Mexico City

Some things that struck me about our visit to Mexico City last week...

Stop signs and red lights are to be taken as suggestions, nothing more. Do not assume that any prior knowledge you have about traffic patterns and rules will apply here. They do not. Or they do. Assume at your own risk.

Every house in the admittedly wealthy neighborhood where we were staying had 20-foot high fences with massive electric gates and high-voltage fences. Not only this, but they have gates at the end of each block manned by private security guards. This seems like a stressful way to live. I found out that I have a cousin that moved their family to Miami a couple months ago because they were too worried about getting kidnapped constantly.

That also seems like it would be a stressful way to live.

We, as gringos, get stared at constantly, even in the insanely huge city that is Mexico City. This is different than New York City. I could walk around looking crazier than all get out in NYC and not get a second glance. Here, all it takes is slightly less melatonin and a Lonely Planet guidebook to feel like a freak of nature.

Time, as Einstein figured out, is relative. We tried to go to the Palacio Belles Artes in order to see one of Diego Rivera's murals. The guidebook, signs, and other literature all said that it closes at 6pm. We arrive shortly before 5:30pm and are told that we can't come in because it's closed. Pointing at the signs and sputtering in barely intelligible Spanglish doesn't seem to help. We walk away, frustrated.

In 1978, underneath a section of the Centro Historico, they discovered partial ruins of a massive Aztec temple structure. In order to excavate the relatively small area that they dug up, it was necessary to destroy a number of colonial-era buildings and infrastructure. I believe this was a good idea. Of course, it led me to fantasize (yes, to have fantasies) about all the other incredible things that must be under all the other buildings they left standing.

For those who don't know, Mexico City used to be a large lake, in the middle of which sat an island city that the Aztecs built. It was reached by a series of roads they made from the shore, like a bunch of bicycle spokes. Over time this lake was filled in and built upon. This has caused the cities buildings to sink over the years, and is a constant issue. Mexico City is sinking.

Frida Kahlo's house is pretty cool. The walls are painted a blue that I would use to paint everything, if I could. We were only able to see a small sampling of paintings due to the refurbishing of much of the house. This seemed to be a pretty standard excuse for a number places we wanted to see.

Still, her garden was (kind of) worth the visit.

Fact: Leon Trotsky lived out his days (until he was stabbed to death with an ice pick) in Mexico City, first staying with Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, later, in his own compound a few blocks away. His house is curiously preserved, almost creepily so. His towel hangs on a rack, his toothpaste on the sink, clothing in the closet, toilet left unflushed. Not really, but it wouldn't have been shocking the way the rest of the place was kept. His ashes are there, in a monument with the hammer and sickle carved into it and the soviet flag flying overhead. He's the only one of the original Russian revolutionaries never to have been "rehabilitated" by the USSR. Seemed like a nice-enough guy. In the end, as you know, Stalin got to him.

The subways in Mexico City are pretty great. Very cheap (20cents a ride), very fast and very efficient. They are all color-codeda and each stop has a symbol associated with it. This is because back in the 60s when it was built, there was a shockingly high percentage of the population that was illiterate. The illustrations served that portion of the population. This was a good idea.

A lot of people seem to blurt out different things in english, almost like a burp or a fart, only without saying "excuse me" afterwards. An example comes to mind.

We were standing in front of a building that contains more Diego Rivera murals but was closed due to more mysterious refurbishing, trying to decide what to do instead. A man came up to us, and with no introduction or encouragement, declared, "Mexico! Mexico City!" and then walked away. Obviously, we agreed with him, but couldn't figure out the proper reply in time. Clearly, this was a missed opportunity for bridging some sort of cultural divide

Yom Kippur in Guadalajara

We just spent Yom Kippur in Guadalajara, the closest place to Zacatecas with a synogogue. M and I came down here with friend Ben, who is visiting us for a few days while on assignment as the Wandering Jew (blogs.jta.org/wanderingjew).
He arranged for us to attend a couple different synagogues in the community. These visits, and subsequent interviews with community members and rabbis, would form the basis for some of the stories that he would be writing about Jews and Jewish things around the world.
The fast went by well enough and Yom Kippur ended with a blast by about 12 shofars, which was cool. We were invited to break our fast at the home of the president of the larger congregation, a woman named Fanny.
We drove over there with her and sat down at a large table with a few other people. The food was...food, and definitely good enough to eat after a lomg 25 hours. By the end, it was us, her husband, her mother, sister and brother-in-law, son, and various cousins.
We were talking about where we were from, what we were doing in Mexico and so on. It came up that I am a Rubenstein and I mentioned that I have family in Mexico City. Fanny's mom asked, "oh? What Rubensteins? Jackie? Annette?"
"Actually, yes!" I exclaimed.
I proceeded to explain that we had met them for the first time over Rosh Hashana.
"Then" she said," we are cousins too!"
Turns out that she's a cousin of the cousins we stayed with, and, yet again, the world grew even smaller.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Internet, or lack thereof

So, we moved into a new house the other day. We'll be sharing it with a few other people from our office, and it's totally awesome.

We needed to order internet for the house, however. Luckily, Antonio, one of the housemates, ran into a guy offering a deal on broadband. They set up for the guy to come by the house yesterday evening for me to see the details and sign a contract. So, the guy shows up, and we have a hard time communicating. Finally, we reach some sort of agreement and I sign some papers (3MB, 340 pesos/month). I pay him the 99 pesos for the installation and he asks when I can be around for the installers to come. Anytime after 2:30pm is fine for me, I say, but until what time would they apossibly come? Oh, he says, until about 6pm or so.

Great, I say. We shake hands and off he goes.

It's only later that it occurs to me that I have no idea on what day...

Rooftop sitting

Isn't it interesting how it can rain pretty much every afternoon, always around the same time? During the rainy season, at least. You can see the rain clouds so clearly too. There's a pretty decent sky all around, then a big dark cloud show up, slowly rolls overhead and starts to rumble.

Soon, drops start to fall, slowly at first then faster. The wind picks up, the drum and horn band over by the plaza kicks in. More drops, the band supplemented by the deep thunder - unless it's the other way around.
Drops everywhere now - it's bad but it'll get worse.
Can barely hear the band now, the rain drowns it all out. Car alarms, set off by the thunder, the band, or the occasional fireworks. A stray clear bit of sky makes for a brief reprieve but it's chased away by a stronger darker cloud.

Finally, the umbrella just isn't doing a job it was never meant to do. I'm getting wet.

Cuidado, Baby

We away for Labor Day Weekend (yes, we celebrated with a long weekend, just like at home) with our friends Kate and Antonio, who work at the CDM, and Amanda, a friend from spanish school, to San Miguel de Allende.

If you aren't familiar with SMA, it's a medium-sized town about 4 hours north of Mexico City, just around halfway to Zacatecas. At one point, it was, and still claims to be, an artists colony of sorts, but it functions more as a retirement community for folks from the US (notice I don't say americans - it's because mexicans see themselves as americans as well...and they are). It's quite like a DisneyLand version of Mexico, with it's beautifully maintained streets and buildings, etc. Of course, this is only in the center of the town. A ten minute walk away lives everyone else. The people who retire here are able to live for a lot less than in the US, assuming they bought an apartment or house before the prices rose into the millions in US dollars. Crazy. We did see some awfully big houses, some of them nice looking too. There's a lot of talk about how people live on their Social Security checks, but honestly, I don't think that's realistic. We talked to one woman who bought a house here in 1986 for 12,000USD and it sold recently, though not by her, for over 400,000USD. Like I said, we saw some sweet places, but the 2,500,000USD for a house there just seems a bit excessive.

There's a ton of restaurants, which was actually really exciting after the eh food here in Zacatecas. The restaurants were actually pretty pricey, though the food was pretty decent. The wierdest thing about the place is that there is very little spanish spoken. Most of the old white people don't seem to speak it. We went to this one italian restaurant where the waiter asked us to speak english as he doesn't speak spanish well - he's from Italy. It was really different from being in Zac., where no one speaks english except for the people you already know. I like speaking spanish.

We stayed at a hostel that right on the edge of the centro. It was a nice place, that was almost empty, so that was cool.

There was a woman staying there who was probably more than a bit mentally ill. We had a bunch of weird interactions, one of them involving her wearing a strange blonde wig and claiming it was in honor of Madonna having passed away that evening. She came out for a drink with us and said some strange stuff about all kinds of things. We ended up that first night at Limericks, a Guinness-serving Irish bar, according to Lonely Planet. Of course, they had no Guinness, so I settled for a wheat beer from the tap.

Awesome interaction: I was going to the bathroom through a relatively crowded outdoor patio and tripped over a foot. An arm reached out and grabbed mine to keep me upright. "Cuidado, baby" said a deep voice ("careful, baby"). I look up and a huge black guy is holding me up. He was the first black man I'd seen in Mexico and he'd been living here for, I think, around 16 years or so. A nice guy, but I had to get to the bathroom, so we didn't speak long.

I just love that - cuidado, baby.

Anyway, it rained crazy hard the next day, when we tried to go to a cool botanical garden place. We hung around under a shelter for a bit, but took off once it was clear it would keep raining for a while. The rain got so intense there was literally flooding in the streets. The water was about 5-6 inches deep in some places, if not deeper, and it was actually like a rushing river at times. The town is on a hillside, so it all goes right downhill, making these little rivers on many of the streets.

We just kind of walked around the town, ate some good food, including at an almost-vegetarian restauran, and slept. On the way out of town on Monday, we stopped at a pretty nice hot springs, about 20 minutes away. Natural hot springs, are cool, and being that there's not really anywhere to swim in Zacatecas, it felt really good to submerge myself in water.

Ok. More later.