First days in Lima

¡Hola Chicos y Chicas!

For everyone who doesn’t know me: My name is Katrin and I am going to spend the next six months in Lima, Perú to hopefully have the time of my life. So far, everything looks really promising for that to happen.

I arrived in Lima three days ago after a long journey from Frankfurt via Caracas to Lima. I already got a glimpse of what I could expect in Lima on the plane when I accidentally ordered a strong, alcoholic drink, because of my lack of Spanish skills. It was probably not such a good idea to just say “el mismo” (the same) and referring to the drink my neighbor ordered. However, these two words were the only words I could bring myself to say to the only spanish-speaking flight attendant. As it turned out, he had ordered a coke with rum, too bad that I had missed the part where he said “with rum”.

The next adventure happened at the Immigration desk. The Universidad del Pacifico advised me to get a visa before I entered Perú. I send all the required documents to my host university weeks before the deadline, so it shouldn’t have been a problem. But when it was time to contact the Peruvian embassy in Germany, I found out that they received none of my documents from the authorities in Lima. I was non-existent in their system. In general this is not a big problem, since tourists have the right to stay up to 183 days without a visa, but in my case it was another story. Basically the people working at the German embassy told me that I might not be let into the country. So you can imagine that I was quite nervous when I was waiting at the Immigration desk. However, no need to worry. Although the screen of the Immigration officer said in big, red, bold letters “requiere visa”, the officer just turned up the volume of his Peruvian music, ignored the screen and gave me the permission to stay for 183 days. I started loving Peru from that moment on.

I had already arranged my accommodation in Tilburg, so I didn’t have to worry about that here in Lima and could move in the same day that I arrived. I chose to live in an international student house with eight other young people. At first I thought that a drawback of living here would be that I wouldn’t be able to practice my Spanish, but as it turns out I don’t have to worry about that, since everyone is speaking Spanish here, except for me. The two courses we had to take at Tilburg University were in no way preparing me for my adventures here. However, I will start attending Spanish classes by the Universidad del Pacifico from the beginning of the next week, so hopefully I will catch up very soon.

I have had some time to discover some parts of Lima, especially the district of Miraflores, which is the touristy neighborhood here. Lima is just crazy. First of all Lima is covered in a cloud of smog all the time. It is just grey. No sun, but no rain either. It is just grey the whole time. And loud. Lima is incredibly busy, hundreds of taxis rushing by with drivers trying to get me to use them. I had a small city tour with two of my housemates yesterday and we took a bus…I don’t know if I will manage to ever take a bus alone. Crazy. Apparently there are no bus stops, but you just indicate where you want to get off. How to do that still remains a mystery for me. There are also no official bus routes, every bus goes somewhere else. You may wonder how to know which bus to take…well, if I will ever find an answer, I will tell you. Right now it is safer for me to just walk.

Tonight I will dive into the night life of Lima. Stay tuned…