A Chile Reception
Trip Start
Oct 15, 2007
1
46
97
Trip End
Aug 24, 2008
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Santiago,
Chile
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Finally, we're here and we don't have to hang around in transit lounges waiting to leave!
Baggage collected, we found ourselves a bus and set off for the city. We knew which Metro stop we needed to get off at for Philippe's flat, but worryingly, as we followed the bus's path into town on the guidebook map, we noticed that it said the Metro stopped running at half past ten. We had been late getting into Santiago, and baggage claim had taken ages, so it was about twenty five past as we sprinted across the road to the Metro station, finding a sign we couldn't quite decipher which said something stopped at eleven. We weren't quite sure what it referred to, but we were glad it wasn't due to happen quite yet.
Hoping the ticket system was the same as in Mexico City (buy one ticket for one price and ride as far as you like, changing lines as often as you like, the turnstile eating your ticket as you go train-side), we got a couple of tickets. That was indeed how it worked, and we arrived at the Plaza de Armas station with little mishap. Philippe's flat is right in the centre of the city and so was only a very short walk away; he buzzed us in and we were home.
Home...well, we were in a house. Philippe is a taciturn, awkward sort of creature, and we weren't entirely sure why someone who didn't really want to make conversation was involved with Couch Surfing. When he commented about our being so late and that he was thinking we may not show, we pointed out that the number he had given us hadn't worked, and checked to make sure it was the right one. It was right, we were supposed to have added a one and left out a zero or something, which we had tried, and seconds into our explanation, he seemed bored. He wasn't speaking any more, so there wasn't anything of importance being said. He made a couple of recommendations as to places to go, pencilling them into our guidebook, but seemed somehow...superior about it, if that's possible. An odd situation to be in really.
His flatmate Carlos seemed much more friendly, but was very tired and so introduced himself and went to bed. We had the choice of a double futon in the main room or a single bed in their absent flatmate's room. We chose the bed, and after sitting at the table for a while picking at the fruit Philippe had left us before retreating back to his room, we decided to head for bed.
We dressed the curtainless windows with towels, sarongs and the like, and fell into bed, where we lay as still as possible, sweating like horses. Santiago is a hot, hot, humid sweltering place at this time of year.
Next morning, we crawled out of bed and eventually went to ask Philippe where we could get some washing done, leaving it until fairly late in the morning as he had said that he was sensitive about being woken up early. He said we could use his machine, but that we'd have to buy our own detergent as they didn't have any. Scooping a minimal amount of detergent out of the bountiful supply in the box next to the machine, we figured we'd tell him we'd used some of our all-purpose liquid travel soap stuff, if asked. We had no problem with making a donation for things we'd used (in the large moneybox labelled 'Donations' in the middle of the dining table), but the "Buy your own, we haven't got any" seemed a touch rude.
Washing done, we went out to the local market, an interesting looking building with the appearance of one of the older major British railway stations - York or King's Cross, that sort of thing: lots of swooping ironwork propping up a high roof. A section of it is given over to seafood restaurants and cafes, and Philippe had made a recommendation of one such place. Uncertain as to what to have, we figured we'd try the selection platter thing they offered, which was absolutely disgusting.
They offered it served in a variety of ways, hot or cold, with different dressings. The waiter recommended hot, with the garlicky olive oil, so that's what we ordered. We didn't recognise the names (or indeed shapes) of a lot of the lumps on the plate, so we can't give an overly detailed report, but the ceviche had been pickled for too long and was crumbly, the red lumps of squidgy goo were sufficiently disgusting that we spat them out and all of it was clearly tinned or frozen low grade rubbish which had been microwaved and drizzled with oil. We complained and a higher grade of waiter turned up and demanded to know what the hell our problem was, informing us that if wanted decent seafood we should have ordered it the classic, traditional way: hot, with garlicky olive oil - the other ways of doing it couldn't be expected to produce good results. The staff clearly hadn't got their stories straight with each other before offering their crap excuses.
He retreated into an inability to speak English and flounced off after we pointed out that we had indeed followed the recommendation of the staff and that what he was saying was therefore bollocks. Another plate of the same rubbish turned up. We left.
Fortunately, Chilean restaurants serve bread and pebre (a chopped mix of tomatoes, chillies, garlic and coriander) in abundance as a matter of course, so we were reasonably well fed by the time we left. Disappointed, but well fed.
We popped into a nearby Metro station to buy a 'bip' card, which is a rechargeable swipe card for use on Santiago's trains and buses, which works out (if used often enough) a little cheaper than buying a load of individual tickets, and which goes 'bip' when you swipe it against the sensors on the turnstiles. It took an extremely long time to fathom how to ask the station staff if it was worth our buying one as the listed fare tariff was somewhat arcane and their ability to understand our Spanish seemed even worse than our ability to understand theirs.
They, like a lot of other Latin American public service and hospitality personnel, were of the school of thought that if a phrasebook-clutching foreigner speaks to you in a poorly broken form of Spanish, clearly puzzled about something, then you should assume they are being wilfully stupid, and therefore you should gabble frustratedly at them. At least the classic British way of dealing with non-English speakers (repeat yourself louder and slower in the hope that suddenly they'll understand) provides people with something they can look up in their phrasebooks. The onslaught of aggravated spit notwithstanding, we eventually decided that a bip would probably be worth it. All bipped up, we got some ice creams and hung around the main square, then got some beers and set about trying to work out the bus system.
Philippe had told us about a party being held for members of the Couch Surfing network at the house of another Santiago member and had given us the sort of directions which make sense to people who already know where they're going. Take such-and-such a bus from this street, ask the driver for Bremen Street. OK...so from which side of the street do we catch the bus? Where should its sign say it's going if it's the right one? Once we've figured all that out for ourselves, will the driver have the faintest bloody clue where Bremen Street is or will he shrug, look at us like we're mental and say "Eurrgh?"
Answers: the other side, 'Nuñoa', and yes, the bus driver did indeed say "Euurgh", but we bipped ourselves onto the bus, followed the route on the map in our guidebook and found ourselves in approximately the right area without too much hassle.
As it turned out, the party was at the house of the Couch Surfy type whose offer of a room we had turned down because he was so far out of the city centre. We had preferred the look of his place (big house, our own room, garden, pool, etc.), but the location of Philippe's place was more central, so as we were only there for a few days, it had seemed on balance like the better option.
As we arrived, there were one or two people about, all of whom knew each other. We'd been given a time to turn up, allowed an hour or so before doing so, but given the way things happened, we were about six or seven hours early. Much later on, a load of others turned up who weren't just a load of friends hanging out in their mate's garden, and we started to enjoy ourselves a bit more. We spent ages nattering a pair of Aussies called Trent and Jodie, and to Kate and Brian, a really nice American couple, and Jacob did his famous geek-magnet trick. Go to a party with Jacob, and if there's a nerdy looking type with a squint who can talk for hours about a particular Thin Lizzy guitar solo, then you'll witness this strange and little understood force of attraction take place.
Many barbecued sausages and utterly winged conversations about whether Scott Gorham or Gary Moore was the better guitarist (?) later, we got ourselves a cab back to the centre of town, understanding a surprising amount of the very friendly driver's Spanish, and toddled off to bed.
The next day was remarkably hot, which seems to be the way they do things in Santiago. We took some photos of an old churchy building round the corner from the flat, then, as museums are free on Sundays, we went to check out the Museum of Pre-Columbian Art. It was quite an interesting place, and not all of its exhibits could realistically count as being art. It involved displays of various ancient Latin American (mostly with some connection to what nowadays is Chile) artefacts, including the Chinchorro mummies, the oldest in the world, dating from 2000 years before their more famous Egyptian counterparts.
Rather daunting were the Chemamull: the large wooden ceremonial statues of the Mapuche people from central and southern Chile and southern Argentina, which had served as a sort of spiritual guard at funeral ceremonies. Their large stylised heads, combined with their arrangement in regular files at the dark end of the room, each lit with their own individual spot, gave them the appearance of having just beamed aboard the Enterprise.
Probably the most fascinating item though was the Inca 'Quipu' or ledger. It takes the form of a length of string, from which, at regular intervals, hang clusters of shorter strings. In these cords are tied clusters of knots at specific intervals, which serve as a detailed record keeping system, akin to labelled columns of figures. The Incas had complex systems of bureaucracy and taxation, and their 'Quipucamayocs' (accountants) formed these shawl-like bundles of string to keep tabs on them. Apparently there is some speculation about similar systems being used for keeping up with the religious calendar too. Cute loveable cats were probably not the first choice of companion for employees of the Inca revenue service.
It's a shame how precious museums can get about their artefacts being photographed. Light bounces off the exhibit, and is received by the eye of the person viewing it. If it's a camera which receives said beam of light, then the exhibit is clearly irreparably damaged, and you are an evil, terrible person. See, makes no sense does it? Flash photography, fair enough, there's an argument that excessive light can eventually cause things to fade and crumble, but non-flash photography is just the same as looking. There being a 'copyright' type issue with some paintings might be a minor point in one or two cases, but the bits of knotted string used by the ancients as taxation records? Nope, it's museums enforcing unnecessary rules for their own sake. However petulant that may sound, an even vaguely acceptable reason for these restrictions has yet to surface.
"It's ours, those are our rules" just doesn't cut it as an answer: if breaking the rule does no harm, then it is the rule, not the person who breaks it, which is in the wrong. The Louvre in Paris has an interesting variation on this rubbish: "Out of consideration for the feelings of our other visitors, please refrain from photographing this exhibit". Right, the other visitors who are jostling for position like a football crowd around the Mona Lisa (and whom, incidentally, you allow to photograph the Venus de Milo) would all have their delicate sensibilities mortally offended by my taking a photograph of that which they're looking at, would they? Want to sell postcards of the Mona Lisa instead do you? No, no, it's out of consideration for others, right, sorry, forgot.
Anyway, we took some photos and almost got caught by some large, savage looking Chilean women in security uniforms, who although didn't quite see us and so couldn't be sure, shouted at us just in case. Unfortunately neither of us speak enough Spanish to recite the previous couple of paragraphs to them, so we made a show of switching off the camera, replacing the lens cap, looking annoyed and leaving.
The temporary section of the museum contained a very peculiar exhibition, concerning the Moche people of Peru. It was specified that this was only partially substantiated anthropo-archaeological interpretation of the artefacts which had been recovered, which, given the holes in the explanation seemed only fair to mention. On the other hand it may have been a necessary disclaimer in a country with such a strong Roman Catholic culture of guilt and sexual squeamishness.
There were a great many pieces, most of which ceramic, depicting graphic scenes of anal and oral sex, involving a variety of combinations of partners. Generally the 'recipient' was depicted as disgusted (or at least indifferent). In many cases, at least one of the participants looked skeletal (rather like Eddie from Iron Maiden's album covers, for those of you au fait with Jacob's record collection).
These sculptures and pictures have been taken to depict a ritual of non-reproductive sex which accompanied the ceremony of entombing a King, along with all his burial offerings, and the demonic looking creatures were slaves who had had their noses and eyelids removed, so as to look like the undead. Not content with symbolic mutilation, there was also (of course), an element of sacrifice involved.
Apparently, it was all to do with the death of a King and his transition, through the trials of the underworld, back out into life again. It wasn't made very clear if this was to represent some sort of reincarnation based interpretation of the constant nature of the monarchy (the King is dead, long live the King), or if they genuinely believed that the King (who was maybe just asleep/drugged/in a trance - as mentioned, it wasn't made especially clear) could die, have a fight with a bunch of demons and emerge, reborn and refreshed, ever more regal and majestic.
Anyway, whatever the meaning, there was some weird, clanking, discordant music being piped in, and a load of little statues of men, women and demons having a lot of sex. Kind of like the basement flat where Jacob's old band used to practice.
Our thirst for the historic, the peculiar and the depraved largely slaked, we set out for the Museum of Contemporary Art to indulge our sense of the pretentious. The art itself may not take itself too seriously, but such places are usually fun for watching earnest looking people debating the form and meaning of bundles of rusted steel cable spattered with gobs of concrete.
"No sir, there is no card bearing the artist's name for this, we're just having some building work done."
"Ah, I see, I see, how ironic, how postmodern."
On the way, we sat and relaxed in the Plaza de Armas, until, it being Sunday, a collection of loud people arrived with microphones, guitars and a burning need to demand that all the people present, regardless of whether or not they had chosen to visit any of the churches just seconds away, listen to distorted shouty messages of God-bothering dogma. Yes, it's a strongly Catholic country, yes, maybe we shouldn't be quite so scathing. Really though, can anybody realistically hope to promote conversion through the medium of annoyance? Does anybody ever really think "I'm curious about the Kingdom of Heaven. Oooh, I know, it's a Sunday, so I'll not go to a church, I'll hang around the city square and listen to an angry man shouting 'The wages of sin is DEATH!' through a badly wired amp"? No, of course they don't. Scathing comments justified. Moving on...
En route to the museum, Kirsty had a bottle of some pineapply concoction, while Jacob enjoyed a bottle of Pap. Pap is unnaturally yellow and has a kind of aromatic sweet artificial flavour, so given his predilection for Irn Bru, Tizer and the wonderful Peruvian nectar that is Inka Kola, Jacob loves it. Eventually, he realised that it tastes a bit like bananas, although the name suggests it's maybe trying to be papaya (if that's the case, it's quite fortunate that it fails, as papaya is a disgusting fruit which reeks of vomit).
At the museum, there weren't many people about, and we had a bit of a wander, bewildered by some of the pieces, really quite impressed by others and baffled by the rule which said that although we couldn't photograph the sculptures, photos of the pictures were OK. Go on then, make sense of that.
All museumed out, we got ourselves a bottle of wine and the makings of a simple meal and went back to the flat. We soon had steaming bowls of pasta and non-steaming glasses of wine, and picked through the our guidebook looking at details of local vineyards we could maybe visit. We had tried to e-mail one of them for reservations on their tour, but the site wasn't prepared to play nicely, so we got their number from the book and tried calling them.
Although the website had promised English language tours, the man who answered the general enquiries number didn't speak English. Philippe was out, but the much friendlier Carlos was in, and so we asked him to phone for us. There was no-one there who could sort out tours, but he got a list of the available times and said he'd phone for us the following morning. In fact, as he needed to be at work pretty much as the lines would open, he'd try before leaving, but as that probably wouldn't work, he'd call from his office and give us a ring to give us the details. Told you he was nice.
The next morning, Carlos having sorted us a place on a mid-afternoon tour and written down bus and train directions for getting there, we sorted out a bit of blogging (God knows which bit, probably San Francisco or somewhere), then went for lunch. Jacob's eye had been caught by a review of "Las Vacas Gordas" (The Fat Cows), a restaurant famed for its fantastic steaks and other assorted grilled meats, which had apparently had to add another floor to the premises due to its popularity. Chileans love their meat. A restaurant whose steaks are that good by the standards of the Chilean capital sounded worth a visit. Although not exactly on the main drag, a restaurant, one of whose exterior walls has been treated to a friesian paint job, is fairly easy to locate.
Kirsty had some big, fat, juicy king prawns in olive oil and garlic which were excellent, but Jacob's steak...
There isn't a great deal to be said really, besides...well, how does one transcribe the sound of drooling? There was a section of the menu whose content didn't feature in the food section of our phrasebook. An English speaking waiter was produced, and it was explained that this is the really good stuff. This is the meat from cattle which are beyond organic, free range, traditionally hand reared premium stock. These cows are played soothing music while they sleep.
Sometimes, upon reaching the end of a big steak, when the meat's maybe gone a bit cold, the outer edges are maybe just a little tough, you eat the last few mouthfuls but they're nothing special? That "Mmm, that's good stuff" of the first few hungry bites has worn off a little? No, this was amazing, right to the last morsel. Rare as rare could be, and marbled with yellow fat which was just melting into the meat, keeping it beautifully succulent. Knife and teeth just fell through it.
Vegetarian readers: just wait a tick while the carnivores fetch some tissue to wipe the saliva from their chins...
All back? Right then, on from the restaurant to the vineyard.
We rode the metro to the end of the line, and waited in the early afternoon heat and bustle of an edge-of-town bus station. Our little bus picked us up, and, in welcome contrast to the incredulity of Saturday afternoon's driver, today's completed the name of the vineyard as soon as Kirsty started to speak. We had left ourselves quite a while to get there, given the possible vagaries of the buses and our limited ability to interpret them, but ended up arriving about an hour early.
The earlier tour, on which we hadn't been booked because it had been full, was able to squeeze in an extra two, so we were mercifully spared having to wait around in the heat again. We had elected to visit Concha Y Toro, of which some of you may have heard. They are responsible for, amongst many others, the famous Casillero del Diablo label, which just about all of you will have seen.
Chile produces some excellent wine, as its climate is pretty much perfect for growing grapes, and it has never suffered from the phylloxera infestation which has plagued many other wine producing regions. After European vines were decimated by this, many European winemakers upped sticks and moved to Chile to keep their craft alive. Some of the traditions remain: Chileans still plant rose bushes at the end of their vines, which is traditionally done in France as an early warning - roses are more sensitive to problems such as mildew which, if not detected early will destroy the grape harvest. Chile's too hot for mildew, but they still plant the roses, out of a sense of tradition. Incidentally, it is customary to plant white roses at the end of white grape vines and red roses at the end of the red. Concha Y Toro's are all a kind of purplish colour: we were asked not to tell the French.
We were led around the very attractive grounds of the estate and the rows of vines, stopping periodically for a glass of something nice, before moving onto the cellars. The Casillero del Diablo (Devil's Cellar) takes its name from a rumour started by Don Melchor de Concha Y Toro, the founder of the vineyard, who was having trouble with the locals nicking wine from his cellars, aided, he suspected, by their relatives on his payroll. He put it about that the cellar was haunted by the devil himself, to scare the highly superstitious simple country folk of the day away from his casks. It worked, so the cellar where he kept his private reserve became known as the Devil's Cellar. It's still there, they still use French oak casks for aging (the pores in the wood are finer than American oak, which means, if you leave the wine for long enough, you produce a more subtle and complex flavour), and they still keep it cool by covering the floor with moistened woodchips rather than modern refrigeration.
If you buy a bottle of Casillero del Diablo, it doesn't come from there though. Only the 'Don Melchor' signature label super fancy top end stuff comes from there. You can see the cellar steps from where they age the Casillero del Diablo, but that's as close as it comes these days.
They have a shop and a wine bar, from which we didn't buy anything. We had hoped to be able to buy some bottles of something special as a present for Kirsty's Dad's approaching birthday, but apart from their commercial export operation they no longer ship overseas, so that was unfortunately not to be.
On the way back to the flat we collected the ingredients for a big bowl of spicy dippy stuff (a premixed pack of pebre, some onions and coriander and garlic and the like), got a big bag of corn chips and some cold beers (we'd done the wine thing already that afternoon). Philippe and Carlos were in Carlos's room when we got in, playing on his computer. Although Carlos paused the game, looked up, smiled and asked about our day, engaging us in a genuinely interested conversation about how we'd got on at the vineyard, Philippe openly turned his shoulder to us and huffed, waiting for us to go away. This is a man who had invited us to stay in his house, claiming on his online profile to be a friendly type who enjoys travel and meeting new people.
Our bowl of spicy stuff prepared, we were about to watch one of Philippe's vast collection of pirated DVDs when he wheeled the telly into his room so he and his girlfriend could watch something. He lent us his laptop on which to watch a DVD, and disappeared. The Guest logon on his laptop didn't contain any working DVD software. A lot of mucking about and asking Carlos to help later, Philippe emerged and signed us on with his own logon, and we retreated to our room and watched Leon, pausing it every few minutes to allow the video to catch up with the audio (glitchy software, dubious quality DVD). Stretched out on the bed with the computer perched on the end, we became quite adept at operating the pause button with our toes.
The guidebook listed an 'Interactive Science Museum', and hinted that it was essentially a kids' attraction: kind of like the junior section of the London Science Museum. It therefore appealed to Kirsty's dual senses of scientific interest and childishness, so we decided to spend some of the next day there.
We got off to a late start, and found our way to the museum, the site of which, we were pleased to discover, also houses Santiago's aquarium. For a minimal extra charge, we could visit both, so this we did. The science museum bit was pretty much exactly as expected, with large primary coloured apparatus for demonstrating a variety of scientific concepts: slide the big weight up the bar and alter the rate of the pendulum; pull on the end of the rope that's been threaded through a load of pulleys and little kids can beat their Dads at tug-of-war, that sort of thing.
The big metal hoops in tubs of soap solution for making body-sized bubbles were good, and the tuned rack of huge plastic tubes whose ends could be beaten with big flaps of stiff leather appealed to Jacob's dual interests in playing percussion instruments and making loud irritating noises. Actually, do they count as separate interests?
It was quite fun, obviously, but there's only so much primary school level science instruction which one can take. Hunger was beginning to get the better of us, so we went to the cafeteria, whose livery was a hair's breadth from a lawsuit from Burger King.
We then visited the abysmal aquarium. A few incorrectly labelled tanks of bored looking fish, a small concrete pool of terrapins, and a show going on behind a large partition which we couldn't face watching. We had no idea what it was, but if the rest of their set-up was anything to go by, it would have been extremely depressing - a miserable seal being bullied through a hoop or similar. We quickly gave up and left. We both like aquaria, when they're done right, but this one is a long way wide of the mark.
In order to avoid the day being a bit of a washout, we then went on what turned out to be a very strange visit.
We had heard that Santiago's Municipal Cemetery is quite a grand affair, laid out with little 'districts' of extended families and various professions (firemen, police, etc.), and, although some may find it a little macabre, we both find graveyards quite interesting.
This place is like no graveyard either of us have ever encountered. It's like a city. Seriously, it has streets with names, and the graves are like houses. Sometimes in cemeteries we have seen, there are largish house-like structures marking a family plot. This place has streets and streets of small-cottage sized buildings, each containing a family's graves. There are also streets of smaller tombs, stacked ten or twenty high, looking like enormous brick and marble filing cabinets.
There is even a tower block.
It's a very, very strange place.
Chile has a rather unfortunate political history. Many years of almost feudal rule began to be threatened in the mid twentieth century by the growing popularity of socialist groups, and although they found it difficult ever to gain much of a long-term foothold, the traditional conservative right felt threatened by the more liberal elements of government whose rising to power allowed the proliferation and unifying of these leftist groups. In the early seventies, only a few days before an intended military coup designed to snatch back power for the right, the Commander in Chief of the Chilean Army - one Augusto Pinochet - was approached by the other Chiefs of Staff who asked him if he'd like to be in on the plot.
Through a few deft seizures of opportunity and subsequent elimination of rivals, Pinochet, as head of the military Junta, then set about ruling Chile as unchallenged dictator throughout the seventies and eighties (there were elections of a sort, but it wasn't like he gave anyone a choice not to vote for him). His 'Caravan of Death' travelled the country by helicopter, and those marked out as undesirables 'disappeared'. Even after he eventually lost power, some support remained, and a lot of manoeuvring back and forth in court ensued, trying to decide whether he was of sound enough mind to be tried for the atrocities he had committed. Support began to wane after it became clear that he had squirreled away over twenty million US dollars in public funds for himself and his family; in addition, he was interviewed on TV, appearing perfectly lucid and intelligent, despite the ruling of senility his lawyers had managed to secure him.
On his 91st birthday, he released a statement saying "I assume political responsibility for all that has been done".
He died, under house arrest, just a couple of weeks later, in December 2006 without ever being convicted of any charges. Debate surrounds whether or not he should be commemorated. For some, there is no question: he was a powerful ruler who, it is argued, paved the way for modernising what was otherwise a very backward country. For others, it would be like erecting a Hitler monument in Berlin.
The Santiago cemetery has a fairly recently erected (1994) monument to those who disappeared. The 'Memorial del Detenido Desaparecido y del Ejecutado Político' lists thousands of names.
After the cemetery, we passed the drift of afternoon into early evening at a table outside a café in the Plaza de Armas, enjoying our sandwiches and people watching for a while. Back at the flat, we retreated to our room, played cards and listened to music, then went to bed.
The following morning, we intended to check our email (we were about to head to Easter Island and we had no idea how well connected we would find the remotest inhabited place on Earth to be) before heading into the Plaza to take a few photos, which we hadn't yet done. It's quite a grand affair, and it would seem like a shame not to get a couple of shots of it.
We had a quick nosey at our internet banking whilst online (we have cash in various places, mostly in a savings account to earn a bit extra, which we transfer into a current account so we can get at it - needs monitoring but we make a bit on it), and erupted into a torrent of profanity. Nationwide, the building society we had joined immediately before our departure because they offer a current account with a debit/cash card for which they don't levy a charge for overseas use, were about to hang us out to dry.
They had elected, in their wisdom, to add yet another level of security to their already heavily paranoid internet banking login system: they would issue card readers to internet banking users, in which their old cards would not work. By no later than the end of May, our old cards would cease working, and we would need our new ones, which they would be helpfully sending out to Jacob's Mum's house in Harrogate. Good of them.
We phoned the customer service people, and after a long wait in a queue, were told by a dense sounding operator after our situation was explained that "That's going to be a problem then sir, because you'll need your new cards and you should have been told about this before you left in October so you could be prepared".
A-ha. That's why people whose situation will cause problems with the transition are advised to call this number is it? To be told that there's bugger all which can be done?
After Jacob informed the operator that she was wrong, we were not informed before leaving and that Nationwide were not going to leave us thousands of miles from home without the means they had promised us of accessing our thousands of pounds worth of savings, she stroppily told him that she had been about to put us through to a supervisor before he started talking. Cobblers, all she had said and all she appeared to be prepared to say was that we were knackered and that there was nothing to be done about it.
The supervisor apologised and said she knew we hadn't been informed as the plans hadn't been mooted for this until after we'd left, but that yes, after the new cards were issued in March, the old ones would stay active for ninety days until dying outright, hence the end of May cut off point we'd read about online.
Again, Jacob told her that this was not going to happen: they couldn't do this without fair warning, and, this being the account which is advertised as great for travellers, they ought to consider that they might well have a lot of customers overseas. He pointed out that this plan and its ninety day grace period did not just wink into existence unbidden, rather that it was planned by committee and set up by programmers. As such, it was not impossible to get somebody, somewhere, regardless of how senior they need to be, to authorise the reprogramming which would leave our cards active. As what we wanted could not therefore be deemed impossible, we were to get what we wanted, and she was going to find someone to do it for us.
At that, she realised she wasn't going to get away with anything other than sorting it out. She went and spoke to some management types who said that 'dead' cards could indeed be reactivated, and that she would keep an eye on our account for us and sort it out when it was due to breathe its last, but gave us her name and a direct phone number for her manager in case anything should go wrong.
Well, we'll see how well this works eh? "Don't worry, I'll be keeping my eye on it for you" rings a little hollow after the time we've just wasted having to deal with customer service operators who think it's acceptable to say "That's a problem which can't be dealt with sir" and supervisors who have to be told that they damn well need to find someone who will sort out the problem because this call isn't ending till they do.
OK, sorry about the extensive rant there, but it feels like quite a major setback when someone threatens to cut off your funding! Yes, we have funds in a few different places so we have backup options, but still, not good news.
Our time severely eaten into, we couldn't really go and photograph the square, so we went back to the flat, picked up our bags, got a glimmer of a smile from Philippe as he said goodbye, and made for the airport.
We like to arrive very early at airports to bag some legroom for Jacob, which we were just about able to do, but the morning's delays had meant they only had one good seat left: we wouldn't be able to sit together. As we boarded, we hoped whoever was seated next to Jacob would be kind hearted enough to swap...
