Summer in Santiago...

Hi! I'm Robin. I'm 27, studied history at bristol university and the violin at trinity college of music, and will be writing various ramblings and musings from Santiago, Chile, where i've been playing since March with the Orquesta Filarmonica in a very cool old theatre in the centre of town. The Orchestra's been going for just over 150 years, and has always included a few foreigners, but fired about half the players a couple of years ago when they refused to sign new contracts reducing the amount of paid leave from 140 to 44 days per year. That's how i understand it, anyway! So the management scoured Europe for a collection of (mainly) young nomadic mercenaries to fill the void. The result is a mix of about half Chilean players (survivors of the cull, and new members who auditioned last year), and half foreigners...serbs, polish, russian, danish, american, dutch, and a small british contingent. everybody gets along very well, and the chileans are friendly, funny, and forgiving of men and women who speak spanish like infants with speech impediments. The Orchestra plays a mix of opera, ballet and symphony repertoire, with both national and international superstar casts/soloists. That's perfect for me, and gives a very pleasing variety of styles, genres and challenges.

So here we are! having left london at the end of British winter into the Chilean autumn, we had a couple of months of gringo-frying sun, and then a surprisingly cold winter from which we are now emerging. in fact, the season's first sighting of pasty white legs was reported last week, and is likely to soon be accompanied by hairy white toes peeping out of blister-inducing sandals. i'm writing this in mid-september, so by the time it comes out, we'll be sweating a lot in traditional british summer costume and walking very slowly again.

September 11th (11/9, you idiots...stop swapping it around like you did with all your driving in the left-hand side of the car on the right-hand side of the road confusion) marks the seminal twin towers attack for most of the world, but here it's even more significant for the anniversary of the coup which brought general pinochet to power in 1973. In many ways, the country, a relatively recent democracy, is still recovering, and most people have a frightening story to tell about the previous regime. So 11/9 is a day of demonstrations and, usually, rioting. Demonstrations, which almost inevitably mutate into riots, are pretty frequent in Santiago, but don't affect people too dramatically. most still have to go to work, which creates the surreal sight of prescient people going about their business wearing gas masks to protect them from the haze of tear gas that the police use to disperse rioters, while others splutter, cry and sneeze. there's the odd bit of broken glass and pile of burning rubbish, and apparently a bus got hijacked last month, but i've never seen any violence...honest, guv.

this time, fortunately, all seemed surprisingly calm, and left the police free to carry out raids like one i witnessed from a bus stop: a riot van screeched to a halt and a fat uniformed officer leaped out in pursuit of a rubix cube salesman. the persecuted vendor of retro merchandise escaped, while the police confiscated his abandoned wares, looking pissed off. i'm sure that was only a facade, though, masking from the public their undoubted glee at many hours of puzzling fun ahead of them. or maybe plotting their next move against purveyors of 80's goods...top gun videos? bruce willis vests? (they might not have been 80's, i can't remember, but if not please don't be pedantic...)

talking of bruce, i was disappointed to see his trademark vest didn't make an appearance in die hard 4, which i saw last week...in english, luckily! although within half an hour he was covered in blood, displaying the classic limp/stagger perfected through decades of die hard, and even jumped onto and took out a fighter jet singlehandedly and unarmed, so i wasn't too upset...

anyway, enough rambling. it's a 5day national holiday so i'm retreating through the mountains to argentina. actually, my girlfriend emma needs to cross a border to extend her visa, so we're off for a chilling weekend, then back in time (hopefully) to play madam butterfly for president Michelle Bachelet on tuesday and join the rest of chile in eating meat & pies and drinking red wine & dodgy looking cider in a tent in the local park afterwards...

if you didn't give up before finishing this, congratulations! you deserve a treat.

cheers,

robin