Apartment hunt

Luckily Florian managed to sort out the important experiences for this blog so far, but I guess now it is my turn. Well, like every day in Bogotá, the last two days were filled with so many different impressions. Every day we experience and see at least one new face of Bogotá. The city is just so diverse. 

Yesterday, Florian took some time to recover from his cold, while I went with 2 other girls from the hostel to la Candelaria, which is the historic center of Bogotá. Unfortunately, it is very close to the south of Bogotá and therefore we needed to watch out not to go further south than what is safe. But well, everything seemed fine where we were and we enjoyed some of the really pretty old buildings. Unfortunately, I didn’t take my digicam and my phone already died after taking a handful of pictures. We’ll go back anyway.

Florian already mentioned that nearly nobody speaks any or good English here, but a funny fact is that the street beggars speak astonishing good English. They beg in Spanish the whole time, until we pass and suddenly they beg in English… Very surprising!

Currently, Flo and I still live in a Hostel, and we are in big need of an apartment, as we need to move out of the hostel on Thursday.

 By the way: anyone that plans a trip to Bogotá, you should stay at La Pinta. It is such a great place to stay and get to know the city. The people here are all very nice and it is such a nice (clean and new) hostel while it is very cheap. When one of our Colombian friends saw it, he said: ‘wow this is great. You should just stay here!’ But to study it might just be the wrong place, as it really never gets silent ;)

So Florian and I went on an apartment hunt and we saw many different places. Many did not qualify due to various reasons, and we are now down to 3 and will look at one more before deciding. But it was again good to get to know the city better, as we went from the east, to the west, to the north, and back to the west, etc. While doing this we also got to know the horrible traffic jam from Bogotá a bit better. I cannot describe it, so you better come and see for yourself ;) Okay, well, I try anyway: Bogotá has some main roads that lead out of the ‘CBD’s. So during 4 until, I believe 8, the side of the main road that leads inside the city get’s closed and gets remodeled for driving in the other direction > so outside the city. This means that instead of 2 lanes going to the north, suddenly 4 lanes lead outside the Centrum. At first it seems like a great idea, but somehow there is still no car moving… Furthermore, the city has a great public transportation system. Okay, maybe not really…. 

Again a good idea that doesn’t really work so well. As Bogotá doesn’t have an underground system, they invented ‘Transmilenio’. It is a major bus line, that is different from all the other buses that drive through the city. So the transmilenio are just buses, that have their own roads and own stations, that are comparable to metro stations (you need to check-in and out of the stations). Basically, it looks like a metro station above the ground.

During rush hour (which is supposedly from 6:30am to 8pm, with the major peak time between 4 and 8pm), the lines for getting on the bus are unbelievable. People line up for several hundred meters. This will often take you more than half an hour to just stand in line. However, once you are on the bus, the bus normally moves very fast. Just hope that you don’t have to switch buses several times…. However, at the end of the day, most people make it home ;) and after 9pm the streets start to clear again… ;) 

A good way to move around is also to just take a taxi. We are always surprised how cheap it is… Even today, after we were driving for over an hour to get to one of the apartments (due to traffic jam), all we had to pay were 18.000$COP, which equals approximately 7 Euros. Not bad at all ;) However, many locals say you should not just wave at a taxi in the streets (like you do in NY). Here the system is designed to give you as much safety as possible. First of all, you call one of the hundred taxi companies, and order a taxi to the desired location. Depending on the time of the day, you will be in the waiting line for some time and then finally receive the number of the taxi (you get the license plate number which is also written on the side of the car, so you know which one is your taxi) and a password (like a code number that you say when entering the taxi). So if both numbers are correct, the taxi will drive you to the desired place ;)

The local buses (not transmilenio) here are also very cheap. Each ride costs 1.400$COP (=50cents). However, you need to be prepared to stop the bus like a taxi, jump on the bus while one of your feet is still on the street and that the doors of the bus open like 2 minutes before it actually stops and you can get out… Of course, the buses drive as crazy as everyone else on the street. But I am always surprised by the driving skills. When I asked a local for driving rules, she said:: ‘Normally the main road has the privilege to drive first, but you need to watch out, because many don’t stick to it…’ ahahah. It will take some time until we get used to it, but it already starts to feel normal ;)