Hi. Today I’ll tell you how we even ended up in Uruguay. Originally we were moving to a completely different country — Argentina. The story is so strange that if you’d told me it a couple of years ago I wouldn’t have believed it. I’ll try to go in order.
Still Switzerland, 2024
While we lived in Switzerland we started thinking about another move. We understood: Switzerland and other European countries would not be our home. What mattered: calmer and safer, a normal life, a way to legalise — and farther from everything happening around us. Why we left Switzerland in more detail — /en/shveytsariya/pochemu-uehali-iz-shveytsarii/.
We chose for a long time. There was a whole list. We looked at Serbia, Bulgaria, then more and more at Latin America. In the end our parents picked Argentina. It looked perfect then: easier legalisation, cheaper than Uruguay, and online it was “one of the best countries to move to in all of Latin America”.
Visa, refusal, “we fly without a visa”
At first we wanted it official: fly with a visa so there wouldn’t be problems later. We prepared documents, went to the Argentine embassy. We thought — that’s it, the story is over, new life soon. As usual, it didn’t go to plan: after a while the refusal came.
We were upset, but we weren’t going to quit. The decision — fly without a visa. Our parents hedged: they booked a slot at Uruguayan Migración in advance. Packing again, papers, tickets to Argentina. Just in case we took return tickets — fewer questions at the border. What the whole move cost, including via Argentina — /en/pereezd/tsena-pereezda-v-urugvay/.
Buenos Aires: “let’s save on the bus”
Departure day was tense. Fear of the unknown — and the feeling that a completely new life was starting. We landed, passed control, luckily they let us through.
We planned to live in Mar del Plata — a smaller coastal city than Buenos Aires, calmer and, we thought, safer. But the plane was to Buenos Aires. We wanted a couple of days to rest there. And here’s the “fun” part: we decided to save money and take a bus from the airport into the city. I still don’t understand how we agreed to that.
Somehow we found a bus, bought tickets, sat down. Then — what I won’t forget. Not a tourist route: endless slums outside, a very scary atmosphere. At some point the police stopped the bus. An armed officer got on and looked at passengers. It got actually frightening. We had no idea what was going on.
As soon as we reached a stretch with malls and shops, we jumped off at the first stop. It was getting dark. People with backpacks on their chests, running, looking back. And we — with suitcases that held our whole life. We walked into the first place we found: rested, ate, charged phones, figured out how to get to the apartment. We found a Russian-speaking transfer — he took us.
The next surprise: the keys were not with the host and not “under the mat”, but in a box on a pole somewhere else. Without the transfer we probably wouldn’t have reached that apartment. The apartment itself, at $150 a night, was awful — instead of a peephole in the front door, a hole with a grate.
“We’re not looking at Argentina anymore”
That same evening our parents said: we are not going to look at Argentina further. After everything we’d seen, the desire vanished. We chose Uruguay — even though we knew perfectly well: life here is more expensive, and citizenship for kids under 18, as we understood it, you simply don’t get.
Factor in the catch as we understood it: even when adults get Uruguayan passports, children don’t get theirs until they come of age. At 18 the process starts from zero — papers and at best about another year. This is not legal advice: check officially.
The next morning the same transfer took us to the ferry — and we sailed to Uruguay. Time has passed: we’ve been settling here for almost two years. Life here is on YouTube. Money for the move — /en/pereezd/tsena-pereezda-v-urugvay/. The pug — /en/pereezd/mops/.
Argentina was “perfect on paper”. One day in Buenos Aires — and the plans broke. Uruguay is more expensive and has a catch for kids, but we stayed and are building a life here. Not a ranking of countries — our path.