La Plata - Silver
We are waking up at seven in the morning. Kids outside of our room are making noises, screaming or crying because they don´t want to shower. Her mother is the cleaninglady of the hostal "La Plata". La Plata originally means silver but in everyday language it also means money, cash. That is quite funny, because we are looking for a cheap place to stay, and are sure to have found one here and we sure are people without much "Plata". It is hard to fall back to sleep because from now on there are always some noises made by other guests walking, talking, using the toilet, taking a shower or slamming doors. Nadège is only half awake and my kiss carries her back into her dreams.
Our room is a small square with a big doublebed, matrimonial. The matras is hard and I am having a sore left shoulder during the whole two weeks we are staying in Sucre. The room is one of five on the second level. There are three levels and the roof that I have been on to take some pictures over the town with its white churches, cathedrals and houses. All the rooms can be accessed from a balkony that goes around a small square with red tiled floor, the third of three patios of this hostal. We even have a small toilet on our level which is sometimes not nice. The cleaninglady is a nice person, but she is caring more for her children than for her job. They live on the first floor.
We get up at nine. I rush down to get the shower. There is only one hot shower for all the guests in the hostal, but I do only have to wait in line once. After my bath I leave our patio to enter the second one of the hostal, a bigger one at the same setting with even more rooms. Here some rooms have a private bathroom. From there I enter the big square with the reception. I have to walk another ten meters through a small alley and hit the street.
Edgar Arraya
This is something different, a different world. It is very lively, one of the busstation with minivan-size buses that go up and down the town is located in front, Bolivians are selling fake silver watches, jewelry, handmade bags, belt and blankets, juices of all kinds of fruits filled up in small plasticbags with a straw, they are good!, corn, rize, bottled water, plasticcups and much more stuff line the sidewalk. Policeofficers in military uniforms are blowing whistles to control the traffic and over all the rush and buzz plays some music. It comes out of a speaker that is set on top of a small balcony. There are three songs, and these three songs are playing all day around and around in a circle. It is part of the election campaign on the fourth of April, for Edgar Arraya, one of many who want to be local
governor. Evo Morales is the president, reelected by 65% in 2009. We were then in Rurrenabaque.
Chickenfeedsoup
I cross the street to go into the mercado, the main market of Sucre. Here, you can get everything for daily live, mainly food. I pass the small stands that sell all kinds of bread, empanadas included and walk along a long row of neatly tiled stands where dead chicken are
lined up. The feet nicely cut off and on an extra pile, a delicacy for soup. Not my thing!
I arrive at the vegetable stand where I am going every day. The lady knows us. "Como esta la señora?", How is the lady?, she asks me every day, because Nadège and I were there together on the very first day, but since then I am doing the shopping. "Muy bien", fine, is my response. I get some tomatos, green salad, an onion and some paprika. She puts everything in a plasticbag, 15,- Bolivianos. "Gracias, hasta mañana!" On my way back out of the market, I buy some bread. Five rolls for three Bolivianos. Yes, you can make a cheap living in Bolivia. I have spent no more than two Euros on food that will bring us through the whole day. Coffee not included! I am preparing the salad at the
hostal, we have a small plastic pot, some oil and vinegar and salt for this purpose.
Black-Red-Gold-Green
We leave at around ten. We have to walk up three blocks and then take a right and walk another block to get to the "Instituto Cultural Boliviano-Alemán", which is at the same time the Goethe-Institut of Sucre to take spanish-classes. At the entrance there is a flag which combines the colors of the German flag, black, red, gold, with the Bolivian flag, red, yellow and green. Good idea! The building is really nice, white with a beautiful patio in the center and wooden classrooms decorated German style. Quality, wealth, tradition, taste. Dark wooden floors, comfortable wooden chairs with leather coating, big heavy wooden tables. In one room, there is even a piano. I take advantage of that twice. It´s lovely to play some tunes every once in a while, the last time was in Montevideo. On one wall, there is a whiteboard and maps of Germany or posters of exhibitions in German
showing Claudia Schiffer, the Brandenburg Gate, bavarian landscape or half-timbered houses in small villages in the wineyards along the Mosel. Before we start our class, we have a coffee at the "Café Berlin", a
small independent café in the house, run by Ingrid, a Bolivian. She is nice, but gives the impression of not always being happy, well, we can imagine that there are people around, Germans, giving her a hard time. The German culture definitely differs from the Bolivian,
thinking about punctuality or speed or accuracy. Looking at this house, expectations might be high and I am sure Ingrid has not had a class at University "Cultural Differences". The coffee is good and students can use the wireless internet. I am checking emails: Mails from Mom and Dad and friends, the news in Germany: snowchaos, quarrels in the political world and Schalke 04 are on second place in the first league. News that have been news for years and I am more concerned about the fifteen sentences in spanish that I have been
writing as homework for today.
Pasado indefinido
Our class starts at 10:45. Our teacher Roxana is already in the room. She is not very tall, with a serious but friendly expression on her face and dressed very nice. She makes a young impression, but it is hard to tell her age, she said she had a 23 year old sun. She speaks and teaches English at the University and some French. For the next 90 minutes, it is just her and the two of us.
For this we pay 20,- US$. For eight doublelessons, get one free, that makes 160,- US$ including 20,- US$ entrance fee. WOW, that´s quite a lot! Roxana is an awesome teacher though, the lessons are very well
structured, and we learn quite a lot. For Nadège it is a lot easier to understand and remember all the words and grammatical rules, but I am not doing too bad. Sustantivos, ajectivos, verbos regulares, verbos irregulares - of which there are quite a lot -, presente,
gerundino, pasado and pasado indefinido with five groups of irregular verbs, but as the two ladies say: "When you have understood this, the rest is easy!" All right, I am giving my best! We read our homework sentences, using the new verbs we have learned the day before, and talk about some of them. Theory and practice, like we wanted. Then we move on to the next group of irregular verbs. "Tarea para mañana: Quince frases con este verbos." "Bueno!" - Homework for tomorrow: Fifteen sentences with these verbs. OK.
We walk the streets back down and eat the rest of our salad. Sometimes we have a small lunch - almuerzo - in the Café Berlin, potatoe stuffed with cheese and cooked onions. Good and cheap. Some other meals there were quite expensive, so we preferred our salad. Then a nap at the hostal.
We start the afternoon with our tarea. Fifteen sentences. Well, when you have learned verbs like "to bring, to put, to drive, to go down, to eat, to buy" these sentences don´t take too much time to dwell on.
As it is my style, I am trying to have some fun with a sentence every once in a while: "We were woken up by loud kids this morning, but I gave Nadège a kiss." Later on, we take our notes and walk up the road about ten blocks to "La Recoleta". La Recoleta is a white church and a white square with beautiful white arcades and a cozy café with the most beautiful view over Sucre. We are not the only gringos who have chosen this place to go through notes. We have coffee and go through the vocabulary again, Nadège is checking my sentences, but I am getting better day by day. Only seven mistakes in fifteen sentences, that´s ok. I have earned a refreshment, Radler, beer with sprite.
Back to town at around six. The sun is setting at seven and it is rapidly cooling down. We eat some more salad with bread, some thunafish maybe or the special: Cut a roll in half, put avocado and then onion and tomato on it and salt and oregano. Yummi!
Partybreaker
Tonight is a special night. There is a big party going on at our former home in Germany and we have promised to be at online at seven, which would be midnight in Germany. In the evenings before, we have found a bar-/restaurant with wireless internet and a powerplug right next to a table, the "Biblioteca". We will be online with skype and thus virtually take part in the party at home. We are quite excited.
Tom, the technician in Germany told us to have a test at around 11:40 p.m., 6:40 for us. We have checked the connection and are prepared. The bar only openes up at seven, but we asked for a special permission and got it. So we are waiting. Nothing is happening. Only when we have allready finished the second Radler, the screen shows some activity. Skype is making it´s funny whooooosh-sound and Tom appears on the screen!
Wow, that is great. We are in a bar in Sucre, Bolivia, and Tom is in what used to be our room in the flatshare for five years and we are talking and seeing each other live. Awesome! The wireless net in the house in Germany is strong enough so that Tom can take us around with him on his laptop. That is great. We pass all the partygoers in Haltern and they are as happy to see us on the screen as we are. Lots of laughs and "when are coming back?"s and blown kisses and cheers are going around the world. In the end Tom puts the laptop in the living room and hooks it up with the beamer. So we can see our faces produced on the wall three by two meters in the living room. People come up to the camera and talk to us, there is too much background noise, though, we have a hard time to understand what the friends are trying to tell us. It is so good to see familiar faces and to see them laugh. Great!
Our eyes are focused so much on the small laptop on the table in the bar in Sucre, that we completely forget the surrounding. I am getting cold. I want to put on the sweater I brought. I had hung my small bag with my spanishnotes and the sweater inside on the back of my chair. I look around, but it´s gone. I can´t believe it. This is a bar with a lot of gringos and we feel really safe, but that´s the mistake. Even in a better off town like Sucre, this is still a very poor country. We are distracted for just some minutes and someone takes advantage of it. My new, pretty bolivian bag and my nice, warm fleece Quechua sweater are gone. Worst of all, the book with all my notes of ten days spanish-classes. Dammit! But the camera or the laptop stolen would be much worse! We remember though, that the key to our hostalroom is in the bag. So, this is quick bye-bye to Germany and we rush back to the hostal. Luckily the key doesn´t say the name of the hostal on it, only the roomnumber, so everything is fine, nobodyhas broken in. We are happy, but the theft spoils the day. Again, we promise ourselves to be careful and on alert all the time. So far - knock on wood!!! - we have not been robbed and we want to keep it like that.
Two days later we leave sweet Sucre behind to go to Potosí. We do it with one laughing and one crying eye, Sucre really is a nice town and we like it a lot. It is so pretty with all it´s white houses and very lively with many young students from all over the country.
Bye bye to the señora at the vegetable-stand in the market, bye bye to Edgar Arraya and his three songs and bye bye to La Recoleta.
Off to Potosí!