third house on Isla Negra.
In the evening, I went out to dinner with Tim, someone I had met at the conference and who was interested in my research. We went to a Peruvian place because Sebastian told me that Peruvian food is really good and I wasn't disappointed (even though I'm still not sure what I had was typically Peruvian). The most striking thing was not the food, though. When we arrived at the restaurant, there was a big parking spot saying "taxi". Someone was standing on the street, waving us towards that parking spot. I was like "err, are you sure we can park there?", but Tim reassured me that it's alright. Sure enough, when we came back, the person was still waiting besides our car. We gave him some money and went away. The really striking thing is how cheap some labour is in Chile. There are people everywhere basically doing nothing the whole day. Every little shop has a guard, most apartment blocks have someone downstairs at the reception, etc. Once, we went to have a BBQ after the conference and our bus driver waited the whole evening as if this was the most normal thing in the world… in Europe, you couldn't afford that but it's really common in South America. I always felt guilty when I saw this because I want people to have good, creative and rewarding jobs but it's important to understand the social structures they have… if they didn't have jobs like that, they wouldn't have jobs at all and would be much worse off. Still, it felt very strange to me.
On Wednesday, I briefly met Sebastian after he returned from an exam at the university and then I had to go to the airport. I wish I could have stayed longer. I really liked the country and the people and hope I can return some time in the future. At least I bought some Chilean/castellano Hip-Hop and funk CDs which I'm listening to now. Given how much time I've spent in Spanish speaking countries this year, I'm also seriously wondering whether it would make sense to learn (at least some basic) Spanish…