First impresstions of Santiago

My trip through South-America has started and things are going well. So far I've been acclimatizing, learning Spanish, enjoying dinners and weekend with Marion, figuring out how to get around town, listened to an alt violin concert, cheering with the Chileans after their victory on Spain, visited some musea, skying, celebrating with the local Dutchies after the win on Chile and watching another match with Brasilians. Our group of Dutch supporters even made it to the Chilean national television (http://www.24horas.cl/noticiarios/24horascentral/24-horas-central---lunes-23-de-junio-1294962, between 32:45 and 37:00).

In the meantime, I've been forming my first impression of the continent and of the city. And it is like they say: Santiago is a nice city and it's developing fast. Everywhere you look you can see things being build. The airport is being expanded, the Plaza de armas is being improved, the highest tower of South-America is being build and there are many more activities like it.
The streets are quite big and plenty. There are also a lot of cars driving on them. It's still seen as a symbol of wealth, so whoever can, gets themselves a vehicle. The cars are of decent quality, but I'm quite sure the metro must be both cheaper and faster. In rush hours the traffic is plain slow and motorbikes and bicycles find a way through the masses of cars. With this kind of traffic, being surrounded by mountains for the biggest part, not having any wind and seeing barely any rain, it's no wonder there's a big cloud of smog covering the city.
Although the air might be polluted, the streets are very clean. You might see the country as somewhat poor - it is one of the more prosperous countries of the continent, though - they like to tidy up. They sweep the lawn, I haven't seen any dog poo yet and there's barely any litter.
They also like fast-food. Around the centre there are hundreds of hot dog stands, hamburger makers and sandwich sellers. Most of those are with lots of mayonaise and little to no greens. It's not surprising that most people around here are a bit chubbier than probably is healthy for them.
The people seem nice, too. In the streets they might look at your pale face and blond curls, but once you start talking, they tend to be interested and patient with your broken Spanish. I must say that the World Cup does help to break the ice. Sometimes just yelling a country's name will make you new friends around here. Now that I think about it, I think I like this place quite a bit.

The plan for the oncoming days is to have a day-trip to Valparaiso and then go to Mendoza (Argentina). You'll read how that worked out in the next entry of this blog. Again, if you have requests, I'll see what I can do (see pics of the new haircut at the last blog story). Other comments are very nice to read as well. In any case, let's hope the best teams win! ^^