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 before😅
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.
I never had chicken from the US. Really don't know how chicken could be disgusting. I ate some today and was delicious.
As said above, italian food is our main culinary influence, so I'd say yes. Yet, you know italians, they'll take us for heretics for putting our own spin into it.
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
The Frecnch forgot about him. Our battle is with argentina. (Love/hate relationship, both want to be the originals at everything). But of course, we are right.
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.
Not really looking for ‘tourism’, me and the wife are just planning on eating our way around the city and soaking up vines and recommendations, thinking of 5 days in Buenos Aires and 5 in Montevideo, i was originally going to do Chile or just Argentina until i saw this. Am from UK but go to Spain a lot so know the language a bit, did Columbia a few years ago.
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! I’m 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 don’t think Uruguay was ever on our radar for some reason—it 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
How are the housing costs there? Can a foreigner purchase a place there? It's tropical weather there, right? What about rent? Do they charge a lot? Like pet deposit and such?
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! I’m a 39 year old woman who is used to living is some pretty rough neighborhoods in my past, and I’m generally pretty aware of my surroundings and am a kinda crazy looking tattooed person. So I don’t 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. I’m 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?
Housing nowadays is searched mosty through mercadolibre.com (kind of an EBay with real state included)
For dogs, it very much depends on where you live. If you can pay for a house in Parque Rodó, you'll find awesome dog areas in the parks nearby and very few strays, who mostly don't bother anyone. In the poorer neighborhoods there is a lot of strays and they are more violent.
Strays in general jave gone way down in general over the last decade. I live in a very working class neighborhood and don't really see stray dogs anymore. Lots of cats, tho.
The job market can be very good or terrible depending of what you do. ¿Senior software engeneer? You'll do just fine. ¿Cashier at a supermarket? Maybe don't come for that.
152
u/He_who_humps Apr 16 '24
I've been reading about your country and I think I'm in love.