I’ve spent just over 24 hours in Mexico City and, although I reckon I’ve only covered the merest smudge of this vast metropolis, I feel pretty gobsmacked by what I’ve encountered already. London seems like a drop in the ocean compared to this sprawl of a crazy, characterful, and oddly antiquated place, which I think is going to take some getting used to.
I arrived yesterday afternoon at the Estacion Del Sur bus station and boldly took the surprisingly efficient metro to ‘Zocalo’, where my hostel is situated (right beside what is probably D.F.’s equivalent of Trafalgar Square – great in terms of centrality). A ticket here costs 2 pesos (about 10p) so it’s a total bargain when you compare it to our ludicrously overpriced London system! However, here in D.F., it’s an edgy ride to say the least. Clinging to my handbag and wedging my rucksack against the sliding doors to avoid any potential thieving hands, I looked around vigilantly as the train rattled along through endless dusty suburbs towards the centre of the city. Peaceful it was not – every couple of minutes someone passed through the already jam-packed carriage shouting their mouth off and trying to sell Halloween lollipops or the latest reggaeton CD (which would meanwhile be booming out of a portable CD player perched upon their shoulder). Then came a gruesome sight that I certainly won’t forget for a while – a man without his shirt on, begging, who suddenly unwrapped a cloth full of broken glass in the middle of the carriage and proceeded to lie on it, grinding his back and then his torso into the shards. It was a pretty distressing spectacle and, although he was clearly in dire circumstances and probably quite mentally unwell, I couldn’t help but feel quite angry at his audacious imposition of such a gory vision upon all of us other travellers. My Spanish isn’t quite good enough to have understood everything that he was wailing on about as he went about his self-punishing routine. However, I think it was meant to guilt-trip us all into emptying our spare change into his blood-soaked little square of fabric. I’m afraid to say I had to turn away and hide my eyes. Goodness only knows what kind of services they have to help people in his situation in this city – it was a somewhat sad and grim introduction to the place though.
Anyway, I thankfully made it to the hostel OK with my purse and other precious items still in my possession, (I know it migh sound like I’m making a big deal out of this but Mexico City does have a notorious reputation for theft and pick-pocketing). It’s nice enough here in ‘Hostel Mundo Joven’ – obviously not the lap of luxury (the room smells a bit sewage-y, which seems to be a universal feature of hostels I’ve staid in recently), but it’s cheap, well located and, best of all, very sociable. I had made plans to meet up with a Couchsurfing guy called Andros last night, who said I could come along to the birthday drinks of a friend of his in the smart-ish zone of the city called Condesa. However, our plans weren’t to meet until about 9.30pm, and earlier on in the evening I decided to pop down to the hostel bar to have a drink, read my guidebook and make some plans.
I was feeling a bit tired and, perhaps, if I'm honest, a bit lonesome and disorientated. However, no sooner had I gone downstairs and bought myself a beer, like a pebble on the beach, I was washed up into a warm wave of bonhomie when a group of young Mexicans invited me to join them at their table. Giovanni, Roberto and Miguel were a bunch of childhood friends in their early 30s out drinking with Jasmin - the super-friendly 22 year old sister of one of their other mates. All of them were born and brought up in D.F. (they weren’t staying at the hostel – just using the bar there as a starting point for their night out) and they were incredibly easy, fun and comfortable company. My glass was never empty with them around (the rather nice custom here seems to be to take it in turns to buy big bottles of beer and to keep filling everyone’s glasses rather than buying individual drinks). Then, before too long, they were saying that they’d be happy to accompany me to Xochimilco the next day if that was what I wanted (Xochimilco being a suburb with beautiful sounding flower canals that I had been saying I wanted to visit). They insisted that it would be their pleasure to go along with me (saying it was a place they loved to go to anyway on a Sunday), so I said a big heart-warmed 'yes' and we made plans to meet in the hostel again the following morning.
To be honest, at that point, I could have happily let my plans with Andros slide (the others were trying to get me to go to some club with them, insisting it was a great Saturday night out). However, I had exchanged a few messages with him on the Couchsurfing website and he seemed friendly and keen to meet for a drink. The fact that he’d agreed to come to the hostel to meet me, and then take me out with his friends, did seem really generous and I didn’t want to stand him up as this is something that seems to be very much frowned upon in the Couchsurfing community. Therefore I greeted him enthusiastically when he arrived, half hoping that he might get on with my new Mexican buddies and invite them out too. It soon became a bit awkwardly apparent that this wasn’t going to be the case though. Andros, in his mid-20s, works in advertising and was clearly quite a trendy (he proudly informed me that part of his job was ‘trend-spotting’) well-heeled young Mexico City man-about-town. The vibe I got after a couple of minutes was that he thought my new friends were a bit below him, which was unfortunate. As we left the hostel and walked over to his swanky sports car (which he drove me to the bar in – I, er, don’t think Mexicans have the same kind of attitude to drink driving as we do), he told me I should ‘beware’ and ‘think twice’ about spending time with ‘people like them’. This kind of put me out and, to be honest, hit a raw nerve (I can’t stand snobbery, for one thing, and nor can I stand being told what to do by people who think they know what’s best for me). I an accepting person, yes, but I also think I’m a pretty good judge of character and I hadn’t sniffed out anything remotely dodgy about my new friends from the bar (all of whom seemed to have decent jobs and scrupulous manners as well as being a good laugh). It gave me some interesting insight into the social strata of Mexico City, though, where I imagine (as with pretty much everywhere else in the world) this kind of elitism is rife. It reminded me a bit of ‘Y Tu Mama Tambien’ and how, as well as being a cheeky and humourous film about the sexual awakenings of the two main teenage male characters in Mexico City, it was also, on a deeper level, very much about the social strictures that silently controlled their friendship on account of their differing backgrounds.
That all said, I don’t want to knock Andros because I did have fun with him and his friends. Plus he was interesting to talk to with regards to a different kind of life in Mexico City (life in a faster, more glamourous lane – he lives in the ‘Hampstead-y’ posh area of Condesa, goes to lots of trendy media launch parties, and always seems to get into the best places for free). I got the impression that some of what he told me was swagger but the friends he introduced me to were genuinely very warm and pleasant – all keen to tell me a little bit about the best of Mexico, and to ask about my life in the UK. The venue we ended up in was obviously ‘a place to see and be seen’ and, with its long chrome bar, and moody dark red lighting it wasn’t the most authentically Mexican place, and could easily have been some new 'concept bar' in Soho or Shoreditch. However, Andros and his friends did persuade me to have an authentically Mexican drink – a ‘paloma’, which is is apparently what all young Mexicans drink, especially women. It’s tequila with a mixer of fizzy grapefruit and, although a little sweet, it'sactually quite nice.
We probably stayed out until just after midnight – not a hugely wild night but I was kind of tired and wary of getting too drunk in relatively unfamiliar company. I slept reasonably in the hostel but woke up quite early this morning (the clocks have gone back here as well) and got chatting to an amiable Irish guy called Brian over breakfast - an artist from Cork, travelling for a similar period of time to me. When I told him about the Xochimilco plans he seemed up for coming along too. Therefore, when Giovanni, Roberto and Jasmine arrived we all piled into Roberto’s car for our little day out.
Xochimilco is basically a suburb of D.F. where there are pretty canals that you can take boat rides in (maybe a cross between gondolas in Venice and punting in Oxford?!). It was quite a drive to get there but I was just happy looking out of the window in awe, trying to take in the endless expanse of the city. Also, I was fascinated by the feel of the place. It seems kind of outdated, but stuck in different time zones. Around the historical centre, the buildings are elaborate, elegant and colonial with a feel of the 1940s (a time of much change and development in Mexico, I suppose, when Diego Rivera and his contemporaries were painting all their murals depicting this). However, other parts of the city have a distinctly late 1970s/early 1980s feel. Shops like Woolworths and C&A can be spotted, and they have the same kind of facades, with the same kind of outmoded typeface, that they did when I was a kid. Further into the outskirts of the city, this became more and more apparent. It made me feel strange, like I was travelling back in time to my childhood.
Xochimilcho was colourful and fun and the photos will show what the boat we travelled down the canals in was like. Our trip lasted about an hour and a half, and it was perfect for just relaxing, watching the scenery go by, and observing the curiosities of the place. These included the women sitting in boats on the canals all day frying tacos and other delicious things to sell, and the rather more raucous ‘party’ boats full of ‘borrachos’ (drunk people) drinking those ever popular chilli-beers. There were even some mariachi bands in boats, serenading us with their tunes as they went! It was a lovely morning made all the better for having spent it in good company (I really don’t think it would have been such fun alone) - and the motives of Giovanni, Roberto and Jasmin seemed to be purely to show Brian and I a bit of their city and to have a good time with us. We’ve all swapped e-mails and it would be nice to see them again. However, time here is short and who knows if this will actually come about. I think this is something that is probably going to happen quite a lot to me, so I had better get used to it – making friends very quickly, enjoying brief but good times together, and then moving on. C’est la vie (or that should really be ‘es la vida’).
I spent this afternoon doing a couple of museums near to the Zocalo, including the Museo Naticional De Artes where there was an interesting little pre-‘Day Of The Dead’ exhibition about, well, death (but humourously and captivatingly put across - the Mexicans really do have a national obsession with skeletons, cadavers and gore!). I also went to the small museum that has Rivera’s famous ‘Dream Of A Sunday Afternoon In The Almeda’ in it. Yes, museums here also seem to be a place for blokes to go on the pull – however, this time around thankfully slightly younger and less sleazy ones than in Cuernevaca! I got chatting to an artist called Ramon in one of the more contemporary galleries and took the liberty of agreeing to go to the principal Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera galleries in the barrio of Coyocan with him on Tuesday. I was going to go anyway, and going with a Mexican who knows something about art will hopefully make it an even better experience. Anyway, more updates to follow. There is a very loud football match going on in the bar downstairs at the moment, so it is hard for me to concentrate much more and seeing how much I've written today I think I'll log off.
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