It has been a smooth move from the economically collapsing
arg, to the much more organized chilito. It was only a matter of time until my
cynical side of Chile came out, but alas, it has emerged.
I suppose it might be coming from a big city (the entire population
of Chile fits into the greater Buenos Aires) that people have a tendency to
walk faster, perhaps they have a meeting, or may miss the subway, regardless of
the circumstances, I would say as a rule people tend to walk briskly. Brisk is
the last word I would use to describe the average Chilean walker. You can call
me high strung, which I am, but
there is no excuse to walk at the pace of a small child learning how to walk
unless you are a small child learning how to walk, disabled or over the age of
70.
Not only do Chileans tend to be slow walkers, they are surly
slow walkers. About on a daily basis, I get a middle aged woman, coming out of
some unknown door, pretty much knocking into me, telling me ‘muevete gringa’
(move gringa). This is annoying. At first I felt somewhat bad, kind of
repentant as if I had done something wrong but wait. YOU ARE ENTERING THE
SIDEWALK TRAFFIC NOT ME. So now, when I hear the snide ‘muevete gringa’ I reply
with ‘esperate weona’(wait asshole) of which tends to evoke a quite adverse
reaction. Latinas.
Another sidewalk disrupter are the chains of preteen girls
in their uniformed miniskirts coming to or from school. Maybe I just didn’t
have enough girlfriends to make my own daisy chain that takes up the entire
sidewalk, or maybe I did, but I didn’t because some people don’t want to walk
at the pace of the above mentioned toddler and then have to contend with the
redrover looking formation ahead. If you want to link arms with one of your
friends, that is reasonable, girls like arm linkage. However, if you want to
link arms with twenty of your friends, forcing people to swerve into the side
of the road, perhaps rethink, maybe put that buddy system into action.
(mutiply these three by three and you get school girl chains in Chile)
The third obstacle that I’ve run into are the sudden stop
maker-outers. So say you make it it through several blocks without having to
contend with pre-teen daisy chains, large groups of people walking as if they
are on the brink of death, or frank mean middle aged woman, you will enevitably
make it to some university building where you will have to beware of the newly
smitten (or not so newly) couples. Okay, so everyone likes making out, I won’t
exclude myself from this group but if I’m going to choose to make out on the
street I do no stop suddenly to have a romantic moment, maybe a long stare
followed by the impending kiss. Congratulations couple, you have now made
yourself into a human roadblock, or at the very least a human median. And
what’s more, you CAN kiss and walk at the same time, I know it’s a strange
concept, but try it and simultaneously become much less of a burden to your
fellow pedestrians.
You might think that it is all romantic as it looks in this picture but trust me, it isn't.
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