I was about to take a pic of a kitten in a bench but then people sat next to him so I turned and saw this cutie naping behind me.
We took a guided tour throughout the place, it's huge and as I said, rich of history and rich, the guide told us it's not just "any" cemetery, high class families are buried there so tombs and mausoleums are fancy. Some of them are so big that got me thinking about the power of those families... more than power, love...
And talking about love, we have heard many sad and tragic anecdotes in the tour, but in my humble opinion none of those are as touching as the one I found out by myself.
When the tour was completed, my cousin and me stayed and kept on walking around... then I saw a cute kitten staring at me, it was kinda creepy but when I got closer, he ran so I followed him and found them:
Her name was Liliana Crociati Szaszak and her dog, Sabú. It's the only pic I took of a tomb, I don't know why and also I stayed there for a while... I felt really touched. The tomb didn't say how she died, nor if the dog was with her... there was a poem written by her dad that I didn't want to read because I knew it was going to make me sob.
The statue doesn't look sad, she looks kind of calm, I've seen all kinds of statues in the cemetery but this was so simple.
When I got home I started looking up information about her, and I found many sites.
Turns out she died "recently" in the 70's, while she was in her honeymoon in Austria, she was really young, 24 (which somehow saddens me because I'm turning 23 next week). It is said Sabú passed away the same day she did. I found many myths about her, one being that a mysterious man visits her tomb with flowers on a specific day. other that the dress she is wearing in the statue was her wedding dress.
Anyways, I think these sites explain more:
· Afterlife: a blog with plenty information about the cemetery and the stories behind it.
· Cementerio de la Recoleta: Historias y relatos
· And I was surprised I found Liliana's tomb in Wikipedia.
Leaving the sadness aside... after staying a while at Liliana's tomb, we were heading towards the exit when for some reason we stop to listen to another interesting tour which is about the love stories behind the tombs, that is when a woman asks me with a slightly Portuguese accent where Evita's tomb is, and I still don't know why I talked back to her in Spanish, and I did study Portuguese, I guess I didn't want to act like a fool because she was speaking Spanish, I thought she wanted to practice :p.
Anyways, since the place is huge I forgot where the tomb was so I pull out my cemetery's map and start looking for it, and I kept saying "you can look for it if you want, I'm in no hurry" in Spanish and she was just looking at me and staring at the map, then I hear a 'click' and I slightly glanced out of the map... and turns out the other two men who were with the woman were taking pictures with professional cameras! In my mind all I was thinking "oh no, my hair, I'm not wearing make up, my face is going to look huge from that angle". After a few minutes of reading the entire list of tombs and not finding Evita's, my cousin and I told them to look around where we thought it was, which was near where we were, so they left.
And then I kept on looking because I felt really frustrated, when I found it on the map, we went after them, and I tell the woman "hey I found it" (in Spanish again! I don't know why!!) and then I say "es la número 26" -pointing in the map, and they start mumbling and then one of them says "oh number twenty six", and all I could think of in that moment is "*facepalm" lol. I finally ask them where they are from and the woman says: Belgium!, and then I apologized for not speaking English before and told them to keep looking because they were sure going to find the tomb, in English, finally!, but I walked away because I was so embarrassed, years of speaking English... and I just comfortably stayed in Spanish.
I had many opportunities to practice my English this year, a cousin who came from Lebanon who happens to had lived many years in London so his English was really good and then a Swiss guy my brother and sister in law met in Ecuador, who came to visit for a few days, his English was not really good though, in fact I had to teach him some words, like cupboard.
Back to my cemetery experience, I wonder what the pictures are for, I wish I asked them, I was wearing my Copper-Chloride Flame Scarf so if anybody who reads this and lives in Belgium and happens to see me, please, let me know!
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