Tango Experience

Since with today the official program starts there will not be as many pictures anymore, but still I will continue to report on interesting things happening. I spent the morning working in the hotel. We then met with Andrea for lunch at the university and to get everything ready for Paco's presentations. His first presentation was about how research is evaluated in Spain. In addition, Paco is teaching a course of three days on enterprise architecture. Initially, my plan was to attend his presentations, but finally due to asthma problems (probably caused by the humidity) I decided to rest in the hotel, which turned out to be a good idea. After sleeping for a few hours the asthma has already improved significantly and the coughing has completely disappeared.

Views from the university campus

In the evening Andrea, Paco, Prado, Marcela, and I attended a tango show at a small bar called funfun in the Old City of Montevideo.The show turned out to be great: not only the tango singer, but also the dancing was really great. In addition to that we had the luck that at that day a well known tenor from Uruguay, José Louis Pomi, visited the place and also did a preformance. It was really cool to hear him performing at such a close distance. I took several videos from the evening which are unfortunately ways too big to post here.In the following you can see a few pictures taken by me and Paco from the evening.

Montevideo - Old City and Center

I started the day with a short run on the beach (where I got completely wet), because it was raining heavily. I spend the morning then with Paco and Prado visiting the Old City and the center of Montevideo.

At the way to the bus station we had a bit of an unpleasant encounter, since Paco got attacked by a dog. The dog probably got frightened by some movement of Paco caused by the heavy wind. But lucky the dog did not bite him properly and only his trousers got a bit damaged. Nevertheless, it was a bit of a shock for all of us.

We then walked a bit around the Old City which is surrounded by the Rio de la Plata on three sides. The most western part of the Old City looked a bit abandonned and we did not visit that part because in the hotel they recommended us not to do so.  In the following you can see some impressions from the Old City including the Plaza del Caballo and the theatre of Montevideo.

We also visited the Museo de Joaquín Torres García, probably the best known painter from Uruguay. He is the founder of the Constructive Universalism. One of his most well known drawings is América Invertida. The logo of the BPMuy conference in which I will give a keynote on tuesday has been inspired by his art and the typical colors he uses in his pictures.

We had lunch in the Old City before we moved on visiting the center. I already visited that part the day before and uploaded several pictures from the center in my previous blog post (e.g., showing the Plaza Independencia); so there is not much now to report. We walked again along Avendia 18 the Julio and we visited the Museum of the Gaucho (i.e., the "cowboys" of South America).

The Supreme Court

In the afternoon I had a walk at the beach (weather was much better than in the morning) together with Prado and had dinner with Paco, Prado, Marcelo and Andrea not too far from our hotel.

Montevideo - First Impressions

I started the day with a run of about an hour at the beach. Even though I already started at 8 it was already pretty warm with temperatures around 25 degrees, but with these temperatures I'm still fine. I have to say that i enjoyed the run a lot.  I really like it to explore a city by running.

After breakfast I walked a bit around the neighbourhood of our hotel and made some nice discoveries. On one of the buildings I saw a mosaic that somehow looked familiar---when I looked at it more carefully I saw windmills and two persons on their horses, one of them with lance; yes, it was Don Quijote with his horse Rocinante and Sancho Panza.

 

I then had coffee at a small coffee place where they did not only have proper espresso coffee, but also served Christmas cookies with everything you ordered. It is somehow a weired feeling to be here in summer and to see everyone getting prepared for Christmas. Coming from Austria one of the first things that come into your mind when thinking at Christmas is snow, but not summer and sun.

Sitting at the coffee place I was thinking about what to do with the remaining day. Since I was pretty busy before coming to Uruguay, I came completely unprepared and did not have any clue what you can see and also did not have any map of the city in my mind, but this turned out not to be a problem at all. Since there was a bus stop just infront of the coffee place I spontenously decided to take the bus that goes to the Plaza Independencia.

The Plaza Independencia is a huge square surrounded with palm trees and with a monument of Uruguays national hero José Argotas in its center.

The Plaza Independencia is located at the entrance of the old city. On its west end is the Puerta de la Ciudadela, the historic entrance to the old city.

Not for form this is the museum of Joaquín Torres García, who is probably the most famous painter from Uruguay.

I then walked huge parts of the Avenida 18 de Julio (which has an extension of 3,3 km) where you can find many small shops. When I passed by the National Library I saw a sculpture of Cervantes, the writer of Don Quijote (which is by the way the first novel in history), together with one of Socrates in front of the library.

As you can see on some of the next pictures Montevideo is a very green city with many alleys with very high trees. You can also see a kind of interesting mixture of buildings of completely different styles and lots of street art. Most of the pictures are taken in the area between Avenida 18 de Julio and the Avenida Constituyente / Bulevar España. 

On the way back I stopped in a small restaurant to have lunch, which turned out to be pretty good. The place had a mixture of spanish and italian stuff. Back at the hotel I worked a bit on the project proposal I want to submit. Later on I went with Prado, Paco's wife, to the beach and we walked there a bit and also had a swim. At the beach we also bumped into Marcela, who is currently also in Montevideo teaching at a private university here. It was somehow funny that we managed to meet without having an appointment considering that Marcela is staying in another hotel about half an hour by bus from ours and that Montevideo is having about 1.3 million inhabitants.