due to the flu, i am blogging only in Romanian, here. *(why would that be a reasonable reason?)

i can have what i want here

extrapolation we organized a party last night. the posh kind. a reception, come on!

police car outside, called by ourselves, doorman tipped to be at the entrance until everybody leaves etc.

The first guests arrive in time, they are not Mexicans, what did you think? 

Me, near the door, busy with the flowers I got, somebody rings, I open, the posh lady that comes in ignores me (yes, normally the muchacha opens the door, why a muchacha will wear an expensive black dress, jewels and high heels i don't know) goes right where the people are, talks with them for some minutes, I imagine she is related to one of them, she then turns around and leaves. I don't remember who opened her door, the muchacha inside me didn't do it.

She was going at the Alliance francaise, one block away, and she ended near Allianz Fondika. I blame the taxi driver. And the policemen. And the doorman. Come one, how could she pass all those filters just because she was elegant? Nobody cared where she was going to! 

I intend to become a party breaker. And to go to all kind of posh dinners, just because I will dress the way I will dress.

PS: it would have been so cool if the lady realised she wasn't at the right party only after midnight!

Monica in the Silver City

As we had a loooong weekend in Mexico (it's the Benito Juarez day on the 21st of march and for some years every monday before is a day off, as many other Mondays, in fact)we got out of the city. As you go out of this big tortilla city for other reasons but sightseing: one of them, and an important one,  BREATHING (pollution and high altitude!).

Compasses, friends' suggestion, what we read in books, guides and magazines made us say Taxco and Taxco it was!The silver city.

It's up in the mountains, near the silver mines, and it has no more than 150 thousand inhabitants. And it's really cute!

We were lucky enough to be able to go there on the highway (still horrified with the roads we saw in our way to the monarch butterfly mountains)

So, what's going on in Taxco and who is there to testify?

Thousand of tourists who come to buy silver jewellery or oth

er souvenirs (it's not a cheaper one, but at least it's 925 or even 950 type silver), or  to linger in the main square (Zocalo, as in all Mexican villages or cities), or to eat in the few places that the guides recommend, to listen to some music, on Sunday, or to swallow what the buses', taxis' and dozens of cars' exhaustion pipes produce  as there are people who seemd to have been born in the car, if they cannot climb the city hill by themselves.

There are also museums in Taxco.

I was really sad when I realised the Humboldt House was closed, there was a witch stuff exhibition there that I missed (after the Cuernavaca one featuring torture instruments used by the Inquisition). But I visited the Silvery Museum and I found out that indigens used to work metals way before the Conquista, as precolumbians used silver for religious purposes and not only. 

And yes, I came back with a wonderful pair of earrings.

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PS> 10X for the Spanish to English translation down here!

help me understand mexicans

Here I was, this morning, at the Club where we go, waiting for the Aquqgym teacher to arrive. Like the past Friday, she didn't show up neither at 11 when the program say we should all begin move our bones deep into water, nor at 11.40 when I realise the all the classes began until now (what if the sun burns harder?)

Here she came at sharp 12, telling me the class will not begin because, please sit down- I don't want my readers to faint- in 15 minutes they will charge her more for the parking. I was this close to tell her: here are 15 pesos for that damn hour, but I couldn't move, speak, think farther. Here it is anot so cheap club, here is a coach paid to hold classes every day, here she comes telling me I don't know what Mister Vasconcelos talked to her for more than half an hour, and then the parking bomb. 

Chapeau, LaChapelle!

Thanks to Gorgeoux, I didn't do I don't know what on Sunday, but went to the Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso  to see David LaChapelle's exhibition here in the DF.

LaChapelle's Mexican debut, called "Delirium of Reason (Delirios de Razón),"features, as you can immagine, some of the photographer's works, done in the last 13 years.

45 pesos for a colourfoul hour downtown, plus some funky photos in the LaChapelle style our friends got taken at  the Colegio's Taller. Inside.

looking for yoga classes?

I know the feeling. While in Romania , I was looking with almost fear to the flyer announcing yoga classes in my neighbourhood. (A long scandal not solved yet, linked to a Romanian Guru.) Then I found a class held by Irina, a Romanian who spent many years in London. All OK, except the cold in that room. I simply didn't wish too much to continue. Then my private teacher, with the techniques that helped me heal from a horrible disease. Then Mexico. Yoga classes almost on every street. Neither in the day/on the hour I wish. I found the AgoraLucis place,here in Polanco, on La Fontaine, where  they have classes even in a glass pyramid. Cool, but then we joined a Club where I could do more than yoga, so I had to leave. Yoga every day at 11! What a blessing! There I was, Araceli was teaching us almost the same asanas that were good fo my health problems, we were there, relaxed, who could be more happier. Me, going there, last Tuesday, jumping like a grasshoper, until, as I was late, I realsied the people weren'tt using mats and the woman in white named Araceli was a man in black. No, it was not a holdup, a TaiChi class which I couldn't attend, as I went there barefoot. Then the Club's programme changed, the classes are only 2 days a week, not all 5, and here I am again without yoga as I dreamed: every day, the I want, not too early, not too late, in a lighted warm  room.

Going to the club, now, to get the programme for February and see what can I do with my life.

By the way, you could do yoga at one of the dozens Instituto Mexicano de Yoga schools too. Just search the areas they cover.

If you are based in Condesa and you are looking for hatha yoga classes on Saturday, here's a tip.

sand, birds and boats

Empty Jack Daniels bottles, trance rythms, burnt faces, nachos on the beach, boat parties a few miles away, Pittsburgh Steelers vs Arizona Cardinals and one sorrow: in February night comes earlier, even on the beach.

Greetings from Playa del Carmen!

¡Viva Don Vasco!

We went to Morelia. The last weekend. My reaction when I heard where we could spend the weekend was: so what's going on there? 

Let's see: 4 hours away from the DF, on the highway,there's this city, capital of the Michoacán  State, who's name is, obviously, taken from Morelos, the revolutionary. Just because Morelos, the Mexican State,and the dozens of Morelos streets in Mexico City weren't enough. OK, I come from a country where the cult of personality was something special. in a way much people don't want to remember. 

And I didn't say anything, even if I wrote half a page:)

OK, a university city, 600.000 inhabitants, a beautiful central plaza, the Zocalo, a UNESCO treasure, a lot of festivals, no security problems, lovely climate, blue sky, a colonial downtown, portals, old tram, information points for tourists and, the most important in a country with so many polices yet inefficient, the Tourist Police. 

The sweets market, where I got waaaaaay before the merchants, is what I didn't expect, in fact, hoping it will be different from what I've seen in Mexico so far. nuts, pistachio, almonds, raw, fried, in chili or caramelized, the famous Alegrias, figs, dried fruits, tamarind and so so on. All uncovered, guarded by people who, at 10 AM, was that breakfast or almuerzo? digged their noses in the plastic plates with steamy tamales, chilaquilles or God knows what it was. I imagined, of course, in my twisted mind, all kind of greasy drops on the sweets so away I went, with fear.

Souvenirs, then. As here in the DF I could see all the colourful things artisans in this little country do, nothing impressed me in Morelia's market. Not even the tiny little leather booties where you could keep your Tequila glass, neither the "Remember Morelia" Eco bags, nor the cowboy frogs with  sadist smiles, who knows why.

11 AM and the sun was burning so hard that i wanted to throw my coat. I kept walking, though, as all my pockets were filled with phone, ID, money, batteries, Kleenex, all necessary when you are alone in a town you don't know. No map! 

The shoe cleaners in the Zocalo were busy bees working hard. I felt compassion for the one who was paid to dye some ex-trendy pink boots in the sades dullest black I've ever seen. But the one who wasn't working yet was somehow more depressing. Or was it the one totally ignored by his client? Don't know, I clean my shoes myself.

The coffee, a real blessing for my half-opened eyes (to too much light or too few oxygen- the altitude is not much lower comparing to the DF)- was taken at Lilian's Gourmet, in the chlorine flavour of the stuff one guy used to scrub the floor so vigorously that I suspected a murder took place there, the night before. I chose the place as at the  Conspiraciòn the doors were closed. Conspiracies have nothing to do with the daylight, it's more and more obvious for me!

I bumped into Melchor Ocampo's,statue too. A man who is so many streets, like Morelos, in fact.** 

A dauntless man with a cruel end, who strongly believed, as the plate is saying, he did for his mother country what he judged it was better. Another moment when the local patriotism strucks me in my head.
I took a deep breath to recover and then, like any normal human being with a stomach, no barriers and fresher air in his lungs, I was hungry. As I never go hunting without my gun, I searched the web looking for The Restaurant, I ignored the guides who, one night before sent us where some guys were selling the tables and chairs of what was once las Viandas de Don Jose.  So we went to Fonda Marceva.Then we walked, say a beautiful tree

a strange guy, 

we realised the little green man runs hard here, when it's his turn, of course, and we noted that it's hard to get bored on a Saturday evening in Morelia.  We saw a tram that does the city tour so we decided that could be a nice thing to do, even if near the Zocalo there were two different concerts. We paid our tickets, waited for our guide, met a family who was really prepared to do the tour (with fried potatoes, sweets, coke, popcorn and toys for the kids), saw where we could leave the tips and we waited. And waited. And waited, until the tram driver told us there's no way he could leave, since the tram is empty.


So we climbed our hotel's roof, sat down, listened to the music and watched the fireworks. And the lights on the Morelia Cathedral . And the people on the street. 

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*Don Vasco de Quiroga, born in Spain, came here some 500 years ago. A great man. Details here.

** There's no happier moment than the one you get lost in Mexico City, just because in every colonia there is a Morelos, Ocampo, Revoluciòn or Londra street!

useless mexican police

While people are assaulted on the streets, while drivers are left without the cars at street corners, while families are left without children for weeks and get a piece of the victim's ear or finger for some million of pessos, I was stopped at a corner because I claxoned. I did it because at every corner somebody jumps on my car to clean it. My car is cleaned every week with proper products and I don't intend neither to get a scratched or dirtier car, nor to see a pistol pointing my head. I claxoned, the policeman stopped me and asked for my papers. This time I was lucky. Next time I could be killed. Policemen are there only when you don't let the guys "clean" your car. Mexico has ten kinds of "policias". Could I know, please, what are they doing?