The last corner of the world

"Everything is hard. No one gives you anything. What happens is that what costs  a lot builds strong bases. In your case, you know, that the foundation is deep. Don´t mind to fly. Flying is freedom and takes you to the happiness."

This sentence was dedicated to me by a great friend, it was captured in a photograph in 2004 in which he appeared, his current wife she is one of my greatest friends, a colleague and me. We were dining at a restaurant ( Ocean pacific´s) in Santiago-Chile. One of the most complex moment of my life, those moment when you take a radical decision and where your head goes through a million of statements from euphoria to panic.

For me that phrase was decisive, there was no turning back, I left my whole life, my professional projections, my friends of many years and i left my country.

At first everything looked like a fairy tale, but the reality is quite different, because nothing and listen to me very well! nothing will ever be the same.

Giant suitcase, destination Madrid Barajas, Spain, nothing more nothing less, The capital of arts and literature, Goya, Velázquez with his beautiful Meninas, El Quijote, The Gran Vía street at my feet, what else could i dream of... I wasn´t alone, all so wonderfull!. Until the streets become so normal in your routine that your soul and blood can´t stop of thinking about your country.

It´s complex, yeah! Totally and absolutely because you are from nowhere. With the years you understand that it is impossible to have clones and you can´t live a life two places at once, you can switch and go but believe me it isn´t cheap.

Not only is this, when you go to Chile for a  visit, people have the strange feeling that you are "rare" and How i will not be strange if i have a mixed accent (which happens like it or not), I move in a concrete jungle where there are opportunities wich you have to struggle to  grab  and when you return to your beloved this corner  all seems to move a slow motion!, i´m rare, you said?, yes a little! OMG!

Besides all this, people think you are almost rich because, according to them, "salaries in Europe are better", MISTAKE! Compared to the chilean currency you earn more, but the standard of living and debt is the same or even worse, especially in Spain! (Perhaps, in the Netherlands is different, man!!! Honestly I don´t know) So things aren´t so easy to be like everyone thinks.

However, every time I return to the peace of my beautiful Chile and enjoy the happiness and friendliness of our people, I realize the treasure we have, that warmth, the solidarity that prevails in the hearts, which has been shown to the rest of the world rescuing those 33 men from the San José mine.

A country that grows and strengthens, our own soil, where you were born, that make us who we are, that little corner of the world, that long and narrow strip of land that beats within all those who live abroad.