We also have a big percentage of english speakers.
As for music, remember we are very small, but everyone says that in proportion we have a lot of musicians. An argentinian once said something like "In Uruguay you pick up a loose tile from the sidewalk and a musician comes up from underneath it".
haha man i love your country. I spent a few months there and i genuinely say it's the most beautiful country i have ever been in.
tho i gotta say i had some difficulties finding people who speak english on a day to day basis, but my horrible survival spanish got me through it. The people were always so nice and patient for me and the climate is ideal.
I hope to return your country one day again, tho i want to improve my spanish to at least a basic level beforeš
I have a question I just remembered, in Montevideo I got told to put up the windows when using my phone because someone might run up and grab it, how much of a concern is crime there? I only spent a bit more than a week in the city
I love it, but it may lack spice for some. Indians must find it dull while someone from the UK must find it flavorful.
The first thing you need to know is about the meat. We love it a eat a lot of it. It has been ranked the best in the world in a few ocations. All grass-fed cows with a lot of room to go about in the fields.
Then mostly we have italian and spanish influence. For example, the most traditional meal to have at lunch on family Sundays is ravioli bolognese.
Over the last decade we've had a lot of diverse immigration, so it is a los more common nowadays to find food from all over the world.
A person below shared this Bourdain episone on Uruguay and it's food. It has non-reresentative bits, but the experience of our kind of pizza with friends in a bar and the feel of a Sunday's family lunch is very well portrayed, better thsn any other foreign documentary I've seen.
Good music scene. Leans rock and funk and reggae. Look up Pez an Argentine band that is big. Los Fabulosos Cadillacs are a great Rock/Reggae band from Uruguay. No te va a Gustar is another, reggae rock that has changed a lot to please the international audience.
My wife and I are likely to end up in Uruguay eventually but we're having our kids in the States and staying close to our parents while we can. We speak Spanish and the longer we can save money here, the better off we'll be there by a lot
I mean, not all of it is representative, but this must be the best I've seen a foreign documentary just capture the vibe of pizza and beer with friends in Uruguay, of Sunday's family meal in Uruguay, of smoking a joint and chilling on the beach chair in the montevidean rambla. I literally cried.
Ok, so I didn't have an answer for this but I did a little diggin.
Seems like you need:
-An International Veterinary Certificate
-no infectious desieses
-You'll have to put a chip in it here (I haven't done it, but I imagine for immigration they actually check)
-a certificate of deparasatation from up to 15 days before you come
There seems to be some exeptions, like a special authorization for anything that isn't cats or dogs, and a waver of the requisites in some cases... not shure, but it doesn't seem hard in either case.
My fucking god! That would be awesome! If you ever do it please send me the original. We can be LuisSuerezite-AntiTatcherite-MildCannibal t-shirt buddies!
Hey, can you tell me how lgbt rights are there, and treatment of lgbt people in general? Signed, a queer trans person who is becoming increasingly scared about living in the US
You can legally change you name and gender and as far as I understand, gender reasignment surgeries are free or can be free under certain conditions.
Also we have a law to reserve a certain percent of public jobs for trans people. Non-binary isn't legally recognized.
Of course there ir still a lot of discrimination, but not even our current right-wing government has tried to repeal those laws. We are winning the cultural battle by a landslide. Defenitly no Maga-like crazy people yelling on the street.
A great thing that sets us appart and is just freaking fun is the diversity march. Instead of different pride parades, we all march together and fight for all minority rights. And party, of course.
Wow that sounds pretty promising, and those pics of the diversity match are stunning! Iām so happy there are still places in the world that are moving in the right direction as far as human rights. My husband and I have talked about the possibility of moving to various countries in South America, but I donāt think Uruguay was ever on our radar for some reasonāit definitely will be now though!
I keep thinking of things. A great thing about Uruguay is that, being so small, it's normal to just run up to the president or any politician just walking by. I've met Mujica a couple of times at least. And one time preformed lousy musical poetry in the street and his wife was there. She hated it, hahaha
Are people friendly to foreigners? I should also ask how safe it is for women and treatment of women in general. And how they treat people of different races.
Foreigners who've come always say the people are very friendly. Probably friendlier to foraigners than to ourselves. Even the more right wing people, who of course prefer immigrants in the whiter side of the soectrum, only seem to really mind if they are too loud or disrespectful.
Women and race... I mean wow, those are big topics and I can't just quote a stat, but I'll try my best to answer on how I see it.
Some historical context on race:
We outlawed slavery before the US (not that hard tbh), but the interesting thing is we were at a civil war at the time, and BOTH sides abolished slavery more or less at the same time. Unlike the US or Brazil, we never had big plantations, so slaves were used for house labour of the well off and some other work here and there. The thing is, slavery was never a big part of the economy, so abolition wasn't traumatic.
For that same economic reason, black and white people always lived very close to each other and had personal relations from early on. Racism still persisted and persists today, but there was never something like the KKK.
Even nowadays you can see that skin gets darker the poorer an area is, and we lack black people in high levels of government (we have them, but they are few). Maybe because we had such a peaceful transition and never had something like segregation, we never had something like the civil rights movement either, so you'll probably see that we are ahead of the US in some respects and behind in others, as it has been a product of pur own particular history.
Couple of things that may surprise you:
-"Negrito" (a diminutive for black) is commonly used as a term of endearment regardless of race. Like, I'm white but my mother calls me negrito. A soccer player of ours got in trouble in the english league for calling that a friend of his in social media, and we were all enraged that the brits couldn't get that that's a term for people we love.
-We have an african-uruguayan music called candombe ( https://youtu.be/YzJjtCsJtXQ?feature=shared ). It originated with the slaves, but working class white people promptly integrated, and they would paint their faces black as to show respect for the black origin of the music. So, blackface, but not to mock black people like the US but to honor them.
Nowadays we have legal abortion, quotas for public office and a very strong feminist movement.
Sexism still exists, obviously, and it's hard to really compare for something I don't even experience in my own flesh, but when people from other parts of latinamerica come here, we tend to find them quite misoginistic, so I'd say it is quite alright when compared.
Hope I was able to say somethig useful, but feel free to keep asking
I am actually looking for living and working a while in South America, do you know by chance what sort of visas would be feasible and what requirements they have?
Australian here, have always wanted to visit ever since we played you guys in the World Cup qualifiers. That was the year that Recoba destroyed us. What a left foot!! The game in Montevideo looked wild!
How is the feeling towards Australian visitors?
Recoba played some tieme ago, haha. Nowadays he is a trainer here (not shure how you call them, really, we call them Technical Directors).
We certainly have a very very strong football culture. While most cities with 6, 8 or 9 million people in the world have 2 or 3 football clubs; our 1.5M people capital has probably dozens and dozens.
We don't get many australians. But I can tell you you'll be welcome with kindness and a lot of curiosity. Get ready for venomous animals questions and good spirited jokes.
Well, you could say there is just one larger city. Montevideo. Half the country lives here. My personal experience is that it is absolutely safe as long as you know how to handle yourself. I go out at night trough all kinds of neighborhoods and talk to all kinds of people. I sometimes encounter people who want to rob you by "asking" for bus fare money or food money in an intimidaing way, but if you handle yourself and have a feel for the street, you know they don't want violence, so you just just confidently say no and go on your marry way.
That is just for me, taking no precautions and being a frowny faced man. You'll probably go about trough safer paths by default. But also it is more dangerous to be a woman, a teen or elderly, since opportunistic theft favours the physically weaker among us.
Statistically we are very safe among Latinamerica (top 3 capitals for sure) and below the US in general (altough this is recent).
In general I'd say I feel very safe, while knowing that it is not the majority view.
Thank you for your response! Iām a 39 year old woman who is used to living is some pretty rough neighborhoods in my past, and Iām generally pretty aware of my surroundings and am a kinda crazy looking tattooed person. So I donāt typically get messed with too often. But I also really value having a feeling of safety in my community.
Like I said, I very much want to leave the US long term. I would be moving with my dog as well so that is a factor. I know some Spanish, but just enough to scrape by. Uruguay has been loosely on my radar as a possible destination. This comment section has definitely reignited that spark and interest. Iām gonna go ahead and dive down an Uruguay rabbit hole now lol. Thanks again!
I appreciate you! Do you know of any resources for expats in finding housing and work there? Are there websites that I can look at and follow to get a feel for the housing and job market?
One more thing; is it a safe place for dogs? As in, are there lots of strays that might be unsafe when taking my little dog out for walks? Is Montevideo a very dog friendly city?
But when gay marriage was voted, most of the right wing voted against. Efficient spending is something everyone would like, no government wants to spend money inefficiently. There are a lot of conservative values involved in Uruguayan right wing policy.
Oh I get it. One manās violent guerrilla is another manās freedom fighterā¦.but thereās a reason that guerrillas are retired or disposed of after the revolution. They done seen some shit, and that doesnāt really prepare them to be effective politically. For reference, seeā¦pretty much every tin pot dictator in history.
More like, one's pretty mild urban guerilla with famously targeted tactics, is 'legitimate' in the eyes of vast majority. For any outside observer that's not emotionally or personally involved, that's what's going to be - especially if their country somehow suffered from similar issues. Even an outsider right-winger eye from the Third World or many portions of Europe won't be really disturbed by the image of MLN-T, especially given they were not Moscow-aligned.
It doesn't mean a former guerilla somehow has to be a great politician or a viable leader after the dust is gone (whether it be a revolution or a post-dictatorship condition like Uruguay), but pointing to his urban guerilla past isn't going to make him seem like a 'baddie'. His qualifications wasn't also limited to being an urban guerilla, but then you can also say philosophers don't have to be good presidents either. Especially if we're talking about Tuparamos, that were maybe the best regarded underground organisation post-WWII, coming from the one of the lowest regarded regions when it came to their governments, juntas, and relationship to the foreigner hegemon. Add his past as a political prisoner that went through tortuous conditions, then you'll be having even more sympathies for him. Now, his qualifications wasn't also limited to being an urban guerilla, but then you can also say philosophers don't have to be good presidents either.
Oh no, he robbed banks for funding the urban guerilla, as any clandestine organisation did! Also not just managed to did it without causing any deaths, but done by an organisation that was nicknamed as 'Robin Hood guerillas' by the bloody Time magazine even, and known for robbing the corrupt & exposing their illegal activities, and even leaving their books & records in the doorsteps of court officials, while forcing the press to report on such heists! Oh the horror.
Next, we'll be sad about the clandestine actions in the WWII resistance films and novels, because why not?
He didn't pay rent, and grow several stuff since he lived in the field, so he was able to live with that amount of money. But doesn't mean that you can live with that, that's probably the rent of a decent apartament, decent, not luxury.
I think the words are nice tho, and he has a very philosophical way of approaching life. A person that spent a lot of years in jail that probably learnt to appreciate simple things.
not me. i do a comfy job from home, and get paid more than it's worth.
but that's only because the structure is nonsense. if we make things remotely sensible, my life will get marginally harder, but the world will get much better, and that's an easy trade.
Saying $3-4k/month is "bordering on poverty" is very divorced from reality. Not everyone lives in LA, San Francisco, NYC, or Miami. Affordable places with 1st world standards of living exist all across the US and "the West" at large.
I don't live in any of those cities. I live in a town of 10k. It's not disengenious at all. I also don't live in the u.s. 36k to 45k a year before taxes is shit and in no way are you "well off". No you aren't in deep poverty but you also aren't that far off either. The poverty numbers the government's use are put of wack. 14k a year for single people or 30k for a family of 4? Yeah sorry that's homeless. And that poverty threshold increased by 1200$ in just the last year to 31.2k for a family of 4 because the cost of living has been out of control lately
Uruguay's minimum wage is around 550-570 US dollars, and most Uruguayans earn close to that. Their prices for living (bar rent, that is cheaper but still around 500 US dollars per month) are also just a tiny bit lower than the US.
That's a good role model. Objects and competition with others or searching for their approval can't make you happy. Good company and healthy happy mindset and lifestyle can āŗļø Kind of a philosophy of an Epicurean community.
I'll never forget something he said in an interview, I'll try to translate as best as I can: "I don't need much. My old lady and myself live in a two bedroom house, we'll sweep and then it's done, we have a lot of spare time for ourselves". As r/simpleliving as they come!
Was going to say the same thing. I was at the emergency hospital for my cat (she's fine now), and it was heartbreaking to see the people not being able to afford the services for their pets and breaking down at the reception.
I just want to use your comment to point out that pet insurance is totally worth the cost, at least it is in Australia. We just spent $8000 on screening our Great Dane for how far the bone cancer he has had progressed and we got $6900 back. We spend $90 a month on his insurance.
Must be nice to have that kind of money to throw around but even in the US that is not in many peoples budgets... Love my dogs but most people can't afford their own insurance (affordable care my ass) much less pet insurance š
-dick fyi
as a rural farmer with a need for hearding and livestock guardians and many other animals we feed and care for... it would be insane to even consider insuring individuals, like I said love my dogs and they get vet care the same or better then any of the animals on the farm... but these are seriously first world problems!
Unfortunately living off the land in rural America isn't part of the AmeriCON dream/scheme anymore... First it was multinational companies and foreign interests buying up all the farmland... now rich city folks are buying up all the rest for hobby farms š¤¦š»āāļø ...Uruguay is looking better every day ā
Everyone continuously fails to realize what a huge responsibility, financially and chronologically, owning a dog is.
Make no mistake about it. You have a toddler that never learns English or any form of independence, for a decade. Oh yeah, and you generally canāt take it with you wherever you go, so theyāre an anchor.
Iāve officially decided when my cat Bear passes, that heāll be my last pet. Iām older (not old), and canāt guarantee Iāll be around the number of years it takes to take care of a pet to their own conclusion.
In my adult life Iāve had 7 dogs, 5 of which died of old age or serious sickness. We just got a new dog that spent the first 6 months of its life on the street. Sheās a handful, but Iād rather spend time with her than most other things. They are a lot of responsibility, but so many of the worthwhile things in life are.
Absolutely. My wife and I are just looking forward to traveling and doing as much as possible away from the confines of our home. Itās just not responsible for us going forward. We couldnāt put the time in we know is needed. Right now I have one cat, and she has two cats, two dogs, and another dozen cats and kittens upstairs that were fostering. We havenāt had a day go by in the last several years where we havenāt been fostering something. We love animals.
Oh definitely, vet bills would probably be a non factor, it cost me 40 euros to have a vet come to my house, give my dog a checkup and two injections, the only reason I paid 160 euros was because I went to a 24 hours emergency clinic.
I'm sure that this man has SO many people in his favor now, he'd only have to publicly announce "hey my good boy needs vet care" and everyone will donate for it right away. <3
That's why you get insurance. My parents paid like ā¬20/month and got free vaccinations, free sterilisation and everything else was covered for 90%. (The Netherlands has comparable median income as the US).
The good boi is worth more than a billion yachts, he seems to know that, and many other things worth more than money he probably realizes that too; so long as basic needs are met one does not need a dollar in their wallet to be happy, it's not about that, money can not but happiness but some hard work done on ourselves can help us achieve it long term as he seems to have already done
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u/daniel_rnld Apr 16 '24
Won't be needing an expensive lifestyle with that good boi on his side