City Guide: Bogota

Bogotá is a gigantic city of about 8 million people, set high up on a plateau in the Andes, at 2600 metres above sea level. It is the largest city at such a high altitude in the world although the larger Mexico City is only about 200 metres lower. As a result of its high altitude it’s actually often a little cold, which surprises a lot of people who imagine a hot humid tropical city due to Colombia’s location completely within the tropics and near the equator.

Another myth about Bogotá and Colombia in general that I have to dispel, is that it’s dangerous. Firstly, yes crime is higher here than in most parts of Europe, but violent crime is lower than in some parts of the US, and definitely lower than both Brazil and Mexico, countries which people visit more regularly. Higher crime does mean being more careful, but that is all, it shouldn’t put you off from going. And unlike some countries in Asia, Colombians that approach you to help you, truly are being friendly and helpful, there is no ulterior motive.

Secondly, yes Colombia has had a guerrilla insurgency for more than 50 years, however in recent years not only does this not effect Bogotá, but in fact all the major populated areas of the country are generally free from this problem and safe to travel in. So with those two things out of the way let’s talk about the city as a place to live.

At 8 million people Bogotá is a big city, the fifth largest in South America. As all Colombian cities, the streets are organised into numbered Carreras and Calles, which tries to place a grid like order on a city that is actually not in a grid shape. Calle numbers increase as you go north, Carreras as you go west. It is generally split into north, south, west and central areas. There is no east as the central areas hug a steep north-south range of mountains which you can see from almost anywhere in the city. The north is the modern rich area of the city; this is where a new second kind of centre exists, that includes several business areas of high rises, the biggest concentration of nightlife and entertainment, and many large modern indoor shopping centres. People who live in the north often never visit the rest of the city, most of them think south of Calle 72 is dangerous, although in truth it isn’t.

The west includes the airport and the city’s biggest park, Parque Simon Bolivar, and is mainly middle class and mixed suburbs. There are some modern expensive areas in the west as well as older lower income areas.

The centre is long and thin, and stretches southwards from the north through the older but expensive neighbourhood of Chapinero, down through El Centro, the proper centre as well as including La Candalaria, the historic old town of Bogotá. Here you can find a massive range of shops and restaurants, as well as the financial skyscrapers in Centro Internacional. This area is also where tourists visit the most and includes many museums and hotels too.

Finally, the south is the poorer part of Bogotá. Within the city it has a reputation as being dangerous and somewhere to avoid, although there are nice neighbourhoods and parks in the south, but there are also many no go areas, and on the southern fringe vast shanty towns.

Bogotá is at the centre of Colombia both geographically and as the capital the major transport hub. Planes and buses leave the city to all parts of the country, but if you plan on taking a bus be prepared for hours of narrow winding mountain roads not that long after you leave the city, almost every other region is down the mountains.

 

Within the city, public transport is not great, and with private car ownership on the rise traffic is pretty bad. The main transport system at the moment is Transmilenio, this is a Latin American phenomenon that was originally created in Brazil but has spread to many cities throughout the continent and some other parts of the world, and Bogotá has one of the largest. The idea is simple it is like a metro, with fixed stations, different coloured lines, free transfers within the station, turnstiles at the entrance, etc. But, it uses long bendy buses that travel on special separated lanes on the road. The system is really good and can move you around the city very quickly, but a lot of the time the buses are incredibly crowded. The locals call it, "Trans-muy-lleno" which means Trans-very-full. The range of express and all stopping buses can also make the system a little confusing to first time users. I could never understand the station maps at first and always used the website to plan my route for the first few months of use. The other problem is that although now there are about 10 lines, its nowhere near enough and many areas of the city are still quite far from the stations.

Other transport options include many old polluting buses or colectivos (mini buses which operate like normal buses), and taxis, which are surprisingly cheap at under 1.50 euros minimum fair.

The first thing that I liked about Bogotá, is this is a city which can look like almost any part of the world. From modern office blocks and apartment buildings with stunning views to old Spanish colonial houses and buildings as well as everything else. There are some neighbourhoods where the houses even look like old English Victorian houses. Also the eastern mountains are a constant reminder of where you are, almost at the top of a chain of Andean mountains.

Secondly a city this big has a bit of everything. Its culture and restaurant scene is really varied, full of museums, theatres and universities, it has long had the nickname the Athens of south America. And although people may argue that Latin America is a more conservative or traditional part of the world, Bogotá is a city where counterculture and more liberal attitudes thrive.

Bogotá has many universities, but perhaps the three most famous are, Universidad de los Andes, Universidad Nacional, and Pontificia Universidad Javeriana. These 3 are renowned not just in Colombia, but throughout Latin America. Los Andes was ranked in the top ten universities in Latin America recently.

As for cost of living, it is not as cheap as you might hope. The basics, meat and vegetables, public transport, and rent are quite cheap, but any luxuries are not only expensive for Colombia, they are often expensive even for the UK. Baby products, nappies, toys, even pre packed baby food, and formula milk are more than in Valencia, and possibly more than in London too. A night out in the city’s Zona T nightlife district is comparable to London’s west end in cost. Beer is a great example; a local bottle of beer in a little bar goes for under a Euro, where as that same beer is almost 4 euros in Zona T, and an imported beer can be 10.

In general anything bought from an international chain is more expensive in Bogotá than in the USA or Europe. This is why Colombians with some money often fly to Florida to go shopping!!!

But of course with rent being relatively cheap you can find some amazing apartments you would never dream of renting at home. Once we were shown a place that was a massive two bedroom apartment, modern, with a giant kitchen and living room, views across the city, balcony, and free use of a gym in the complex, for about 750 euros a month.

Such a large city has a real choice of neighbourhoods to live in, but I would let your work help you to make that decision, you don’t want a long commute if you can help it. Most modern apartments with good amenities are in the north, but of course the southern part of the north is the most expensive part of the city, and if you live in the far north you are a long way from everywhere else. The west has some nice neighbourhoods and is more centrally located. But you may find with either of these options you don’t have much on your doorstep.

Chapinero has good apartments around and you have lots on your doorstep, but you could have the added problem of being up the mountain side slightly, and if you ever walk it you’ll realise that the altitude makes a big difference when walking uphill.

As for job options, with good Spanish you could work for a big or international company. If you are a good English speaker you could teach English, work is easy to find, but be prepared for lots of travel around the city, and lots of cancellations too. Another option is start your own business, tourism is growing in Colombia and most people spend a few days here. The budget and backpacker industry has exploded in the city, with hostels, tour companies and other things.

The main thing is at the moment Colombia feels little problems from the general economic crisis around the world, and there are jobs and successful entrepreneurs too. Of course being a Spanish speaking country, not speaking any of the language can make the simplest of things difficult. But Colombians are friendly and helpful, and if they speak some English they will want to try it out on you. I found English schools in Colombia don’t expect their teachers to speak any Spanish and are often ran by people with good English themselves. So knowing zero Spanish is no problem in this line of work.

But, of course if you don’t know any Spanish and have some time and money, you can learn it here. Bogotá is supposed to have the clearest Spanish in the world, so the locals are good people to practice with.

If you know Spanish from Spain you will find many differences, but not enough to cause a problem. The biggest difference is everyone uses `usted` here; `tu` is almost never used. Also a lot of vocabulary especially food is different from Spain.

Apart from transport the biggest downside about life in Bogotá is the weather, although you could say the temperature range is great, never really cold, never hot, you don’t need aircon or heating. It rains a lot, and remember I come from England so that’s saying a lot, but my first year there, it rained almost everyday for an hour or so, apart from in January. It is really changeable though, so many days it rains in the afternoon following bright sunshine in the morning. Of course if the colder weather is too much for you, remember just a couple of hours down the mountain is tropical heat, all year long.

So depending on your situation Bogotá can be a great city to live in. There are plenty of job opportunities, great entertainment, and you’re surrounded by one of the great mountain ranges of the world. You can buy fresh food from a market or a restaurant, and it’s a great place to learn Spanish, or if your Spanish is good already, study something else at one of the universities.

The downsides would be the weather and public transport, and perhaps crime levels, but that was never an issue for me. So if don’t mind the weather, and don’t need to travel around the city much, there is no reason to stop you moving there.

City Guide: Valencia

This is the first of several guides to cities that I’ve lived in, their good points and bad points. I’ve decided lived in, is more than 2 months in a city, which is long enough to get a bit of an idea of life there, although of course maybe I am wrong with some facts, these are only my opinions. Also some of the cities I lived in almost 10 years ago so things could've changed, since I last lived there. The cities include 2 UK cities, 3 Australian, 1 in New Zealand, 2 in Canada, 1 in Colombia, and 1 in Spain.

If you disagree on my points please feel free to tell me, what and why, like I said I could be wrong. The first city I am going to look at is Valencia in Spain, which I moved to with my family at the beginning of this year, so the info is up to date, but perhaps 7 or 8 months in a city is not enough time to know some things about it.

Valencia

Valencia is a medium sized city on the Mediterranean coast in Spain. It has about 800,000 in the city proper and almost 2 million in the urban area. It is a historic city and the capital of the Valencian Community, which stretches along the central eastern coast of Spain. Apart from its size, which for me is the perfect size for a city to live in, its other really big plus factor is the climate. It has little rain, never gets too cold, for much of the year it hovers in the 20s for daytime temperatures, only in the heat of summer is the climate a bit too hot.

Valencia is located by the sea, but the centre is inland, and so it is easy to go weeks

without heading out to the beach, but it is there right within the city limits and easy to get to by car, bus, or metro. Valencia is also an important transport hub within Spain with motorways and railways, heading north to Barcelona, south to Alicante and Murcia, and inland to Madrid. The city is really flat, and so is good for cycling, or even walking. In fact coming from the UK, Valencia, is an incredibly compact city, as almost everyone lives in flats.

I would say the size of the city proper is comparable to Leicester, in the UK, but it has more than double the people. This high density means in the city there are no suburban areas, and wherever you live its never far to shops bars and other businesses.

Valencia has a range of public transport, buses, metro, suburban trains, and a public bicycle scheme. Although of course for many people the car is king, and if you live outside Valencia proper it is probably the best option for most journeys except going to a few destinations.

The metro is quite small, but includes underground trains, and two tram lines, its quick and good for getting to the city centre, beach, airport and a few other places. Strangely enough the metro within zone A is cheaper than the buses, although in September metro prices went up, but buses prices didn’t, so they aren’t that different. The metro is a bit like a suburban train network as some lines go quite far out of the city, in some cases almost as far as the Cercanias suburban train network. Although the advantage of the metro is it connects with many stations in the city, where as the trains, only have 3 stations within Valencia, and only really one for the central area.

It is said that the Valencian Community’s biggest export is sunshine, with all the millions of package tourist holidaymakers that come to other parts of the community particularly Alicante and the Costa Blanca you can see why. But, in fact all year the sun shines, the average Valencian day whether in winter, spring, summer or autumn is sunny with few clouds. This is something that I really like having lived in many rain drenched cities throughout my life, including any UK city, Vancouver, and Bogota.

One of the things I really like about Valencia is its city centre. It is really big and has several different areas with different things and styles, including lots of historic sites. In the north of the centre is the historic district of El Carmen. This is a place with a maze of narrow streets and tiny bars and restaurants. It is also the main nightlife area of the city, full of young Valencians at the weekend and tourists the rest of the time. Being in the centre the bars and restaurants are a little expensive, but some are very nice. South of El Carmen is the more touristy area bounded by Plaza del virgin, the cathedral, Plaza de la Reina, and the Mercado central. This area is also full of old narrow streets and bars and restaurants, but also full of tourist shops, and groups of tourists wandering around lost. South of here and more to the east is the main shopping district, this area has slightly bigger streets, and also includes the plaza del Ayuntamiento, and train station.

Curving around the north of the centre is Valencia's unique feature, and one of my favourite things about the city; Jardines del Turia. This is the major city park, which follows the course of the old river, which was diverted many years ago. So the park is a 7km long winding green space through the city. It is also sunken below street level and crossed by many bridges, some old and historic, others modern and new. It includes playgrounds, sports facilities, a stadium, green spaces, fountains, etc, and at one end the Biopark, which is Valencia’s zoo, and at the other, the Cuidad de las Artes y Ciencias (The city of Arts and Sciences), Valencia's space-age culture and entertainment complex.

In tourist guides to Valencia this 'cuidad' always features highly, but for residents, its nice that it’s there, but it isn’t something I visit much. The complex includes an opera house, a science museum, an IMAX, and Europe’s largest aquarium. In fact we did visit the aquarium many months ago, and it was a really good day, and worth the 25-euro entrance fee, but I’ve heard bad things about the science museum.

Talking about entertainment and culture, Valencia is full of museums, the most famous being Bellas Artes, art museum, and IVAM, modern art museum. There are many historical sites, especially in the centre. The usual entertainment can be found, cinemas, lots of nightlife, a number of shopping centres within the city, and further out.

And of course in the neighbouring region you can find mountains inland, many amazing beaches along the coast. Lots of old Spanish towns, many of them with crazy festivals at different times of the year, including La Tomatina in Bunol, which is basically a giant tomato fight, and of course the biggest festival which is all over the community is, Las Fallas. Every town city and neighbourhood celebrates this, but the biggest is in Valencia. It has many facets, but the main feature is many giant wooden sculptures are erected all over the city, with images of all kinds of things, and then on the night of 19th March, they are all burnt to the ground.

This festival can be a great thing perhaps the first few years, but I can see how it can become an annoyance as the years go on. Firstly from late February until late march, fireworks can be set off in the streets anywhere and anytime, and the first 19 days in March, the plaza Ayuntamiento is a no go at 2pm as it is full of tourists watching the Mascleta (daytime firework display). Then the final 4 days see the city overrun with tourists, even in little residential streets near the centre it can get like Trafalgar square at New years. Having said this, it is a unique and interesting festival, and perhaps if you like it enough you can join a Casa Fallera and become part of the celebrations.

Crime in Valencia is relatively low, so it feels like one of the safer cities I’ve lived in for a long time. Of course it does happen, but generally it is lower than many UK cities. People walk the streets late at night by themselves, although I personally would avoid the park late at night.

The city has two big universities, the Universitat de Valencia, and the Universitat

Politecnica de Valencia. So it is full of students, and lots of exchange students from other parts of Europe and the world, but also has good options for studying if you're interested.

Being in Spain, there is less work around at the moment although I would say there are jobs, but it’s tough to find them. If you are a native English speaker, English teaching is a recession proof industry here and there is still lots of this type of work around, mainly because the Spanish unemployed are thinking of either moving to northern Europe or of learning English to increase their employability.

Having said that finding work can be a problem, if you are from Northern Europe, your money goes much further here, in fact its quite cheap to live here. The supermarkets are cheap, rent isn’t too bad, and if you avoid the centre, restaurants and bars are quite cheap too.

Finally a word on the language, if you don’t speak Spanish it can make things harder here, but I would say with time you can learn enough Spanish to manage. In the centre many businesses have English-speaking staff, but outside there, almost no one speaks English, and Spanish is the universal language. Of course there is another language spoken here, Valencian. Valencian is taught in schools, and sometimes is the first language written in signs, but generally, it’s not a problem here, if you have zero knowledge of Valencian, many locals don't speak it either.

So I would say Valencia is a good choice to move to, it has an overwhelming number of plus points, climate, location, entertainment among others. I guess its biggest downsides, for an English speaker are having to learn the language and perhaps the economic crisis that is affecting Spain currently, but if you can get past these points there is no reason why moving to Valencia can’t be a good move.

Los primeros días en la Guardería o Centro Infantil

El 3 de Septiembre  mi Bebé asistió por primera vez al centro infantil, una semana antes yo estaba muy nerviosa  pensando y leyendo cómo prepararnos para que los primeros días no fuesen tan traumáticos.

 La experiencia resultó totalmente diferente a lo que yo esperaba, me imaginaba un bebé llorando ,gritando en el piso y sufriendo a cada minuto por mí ausencia ,pues nunca nos habíamos separado por tantas horas, he de decir que más sufrí yo, él ha estado de lo más  feliz, encantado con sus profesoras, va con ellas sin llorar y disfruta al máximo jugando, bailando y cantando.

Por eso aquí dejo algunas recomendaciones que pueden ayudarles a hacer más llevadera esta etapa, recordemos que es muy importante la actitud que nosotros los padres asumamos frente a éste proceso de adaptación.

En primer lugar comenzar con una Adaptación progresiva, que los primeros días sólo sea por un par de horas,incrementando cada día  y así hasta llegar al horario definitivo.

Descanso adecuado, procurar que el bebé descanse muy bien durante la noche, si se encuentra fatigado o de mal humor se dificultará su proceso de adaptación.

Un buen desayuno, es importante ya que éste aporta los nutrientes y la energía necesaria para que él tenga la alegria y energía necesaria para disfrutar de la Escuela.

Llevarlo con tiempo, que esté relajado  y tenga tiempo para desayunar tranquilo, arreglarle bien y no fomentar nervisosimo o mal humor.

Seguir y/o crear una rutina, los bebés se sienten más seguros y tranquilos si comen en horarios establecidos, tanto para la hora de dormir como para asistir a la escuela, la rutina ejerce una importancia significativa , en mi experiencia puedo decir que requiere de mucha constancia  y al prinicipio para establecerla requiere de mucha energía y trabajo pero merece la pena, luego facilitará  todo.

Ser puntuales, que no sea él ultimo al que se recoge porque puede sentirse abandonado, al ver ír a los otros bebés

Buena comunicación con la profesora, es muy importante sentirse seguros y confíados en la cuidadora de nuestros bebés, de ésta manera él también se sentirá seguro y tranquilo.

Prepararse para posibles  gripas, resfriados etc son de lo más comunes , hay que éstar preparados con el calendario de vacunas al día y solicitar a su doctor  información sobre cuidados o vitaminas que pueda necesitar.


Finalmente  alabarle por sus progresos, tratar de llevarle todos los días y mostrar interés por las actividades que realiza  van a ayudar muchisimo en este período.


Espero éste post sea  últil y disfruten al máximo el gran logro de los  pequeninos.


Qué otras recomendaciones puedes aportar para que la ida a la escuela sea más llevadera?

Por inauguración del Blog muy pronto sortearé un lote de los productos favoritos de mi bebé , ya les contaréee