Making Plans and Decisions

Happy together!

So since I am hear I already experienced a major earthquake and a tsunami alert including evacuation. What's missing is an volcanic eruption. Hopefully I won't have to experience that!

But I wanted to tell about the things Inés and I were thinking about and planning during our holidays. Well most important of all we are going to marry in November. We think our relationship has been proved and tested well enough, we definitely want to keep staying together in future and have a lot of common plans, ideas and thoughts. And for sure we just feel very comfortable, secure, happy, beloved and content together. Apart from that we are planning to travel to Austria together next year and knowing about the immigration laws over there for sure it is much easier for Inés to get a visa when she is married with me. So everything militates in favour for this step and we decided to make it.

In May when Inés' mother, who lives in Italy, comes for a visit, we are going to have our engagement, celebrating it with Inés' family in Santiago. The marriage will take place on 11th of November 2011 in Pucón and therefor will be coming some of my family and friends from Austria. So anyway this year surely is going to be a good one.

Apart from that we had been thinking about what to do for our living in future because both of us working the whole day long being away from the house while all the children had been there alone all day long during the summer wasn't really satisfying for nobody. So we will have to create our own place of work at home. We already started this with our shop but that only does not yield suffieciently. So we had to think about anything else. This now is going to be a sauna and cafeteria next to the shop. We are going to construct a small house in our lot, at the edge of the forest for that where we have place for all that and our shop. Being situated on the access road to the skiing resort on the volcano we plan to bring into the sauna the skiers after a long, cold day on the slopes and so get an income independent from the summer season. Apart from that there are living several Europeans in the area who for sure in the long and rainy winter months (and hopefully all around the year) will appreciate a well maintained, familial sauna. During summer season getting clients should not be a problem anyway. So this is in what we are going to work the next months and to do it I am going to stay here in Chile this winter. Anyway if I want to live here the next years someday I have to get used to it. Better now than later. So from next season on to everybody who is going to visit us we can offer one more service.

Apart from that, now that season had ended, I am amusing myself with settling fire wood for the winter, various repairs at the house, trying to keep the children under control, doing the chores, herding the animals and so on.

For the winter the boss of my rafting company offered my a work contract, so as it looks like I am going to work with him then as well. So finally I am even becoming a skiing instructor. Never thought of that. How funny life can be sometimes.

Vacations - more or less relaxing

Enjoying the first holiday lunch with Inés

Our vacations brought us to Valparaiso, the only really interesting and fascinating city in Chile. It is located around a big bay on the shores of the Pacific Ocean west of Santiago. It has a very unique flair being a mixture of almost everything you can imagine. It is a port town and the headquarter of the Chilean navy and that for crowded by marines in their nice uniforms as well as sailors, whores, drinkers and all that kind of people related to any big harbour of the world. As well it is inhabited by lots of artists and students who give it a bohemian touch. And of course it is full of tourists. The town consists of two totally different parts. There is the flat bay itself, containing the Chilean parliament, office buildings, huge colonial houses, the port, bars, restaurants, cinemas and all the urban infrastructure. With the centuries the city spread over the surrounding hills, climbing them with weirdly meandering steep roads and even steeper, adventerous elevators – so called ‘ascensores’. Up on the hills there exists another town. Constructed following the natural shape not two houses are alike. They are painted in any imaginable colour and you find huge mansions next to dangerously looking barracks. On the hills you find lots of art cafés, international restaurants, art shops, galleries, lovely hostels and various museums. Artists are offering their work and handicrafts on any corner and time does not seem to exist there. The whole town itself, especially up on the hills is a huge piece of art. On every single house, in every back alley or staircase you find paintings and graffitis. Some of them pure scribblings others great pieces of art.

Valparaiso is not truely a beatiful town. It is shabby, dirty and stinks but the flair it gets for its wide range of inhabitants and its unique landscape makes it really fascinating. According to that it reminds me a little of Venice. You just have the hills in spite of the channels.

We arrived and took a room in a central hostel in the plane which I knew from my first visit here. We walked around the city and the hills, eating and drinking in fine cafés and restaurants, watching arts and handicrafts, climbing the hills with some of the ‘ascensores’ or by steep labyrinthine staircases, just soaking up the spirit of the town. In the night we hardly found sleep because the alarm of a car just outside our window rang every 30 minutes and one floor above us anyone walked around and moved chairs loudly half of the night. Meanwhile on the other end of the Pacific Ocean the major earthquake in Japan took place. Soon after we had woken up we realised that there was a tsunami warning for the whole Chilean coast. Inés got really nervous and hardly could enjoy the day but nevertheless we discovered the city another time. We followed the medias during the day and when they informed that the tsunami had hit the Easter Island (belonging to Chile) with waves of about 1 ½ m we decided to return to our hostel to prepare ourselves to leave. When we came there, the owner informed us that there is an evacuation going on and until early night everybody has to leave the bay. So we packed our things and searched for a hostel up on the hills which was not that easy because those are the classic tourist places and due to the tsunami alert everybody who did not leave town was searching shelter there as well. Finally we found a nice hostel where we even spent a quiet night this time. To relax from the stress of the evacuation we had an awesome dinner in a French restaurant just next door (ostrich tenderloin with couscous and cremé brulée as dessert).

During the night the tsunami went by without causing any problems (although in other regions of the coast a few minor destructions had been reported). On the next day we went to Isla Negra a small village where you can visit the house of Pablo Neruda, Chile’s most famous poet and Nobel Prize winner which nowadays is a museum dedicated to him and his collecting passion. When we came there, they told us you just can visit the house with previous registration (which was not mentioned on the homepage that I had watched before) but finally after some discussion they let us join an English tour. That was a little disappointing because we had been guided through like cattle in a market and you did not feel that much of of Pablo Neruda's extravagance nor got any deeper insight in his interesting life.

Our plan had been to spend the next days on some beach but unfortunately a chilly strong wind had come up and did not seem to leave soon, so we changed plans. The next day we went to a small town called Curíco where we hoped to relax from the tsunami evacuation and all the rest and to visit a nearby national park in the Andean foothills and one of the numerous vineries in the region. We got there and did not find any proper hostel. They all had been either horribly dirty and run-down or damned expensive despite the town itself does not has to offer anything. Finally we took the best room we had found to spend the night although it was still very basic and anything else than inviting. The next day we went to the closeby village of Molina where there should leave buses to the national park. Unfortunately this service had already been suspended due to the end of the summer season. Very frustrated, because nothing seemed to happen well these days we did not try to go to a vinery anymore but took the next bus back to Pucon because we said that we are having chaos in our own house there as well, but at least no costs when we stay there. On the way back to Pucón it started raining heavily.....

So far the story of our only more or less relaxing and a little disappointing holidays. At least Inés and I have had a few days away from Pucón where we had stuck the last months due to the high season and some hours together only the two of us, which let us make some decisions and plans for the future. More about that the next time.

High Season

Being happy at work

Right in time to help to cure my January depression there opened up a German restaurant in the center of Pucón called 'Biergarten' (Beer garden). It is run by a very nice German couple and because Elke, the owner, is working in the kitchen herself, you can get real authentic German food over there like 'Schnitzel', 'Leberkaese', 'faschierte Leibchen' or 'Bratwuerstl'. Because they of course have very good beer as well and Uli, Elkes husband, is an enthusiastic motorcyclist it became something like my second living room and I washed down my frustration there with some nice draft 'Weizen' more than once.

Fortunately February had been much better than January and I had to work a lot which saved me from drinking too much beers at 'Biergarten'. That for I drank them at lots of asados with colleagues like someone uses to do it here during the summer. So I finally earned some money, had fun on the river, a lot of sun and no time to be annoyed with troublesome Chileans. Apart high season has to offer numerous events in Pucón. Apart from the asados there took place various concerts, the annual triathlon, a rodeo, numerous exhibitions and so on. Inés and I had been to the life performance of Chile's most famous theatre group who has a weekly sitcom. They had a cooperation with Inés' restaurant so we got free tickets. It was a typical funny and easily understandable slapstick comedy about relationship problems so even I could laugh a lot.

So February passed by quite fast and amusing and meanwhile high season already had come to an end a few days ago. Now Inés, who had been working heavily as well these weeks, and I will go on a small holiday for about a week to relax from all the tourist crazyness. We will go north from Pucón but to know whereto exactly you will have to have a look in here again because so far we do not exactly know it ourselves.