« May 2006 | Main | July 2006 »
June 25, 2006
My Kind of Fundraising
In the tradition of "rent parties," some local folks who are going to China threw a party to raise funds for their trip. They charged $10 pesos for entry and $10 pesos for each beer. Shawn and I were fossils compared to all the other guests, but we can still get down.
Our friend Fiona warned Shawn that she's 'directionally challenged' when she gave him the instructions on reaching the party. In turn, Shawn kept reminding Tara and me of this when we were asking him over and over where we were supposed to be going. When it started to sprinkle as a huge cloud slid in to swallow up the stars above us, we knew we didn't have much time to find the place before getting very wet.
We turned around and went the opposite direction on the street, looking for our one solid clue: a sign that said "BIENVENIDOS" and had some Chinese characters on it. We ran into a snag when Tara spied a rat crawling around in some garbage on the opposite side of the street and was nearly paralized with fear. I did some scouting while she and Shawn stayed behind, but within two minutes, I'd located the sign. Tara and Shawn scurried around the far side of the corner to cross the road and meet up with me, and a few moments later we were standing under the sign at a locked iron door.
We were admitted to the party by a charming Chilango who escorted us up the dark stairwell, a run of concrete steps with nothing along the side to keep one from falling to certain injury below. That's not entirely true. At the top of the stairs there was a yellow warning sign with that poor anonymous man in silhouette that always runs into trouble, in a free fall from an unguarded platform. That wouldn't help the unfortunate schmo that never made it to the top of the stairs.
We entered the second floor area to find that there were already several people already there. We paid the entry fee and bought a couple of drinks. I had feared that they would not have any tequila, so I brought my own; alas, they had tequila so I just looked like a jerk bringing my own stuff when I could have been buying theirs. Still, I was glad to have brought Herradura, because they had José Cuervo, Satan's own tequila. I gave them my bottle and they said they'd guard it for me. To make myself feel less guilty, I paid them the price they were charging for José Cuervo for a couple of drinks, before they started to refuse my money.
We started in to chat with some of the people there, and the regular small talk ensued, leading to the inevitable question of how we like Guadalajara. I replied with my standard praise about the people being friendly, the weather being beautiful and the food being delicious, then followed with my constant complaint about the fact that, apart from loud dance clubs and Sanborns Café, there's nothing to do after midnight in this town. At first, the people we were talking to responded that we just didn't know they places they knew of to go for such things, but then when I asked them to tell me of such alternative places, every suggestion was trumped by someone else saying that it was a loud dance club and reminding the other that such a place was exactly what I said I didn't want. I gave my email address to one woman so that she could email me when she thought of some of the places that fit my demands. Four days later, I'm still waiting for that email.
Shortly thereafter, the people we knew arrived and scolded us for not attending the Guadalajara pride parade. We were watching Mexico being knocked out of the World Cup by Argentina and didn't know that anything of the kind was going on. Apparently, a great time was had by all, but you'll have to read another blog for coverage of that event. Soon we were joined by other people that Shawn either works with currently or met through his course at ITTO, and while Shawn caught up with them, Tara danced and I talked a bit with a young Mexican guy about the fact that one might earn more in the United States than Mexico, but it comes at a cost - a lot more stress and a lot less time to relax.
There was a lot of music, drinking, dancing, smoking and talking. One of the funniest moments at the party was Shawn's realization after talking to someone in Spanish for several minutes that the person didn't speak any Spanish. It turns out he is from Switzerland and speaks German and English.
Before we knew it, the people in our group were the last ones there, and although we'd been told there would be some live guitar from the Chilango after 4 am, when that hour rolled around, he was nowhere to be found, having made a quiet exit alongside the señorita with whom he'd been dancing earlier in a manner most intimate. The hosts reassured us that we didn't have to leave, and in fact, we could crash there for a while if we wanted. We figured it was best to get a cab and head home before the sun came up. It's just depressing to wake up at the pary place hours after everything has come to an end.
Somehow we all made it safely down the perilous staircase. Maybe the warning sign was helpful after all. We jumped in a cab and were completely quiet the whole way home. We were worn out. Shawn commented later that the ride home seemed to take forever.
Two days later, when Tara and I were going out to do some shopping, we were crossing the street when we heard someone honking at us. We went over to the car and saw that it was one of the women we'd met early on at the party. It turns out that she lives a block away from our apartment. Later that day, while shopping in La Gran Plaza, we ran into two more people that had been at the party - the Swiss guy and the guy he came with.
It's a small world.
Posted by crispy at 03:43 PM | Comments (3)
June 21, 2006
The Road to Bogotá: Part Two
[part one]
If at first you don't succeed, go to the Casa Azul and putter around Coyoacán for the afternoon, then try to catch another late night flight to Bogotá.
Exterior, la Casa Azul, Coyoacán
We had nearly 24 hours to kill when we learned that our flight was cancelled, so we made plans for the following day to visit the Frida Kahlo Museum, housed in her family home in Coyoacán, also known as the Casa Azul.
We took a cab from the Camino Real that they 'arranged' for us, which ended up taking about 40 minutes and cost us about $25 USD. This was a 'tourist taxi,' which basically means it's a service that rips off tourists. The driver was nice enough, and the cab was very comfortable. We'd heard horror stories about getting kidnapped by illigitimate taxi drivers in Mexico City, so we wanted to be safe rather than sorry. The tourist taxi was guaranteed to be 'secure.'
The ride to Coyoacán was our first real chance to get the feel of Mexico City. It was nice and cool, being overcast and considerably higher than Guadalajara (about 2,200 feet). We were shocked to see how green and lush Mexico City was. We expected wall-to-wall urban landscape, but that was not the case. We passed park after park and went along many roads shaded by trees. In Guadalajara, it seems that people are terrified of trees, as people take any opportunity they can find - being near power lines, growing too tall, taking up space - to cut down the few that exist. Such didn't seem to be the case in Mexico City, which seemed like the Amazon in contrast.
I expected the Casa Azul to be pretty far out of town and in a dusty little pueblo, but Coyoacán is anything but that. It's a very nicely groomed, smart section of what seems like another part of Mexico City, like Tlaquepaque seems to be another part of Guadalajara.
Exterior, la Casa Azul, Coyoacán
While it does contain a few of works by Kahlo, the Museo Frida Kahlo focuses more on the life of the artist. There is a huge display case containing various medicines she took and a couple of self-decorated torso casts from a few of her numerous surgeries. There are a few interesting works by others too, and a little museum store where we bought postcards that we dared to send out through the infamous Mexican mail system. To date, nobody has mentioned receiving one. It's been almost three weeks.
The Casa Azul is very interesting, and I recommend it to anyone with an interest in Frida Kahlo. Those wishing to see a lot of her work will likely be disappointed, but the fact that one can see unusal 'works' of hers (like the painted casts, the decoration of the kitchen, pages from her journal) is quite a treat. More interesting is being in the house where she worked and lived, and getting a sense of the history that took place there.
We left the museum to find some lunch. Normally, we have a decent guide book to get some direction in such matters, but because we were not at all expecting to spend the day in Mexico City, we had nothing but a barely adequate map of Coyoacán in a Mexico City tourism pamphlet given to us by the concierge at the Camino Real. We figured that if we headed toward the center of the neighborhood, we'd probably find something. We were not disappointed.
We came upon a nice park that had an information booth, where we asked for restaurant suggestions, being that we're vegetarians. I thought the woman there would suggest going to some sit down place that would have the usual: quesadillas, cheese enchiladas, enfrijoladas, chilaquiles, etc. Instead, she told us to go to Vege Taco, a place that serves nothing but vegetarian food.
For us, this was an amazing delight. So often people tell us, "You HAVE to try the pica..., oh, that's right. You're vegetarians." There are so many dishes down here that gringo meat eaters tell us are simply the best dishes in the world, and for the first time in my vegetarian life, I am ignorant of what something tastes like. That is, I'd tried pretty much everything meatwise in the United States that is common there. If someone eats a hot dog, for example, I know all too well what that tastes like. Yet there are several things here, often times sauces that are vegetarian in and of themselves, but end up always being served on meat, where I can't even imagine their flavors. Like the traditional sauce, pipian. It's always used to stew chicken or pork, so I never get to order it at restaurants here.
But at Vege Taco, I could get all kinds of things like that. Unfortunately, we had to choose just one dish each. Shawn got flautas, and I, being really into learning new things about our home state of Jalisco, ordered faux cabrito (young goat), Jaliscan style.
I won't knock anyone that digs goat, but I don't know that I would have really been all that jazzed about eating goat had I come down here as a meat eater. Okay, that's probably not true. I'd end up trying it one night while drunk and thinking it was okay. However, the nice thing is, even for people that eat meat, if you have a hard time stomaching even just the idea of goat, you could try the vegetarian version (made with seitan) and understand how it's prepared without having to eat goat. There were a lot of vegetarian versions of traditional Mexican fare that might give your average gringo pause, and I'm sure that a lot of meat eaters would be hesitant to eat at Vege Taco. However, all the people there (and it was pretty crowded), were chowing down without hesitation.
This is my fake young goat, in the Jaliscan style:
"Cabrito" Estilo Jalisco, Vege Taco, Coyoacán
Here's Shawn's flautas:
Flautas de "Barbacoa" Vegetarianas, Vege Taco, Coyoacán
I wanted to stay and keep ordering things from the menu, but a full stomach and the hour dictated that we return to the hotel, pick up our bags and return to the airport for our flight to Bogotá. We hailed a cab and paid about $18 USD on the return trip from Coyoacán, and on the way, I had a nice chat with the cab driver. He asked us all the standard questions, and I gave him all the standard (for us) answers. We talked about politics, the fact that we much prefer the relaxed rato de vida of Mexico, and that, despite the fact that all the Mexicans we knew that were from places other than Mexico City say that chilangos (a term for people from Mexico City, and supposedly pejorative) are rude and self-centered, we had not found that to be the case. He explained that it all depends on where you go in Mexico City. He claims that in some neighborhoods in Mexico City (he named a couple that unfortunately, I have since forgotten), people are very rude, but in many parts of Mexico City, people are very friendly.
We must not have gone to any of the rude places, because we found everyone to be quite friendly, polite, and when the need arose, helpful. Like when we got to the airport and got in line to check our luggage, the men going through and running chemical tests on the insides of our luggage were quite friendly. We spoke Spanish with them initially, but then one of them said that his co-worker wanted to practice his English with us, but was too shy to ask. We then switched over to English and had a nice talk with them while they processed our luggage with this funky device that checked for explosive residue on a piece of plastic (?) tape that was wiped along the interior of each of our bags. After passing the test ("TNT: OK!"), we stepped up to the counter where the same guy that had told us the previous night that our flight had been cancelled a month before was waiting with a pleasant smile. He was exceptionally friendly as he told us, "I have bad news for you. Your flight has been cancelled."
He was very friendly as he tried to calm us down, and he was exceptionally nice in putting us up at the Sheraton María Ísabel right across from the Ángel de Independencia on Avenida Reforma. Everyone in line behind us was also on this cancelled flight, yet instead of making a general announcement, they let everyone go through the security check of luggage, and then told them individually that the flight had been cancelled. I can think of no reason to do this besides really enjoying making people wait in line needlessly, but you get that kind of irrational stuff in Mexico all the time. Eventually, they herded us outside, to wait for a van that would take us to the hotel.
As we stood and waited, Shawn asked a young man who was also waiting if he spoke English. I thought this was strange at the time, but Shawn explained later that he presumed that the guy was English because he was paler than we were. It turns out that he did speak English, but he was a law student from Monterrey, and was heading down to Buenos Aires (our flight continued from Bogotá to Argentina) to study dance for three months during the summer break. He was quite cute, and we were delighting in the conversation, but then he started in on the whole thing about how he hates Mexico City and thinks both the metropolis and the people are ugly there. After that, I couldn't help but think of him as a little too prissy for my tastes, but luckily about that time, the van pulled up and we all got in.
The driver (David Montaño, cell 044/55/8560-9261, 044/55/2965-1437; office 55/2643-2406), who drives tourists around Mexico City for a living, was absolutely delightful. He asked me the usual questions, and upon my telling him how we were not really all too disappointed to be spending another night in Mexico City (since before we'd only been to the border towns and Guadalajara), started telling me all about other beautiful places in Mexico that needed to be checked out. I found us to have similar tastes in how we visit other cities. He recommended Acapulco, but when I said that I didn't really go for resort towns, he wagged his finger and said, "No, no, no." He suggested going for at least three weeks, finding a cheap apartment or condo that rents by the month and just living there, maybe checking out a couple of the big hotspots if you're into seeing what they're all about, but otherwise, just living there among the locals and asking around among them for recommendations on where to eat, what to see and how to pass the time. His loving description of excellent food, beautiful muchachas and thoroughly enjoyable time spent there sold me.
As we drove along, he pointed out a lot of sights in Mexico City, although it was hard to see many of them because it was dark out. Even the Ángel de Independencia wasn't visible, being under scaffolding for cleaning. Still, he gave us a rundown on the basics of our local layout, talking about the two Mexico Cities: the old and the modern. When at last we pulled up at the hotel, I was a little sad to have arrived. I would have liked to have hired him to drive around a bit more and show us some of the late night hotspots, but we had to check in with the others to be sure that Aerolíneas Argentinas would pay for it. After we got to the room, despite planning at the airport to go out and party down in the city, we were beat and just crawled into bed. The double-paned glass kept out any city noise, and those soft Sheraton beds were so comfortable that we passed out within minutes.
Here are some photos of the view from our room on the 20th floor.
Mexico City, from Sheraton María Ísabel
Mexico City, from Sheraton María Ísabel
Mexico City, from Sheraton María Ísabel
Posted by crispy at 01:53 AM | Comments (6)
June 19, 2006
When is a bolillo not a bolillo?
Not all bolillos are created equally, I recently leared from neighbor Alberto. There is a special type of bolillo made here in Guadalajara...
Wait, wait, wait. You don't know what a bolillo is?!
Okay, a bolillo is similar to french bread, and is made with wheat flour. Usually, it's bleached flour, but you can get delicious bolios at the pan integral (whole wheat) bakeries also.
Oh yeah, in Mexico, you often have bakeries that make just whole wheat things, including whole wheat raised, frosted donuts.
The bolillo is usually about five to seven inches long, has tapered ends making it oval in shape, and is cut across the top before baking to give it a slightly irregular surface and a little more crust.
Oh, that's right. I should have mentioned before that the bolillo is crusty on the outside and very soft on the inside. That's what makes it like french bread.
It's used to make tortas, the most well-known around here being tortas ahogadas. If you don't know Spanish, 'ahogadas' means 'drowned.'
I forget that most Mexican food as represented around the world doesn't include tortas, so maybe I should explain those too. Tortas are sandwiches, somewhat comparable to submarine sandwiches, hoagies, poor boys and grinders. Mexicans are not all that big on the miscellaneous vegetables though, so you often get just meat, bread and some kind of sauce. In the torta ahogada, the sauce is on the outside of the whole thing, like a 'smothered burrito.'
Still with me?
The torta ahogada is fried pork, onions and beans (but honestly, it's 99% pork) stuffed into a bolillo, then 'drowned' in a spicy tomato and chile sauce. It is known as a specialty of Guadalajara, and they are sold everywhere - in restaurants, from street vendors, in loncherías...
Ah, hold on. That is something a little strange. Usually it's people from Mexico City (defeños, chilangos) that call sandwiches on bolillos 'tortas.' It's usually not called a torta here, but rather, a lonche. That's not 100% solid; a lot of people are going to call a turkey sandwich a torta de pavo, but you see lonche used around here just as much if not more than torta, except when you're talking about tortas ahogadas. It's never called a lonche ahogado. It's always a torta ahogada.
Yet I stray from my point, although it is important to bear all that in mind for understanding my point.
The point is, I learned recently from Alberto that the type of bolillo used in Guadalajara and surrounding environs is a special type of bolillo called a birote. Birotes are particular to Guadalajara, and are perhaps best described as sort of a sourdough bolillo. I don't know the exact difference between the two, but the birote tastes slightly sour, like a light sourdough. People here describe them as salados when you go to buy them and they think that as a non-native tapatio you don't realize the difference. However, they're not called bolillos salados, they're called birotes. Well, except on the little labels that the bakery at the supermarket sticks on the bags, in which case, then they're just called bolillos.
Combining all that information then, we see that a lonche is usually going to be made with a birote, and a torta is going to be made with plain bolillo.
Of course, that is apart from the torta ahogada, the specialty of Guadalajara, made on birote, yet called a torta all the same.
Oh, and I should mention that there's another regional type of bolillo that's from Mexico City and is called telera, but that's a topic for an entirely different entry.
Posted by crispy at 08:27 AM | Comments (6)
June 18, 2006
Like Mexico 40 Years Ago
In the United States, the Supreme Court has ruled that evidence can be used against a defendant, even if police failed to knock before entering to execute a search warrant. In California's special election, some volunteer poll workers kept the voting machines at their houses for up to two weeks with no supervision.
We hear it said often that Mexico is about 50 years behind the United States. In some cases it seems that the United States is starting to become like the Mexico of several decades ago.
Posted by crispy at 02:35 AM | Comments (5)
June 16, 2006
The Road to Bogotá: Part One
I got some Tafil from my doctor and I was ready to rock and roll to Bogotá, in just two hops. Yet upon our arrival in Mexico City, we learned that the flight between Mexico City and the Colombian capitol, the one that our travel agency supposedly confirmed three days before, had been cancelled a month earlier.
Shawn thought that we should confirm our international flight. I didn't realize this because I never fly. I tried to call and confirm the flight through AeroMexico, first asking the representative that answered if they had an English customer service number. We are in Mexico, but there are a lot of tourists taking AeroMexico flights that are not Mexicans, whether going between two Mexican destinations or coming from or leaving to another country outside La Republica. It seemed to make sense that they should have a number where you can talk to someone that speaks English from within Mexico, but of course making sense is not what airlines are all about. The representative explained that they have customer service lines where you can deal with an English-speaking representative, but only in Houston, which has a toll-free number that you can access only from within the United States.
I worried that trying to confirm our flights over the phone with my less-than-perfect Spanish introduced room for considerable error, but if they didn't have an English line, they would have to deal with it. When the guy asked me for the ticket number and I read off the big one listed in the center-bottom of the ticket, he told me that was not a valid ticket number. I later found out, upon asking the clerk at check-in, that the number I gave him was indeed the ticket number, and surprise of surprises: valid. Because we could not confirm by phone though, we decided to stop by our travel agency where we'd bought the tickets over a month earlier and ask them to do it for us. It's always easier to deal with issues that may suffer from language shortcomings in person.
We stopped in and explained to the only employee present that we were not the best with Spanish, but we wanted to confirm our flights that we'd arranged through them. We interrupted her watching what probably was a very juicy telenovela, but she took our tickets, went into another room for ten minutes, then returned and entered a few keystrokes into her computer. She turned the monitor around to show us a screen with our names, destination, flight number, etc. on it, and said that we were all ready to go. I asked her if the seat numbers we had been assigned were still the same and even read off the numbers to her. She said that the seat assignments were the same and still valid. I asked one last time to verify that I understood everything correctly: so our flights have been confirmed and we don't have to do that? She said that was correct and that the only thing we had to do then was to show up at the airport two hours before our flight time.
We left, discussing how great it would be to be in Colombia in just a few days, and stopped by at Larry and Joseph's place to chat for a while. I praised the travel agency for being so helpful and was glad that our neighborhood option was a pleasant place for doing business. I like to shop locally.
So you can imagine how confused we were after landing in Mexico City and walking up to the Aerolíneas Argentinas area only to be stopped by security asking us repeatedly if we were sure we had an Aerolíneas Argentinas flight that night. We explained that we did, showed them our tickets, and still they would not let us pass through. One guy we were talking to told us to wait while he went to talk to another security person, who chatted with him for a bit before coming over to let us through and directed us to the Aerolíneas Argentinas check-in counter. We thought it was kind of odd that we were the only people being detained in this manner, and that something about us required so much discussion and caused such confusion. Yet when you're living in a foreign country, you learn to not worry too much about things that seem a little strange. There are just far too many of them to get worked up about each one.
The attendant was counting slips of paper as we walked over, kind of like he was closing out a register. When we stepped up to the desk, he looked up surprised as we handed him our tickets, saying that we were there to check in. He gave us a curious look before looking at our tickets, and hesitated a bit before telling us, "I have bad news for you. Your flight has been cancelled."
It was around midnight at this point, and we were not prepared for this. In my mind, I got a mental picture of the travel agency woman sitting in the back room for those ten minutes like Ernestine the telephone operator, filing her nails and watching her telenovela, hoping that those pesky customers would go away if she just stalled them long enough. I was furious and vowed to never use Felgueres Agencia de Viajes (Niño Obrero 616-A, Zapopan, Jalisco) again.
The airline rep asked us if we'd confirmed our flight like we were supposed to, and I told him that we had, as far as we were lead to believe. He said they'd put us up in a hotel for the night and have us leaving the next night at the same time. I was worried that we'd be in some scary spot in Mexico City, but they actually placed us at the Camino Real Aeropuerto that was right at the airport. The Camino Real properties vary in their quality, but overall, they are generally okay, so I was actually glad to know that was our roost for the night. The Aerolíneas Argentinas guy marked boxes on the ticket we were to give the hotel desk staff that signified that we were to be given dinner, breakfast and lunch coupons, included at the airline's expense. That was an extra that we felt showed some good faith, and after perking up a bit, I was a little excited to be spending a night in Mexico City. I thought that maybe we'd go out and do something cool there. Since Guadalajara folds up completely at around 11 or 12 pm (apart from the one Sanborns Café, of course), I thought it might be cool to enjoy a little interesting nightlife.
However, when we got to the front desk, it took a good 15 minutes to check in, because the staff was so slow and they initially refused to give us vouchers for breakfast and lunch the next day. I was off chatting with the bellhop that had our luggage, and didn't realize that Shawn was having to argue with them for these things, even though they were clearly marked on the ticket. They called over to our Aerolíneas Argentinas representative to confirm it, and even after doing that, they still refused to give us anything more than breakfast. Later, upon trying to use these coupons in two of their three restaurants, we were told that the coupons were not accepted, and the only place we could use them (instead of the Italian restaurant or the Mexican restaurant that were praised by the bellhop) was the lame 24-hour cafeteria-style spot that was also the worst of the three places for vegetarian options: only a vegetarian sandwich that came with very ripe cottage cheese (despite the fact that the menu said all sandwiches come with french fries). The sandwich wasn't bad though, and after dealing with a snooty maitre d', the waiter was very friendly.
By the time we got done with this whole ordeal and waiting forever for our food to come out from the kitchen, we decided that we were not, after all, up for Mexico City nightlife that night. We made plans to go to the Frida Kahlo Museum in Coyoacan the next day, which turned out to be a delightful excursion and revealed to us that maybe we might prefer living in Mexico City.
[part two]
Posted by crispy at 12:29 AM | Comments (6)