Aria Relocation Services

12/09/2014

TRAVEL

Wine, Olive Oil and the Good Life in Uruguay
SEPT. 11, 2014
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A Taste of Uruguayan Wine Country
A Taste of Uruguayan Wine CountryCreditMatilde Campodonico for The New York Times
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Next Stop
By DANIELLE PERGAMENT
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Our first lunch was laid out like a last supper. There, in the middle of a vineyard, underneath a billowing white cotton tent, a long wooden table had been set up, every inch of it covered with platters of food. There was the stuff you might expect at a picnic: bread, homemade and chewy; wedges of various cheeses arranged on wooden cutting boards; paper-thin slivers of prosciutto and salami. Then there were the local specialties — bowls of creamy spinach dip, stacks of freshly baked empanadas, stuffed with tuna and still steaming. And finally the wine, bottles of the heavy stuff this area was famous for and what brought us here in the first place.

We were eight that afternoon — my friends and I; our hosts Diego Vigano, his wife, Maria, and his father, Mauro Galeazzo; and, scampering around somewhere, Coco, the cherubic 2-year-old who had the run of the place. The setting was Posada CampoTinto, a gorgeous five-room boutique hotel set on a sprawling hill deep in the wine country of South America. It had taken an overnight flight (to Buenos Aires), an hour in a car (to the port), and three hours on a ferry across the Río de la Plata that separated us from Argentina. But as I took my seat next to Mr. Galeazzo, a dashing Italian gentleman of 87, I forgot my fatigue and concentrated on not stuffing all the food into my face at once.

Photo

A vineyard in the Carmelo area. Credit Matilde Campodonico for The New York Times
“Welcome to Uruguay,” said Mr. Vigano de Narvaez, raising his glass and looking around the table. “Our population just went up since you arrived!”

Uruguay has made some news lately — all of it indicative of a country that wants you to enjoy yourself. First, Uruguay beat out Argentina as the highest per capita consumer of beef, a real victory for the smaller country in this meat-loving part of the world. Last year, The Economist named Uruguay Country of the Year, partly for legalizing same-sex marriage and partly for becoming the first country to legalize the production and the sale of ma*****na, saying that those actions have “increased the global sum of human happiness at no financial cost.”

Sitting in the middle of the vineyard, surrounded by songbirds and a light breeze, it was hard not to feel the sum of human happiness in ways entirely unrelated to federal legislation. We were there to explore a nascent scene of great wine being made and the kind of easygoing, grass-roots vibe that comes from small communities birthing their own tourism industry.

This locus of Uruguayan wine country, though not the largest in this small nation, has been producing wine for generations — but has only recently gained attention as much for its wine as for being an awfully nice place to visit. It’s centered around the dusty old town of Carmelo, about 150 miles northwest of the capital of Montevideo and just across the Río de la Plata from Argentina. It’s a place of grassy roads, fields of grazing cattle, and hillsides of pale green vineyards. Wildflowers carpet the land and rosemary and lavender plants grow to be the size of small Fiats. It’s Tuscany in miniature.

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The eight vineyards around Carmelo comprise about 1,000 acres, making the area slightly smaller than Uruguay’s biggest wine regions, which are outside Montevideo and Canelones. “Uruguay produces less than 100 million liters of wine every year, which means our entire country produces as much as one large winery in Argentina,” said Juan Andres Marichal, vice president of the National Wine Institute of Uruguay. “Our wineries aren’t big corporations. They are small and run by families.” If Argentina is the continent’s wine Goliath, Uruguay may be on its way to being its David — a formidable opponent. And a huge part of its appeal and success may be that it’s small and accessible.

We started early the next day. I met my friends (Lisa, who traveled with me from the States, and Astrid and Matias, who joined up with us in Argentina) on the terrace of CampoTinto for a breakfast of cheese, ham, toast and yerba mate, or simply mate (pronounced MAH-tay), which tastes like green tea if you added bitterness and removed joy. Calling it an acquired taste is generous, and yet it’s as popular in Uruguay and Argentina as steak. Mate is served in cups that look like hollowed-out gourds lined with silver, and Astrid and Matias drank theirs through a stainless steel pipe slash straw contraption. It is a beautiful, methodical, centuries-old tradition, and after one sip, I wanted no part of it.

Half an hour later, it was time to borrow bikes from the hotel and get our bearings.

Just down a dusty clay path from CampoTinto is Cordano Almacén de la Capilla, one of the oldest vineyards in Uruguay. “My great-great-grandfather came here in 1870 from Genoa,” said Ana Paula Cordano, as we stood in her wine shop and general store, which seem to be lifted from an earlier century.

We had ditched our bikes outside and were perusing jars of dulce de leche and baskets of homemade caramels made from wine. Antique glass bottles and scales lined the shelves, and dings from the ancient cash register added to the feeling that we had stepped into a saloon in the old west.

“He brought with him the Italian tradition of planting grapes,” Ms. Cordano said, referring to the vineyard’s founder. “We had to modernize, but we try to preserve tradition.” That tradition was on display in the field just behind the Cordano store — an antique wine press, old hazelnut trees, and just beyond the yard, cows and horses grazing in the pasture as they have for generations.

Photo

A beachfront view at Casa Chic hotel. Credit Matilde Campodonico for The New York Times
Only a few miles from CampoTinto — everything is only a bike ride away in Carmelo — is El Legado winery, one of the smaller, more elegant wineries in the area. “What we have in Carmelo is a microclimate,” said Bernardo Marzuca, the tan, crisply dressed owner of the winery, which he opened in 2007 (he released his first vintage in 2011). It was the following evening, and we were sitting at the heavy wooden table in his tasting room, surrounded by wine-stained oak barrels, platters of salami, olives and breadsticks, and antique revolvers hanging from the door frame. “The harvest in the rest of Uruguay is in March, but here in Carmelo, the grapes mature faster, so the harvest is two weeks earlier.” He stood up, and walked over to one of the formidable oak barrels next to us.

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Mr. Marzuca pulled out the plug from the top of the barrel, inserted a long glass syringe, drew out some wine, nearly black, and dispensed it into a glass. The tannat grape, the pride of Uruguay, produces the “wine of the machos,” so-called because it’s quite strong. It was rich and lush and tasted faintly of berries.

“My father planted these vines,” said Mr. Marzuca, pride swelling in his voice as we walked through his vineyard at dusk. “Tannat grapes grow better in sandy areas, and I think they have grown quite well here.”

The sky had slipped from orange to red to black. It was time to head back to CampoTinto for the night. We piled into Mr. Vigano de Narvaez’s 1951 lime green Studebaker — almost everyone here drives a 1940s- or ’50s-era car (when not traveling by horseback or bicycle). “We like the old cars,” Mr. Vigano de Narvaez said over the rumble of the engine. “In Carmelo, if something is not broken, we do not fix it.”

The next day, we put our tannat expedition on hold and delved into another famous crop. In the shadow of wine countries all over the world, there is usually olive oil — and in southwestern Uruguay, the olive oil of reckoning comes from Familia Longo.

“This place was a real mess when I took it over,” said Dolores Longo, the owner. The following day, we were strolling through her olive grove, the late afternoon sun giving way to a slow chill in the air. “I didn’t know anything about how to make olive oil — I had to teach myself.”

What she learned eventually led her to make three different types of olive oil: grassy manzanilla, fruity arbequina and the pungent and peppery coratina arbequina. “If you don’t process the olives within a few hours, the oil suffers,” Ms. Longo said, as we ended our tour in her tasting room.

And yes, at this point, Uruguay was beginning to seem like a series of very cute, very charming tasting rooms. My palate, spoiled, indulged and exhausted, demanded a break.

“Punta Gorda,” said my friend Matias, a Patagonian farmer of few words. “You must see it.”

There are two things to know about Punta Gorda, a fleck of a town 20 minutes (by modern car) from Carmelo: It’s considered kilometer zero for the Río de la Plata, and like so many points on the coastline of South America, it boasts a connection to Darwin (the Beagle stopped here on Darwin’s famous voyage of the 1830s).

Standing on a hilltop, overlooking the muddy, roiling river, we could see Argentina in the distance. “It’s close,” said Astrid. But this quiet pocket of wine country, she added, “is a world away from the rest of the world, isn’t it?”

IF YOU GO

Where to Stay

Posada CampoTinto (598-4542-7744; posadacampotinto.com) is a charming boutique hotel offering stunning views of surrounding vineyards, a pool and a patio that’s perfect for cocktail hour. The owners have plans to open their own winery in the next few months. Double rooms start at $180. (American dollars are preferred, as they are at many places in Uruguay.)

The name sets a high bar, but Casa Chic (598-454-04030; casa-chic.com) delivers. Ten bungalows, each with two rooms, are perched on the hillside, and a generous pool seems to run right into the horizon. Sit down to a lunch of rosemary crostini with artichokes, grilled Camembert and tomato sorbet and enjoy the view of the Rio de la Plata. Double rooms start at $250.

The Four Seasons Resort (Ruta 21, kilometer 262; 598-4542-9000; fourseasons.com/carmelo) is beautiful and spacious. From $370.

What to Do

At Familia Longo (Ruta 21, kilometer 270, Colonia; familialongo.com.uy), Dolores Longo likes to prepare toast with jam — along with personal anecdotes — to go with olive oil tastings.

Cordano Almacén de la Capilla (Ruta 21, kilometer 257; 598-4542-7316) is the oldest vineyard in the region. Go for a late-afternoon wine tasting.

One of the largest vineyards in the area, Familia Irurtia (598-454-23355; irurtia.com.uy) often has some sort of entertainment, like traditional dancers, during a tour. Book in advance.

Make a reservation at El Legado (Ruta 97, Carmelo; 598-99-111-493) so Bernardo Marzuca, the owner, knows you’re coming, and he will probably invite you to draw your own wine from the barrels in his tasting room.

Where to Eat

Discover Four Seasons Resort Carmelo - a luxury resort located along the shores of Uruguay's Rio de la Plata featuring a landscape of grassy plains and rolling vineyards.

02/09/2014

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-gglI43UVsE

31/07/2014

What Happens When You Live Abroad
Chelsea Fagan

A very dependable feature of people who live abroad is finding them huddled together in bars and restaurants, talking not just about their homelands, but about the experience of leaving. And strangely enough, these groups of ex-pats aren’t necessarily all from the same home countries, often the mere experience of trading lands and cultures is enough to link them together and build the foundations of a friendship. I knew a decent amount of ex pats — of varying lengths of stay — back in America, and it’s reassuring to see that here in Europe, the “foreigner” bars are just as prevalent and filled with the same warm, nostalgic chatter.

But one thing that undoubtedly exists between all of us, something that lingers unspoken at all of our gatherings, is fear. There is a palpable fear to living in a new country, and though it is more acute in the first months, even year, of your stay, it never completely evaporates as time goes on. It simply changes. The anxiousness that was once concentrated on how you’re going to make new friends, adjust, and master the nuances of the language has become the repeated question “What am I missing?” As you settle into your new life and country, as time passes and becomes less a question of how long you’ve been here and more one of how long you’ve been gone, you realize that life back home has gone on without you. People have grown up, they’ve moved, they’ve married, they’ve become completely different people — and so have you.

It’s hard to deny that the act of living in another country, in another language, fundamentally changes you. Different parts of your personality sort of float to the top, and you take on qualities, mannerisms, and opinions that define the new people around you. And there’s nothing wrong with that; it’s often part of the reason you left in the first place. You wanted to evolve, to change something, to put yourself in an uncomfortable new situation that would force you to into a new phase of your life.

So many of us, when we leave our home countries, want to escape ourselves. We build up enormous webs of people, of bars and coffee shops, of arguments and exes and the same five places over and over again, from which we feel we can’t break free. There are just too many bridges that have been burned, or love that has turned sour and ugly, or restaurants at which you’ve eaten everything on the menu at least ten times — the only way to escape and to wipe your slate clean is to go somewhere where no one knows who you were, and no one is going to ask. And while it’s enormously refreshing and exhilarating to feel like you can be anyone you want to be and come without the baggage of your past, you realize just how much of “you” was based more on geographic location than anything else.

Walking streets alone and eating dinner at tables for one — maybe with a book, maybe not — you’re left alone for hours, days on end with nothing but your own thoughts. You start talking to yourself, asking yourself questions and answering them, and taking in the day’s activities with a slowness and an appreciation that you’ve never before even attempted. Even just going to the grocery store — when in an exciting new place, when all by yourself, when in a new language — is a thrilling activity. And having to start from zero and rebuild everything, having to re-learn how to live and carry out every day activities like a child, fundamentally alters you. Yes, the country and its people will have their own effect on who you are and what you think, but few things are more profound than just starting over with the basics and relying on yourself to build a life again. I have yet to meet a person who I didn’t find calmed by the experience. There is a certain amount of comfort and confidence that you gain with yourself when you go to this new place and start all over again, and a knowledge that — come what may in the rest of your life — you were capable of taking that leap and landing softly at least once.

But there are the fears. And yes, life has gone on without you. And the longer you stay in your new home, the more profound those changes will become. Holidays, birthdays, weddings — every event that you miss suddenly becomes a tick mark on an endless ream of paper. One day, you simply look back and realize that so much has happened in your absence, that so much has changed. You find it harder and harder to start conversations with people who used to be some of your best friends, and in-jokes become increasingly foreign — you have become an outsider. There are those who stay so long that they can never go back. We all meet the ex-pat who has been in his new home for 30 years and who seems to have almost replaced the missed years spent back in his homeland with full, passionate immersion into his new country. Yes, technically they are immigrants. Technically their birth certificate would place them in a different part of the world. But it’s undeniable that whatever life they left back home, they could never pick up all the pieces to. That old person is gone, and you realize that every day, you come a tiny bit closer to becoming that person yourself — even if you don’t want to.

So you look at your life, and the two countries that hold it, and realize that you are now two distinct people. As much as your countries represent and fulfill different parts of you and what you enjoy about life, as much as you have formed unbreakable bonds with people you love in both places, as much as you feel truly at home in either one, so you are divided in two. For the rest of your life, or at least it feels this way, you will spend your time in one naggingly longing for the other, and waiting until you can get back for at least a few weeks and dive back into the person you were back there. It takes so much to carve out a new life for yourself somewhere new, and it can’t die simply because you’ve moved over a few time zones. The people that took you into their country and became your new family, they aren’t going to mean any less to you when you’re far away.

When you live abroad, you realize that, no matter where you are, you will always be an ex-pat. There will always be a part of you that is far away from its home and is lying dormant until it can breathe and live in full color back in the country where it belongs. To live in a new place is a beautiful, thrilling thing, and it can show you that you can be whoever you want — on your own terms. It can give you the gift of freedom, of new beginnings, of curiosity and excitement. But to start over, to get on that plane, doesn’t come without a price. You cannot be in two places at once, and from now on, you will always lay awake on certain nights and think of all the things you’re missing out on back home.

31/07/2014

MAY 21, 2012
What Happens When You Live Abroad
Chelsea Fagan
79.1k
A very dependable feature of people who live abroad is finding them huddled together in bars and restaurants, talking not just about their homelands, but about the experience of leaving. And strangely enough, these groups of ex-pats aren’t necessarily all from the same home countries, often the mere experience of trading lands and cultures is enough to link them together and build the foundations of a friendship. I knew a decent amount of ex pats — of varying lengths of stay — back in America, and it’s reassuring to see that here in Europe, the “foreigner” bars are just as prevalent and filled with the same warm, nostalgic chatter.

But one thing that undoubtedly exists between all of us, something that lingers unspoken at all of our gatherings, is fear. There is a palpable fear to living in a new country, and though it is more acute in the first months, even year, of your stay, it never completely evaporates as time goes on. It simply changes. The anxiousness that was once concentrated on how you’re going to make new friends, adjust, and master the nuances of the language has become the repeated question “What am I missing?” As you settle into your new life and country, as time passes and becomes less a question of how long you’ve been here and more one of how long you’ve been gone, you realize that life back home has gone on without you. People have grown up, they’ve moved, they’ve married, they’ve become completely different people — and so have you.

It’s hard to deny that the act of living in another country, in another language, fundamentally changes you. Different parts of your personality sort of float to the top, and you take on qualities, mannerisms, and opinions that define the new people around you. And there’s nothing wrong with that; it’s often part of the reason you left in the first place. You wanted to evolve, to change something, to put yourself in an uncomfortable new situation that would force you to into a new phase of your life.

So many of us, when we leave our home countries, want to escape ourselves. We build up enormous webs of people, of bars and coffee shops, of arguments and exes and the same five places over and over again, from which we feel we can’t break free. There are just too many bridges that have been burned, or love that has turned sour and ugly, or restaurants at which you’ve eaten everything on the menu at least ten times — the only way to escape and to wipe your slate clean is to go somewhere where no one knows who you were, and no one is going to ask. And while it’s enormously refreshing and exhilarating to feel like you can be anyone you want to be and come without the baggage of your past, you realize just how much of “you” was based more on geographic location than anything else.

Walking streets alone and eating dinner at tables for one — maybe with a book, maybe not — you’re left alone for hours, days on end with nothing but your own thoughts. You start talking to yourself, asking yourself questions and answering them, and taking in the day’s activities with a slowness and an appreciation that you’ve never before even attempted. Even just going to the grocery store — when in an exciting new place, when all by yourself, when in a new language — is a thrilling activity. And having to start from zero and rebuild everything, having to re-learn how to live and carry out every day activities like a child, fundamentally alters you. Yes, the country and its people will have their own effect on who you are and what you think, but few things are more profound than just starting over with the basics and relying on yourself to build a life again. I have yet to meet a person who I didn’t find calmed by the experience. There is a certain amount of comfort and confidence that you gain with yourself when you go to this new place and start all over again, and a knowledge that — come what may in the rest of your life — you were capable of taking that leap and landing softly at least once.

But there are the fears. And yes, life has gone on without you. And the longer you stay in your new home, the more profound those changes will become. Holidays, birthdays, weddings — every event that you miss suddenly becomes a tick mark on an endless ream of paper. One day, you simply look back and realize that so much has happened in your absence, that so much has changed. You find it harder and harder to start conversations with people who used to be some of your best friends, and in-jokes become increasingly foreign — you have become an outsider. There are those who stay so long that they can never go back. We all meet the ex-pat who has been in his new home for 30 years and who seems to have almost replaced the missed years spent back in his homeland with full, passionate immersion into his new country. Yes, technically they are immigrants. Technically their birth certificate would place them in a different part of the world. But it’s undeniable that whatever life they left back home, they could never pick up all the pieces to. That old person is gone, and you realize that every day, you come a tiny bit closer to becoming that person yourself — even if you don’t want to.

So you look at your life, and the two countries that hold it, and realize that you are now two distinct people. As much as your countries represent and fulfill different parts of you and what you enjoy about life, as much as you have formed unbreakable bonds with people you love in both places, as much as you feel truly at home in either one, so you are divided in two. For the rest of your life, or at least it feels this way, you will spend your time in one naggingly longing for the other, and waiting until you can get back for at least a few weeks and dive back into the person you were back there. It takes so much to carve out a new life for yourself somewhere new, and it can’t die simply because you’ve moved over a few time zones. The people that took you into their country and became your new family, they aren’t going to mean any less to you when you’re far away.

When you live abroad, you realize that, no matter where you are, you will always be an ex-pat. There will always be a part of you that is far away from its home and is lying dormant until it can breathe and live in full color back in the country where it belongs. To live in a new place is a beautiful, thrilling thing, and it can show you that you can be whoever you want — on your own terms. It can give you the gift of freedom, of new beginnings, of curiosity and excitement. But to start over, to get on that plane, doesn’t come without a price. You cannot be in two places at once, and from now on, you will always lay awake on certain nights and think of all the things you’re missing out on back home.

24/03/2014

Our mission is to offer the best and more reliable Relocation service through all the moving process, so when our client arrives to our country not only feels at home but also is fully operational to focus in the new employment.

We provide services in home finding, schooling, health care insurences, opening bank accounts, inmigration procedures and everything the client needs to settle in.

04/03/2014

FOREIGN INVESTMENTS IN URUGUAY

Uruguay has traditionally been considered as a country with a friendly legal framework for foreign investments.

Its stable political system, in which respect for the rule of law is the norm, and its strategic location are some of the factors that make Uruguay an attractive country for investors. In this regard, strong public policies have been implemented in order to maintain a favorable investment climate and to attract foreign investments into the country. The main general rules regarding investment protection are in the Investment Law.

This legal framework contains certain principles, which can be summarized as follows:

• Uruguayan Law provides no discrimination whatsoever with foreign investors vis a vis national investors;

• Foreign investments are admitted without any previous authorization or filing requirement, before any governmental agency;

• Foreign currency inflows and outflows are subject to no restrictions; Uruguayan Law guarantees the free remittance of capital and dividends abroad in freely
convertible currency, as well as other investment-related funds;

• There are no restrictions or limitations regarding the percentage of equity that foreigners may own in local businesses;

• There are no restrictions or limitations to appoint foreigners as directors of Uruguayan companies, residents or not;

• There are no restrictions or limitations for foreign investors seeking to set up a local operation with respect to the kind of business entity they are allowed to use;

• Uruguayan Law provides total economic and exchange freedom;

• Bank secrecy is provided for and protected by law.

• The Government promotes investment in general, and keeps a favorable policy towards foreign investment. The general regime is totally open and does not make any discrimination at all between local and foreign investors from tributary point of view. Foreign investor has the same incentives as local ones.

• The foreign investor can operate in the country, setting up an Uruguayan partnership company -which is the most frequently used in this country- in which the investor can have the 100% of the share capital. The investor can also operate through the setting up of a limited liability company or other kinds of personal companies integrated by foreign physical or juridical persons (legal status). In the same way, the foreign investor can choose to operate in the country through a foreign company, partnership, opening a branch in Uruguay.

• It is a member of investors protective international organizations, such as MIGA, International Center of Settlement of Differences Regarding Inversions, (the World Bank is the seat of this Center).

04/03/2014

22/02/2014

Una luz al otro lado del río
En busca de tranquilidad, pero sin alejarse demasiado de Buenos Aires ni de sus afectos, miles de argentinos eligen cada año Uruguay para radicarse
Por Fernando Massa | LA NACION
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Lisandro y Sabrina Wallasch. Hace dos años, paseando por la rambla, decidieron mudarse a Montevideo. Foto: Ignacio Coló / Enviado especial
MONTEVIDEO.- Lisandro Wallasch se insertó con el fútbol. Hincha de Estudiantes, de 31 años, y ahora también de Peñarol, lo primero que hizo en su departamento del barrio de Malvín fue instalar el cable para poder ver los partidos del torneo argentino. Y el primer contacto con un grupo de gente fuera de la empresa agroindustrial donde trabaja también llegó con una invitación futbolera: un uruguayo que conoció en su rubro, el financiero, le dijo de sumarse a los partidos en cancha de 5 de los sábados.

Su mujer, Sabrina, de 28, en la Argentina había estudiado diseño de moda y, aprovechando las facilidades que brindaba la política de expatriación de la compañía de su marido, se decidió por estudiar en Montevideo alta costura. También retomó el modelaje publicitario, con el plus de encontrarse no más de 50 personas en los castings, lejos de esas miles que convocaban aquellos de Buenos Aires. Para describir cómo los recibió Montevideo usan un adjetivo bien uruguayo: "Impecable". Y eso que son porteños, algo que nunca pasa inadvertido.

Cuando dos años atrás surgió la posibilidad de cambio dentro de la empresa, Lisandro eligió postularse. Pero fue un fin de semana como turistas en Montevideo lo que los convenció. Sentados frente al río, en Punta Gorda, él le dijo: "Y, ¿nos quedamos?". La tranquilidad, la rambla con los corredores, los mates y las bicicletas, y esa conexión cultural indiscutible fueron indicios de que la transición no resultaría difícil. Sí lo fueron los primeros meses con los trámites de radicación y el contraste que les mostró la ciudad en invierno.

Lisandro es parte de una ola de ejecutivos argentinos que en los últimos años desembarcó en sectores financieros, en el agro -con una primera oleada en 2008, año del conflicto con el campo- o en empresas de consumo masivo y de servicios en Uruguay y que se instaló con sus familias en Pocitos, Carrasco o Malvín. "En general, los ejecutivos medios y altos que vienen a Uruguay son hombres de entre 35 y 45 años, con pareja e hijos en edad escolar, que buscan calidad de vida para sus familias", dice Federico Muttoni, gerente de la consultora uruguaya Advice.

Este movimiento de argentinos, que tuvo su pico el año pasado cuando la Dirección de Migraciones uruguaya concedió 1645 radicaciones definitivas -cuatro veces más que en 2012-, y que se repartió entre Colonia y Punta del Este, excede al mundo empresarial. Los motivos laborales o personales son muy variados, pero coinciden en la búsqueda de una vida que les dé un respiro del vértigo y la conflictividad porteña sin tener que alejarse demasiado de sus afectos.

Uruguay no sólo es una opción de cambio al alcance de los argentinos. Uruguay está de moda. En diciembre pasado The Economist sorprendió a todos eligiéndolo "el país del año". Los motivos van desde las políticas progresistas que ha adoptado su gobierno en los últimos años -el matrimonio igualitario, la legalización y regulación de la producción, venta y consumo de la ma*****na-, la austeridad y transparencia de su presidente, José Mujica, como paradigma de la idiosincrasia uruguaya hasta otros que podrían desprenderse de forma tácita, como sus playas o la calidez de su gente. Aunque como todo lugar, también tiene su contracara: el alto costo de vida que sufren incluso los uruguayos y otro tema, impensado años atrás, como el de la creciente inseguridad.

Tres años pasaron desde que Facundo de Almeida se instaló con su esposa y sus dos hijas en un departamento en el centro de Montevideo para asumir la dirección del Museo de Arte Precolombino e Indígena (MAPI). El disparador para empezar a buscar una alternativa de vida familiar más tranquila tuvo que ver con la ventana del contrafrente de su departamento a una cuadra del Congreso, esa que daba a la sede del Ministerio de Trabajo. Las manifestaciones no las contaban por día, sino por hora. Los kilos de basura que se acumulaban en la puerta y la zona que empezaba a caer un poco los convencieron para empezar a hablar con conocidos que trabajaban en el área de la cultura. El desafío profesional se sumaba como otra razón para el cambio.

Entre distintas opciones apareció una que le deslizó una amiga uruguaya durante una comida en el Bacacay, un fin de semana que paseaban por Montevideo. "¿Seguís con la idea de irte de Buenos Aires?", le preguntó su amiga. A ella la acababan de nombrar directora de Artes y Ciencias en la intendencia de Montevideo y sabía que andaban en busca de un director para el museo. Facundo la miró a su mujer y ella le contestó: "Yo te sigo a donde quieras".

"Fue una transición, no una ruptura. Elegimos venir. Frente a otros destinos de la Argentina, a mí me resultaba más interesante Montevideo no sólo desde el punto de vista profesional, sino también por venir a una ciudad con una infraestructura y una identidad cultural mucho más parecida a Buenos Aires. Montevideo ofrece las posibilidades de una capital, pero a una escala más humana", dice. Su vínculo con Buenos Aires, sin embargo, se mantiene hasta en lo laboral: sigue dando clases en una maestría de la Universidad Torcuato Di Tella. Pero Montevideo se encargó enseguida de confirmarles su fama de ciudad receptiva. Fueron tres guiños. En la primer reunión, la intendenta Ana Olivera no lo invitó a su despacho, sino que se acercó ella misma al museo. El segundo, durante el primer mes, aún como turistas y sin contrato, cuando tenían que anotar a sus hijas en la escuela. Recién la encontraron el último día de inscripción. "Lo único que tengo es el DNI argentino", se resignó él. ¿La respuesta? "En este país no miramos los documentos de los padres para educar a los niños." El tercero, cuando a días de haber llegado una de sus hijas repitió eso mismo que había dicho la primera vez que se fue de vacaciones a la costa, lejos de los bombos de las protestas porteñas: "Papá acá no hay pum pum, pum pum ".

Facundo tilda de mitos dos típicas quejas de los argentinos que viven en Montevideo. Una que dice que en el invierno no pasa nada y esa otra que habla de la burocracia y lentitud de los trámites públicos en Uruguay. "A mí no me alcanza el tiempo para hacer cosas. Un ejemplo es la programación del Teatro Solís -cuyo ballet dirige otro argentino, Julio Bocca- o del Sodre. Quizá no llegan exposiciones como las de Proa o el Malba, pero para verlas se cruza a Buenos Aires y listo." Respecto a la burocracia es contundente: "Son burocráticos en el sentido de cumplir con todo lo que dice la norma y el procedimiento. A la larga el sistema no termina siendo más lento que otro al que termina demorando la corrupción".

Sí afirma que la vida es muy cara. La luz, el agua, el transporte. El equilibrio para él se da con los servicios públicos de calidad que la ciudad ofrece: la escuela pública primaria -no así, el liceo, como se llama al secundario-, la medicina, y las actividades en espacios públicos para grandes y chicos.