In the City

Ahh, Mexico City. Everyone in this country seems to have an opinion about El Destricto Federal, and now I know why: it's so massive, so densely populated, that it almost deserves to be called a country in its own right. How did one city manage to combine the urban claustrophobia of NYC with the unrelenting sprawl of LA while managing to become more bloated than both of them put together? There are blind dudes walking the subways selling compilations of mariachi music, blasting a sample of each song through a mini-amp strapped to their backs. There are trees planted on people's roofs by the city to help balance out the pollution-to-oxygen ratio (it's currently 2:1, I hear). There seem to be just as many foreigners - Chinese, French, African - as there are Mexicans. Needless to say, compared to the rest of hazy, lazy Mexico, it's a weird place.

It's also waaayyy to big to see in just under two days, which is all Eliza and I could muster. We wanted to go out to some clubs, for instance, but our friend Luis, who let us stay at his lonely apartment, lives at least an hour away from anything non-residential. Luis is a smart, gregarious guy with bottomless generosity who is also hopelessly smitten with Eliza, who once fancied him as well but lost interest before he got up the nerve to confess his love to her. As such, he catered to our (or more aptly, her) every need, picking us up when we arrived at 5 in the morning, showing us around the city's tangled web of subways, and even offering us his house key when he had to return to Morelia before we wanted to.



Despite Eliza and I's shared inability to navigate, we did make it to several spectacular museums, including the stunning murals of the Palace of Fine Arts (pictured below), the Museo de Anthropologia, and the old house of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, which ended up being far cooler than Diego's childhood home in Guanajuato. Mostly, though, Eliza and I just wandered around the city's commercial center, giving in to our poor senses of direction and exploring interesting places as we passed by them. As we took pictures in front of fountains and statues amongst cavorting lovers, she joked that it felt like we were a honeymoon couple, and I had to laugh in nervous agreement. But if anything, the trip just cemented our friendship, as we had plenty of time to get to know each other walking the streets and huddling into packed subway cars.

Our classmates Monika and Kerstin met up with us on Friday night, but those two are so gung-ho and tireless that they had already ditched us the next morning to get an early start on their day. Both girls go to Berkeley, Monika living in a Co-Op and Kerstin a Sorority, and both of them are pretty typical of their respective origins: both down-to-earth, one slightly hippie-dippy and the other slightly girlish. Though we come from the same school I barely knew either of them until this weekend, but they were fun to trek around with. If only they didn't keep such a rigid itinerary.



We tried to end the trip with a visit to Teotihuacan, home to one of the only remaining pyramids in Mexico, but after an hour and a half on an uncomfortable bus ride, we got there just in time to hear the site was closing and we wouldn't be able to clime the old relic after all. Weary and still feeling slightly ill from breathing Mexico City's pollution all day, we headed back to Morelia, ready to sleep in a normal bed again and say goodbye to this monstrosity of a city. All I got for our troubles was this picture: