Math Formula

Thursday, July 14, 2011

Wanna beer with chilli? -- News from Mexico pt. I

For those of you who are interested in it (and those who are not but nevertheless ended up here upon blindly following the link), this is my first news from Mexico (speek me-chi-kho). Yes, my random walk down earth kind of brought my in this overally amazing country. Sorry for not having announced so in my first post, but travelling is among my major interests.

Disclaimer: I don't have pictures with my this time - you'll have to wait for the next post, in which I promise I'll  come up with some!

On Saturday morning (even before both cock and muezzing get up), we left from Vienna. Transit stop in Madrid, where we were quite entertainen by automated (no human drivers) 'metros' transporting you from one terminal to the either. Kind of remembered me at my student time, when I was working on Saturday afternoons at a supermarket chain. I was the guy issueing credit vouchers in exchange for bottle deposits, and I was pretty good and fast! Bottle of beer 9c, mineral 27c, Cola 27c ... you see I still know it! Until one day I found myself replaced by the new T-3000, who could handle bottle twice as fast and three times as accurate as I could ...

Anyways, some 20 hours after getting up (and without too much of sleeping - naturally, we had to start preparing for our journey by finally reading the tourist guide and first step language instructions) we ended up on Mexico City Benito Juarez Intl., named after one of the dozen heros of the country. Having successfully avoided the first tourist trap (exchange office offering a rate of 13:1 instead of the current rate of 16.6 : 1), we learned about one speciality of Mexican lifestyle: tranquilo (translating into something like stay calm, cool, don't hurry, ...), which seems to be all over.

Up to now, we were kindly hosted by a friend of my travel mate, who introduced us into some of Mexican specialities. Even though I was already prepared to give up on all my stupid imaginations about the country and the people here, I'm once again surprised about the fact that I'm pretty much surprised about everything experiencing here! For me, that once again shows how ridiculous it is to expect and think too much about things until you experience them yourself, because naturally, they will be plainly wrong and misleading! For instance, people in western europe do know that Mexican have a crush for eating hot and spicy ... but might you have expected that they drink also there beer with chili? (along with a mixture of maggi and salt). Literally, they add these ultry-spicy chillis to pretty much everything they eat and drink!



Furthermore, I'm overally surprised by their friendliness. Starting from helpful officers at the airport and guys in the streets wishing you good health when you sneeze, friendliness seems to be the second mantra, right after  (and sometimes even before) tranquilo.

Now, our first days in Mexico City (2 1/2 the number in citizens as my beautiful home country at the Danube...) were mainly filled with watching the astonishing remaining parts from the Maya and Aztec). We also had intention to watch the finals of the sub 17 world championship, but couldn't get a ticket on short notice any more, which might be partly due to the fact that plently of people wanted to support their own team, running against Uruguay in the finals. It would have been great to watch a game in the legendary Aztec Stadium, especially the final of the world championship, but instead, we ended up escaping the rain (yes, apparently it's monsun time in Mexico City during this time of the year!) and watching the game in a bar instead (and, of course, drinking beer with chili).

On the next day, when visiting the amazing Pyramid of the Sun, we got another touch of football when meeting the brazil sub 17 team (who already looked quite ok, after having lost the game for the third place against Germany the day before).

I guess I could keep writing like this on and on, about tacos, the fact that the Aztecs thought the Spanish conquistadors would be gods instead of their end, pandas and bears in the zoo, ... but I will stop it here, because there is still that much too see around here (and our bus to Uruapan is waiting for us, taking us on a 7 hours trip close to Paricutin, a volcano which we will approach tomorrow "hopefully" (c) Tom).

Don't know yet when there is an update to be expected again, but probably it will be from somewhere on the pacific coast - getting time for the beach then!

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