I celebrated my first year in Chile recently, so I thought that I would try to sum up my experience so far in a very unplanned, random-thoughts kinda way. Let’s see how that goes.
My first thought is that this won’t be one of those culture shock travelogues about how different everything is here compared to “home”. You know, “This place is sooo different! They flavour their food with belly button lint, the dogs know sign language, it’s illegal to insult the rainbow, and all the roads are paved with broken promises.” Are things different in Chile compared to Sweden? Yes, of course. But to me, everything is always different. I’ve never experienced “normal” in my life.
You see, I wouldn’t raise an eyebrow if a UFO landed one day, and some three-headed green blob got out and told me “There you are zzzgrrlxyx! You must have fallen out the ship’s window when we had to swerve to avoid hitting that comet. Get in! We’re late for dinner on our home planet!” While I mostly enjoy life on planet Earth, I’ve never really felt at home here. To me, “home” isn’t a place. It’s that feeling you get from being around the right kind of people and doing the right kind of things. So, in that sense it doesn’t matter much where on the planet I am located. It’s about the circumstances.
So, do I feel at home in Valparaiso? Oh yeah! I have everything I need to be happy here. I have a wonderful family. We have a beautiful home, full of bones, books, and black things. We have the Pacific just outside our window, and I will never get tired of taking evening walks by the ocean, watching the sun set behind the hills of the city. We live a simple life with lots of good food, good fun, creativity, resting, and living the way we want to. I can feel my soul healing from living this life.
There’s also a lot of fun things to do here. Lucha libre, absinthe bars, museums, concerts, cemetery walks, saying hi to cats, and so much more. Chile is also a very diverse country. There’s the sea, mountains, deserts, forests, wilderness, sprawling metropolitan cities… And the shape of this country is so fascinating. It’s like this slim intestine, clinging to the west coast of Latin America like a strand of spaghetti. So narrow that you can basically walk from the coast of the Pacific to the Andes on the other side of the country. But if you are going to travel up and down the country, you’ll have to enter cryosleep because the journey will take generations to complete.
So far, I’ve only explored Valparaiso and Santiago, and it feels like I’ve still only discovered 0.3% of both of those cities. There’s just this gigantic buffet of places and experiences in Chile that will take the rest of my life to discover. Of course, the geography and nature are very different from northern Europe. Having vultures, sea lions, scorpions and parrots instead of squirrels and sparrows as local wildlife is feeling refreshingly exotic. So is the sky, with its tilted moon, different constellations, and the sun and the moon wandering across the sky in the “wrong” direction. Celebrating new years eve under the hot summer sun and watching the autumn fog arrive in April (while the northern world is spamming Instagram with spring flowers), is giving me exhilarating “being on another planet”-vibes.
So I guess my “exotic” vibes come mostly from nature and climate. People and culture then? Well, any culture is exotic to me. Growing up, I was just as perplexed and confused by the people across the street as I have been with people I’ve met from all parts of the world. I’ve been feeling like a stranger at family dinners, and like I’m with family when I encounter like-minded strangers. I am my own tribe and culture, and geography has no power over that feeling. If you ask me what’s different here in Chile, I will just shrug. Things and people here are just as odd or familiar as in any other place I’ve lived. Also, there is something very arrogant about comparing countries. We tend to se our home country as the default for “civilization”, and seeing the differences as “the wrong way to do it”. Most lists that concern observations by a person that have moved from one country to another tend to be “My top ten reasons why this place is weird”. While that same person most likely will tell any foreigner to “shut up and be grateful to be here in my perfect country” while they are at home.
With that being said, my impressions of life in Chile so far is:
- Taking the bus here is like riding a rollercoaster without any safety precautions. Probably because the bus drivers are on cocaine. But you get to where you’re going on time, and holding on for your life is a pretty good workout.
- Collectivo (a kind of hybrid of Uber/bus/share taxi route) is a cheap and brilliant transportation alternative, and every city should have them.
- The street art and the murals are amazing! Every city needs lots of street art!
- The bread here is awesome! Wait, what?! There’s no rye crisp bread? Ok, I can make it myself. But seriously, the bread is really good.
- So! Much! Mayo!
- Sushi is to death. I’m used to eating around 8 pieces. Here, two people can split 50 pieces as a snack. And they’re very creative with the sushi. So far, I’ve tried sushi burger, sushi completo, fried sushi, sushi with banana, ceviche sushi, almond sushi, black sushi…
- Is that fog or weed smoke? Both. Oh, ok.
- Everyone is selling everything, everywhere. I can take a short walk around the block and come home with bread, homemade marmalade, new clothes, Fluoxetine, a goat, a spare battery for my old Canon camera, and the phone number to a great dentist.
- Stuff is on fire all the time. Either by accident (bad wiring, old heaters etc.) or on purpose (protesting something).
- Apparently you can build your own house with what you find in the back of the garage, some tape, and wishful thinking.
- It’s surprisingly cold inside during the winter. But then again, I’m used to Scandinavian buildings that are so well insulated that they could be used as spaceships without problem. And with having radiators in every room, hot enough to set fire to an iceberg. And with “cold”, I mean less than +25C. Yes, I’m spoiled, I know. And I’m honestly very, very grateful for the mild winters that are no colder than a European autumn.
- It’s interesting to be 185cm in a country where people are, like, 37cm tall on average. I feel like Gandalf in The Shire. I get asked to pick stuff from the highest shelf a lot. I can clean the ceiling without using a chair to stand on. But using the bathtub is like taking a bath in the kitchen sink.
- I don’t even notice the earthquakes anymore. It has become as exotic as a cloudy day.
- I encounter more Swedish than I have in any other country I’ve been in. And people get very excited when they hear I’m Swedish. I don’t know how many times I’ve met people who pull out an old photo of Olof Palme from their pocket and start talking about Swedish social democracy and solidarity with an emotional voice. I don’t have the heart to tell them that Sweden is run by capitalists and racists these days. And like most well-off countries, we build higher walls instead of bigger tables. But it is nice to be reminded that Sweden used to be a compassionate place that cared about people outside its own borders once upon a time.
- Chileans are not very hot-blooded or Latino-like, but more like Scandinavians. In the sense that they are quiet and reserved, and don’t really dance salsa out in the streets. Except during Fiesta Patrias/dieciocho (independence day), when they party in a way that make Guns N’ Roses look like Zen monks.
- Chilean Spanish is… ummm… unique. Imagine taking a Spanish speaking person, filling them with cheap vodka and Novocain, replacing their tongue with a viper on cocaine, removing their verbs and replacing them with weird slang words, then recording their speech backwards and at 5x speed. That’s still more comprehensible than the Chilean Spanish. It’s a bitch to learn, but I have to respect a country that deliberately butchers the tongue of the conquistadors as a linguistical middle finger to its colonial past.
All in all, I really like it here. I feel relaxed and comfortable. Chile has been very kind to me so far, and I can really recommend it. I also really recommend being a foreigner at some point in your life. It’s educational, and humbling. Being a stranger in a strange land is like having a fresh breeze blowing through your mind and soul, sweeping away old prejudices and stale mindsets. You get to open your mind to new things and see life with new eyes. It makes you grow as a person, and it brings us closer as humans. Which, in my humble opinion, is exactly what the world needs right now…
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”
– Mark Twain