Pensamiento: It’s basically easy to get around in pulic transport everywhere in the world

Maybe that myth applies to any country – excluding Latin America. First aspect that might seem weird for us, as over-thinking, super-structured Europeans, is that there are no bus timetables. You simply wait what is going to happen. I was prepared for that though, thanks to a friend of mine from Latin America. A fact that I was not prepared for is that you cannot necessarily find your way back by bus at the opposite side of the road that you came from. Well, it’s easy to guess if you just read the description of the route on the bus. And if you are Chilean and live in the city for like 30 years in order to know where all those streets are. I don’t, so of course I went lost. Just on the day on which I was supposed to have my first encounter with the Chilean start-up scene. But more on that when you read further. Chilean busses are also weird in the sense that different busses might have the same number and terminal station but a different route, so you’d better not think it’s enough to know the bus number and the final station. So another fun fact about Chilean public transport: they do not have fixed metro or bus ticket prices, it depends on the time of the day when you check in. At rush hours – for example – you pay super much for the fact that you have to squeeze yourself into a tram full of half of the population of Santiago. If you want to travel on festive days, be prepared to pay 5 times more than you normally would. Having talked about rush hour in Chilean public transport: It’s actually more like survival training. As soon as the door of a crowded metro opens, you have to fight. People squeeze themselves into wagons without caring about who they dash out of their way. Once I was so squeezed into a metro wagon that it was impossible for me to open the pocket of my jacket and answer my phone. Conclusio: Praise to Wiener Linien, you are amazing and I will never ever complain again.

Interview: How an interview turned out as a podcast

So on that getting lost on the bus trip- day I actually met my first supercool entrepreneur here in Santiago. Maybe some words on the Chilean startup scene: it barely exists. Well it does, but it’s really small, which is why the Chilean government decided to support founding of start-ups in Chile by building up the organization ‘Start-up Chile’, which basically offers you a whole lot like accommodation and funding in Santiago if you get accepted. So they are actively trying to push start-ups, which I personally find a noble and meaningful goal. So back to my entrepreneur-story: I was actually constantly joking about the fact that Chileans are always late. So maybe it was karma when I found myself in a bus at exactly the other part of the city compared to where I wanted to go initially. It took me a while to figure out how lost a really am (by that time I hadn’t figured out that there is an offline map app that shows you your position in a city – it’s called 2GIS, super helpful!) but when I finally made my way to the meeting point, I was 2 hours late. I tried to gallantly compensate my interviewee for that fact by promising him to offer him some beers. The interview went pretty smoothly, as it usually does with entrepreneurs as they know exactly what they do and love about their job. I already packed up my equipment in order to make my way home, when my interviewee suddenly claimed: ‘Actually, now that I gave you an interview, I would like to have something in return.’ I found out that he is doing podcasts of people with different exciting stories, so I was his next ‘victim’. We ended up having a super-sophisticated and deeply philosophical podcast discussion about the Austrian education system, my future plan to found a school and of course about Whatchado. (If you are interested in listening to it – or to other amazing episodes, here is the link: ) This day was again one of those days where I arrive home super exhausted but all I can think of is:

How lucky am I to live amazing days like this one.

Check out all stories from my trip in the SOUTH AMERICA TOUR CHANNEL below: