So while it would be worth an extra blog to post my growing collection of pics with beetles, I am in reality much too lazy to scale down more than one pic… and so will only post this beauty of coincidential Mexican every day design close to the floating gardens of Xochimilco (Sotschi-Milko, not Milka).
On a sidenote, if anyone knows right away how I can scale down several pics at once with Gimp, please let me know – bulk action is the correct word, huh. Would save some time in the evenings…
I worry my PC might be stolen. Not because of the PC….. but because of the pics that I trustfully download to it. While I think I might as well try to hit the limit of my camera-card memory, I realize that might be stolen as well. Paranoia is a weird thing, I find it a curious experience.
So taking my look back at Mexico Ciudad that has welcomed me to the country. A lot of moments cling with me that have no photo… and fortunada so – I catch myself a lot of times triggering the photo but not having all my heart in it so I just know I tried to catch the moment but reality is beyond that picture. Than some moments I would really have loved to catch don’t turn out. While some pics have caught a moment that takes me by surprise when seeing it for the first time. You know what I mean..?
So as friend C. will manage to scroll through this even without the pics….. which is all I need to feel my blog is successful………… lemme just describe my moments.
Walking at Hidalgo square (one of the two closest metro stations to „home“ in DF) at night making my way through street vendors of all sorts, a young woman, almost a girl, walks in front of me, carrying a long metal bar – at least 1,5m. I avoid her once. And as if she had eyes in her back she turns (as far as she can), sees me and asks me if I have been fine with her dangerous overload coming in my way (yes she said that in Spanish yes I understood, cough cough). While she still is carrying her heavy load. That much politeness makes me think of friend J. who has pointed out German specialties of being – er – polite – while ago…
I have also learned that my usual successful habit of clear strict „no“ to shoo away intrusive vendors does not work well until the 3rd or 5th „no“. So I learned from Laura yesterday and have refined my strategy today. Make eye contact, smile, and give the most polite „no, gracias“.
Now if I find out that works in other countries as well, I can volunteer as there-is-hope-subject of German politeness 😛
Then on one of the first nights, already dark, when I tried to walk home alternatively (barbarians, you know…). And I got lost. As I was walking on a street a block further — eeeeer — I think it was west – than I was supposed to to be able and have some orientation. So – as it turns out one block away from my street – I sense something’s wrong, I get out the guidebook in front of a worn out hotel and I check and walk on – and without thinking I ask a woman that comes along. She’s young, looks a little worn out herself, has on a very short dress, is the usual one head smaller than me, and I ask her for Pedro Moreno. She points vaguely in the right direction. And I say gracias and continue – but she doesn’t. She goes after me, admitting she’s not sure herself in a very nice implicit way… and stays with me until we find the street sign of the next intersection – Pedro Moreno. It takes me another 2 minutes to get my brain working to figure out I’m looking at my „home block“ just from the other direction. And I have to cross a huuuuge DF-street to get there. I have to tell the girl about 5 times I can make it on my own from here. My very funny ohlala-Spanish plus me holding a cup of boiled Maiz in one hand and balancing my guidebook in the other seem to leave an impression… This cute woman from such a different world hugs me in the end and sees me off while I am amazed. This is supposely one of the more dangerous city in the world but if you ask for help you’ll experience more than you could dream of in our supersecure city of Munich.
Than going for the best Taco place in our area with C., who comments on the matter with „In the 35 years of my 42 years of my life that I’ve been eating tacos these are the best“. Well the comment comes pretty close… My stomach’s already a little revolucionado at that point, so I have a coke and watch him eat plus I watch the taco-guy cut carne (con puerco, sniff) from a Kebab-like thing, completed by little pieces of pineapple that is on the very top of the pole and which he catches with the plate in midair. So I’m quite absorbed watching… And then C. orders his second round, after what looks like a beggar to me approaches him and talks to him. So second round is one taco extra for that guy. Whose eyes are glued upon his taco con todos with which he disappears into the dark, after extensive gracias.
While that already moves me, I get out the next morning to catch my breakfast in el mercado. And get lost (I always lose orientation in mercados cause I watch and watch and watch and then – I’m lost. But I’m a woman and can ask….) So when getting out, I by coincidence find the food-stand where we had that superwow-breakfast one day before with the owner that’s on my photo. And he sees me from 15m distance, recognizes me, starts waving…. I walk over, we shake hands, he asks how the Frida museum was, I throw back a bueno and gesture my way through my mediocre Spanish. And even manage to answer what I’m up to that day. And then when I get out and consider staying in DF for the rest of my vacation…….. I walk the street and on a wall sits a beggar.
I get closer and think that I know that face… And remember the taco-scene. And I give my widest smile at him and greet him (it’s not Germany, you can greet whoever you want and smile at them and they’ll be happy, smile back at you and greet back – so nice!). And he looks surprised, then gives me a wink of his eye, a thumbs up and – to say it with Shakespeare – thus we part.
It has taken me a few more years to have that kind of relationship with people in my part of town in Munich…………..
Then our dinner tonight with R. who’s a little older and wiser than me and our perfect place in the mercado of Plaza Garibaldi where the mariachi bands play all day long which they happen to do in that very moment a few tables away when we start having our dinner. And then tears come to her eyes as she recognizes the favourite mariachi song of her mom that’s being played, and tears come to my eyes, as she explains the content of the song to me, which is (I hope I somewhat summarize that correctly now): when we die, we can take nothing with us. So while we’re here, we ought to live life to the fullest.
I still hear the mariachis in my head.