This morning when I put my big backpack on the wooden bench in front of my hotel and awaited my golf cart taxi to take me to the ferry of Holbox, I had a feeling of being at home just cause what I need for basic life was packed up all around me. And I felt like I could go anywhere.
I had this funny notion of feeling the trip’s an illusion. As if the setting around me changes, while I unchanged am watching as things are passing me by in this scenery or that one and what does it change unless I am me?
The mysteries of travel. I have seen so much, that each part of my voyage (voyage, eternellement….) seems far from the other parts and yet closely connected like pearls on a string with very different shapes and colours yet all – beautiful.
I have seen sceneries beyond my imagination but which fired it – like the doors that you can open up on a Sunday afternoon if you wish to speak to the dead.
I have seen Mexican toilets – my very very favourite the private one of the family in the Chamula community (close to Cristóbal) with a flowery curtain up front. Which is as you can tell very atmospheric, but given a stormy cold day (we’re talking Cristóbal here, so it was of course a stormy cold day) you better ask your fellow tour companions for help. In a poetic moment I asked the American lady if she would be my toilet angel. So she held on to the curtain from the other side and I did not experience such exposure as number one courageous tourist on our tour 🙂
I have travelled far and wide by bus and I loved that. I spent a lot of time in buses, admittedly. But it’s given me a feeling of the country I’m passing through. I will not forget seeing the volcanoes appear on the horizon – much higher than I ever anticipated when driving from D.F. to Puebla. I bear in my mind sight of at least a dozen huge birds flying deeper than the bus in the mountains, sailing on the wind. I remember one passage where we were driving above the clouds before entering them…
And just as of today I love the way Mexican busdriver take care of themselves. I’ve seen the bus stop and the bus driver close the door carefully, then march to the toilet in the back, take his time, march back up to the front and continue. Today the guy stopped and bought himself cookies and a coke. And then he involuntarily spilled the coke all over the place (mostly on the floor, though…) which I think happened when passing another of Mexicos most famous street bumps.
I’ve learned a lot about car driving in Mexico. If you’re in doubt, just use the emergency lamps (actually I currently can’t remember the word in German which makes it sort of hard to look it up on a dictionnary…….) on your car – that’ll tell everyone you’re up to SOMETHING.
And while I do have my doubts and fear to be soaked back by routine into my German (or is it…?) life, unmistakeable signs started to pop up in Merída already…
I hope the guy was not angry at me later cause I really had to laugh out loud which is not the nicest way if someone courageously stands up in his Lederhosn in tropical warmth.
I have changed and I haven’t and how will I be able to tell? I’ve kept watching my shade on this trip and I see it has changed.
I like belonging somewhere, yet I am not sure I belong to somewhere or something at all – I just am, and in these rare moments that find me when I travel… I lose it all and gain just myself.
I was wondering about those ancient communities around San Cristóbal and how I thought they don’t support individualism a lot and have their costumes like uniforms. And then, driving back into Cancun today, I realized how people are much more part of a Western style, if you can call it that way. And how dull that is as well.
Of course nothing serious, as you don’t lose your individuality just cause you start behaving in an uniformal way… Nevertheless I wish to keep my moments where I stay out of conformity simply enjoying myself.
I might keep up the blog for a bit or a bit more – how am I supposed to know that now.
I just like the idea of describing Munich and Bavaria and Germany from a foreign point of view. I’ve heard despite all the Germans are quite a nice people. Let’s find out.
No jokes about US customs at this point (…), as hard as it is. I’m looking forward to hotdogs at Atlanta airport tomorrow plus I hope to take a picture of the bible book section in the papershop. If all of this doesn’t work out, I’ll search comfort in the Toblerone section of Amsterdam airport.
