Try not to feed the animals

Talking to a colleague/one of a couple of bosses I have at MatadorNetwork last night as he was in Santiago, getting ready with his family to set up shop someplace entirely different, I was reminded of a million and one stories that I hope I never run out of time to tell. In the interest of time, I've clumped three together in a collection I like to call: Animals will take your food, and you will let them, unless you are an idiot.

I can recall three times in my life that animals have seized my food, either while I was eating it, or before I could get to it. This if we're not including the occasional mouse that may have inhabited my old house in DC or the legions of ants that attacked the trail mix in Cuba (how did they get in through the plastic bag?) I'm also exempting the weird grain moths (or weevils, like I liked to call them) that took up residence in the pantry one year, living on the bulgur, quinoa, brown rice and any other carbs they could get their six legs on, taunting me with their beating little wings until I smashed them with a swiffer (with which I always used reusable covers, because hey, I'm green when I want to be), moth massacre aside.

Three times, food has been swiped from me. We were careful in Yosemite, leaving food wrapped, in a cooler, in the car. Didn't want any bears paying us a surprise hello. But how can you be careful of stray dogs, seagulls, and those giant-four legged scavengers, the wild ponies of Assateague?

The dog story is good one. I like to call it "insult to injury." A college friend of mine and I were in a bus station in Puerto Escondido, Mexico, waiting for an ill-thought-out overnight bus to Oaxaca. Somewhere along the way, her small on-the-bus bag got stolen, this after she'd pulled out a loaf of bread and her journal so she could write down what she was feeling. Which afterwards was probably long columns of stars and arrobas (at signs) and exclamation points because damn, her stuff got stolen. Later on that evening, as we were making phone calls (or trying to) to cancel credit cards and decide what else to do, we had our stuff resting on the ground by the broken payphone (which, by the way, did not respond to kicking). And up came a mongrel cur, opened his maw, swiped the bread and scooted down the street. Not willing to be victimized once again, I started running after the dog, as though I was going to take the bread back from him if I managed to catch him. I eventually realized my folly and went to lick my wounds with the aforementioned friend. Later we got to give a police report to a shirtless police officer who was haciendose cariño (petting himself) with the side of his sidearm. Spiffy! Also hairless, if you were wondering.

The second food-theft story involves sitting on the beach in North Carolina with some of my ex's friends. I was vegan at that time, an animal lover in the extreme (later mothkilling be darned), and as everyone else nibbled daintily on their cheese sandwiches, I had a hummus sandwich in hand. I remember I was sitting on the beach, knees bent, with the sandwich in my left hand, elbow flexed, resting upon my knee, the universal sign (apparently) for "I am no longer eating this sandwich, please come and thieve it from me). I remember the feeling of my sandwich suddently becoming bouyant, floaty, upward-pulling even. And I did battle with the seagull there for just a minute before I realized that much like the bread I'd have wrested from the dog's jaws, there was no way I was going to eat this hummus sandwich after it had been in a seagull's beak.

Which brings us to the third, and most mane-flowingly tender story. I was sitting outside at a campsite in Assateague, Maryland (close to neighboring Chincoteague, Virginia where the locals hold an annual pony swim to raise money, and yes there are ponies on Assateague as well, because sometimes the ponies swim just on their own, apparently), when I heard a kid at a nearby campsite say to his mother, "Mom, there's a horse. There's a horse, right here." The wild ponies stand in the surf, walk around on the roads, and pretty much do whatever they like in this area, looking much like the Icelandic horses/ponies (difference? I'm a wordsmith, not an equestrian expert) with their broad hooves and thick manes. The wild ponies at the beach are an attraction on both Assateague and Chincoteague, sometimes causing traffic backups and being generally darn cute. They also have long flexible pink tongues which they will daintily use to slurp up your cereal and soymilk out of your dented tin bowl while you step back to feel around for your camera to get a picture of the horses that are "right there."

Up until now, I have not had any more animal food thievery, or at least none that I know of. I used to have a cat who really liked watermelon and honeydew, and would stand on his hind legs like a cat posessed, for a piece of potato, which has nothing to do with anything, but man was that ever cute.

Foodtheft? Just me? Not you? Oh come on, tell the story of when an animal took something from you. Hopefully not a chunk of your shoe like a stray dog tried to from me in Santiago not too long ago. Glasses? Camera? Icecream? oh come on, I can't be the only one!

The return of Señora Barbara and why can't my nose and ear just be friends?

"Enfermarse es super caro acá" (Getting sick is so expensive, here!), I said to my (I think) Bolivian pharmacist downtown this morning, as I was purchasing my pricey new meds for what I'd feared was an ear infection or a nearly-ruptured eardrum.
"No lo esssss" he said, (no it issssssn't), he said, drawing out the S like a snake. (This along with the way he looked, and the fact that he was friendly made me guess that he was Bolivian).
"Sanarse es lo caro" (Getthing healthy is the pricey bit), I said. And he smiled, with the very Chilean,
"Así es" (so it is).

There had been clicking. And squeaking, and a generalized heaviness inside my head localized to the left side. And I thought to myself, "Señora Barbara," (this is my medical name) you are flying ten hours in a little over a week. Do you want to be seized with blinding ear pain on the flight? No! I said. I do not.

And so I found myself at the friendly neighborhood Integramédica where I get all of my medical stuff done. It's close, cheap enough with my health insurance and they all remember me well from a very exciting digit-slicing event earlier this year, and still like me in spite of it and the hysteria that ensued. So there I go.

Turns out my nose and ear aren't communicating properly, the lines of communication are shut down. I don't know if there's some kind of work stoppage, tiny little protesters with even tinier pancartas (protest posters) in there, but whatever it is, these parts, they are not playing nice. Sneezing feels weird, coughing is best not to talk about, and last night I imagined pools of warm liquid pouring out of my ear as I tried to fall asleep.

So off I went. I had a longish wait, during which I was subjected to lots of things I don't care about on a flat-screen TV, and a very nice woman who traded me a 100 peso coin for 10 10-peso coins because she wanted to make a phone call, and who am I to stop one of the five remaining people in this country who don't have a cell phone from making a call?

The doctor did call me Barbara, as they are wont to do, but did not ask me any of the repetitive questions people ask foreigners in this country, and then put on that great strappy headband with the convex mirror that otorrinos (ENT docs) wear I'd hoped it had a really cool name that I could report. It's called an "espejo frontal." Yawn (also makes ear feel weird!). That just means front-side mirror.

I left the office just about $10.50 poorer than I went in and then proceeded to spend a fairly atrocious amount of money on jacked-up slow-release sudafed (Frenaler-D) and Nasonex, of which I have been instructed to administer 2 "puff" into each nasal cavity every evening. Where "puff" is the Spanish word for spray, one would suppose. The meds cost 47 dollars, and while I was looking that up, I noticed that the US dollar is below 500 pesos for the first time in a long time. Which is decidedly ungood for US dollar spenders in Chile. And may I add that when I first got a cold here in Chile and tried to buy anything, anything at all with the Sudafed ingredients in it, I was turned away, with them saying "we don't sell that." Not true, apparently. But at the price I just paid, I probably would have run away screaming at any rate.

With any luck at all, the Nasonex will act like teargas (but less burny!), dispatching the roadblock located on that great nasal-aural highway located behind my cheekbone, and all will be well in the world of eardrums, and I will stop imagining liquid streaming out of my ears. And if the dollar climbed up a little, that wouldn't be too bad, either.

This is the stuffy-eared Señora Barbara, signing off from my comfy green couch in Barrio Brasil. Now get to work! (me, not you).

On cranberries, camote and other seasonal specialties that "everyone" loves.

With the coming of Thanksgiving, repeated questions about the ever-moving date (not a lot of holidays that move around in Chile), and the particularities of the feast come up again and again. Chileans know pavo (turkey), at least sliced and on a sandwich if not as the whole bird. They can also understand the whole put-it-in-the-oven-and-bake-it quality of some of your more favorite casseroles. Squash is no stranger, and sweet potatoes are seen periodically, and are understood to be part of Peruvian cuisine. Anything Peruvian food-wise is to be oohed and aahed at, so they figure those must be tasty, with or without the addition of mashmelo (should be malvavisco, but this word is not used much in Chile). The odd eyebrow may raise re: wetted and recooked bread with butter and sage and celery, but who doesn't like bread, so in the end, they will nod approvingly.

And then comes the cranberry question. First, which cranberry, they will ask. Which? Cranberry? The problem here is that the word "berry" (baya, botanically speaking, in Spanish) is not really seen to describe any particular fruit, more a series of fruits that in Italian would be called "forest fruits." Blueberries, which are arándanos in Spanish are only slowly making it to the market here in Santiago, and then sort of as a specialty item. Cranberries are grown in some quantity in the south, and quickly exported, generally before making a landing in the local market, though those in the know may be able to intervene, and they are available dried at some local/gringo bazaars, and I bought them once in Pucón (tourist/adventure sports capital in the close south).

Until a couple of years ago, the word arándano was used by many people to mean both the blueberry and the cranberry, though this question is asked less and less, as the cranVERRi is becoming more known, in name, if not in taste.

But even fully informed of which arándano we're talking about, Chileans want to know what the big deal is about the cranberry. Is it amazingly sweet? Is it tremendously flavorful? Is it your favorite? Can you make ice cream out of it? No, yes, no and probably, I answer. Does anyone really love cranberry sauce? I feel like a bad American saying so, but simply put the cranberry no me raya (doesn't move me).

But I will concede that it is a taste of the season, without which even my no-turkey (and no tofurkey) Thanksgiving would not be complete. I even made it last year, watching as the poor bobbing oblong (who knew, I thought they were round) berries turned juicy, then gelatinous in a white enamel pot on my sister's giant stainless steel stove. Secret ingredients were added, and the dark fuschia menjunje (mix) inverted into a glass bowl and left to cool.

I was trying to explain my feelings about cranberry in terms of the Chilean love of camote, which I had always assumed was out of nostalgia, rather than actual sensory experience, which I find sadly lacking, and heavily thirst-provoking.

Camote (at least here) is this thing, which two friends recently told me they thought looked like a chrysalis.

In plastic.



Set free.



Ready for sharing.



It's cooked sweet potato (I believe, help me out here?), tooth-achingly sweet, a little mealy, and covered in a thick glaze made of confectioner's sugar (it would seem). This sweet is sold on the street in little bags for 100 pesos, or this one that I bought at the thoroughly amazing Galletería Laura R (cheesecake, people. Real cheesecake, no yogurt or gelatin involved!) for 300 pesos because it's so big, and lovely. Or maybe it was the gold twist-tie that jacked up the price. Anyway, at 60 cents, it wasn't going to break the bank, and I thought that before I swore off camote for time immemorial, I should try the best possible camote. Anything the geniuses at this bakery (Manuel Montt near Eliodoro Yañez or up on Vitacura a little above the Rotunda Perez Zucovich) lay their hands to is delicious. So I took the plunge. Plus, who could resist a sweet that looks like a (future) bug?

Where was I? Oh yes, the cranberry and its fans, and the camote and its fans. I was trying to explain to people that cranberries aren't actually that delicious, they just remind you of a time and place, much like the camote, which appears and disappears throughout the year (though it seems like it could be preserved to serve all year round).

And then there were blank stares.

CiQ (Chilean in question)You don't think camote is delicious?

EGI (Embarassed gringa interloper) Um, no?

CiQ But how, it's so delicious?

EGI kinda pasty

CiQ but it's so sweet!

EGI also grainy sometimes

CiQ it reminds me of my grandmother

EGI oh, well I'm sure your grandmother's tasted better.

CiQ No, it pretty much tasted like this. Don't you think it always tastes the same?

EGI really? I've only eaten it twice.

CiQ In your WHOLE life?

...

And on and on it goes, with us never getting back to the arándano, or its oval-ish cousin, the cranVERRi. My point is, there are things you may like because you've always eaten them, and that you will love them and defend them even if they taste like paste, or metal, or (in my case) sometimes give you a rash.

Because hay gustos y gustos (to each his own, taste-wise). But at least cranberries don't look like they're going to sprout legs and walk away.

Transantiago "Expreso" service: speedier, yet more confusing.

Santiago’s transportation system can be described in a couple of words. For one, extensive. There is practically no untouched hamlet, no place so far and remote that you cannot access it by micro (bus), feeder bus (they call these "buses de acercamiento", or busses to get you close (but still no cigar) or metro. If those don’t work for you, there’s probably a colectivo, or shared taxi, but nine times out of ten, this is faster (though more expensive), but is seldom your only option. It’s almost always possible to get from point A to point B on public transport. And for this I truly applaud the system.

Another word you could use is crowded. Like really crowded. As in, I’ve been to Tokyo and I grew up in NY and used to take the metro at rush hour in DC, and believe me when I tell you this is unhealthily crowded. Squeeze your ribs, breathe your neighbor’s air, I saw someone’s lunch bag get trapped on the outside of a moving train the other day crowded.

One of the problems it that no one works a staggered schedule here. Everyone comes and goes at pretty much the same time of day, so there’s this critical mass (or should I say masse) of people that have to get from the outer comunas (districts/neighborhoods/municipalities) trying to get downtown. Another problem is that most people seem to have to get downtown. If people worked more spread out over the city (or over time), perhaps the crush would not be so intolerable.

One thing that the metro system has done, since I don’t think the trains could come more frequently (they seem to come more than once every 3-4 minutes by my watch during rush hour), or that the trains could be longer (can you imagine the chaos a broken train would cause?), is to institute “skip-stop service.”

Think about it, “skip-stop service.” Isn’t that descriptive? Don’t you know what I mean? You get on at a main station, and the train skips every other stop. They used to do this with the 1 and 9 trains in Manhattan when I was a kid. Skipstop. Sounds so cute, like a childhood game. I guess in Spanish they could call it saltarín, or jumpity. Or maybe saltito, hoppy! This, I think, would help people to understand the new system. Instead, they have called it Expreso, where each of the letters in Expreso alternate between green and red.

See?




The Expreso service probably gets you where you are going faster, especially given the extreme crowding on the metro, because the whole getting on and off while (hopefully) not trampling your neighbor is time consuming, in addition to potentially painful. Yet everyone I know who doesn’t live or get on the metro at a station that is served by just one train admits to getting confused about which train to get on. I guess over time, and with the help of these handy folios handed out by people in red and green windbreakers (court jester-style, with one half red and one half green) people will figure it out.

But while we are all trying to figure out which train to get on, and figure out where in the world the trains are labeled (this handy picture tells the story), I will continue to ask myself the same question.



Why in tarnation, when there are so very many colors in the world, as well as many other classification systems, did they decide to use red and green to identify the different routes, when there are people in Santiago who refer to the train lines themselves by the colors used to represent them on the map? (Their official names are 1, 2, 4, and 5, and no, I did not accidentally leave out 3, there is no line 3, and no, this is not a joke).

That is to say, if I live on the green line (which I do), why do I then have to choose between the red and green route to decide how to get to where I’m going. If they’d used, oh, I don’t know, cappucino and americano (in keeping with the “expreso” theme, and yes, I know that’s not how it’s spelled), I’d find it a lot easier to remember which was which. But I guess red and green windbreakers are more stylish than beige and brown, though I’d have to guess that the beige and brown would be easier for people who are colorblind to see the difference between. Plus, tasty.

Here’s a detail of the skipstoppiness, where the red and green mean both trains stop there. It may seem crazy that there are three such stops in a row, but two are transfer points to other metro lines, and one is a major transit hub.



In the meantime, I will try to bike everywhere, despite a continuing attempt by motorists to block every single bike lane that exists. If I drink enough espresso maybe I can launch myself over the vehicles. Now that would be jumpity.

Going home for Thanksgiving!

November seems so innocuous. It seems like such a pleasant, in-between month, a time when no real expectations are laid, and nobody really has any major plans until waaaaaay late in the month when Thanksgiving comes and then there's a crush of OMG holidays until about the tenth or so of January. And then everything goes back to normal.

This is my sixth November in Chile, and as I bust out the shorts and other assorted summer paraphernalia, I notice it is the first time I have not gotten weather sick. Weather sick is like homesick, missing something you can't access, can't truly experience. Weather sick in November is triggered by talk of kids running through piles of leaves and zipping up coats over Halloween costumes. It's fanned by tales of hunkering down and thick stews and picking up cast-aside knitting projects. Because that's fall.

Here in the southern hemisphere, my spring allergies are raging (still have not bought that nutmeg necklace I say I'm going to get), windows are flung open and berries and chermioyas flood the markets. And while I still find it unsettling that it stays light until so late in November and summer holidays will be in January and February, the draining whiny nostalgia of what fall feels like in the northern hemisphere is absent this year.

You might think it was because I've gotten over it.

Or you might know that I have in my greedy little email account confirmation of a ticket "home" for día acción de gracias (Thanksgiving). And while I will miss the chance to plan a very gringo thanksgiving, complete with a fight over the last remaining sweet potatoes at the Vega (go in on the Dávila (back) side and find the middle-eastern veggies and stuff, there's a guy there that has them this time of year), and combing the city for celery (Jumbo is a good bet right now), and lamenting yet again that although they grow cranberries in this country, nearly all of them are exported, only to be reimported in small quantities in gelatinous goo contained in cans, well in spite of all that, I'm really glad to go see my people, and my people's people in a new/old tradition that we've been celebrating for the past three years. (did you see that sentence? and I call myself an editor!)

The tradition is called "Aunt Eileen comes home for Thanksgiving." I think everyone is pretty happy about it, particularly my nephew, (2.5) who says on the phone, "een bring suny" (suny is soft caramel candy not unlike fudge, but without the chocolate), as I'm told his supply recently ran out. Did you hear that? He calls me "een." Please cue heart-achingly saccharine music and then see if you can speed up the next two weeks a bit. There's a little boy that needs his aunt (or the candy she brings, so what?) way up north. Thanksgiving, indeed.

Saturday's Seven Snarky Snaps

And contrary to the popularly-held misconception, a Spaniard would not say Thaturday'th Theven Tnarky Thnapth. That's Elmer Fudd. Spaniards only -th the c and zs in speech. Which you can put in your pocket and take out for trivia night, though be careful, people may start to call you (yourname)-oogle. I'm just thaying.

So here are seven snaps from the previous week which I think pretty well typify some repeated traveler and expat observations about Chile.

1. The dogs sleep anywhere they feel like it. Also, they are picky eaters and prefer kibble and meat to all forms of carbohydrates. This one has his face in a pile of french fries, and isn't budging. And yes, he was alive.



2. Just because you call it pizza does not make it pizza. These guys set up here there and everywhere, set up a gas-powered oven of dubious cleanliness and slap down some flattened rolls with a piece or two of sweaty cheese atop. I know we're beating the whole pizza-in-Santiago thing a bit to death, but this truly is an abomination before Italy. Darn cheap though, and will suffice in a pinch. Olives optional.



3. Things may look the same in Santiago as at home, but when you get a little closer, you'll discover tiny little differences that will make you scratch your head. Also, the native speaker's intuition will never die. I haven't been in a KFC in the United States in at least ten years, but I can nearly guarantee that there is nothing on the menu called "rods."



4. There is no end to the abuse of dictionaries and machine translation vis-a-vis confused misuse of words. This one is understandable, at least. And I should say, it wasn't translated by the actual postal service here, rather likely a hilltop vendor of postcards and such atop Cerro San Cristobal. No relation to the guy who will pose your kid atop a stuffed zebra and snap a photo, for a price. Why a zebra? Why, indeed.



5. Inconsiderate motorists are the norm, not the exception. This construction truck has decided to straddle the bike lane during prime travel hours for your pedalling pleasure. Thanks, construction truck! I always look for a reason to swerve out into traffic.



6. The restroom can be elusive at times, but if you can hold it, it will come.



7. Even when someone explains to you what is going on and why someone is dressed like a combination of a rat and the center-left presidential candidate/former president (Frei), and even if you speak Spanish, it still doesn't make a whit of sense. But you should always ask anyway, and if you're really curious, look up his channel on Youtube (I'm not that curious, I suppose).



Brought to you by nosiness, my personal endless store of snark, random silly, and of course, the smashing camera on my phone, which actually isn't half bad, and I still haven't managed to smash.

What does a taxi in Santiago say?

Have you ever been unable to find an item in your house (keys, camera cable, that movie someone pressed into your hands promising you'd love it and you never watched it and now they want it back), only to rifle through your items like a B-grade detective and come across not the item in question, but the previous thing you'd given up for lost?

This happens to me all the time. Partially it speaks to the fact that there's probably too much stuff in my 1-BR apartment (with view!), and too many areas that could be called the X of danger. As in the drawer of danger, the shelf of danger, the clear plastic box even though I'm opposed to storage solutions of danger, etc. Drawer of danger is what I like to call that catchall drawer in the kitchen where you put your carrot peeler and some weird knife accessories and the garlic press and that plastic jar-opener thing and whatever other cachibaches (like the yiddish tchotchkes, but more towards junk) you've got. It's a scary place, and it's hard to find stuff. So sometimes you can't. But then you look again for something different, and the first thing pops up.

Which seems like it would fly in the face of the law of conservation of matter, but apparently doesn't, or if it does, it doesn't apply in my apartment or any place I've ever lived. And you?

The frustrating thing about finding your items later is that you're still left with the desire to find the new thing. And if my experience holds true, you'll never find it until you lose something else.

What on this wide wonderful planet does that have to do with this (sorry, cellphone) picture?



Well, I'm so glad you asked.


Many months ago, in fact maybe even more than a year ago, I was out at a birthday shindig at one of those places mentioned in the pizza post, and it was late, and public transportation was iffy and it was freezing cold and also raining, and ok, sometimes me doy el lujo de (I spoil myself by) taking a taxi. And I'd recently had a skittish taxi experience, and so was eyeing the taxis nervously, when one of this small fleet of re-upholstered taxis showed up.

And I got in, and a laughed and laughed, and cursed myself for the cruddy camera on my old phone (new one is somewhat better), and wished high and low that I would see that taxi, or another like it some time. There's a small fleet of these, somewhere in the 12-14 range, and they drive around picking up unsuspecting (and probably unsmiling) Santiaguinos and taking them where they need to go.

Well since then, I have a list of several hundred things that I wish I'd taken pictures of, and like the lost things in the drawer, this memory was sufficiently old and rusty for it to come to the forefront. So thanks Mandi for showing up about five minutes late last night, so I could cumplir mi sueño (fulfill my dream) of snapping a shot of this beauty. Also, in case you were wondering, when I got home from my first experience with this taxi, I announced to my friend (by SMS), "I think rode a dalmation on the way home." And she responded "te fuiste en una vaca!" (you took a cow!). Which now that I heard the mooing sound the taxi makes (this time), makes much more sense.

Take that Santiago deriders. Where's your banyard animal taxi? And would it stop to pose for a picture? Didn't think so. Mu po (moo, then).