We arrived in Montevideo yesterday evening, wanted to book our bus tickets back to Argentina (which was rather difficult, because the girl at the counter didn't speak a word in English, well and my Spanish is like non-existant, so we had some problems...and what was more, she didn't seem very keen on selling anything, at least not to me, but I knew what to do, I asked Jürgen to get our tickets and guess what...one minute later we had our bus tickets...

We then went to our hostel (beautiful old building, funky place) and, as we were starving, went out again to find something to eat. We had 'chivito para dos' - a huge plate with French fries, salad and some beef with ham, cheese and an egg on top of it. At the pub we started talking with two German guys - retired twins - and they told us about their way of travelling - they are on a container ship as tourists - we had no idea that was possible...

Today we unfortunatley had an experience which we could have done without - Jürgen and I were walking around the old city, everything was rather quite, not many shops open, hardly anybody on the streets. Down at the harbour we sat down to watch a football game and there it happenend: some young guys came close to us, touching us, wanting to open Jürgen's jacket and to take away my bag...

After that we were quite shocked and went back to the hostel immediately...you don't feel very safe anymore when something like this happens...

Well, having recovered from our shock we went out again, had dinner (same pub as yesterday, and we even went there for a third time - not possible to find any other nice restaurant) and then went to a Tango concert in 'Museo Del Vino' - a charming, old wine bar. The band was excellent - the singer is said to be very famous in Uruguay - the two old guys playing the instrument were great, totally cool - you could see that they knew what they were doing - real pleasure!

Sunday was even more quiet - todo es cerrado! But we had sunny weather, so we were strolling around the city again, visiting 'Mercado Del Puerte' - lots of parillas - down at the harbour...

Returning to our hostel, another surprise - our shoes were gone. We had them outside on the balcony and it seems that someone really liked them...we were furious...I got even angrier when I heard that it was not the first time...

On our last day in Montevideo we visited the Black community quarter, which was not really recognizable, as we didn't see any Black people at all, and tried to find some new sports shoes. Luckily today Montevideo seemed a bit livelier, but still, it does not have the energy you would expect in a South American city.

Resume: To be honest, we were quite happy when we could finally leave the city on Monday evening. We cannot really understand why everybody is raving about Montevideo and where its excellent reputation comes from - no glamour, no nightlife, no restaurants...beautiful, colonial buildings, but old houses often left to ruin...