My next international flight will be a one-way ticket to Montevideo.
I’ve been wrestling with this choice for over a year now and traveled to more countries in that time than I’d visited in the entire rest of my life: Lisbon, Montevideo, Buenos Aires, Madrid, and most recently Mexico City and Guadalajara. All that research and fieldwork spawned plenty of spreadsheets, and Uruguay quickly dominated the quantifiables:
- LGBT legal protections and acceptance ranking top five in the world
- Stable, progressive, secular, and staunchly democratic government
- Flexible visa with a clear path to permanent residence and even citizenship
- Inclusive and welcoming society for immigrants, even Gringos
- High quality of life including world-class medical services
- Forward-looking policies on energy, climate, and international relations
- Mild subtropical climate with four actual seasons (but sadly no snow)
The price of all those quantifiables is Uruguay having the highest cost of living in Latin America, but a comparable lifestyle in MVD’s Ciudad Vieja is 40-50% less than Philly’s Old City. The 10-year foreign income tax holiday helps, and so does a visa that allows me to work while in Uruguay as much or as little as I want.
Travel back to the northern United States or Europe is prohibitively far for regular visits: PHL/MVD being over nine hours and MAD/MVD being a whopping 12 hours non-stop! While that’s unfortunate, the “consolation prize” is direct flights to a smorgasbord of world-class cities: Buenos Aires (0h55), Asuncion (1h35), Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo (2h30), Santiago (2h37), Lima (5h00), and Bogota (6h10). And there’s the muy tranquilo ferry to Buenos Aires (2h30) which felt as civilized as arriving in Manhattan at Moynihan Train Hall.
Breaking The Language Barrier
There’s no getting around one thing: I need to learn Spanish. There was English in the Ciudad Vieja air, and gay men in LATAM countries I’ve visited are more likely to speak English. Certain words. For reasons. Google Translate helps, and maybe AI will give us universal translators before ending human civilization, but still. I have work to do.
Some words are already sticking: I’ll say “si” instead of “yes” in random conversations. The grammar is effectively simplified Latin, which I studied in high school and college partly out of a love of classical Rome and partly to avoid mandatory “speaking labs”. Even so, Latin vocabulary and pronunciation keeps popping out when I try to speak Spanish and feel stuck. The Spanish “que” comes out as “qway” rather than “kay” about half the time.
Some Latin just stuck, like a handful of lyrics from the Carmina Burana. “Ecce gratum, et optatum, ver reducit gaudia!” and “O Fortuna! Velut Luna! Statu variabilis” have never left my brain thanks to Dr. Wickersham at Ursinus.
Now that the decision’s made, I need to get rioplatense pronunciation and Uruguayan slang to stick. Che, bo, todo bien! The Italian influence will help. A year living a few blocks south of the Italian market in South Philly gave me a taste for … many Italian things. And then there was that notorious work trip to Northern Italy so many years ago. Did I mention that Uruguay has grappa? Uh huh. Notoriousness to ensue.
How Do You Feel?
Travel to each candidate city was a mandatory part of the evaluation. I am a very quantitative kind of guy–except when I’m not. The city as an experience matters: the urban fabric, the skyline, the greenery, the infrastructure. Even a specific feature like Mexico City’s Biblioteca Vasconcelos can create a sense of longing long after returning home. So how do I feel about Montevideo?
Buenos Aires stole the show midway through my trip to Uruguay. Yes, I am still infatuated with BA, but I noticed something after returning to Montevideo from there. It felt like coming home after a weekend adventure in New York City to my carefully engineered life in Philadelphia. That handful of days back in Montevideo, not needing to check any boxes, felt so good without diminishing my infatuation. This wasn’t a competition; it was a package deal.
I expected to take a month after returning from Mexico to re-crunch all the numbers, but after a few days I noticed that Right Brain had slid a piece of paper under the door. On it was a single word: Montevideo. The obsessing, the agonizing, the internal arguing fell away; the bicameral vote was unanimous.
I know I cannot duplicate my Philly/NYC life there, but the Montevideo/BA parallels grow more apparent every day. Maybe what I’m writing here is Left Brain rationalizing an illogical decision ex post facto, a very human thing indeed. I can always point to the spreadsheets and say, “Look, look!” if Left Brain starts to second guess things. But right now, how do I feel about this choice?
The Plan
Uruguayan permanent residence is a pretty straightforward process, but I have lots to do before buying that one-way ticket. Sell the house and car. Dispose of decades of household clutter. Pack and ship the must-haves. Request a bunch of official documents and get them apostilled. And I’ll make time along the way for a few more in-person goodbyes. I promise.
I’ve never done anything like this before: my longest move was just under 100 miles, and that didn’t even cross state lines. But big projects don’t scare me. They’re kind of my thing really. It’s the waiting, the bureaucracy, the gap between decision and reality that will get on my nerves. I will, of course, self-soothe with more checklists, dependency graphics, and spreadsheets. Mmm, spreadsheets.
I already know a few things about where I want to live in Montevideo–between their Old City (Ciudad Vieja) and Center City (Centro). That’s somewhere near Plaza Independencia, hopefully with a view of the bay to watch the shipping. Am I trying too hard to make my new life rhyme with my current one? Maybe, but I really like the melody.