Touch the whale and dance with the skeleton: How I moved to Mexico
I HAVE ARRIVED IN MEXICO FIVE WITH HALF YEARS BACK. My husband was offered a place here: first, he worked for six months, and only then we traveled around the country for two weeks. The news agency, where I worked at that time, was bought by competitors, the future was foggy, and it seemed like a great idea to get away from it all. "Yes, this is a real adventure - to live a year or two on another continent," - we decided. Over the next few months, we got married, found and signed a bunch of cardboard boxes for things, took a mortgage, bought an apartment in Moscow and moved to Mexico City.
By this time I knew a few words in Spanish - “hello”, “thank you” and “please” - and still do not understand why it did not occur to me to at least learn a little more in Moscow. Therefore, during the first months I was explaining to the saleswomen on my fingers and trying to figure out what our friendly concierge wanted from me. However, Pedro, like many residents of the state of Michoacan, where he came from, speaks so quickly and indistinctly that even my knowledgeable Spanish husband did not understand him at first.
Mexico City
When I flew to Mexico and went out into the street, my first thought was: "Oh my God, what is that smell? Do you breed horses here?" The airport in Mexico City is in the city, but in an area in which, frankly, it smells pretty bad. It is such a greeting from the Spaniards - actually the city of Tenochtitlan, the predecessor of the current capital, stood on a complex system of lakes and canals, just like Venice. The Spaniards covered these canals, disrupting the ecosystem, and the water began to rot, and the city is now constantly sinking.
In other areas, you can safely breathe without pinching your nose, and everywhere are endless tacos, meat for which is fried right on the street, hundreds of other types of street food, coffee flavors, tents with freshly squeezed juices, boiled corn with lemon, mayonnaise and chili. All together it forms the unique smell of Mexico City, quite unlike the smells of cities in other parts of the world. At first it seems strange and even unpleasant, and then you come to some New York or Moscow and understand that you are missing him. As well as the typical Mexican noise: calls and loud announcements of food sellers, bells of trash cars, pipes of musicians, singing for visitors of restaurants, the roar of helicopters and sirens driving around the streets.
If you want to know at least something about a Mexican, ask what area he lives in. So you can understand what his family, what education he received, even to estimate the approximate income. In Mexico City areas are clearly divided into good and bad. We live in Condes - a fairly expensive hipster area with a bunch of restaurants, bike rides and running tracks, organic shops and yoga rooms.
At the same time, the historical center of the city is a picturesque place, but gloomy, and in some parts it is completely dangerous and completely undesirable. It is worth visiting museums here (they say Mexico City ranks first in the world in their number), many of them are just incredible. And you should go to the center if you need to buy something special. There is a clear specialization: on the same street they sell dresses for weddings and a fifteen-year holiday (girls put on lush outfits, recruit boys from relatives or friends, travel around the city in limousines and take pictures, and then celebrate with their families), on the other - musical instruments, the third - Christmas trees and decorations for the New Year, on the fourth - the dishes.
All new houses are built taking into account the seismic activity, so the skyscrapers are fortified with special beams. Our house was built in 1970. It stands on logs, which, when an earthquake begins, sway, taking the brunt of it (and the whole house, of course, staggers with it). Yes, Mexico City is shaking. The most terrible earthquake happened here in 1985, according to official data, then ten thousand people died. Now, a monitoring and warning system is used here: forty-fifty seconds before the jolt, sirens are triggered, and people from the first floors have the opportunity to run out, and those who live higher can take the safest places in their homes. When we first realized that we were shaking (it seems that the power was about 6.7 points), we rushed to run from our fifth floor, although this should not be done in any way. Then we were the only people who came out of our high-rise building. Once in the fifth, we finally got used to it and now, as locals, we don’t go anywhere. However, office workers leave the buildings on a mandatory basis, centrally, gathering at special meeting points that exist throughout the city. During earthquakes and a few more minutes after that, cellular communication is usually jammed, and helicopters fly around the city looking for possible damage.
Mexico City is one of the largest megacities in the world, but, to be honest, compared to the same Moscow, it is much simpler and less pathetic. Mexicans usually dress in jeans and sneakers, and in smaller towns, older people still prefer national costumes. Yes, the air here is rather dirty, it can often be smog, and because of pollution, cars have no right to drive on certain days of the week. But, on the other hand, I can sit in the office of my dentist in the central part of the city and look out the window at the squirrel jumping on the tree.
Also in Russia they love to talk about terrible traffic jams in Mexico City. They really are here - but show me a metropolis without traffic jams! And there are a lot of really affordable parking lots (oh, how difficult it is for a Muscovite to simply take and give his parking keys to a parking attendant in exchange for a trust-causing zero), two-story toll roads and four-level interchanges and one of the cheapest taxis in the world. Local roads in general became a shock for me: they are far from ideal in the city, but there are many decent quality toll roads in the country, although they are expensive. One more shock was getting a driver's license: in Mexico City, they are officially bought for seven hundred pesos (a little more than two thousand rubles), while being able to drive or even know the rules is not necessary at all.
At the same time, Mexico City is a more dangerous city than Moscow, here they are attacked and robbed much more often. If in Russia I quietly moved in the evening by public transport or on foot, I don’t catch a taxi on the street, I only take the subway or metrobus during the day, and I never take the local shuttle bus: they are often robbed. I occasionally hear stories of how my phone or wallet was taken away from someone I know. And recently, in our safe and secure area, my husband was robbed, threatening with a pistol. The police arrived three minutes after the call, but, of course, did not find anyone. “The smartest thing you can do is give the robber everything without resistance. They can shoot without even thinking,” is a one-stop advice for those who come to Mexico City. Yes, it is unpleasant and even scary, but after all, sitting at home is also not an option, so that when we stopped shaking, we seem to have begun to treat this philosophically.
I arrived in Mexico City in November and after dank Moscow hoped that I could walk the streets in shorts, T-shirt and flip-flops. It turned out that here only the rainy season ended and winter begins. I had to get a sweater and a jacket, and a year later I finally acclimatized and even bought uggs. In general, the climate in Mexico City, it seems to me, is almost perfect (halving the rainy season - and here it is, perfection). Even in the hottest months in the city there is no such exhausting stuffiness as sometimes in Moscow in the summer. At least, the air conditioning on the windows in our non-poor area is almost never found here, unlike Moscow high-rises.
The city is located high in the mountains, so there are strong temperature changes. In December, at night it can get cold to plus three, and in the afternoon warm up to plus twenty to twenty-two. "Ha, plus three, is it winter?" - my Moscow friends humbly scoff. In fact, they simply have no idea what it is like to live at plus three and even plus ten without central heating in a country where they rarely use not only double, but even single plastic windows, from ordinary frames it blows terribly, and to use electric heaters very expensive. And sometimes we even snow on mountain roads outside the city! True, almost immediately melts.
The first time at this altitude was not enough oxygen, especially during sports, but you quickly get used to it and no longer feel any difference. There is also a very active sun, so all year round you have to apply Sanskrin on all open areas of the body, even if you run out for five minutes for bread.
And, of course, among the dark-skinned Mexicans it is very fashionable and cool to be fair-skinned and fair-haired, and if you have bright eyes, then you are considered handsome. The word "güero" - "white, white" - is definitely considered a compliment: sellers in the markets or on the street addressed me hundreds of times, almost all passersby addressed my son. In most institutions of the city hang signs about the absence here of any kind of discrimination - by age, sex, race or religion. But at the same time, if you have a European appearance, your chances of getting out of turn in a trendy club tend to a hundred percent.
Mexico
Mexico is one of the most developed countries in Latin America, second in the region after Brazil in terms of GDP, with strong oil production, mining, telecommunications and, of course, tourism. In Russia, the image of Mexico is simple: tequila, mariachi, pyramids and the beaches of Cancun - but in fact this country is a million times more interesting. There are not only the Caribbean Sea and cacti, but also mountains, deserts, caves with stalactites and stalagmites, active volcanoes, two oceans, cenotes, including many kilometers underground, pink lagoon with pink flamingos, beautiful waterfalls, jungle, beautiful colonial cities and more than a hundred "magical villages" with a bunch of sights, bald dogs and even geysers.
Here you can see whales in their natural habitat and even touch them (they usually don’t mind), admire butterflies that come here to winter from Canada, millions of fireflies during the rainy season, celebrate the most fun holiday in the country with skeletons dressed in skeleton costumes - The day of the Dead. And the north of Mexico is even more beautiful than the south: there is the cosmic beauty of the Copper Canyon through which you can take a tourist train, the Southern California peninsula with excellent wine and absolutely incredible desert landscapes and dunes.
But, probably, the main Mexican attraction is the local cuisine, which is even included in the UNESCO heritage list. The basis of everything is corn: one of the museums in the country once published a cookbook with dishes from it, consisting of six hundred and five recipes. And also meat, chocolate sauces, stuffed peppers, soups, fried and pickled cacti, eggs of ants, grasshoppers (similar to fried sunflower seeds, by the way) and hundreds of different kinds of tacos, of course. But all this magnificence is washed down by Mexicans most often with Coca-Cola: they occupy one of the first places in the world in its consumption. Well, a little about stereotypes: a burrito in Mexico City will have to search (this is a northern dish, rather even a tex-mex), fajitas are also not very popular and look like grilled long pieces of meat, a quesadilla does not necessarily contain cheese, but tequila is drunk in Mexico, licking salt from the wrist, only tourists.
In general, food service is sacred: Mexicans often go to expensive restaurants as well as to street cafes with three plastic tables: with friends, colleagues, parents, grandmothers and other relatives. To give birth to a child and in a week to go with the whole big Mexican family to the pizzeria is in the order of things. As well as the fact that in most establishments there will be changing tables (and in men's toilets too).
Mexicans
As in all of Latin America, there is a strong class division: there are many very poor, but also a lot of rich. And no, not all Mexicans dream of crossing the border in the United States to work illegally there as a maid or mechanic. Moreover, in general, the Americans in Mexico are treated not so much with ardent love, although, of course, the US influence here is felt in everything, especially in the language.
Mexicans, regardless of income in general, are very positive, friendly, like fun, parties and all sorts of spectacles. I remember once I got on a monologue-performance on the "Notes of a Madman" by Gogol. It was Monday evening, the theater was far from the metro, Gogol in Mexico is completely unknown. And while the hall was full of Mexicans! And it happens on almost any idea. “Yes, we are poor, but we know how to enjoy life. And why not rejoice - the sun is shining, girls are smiling, there is money for tacos. And we will not think about the bad,” the taxi driver once told me.
Education in Mexico is free, but everyone who has at least a little money is trying to send their children to private gardens or schools and be treated in private clinics. This, by the way, is quite expensive if you do not have insurance. But the basic insurance, which gives the right to minimal maintenance, but theoretically could be useful in emergency situations, was even given to us, foreigners with a residence permit. It took her getting forty minutes.
Far from everyone can afford higher education in Mexico, and it is valued much more than in Russia. Therefore, it is considered a sign of respect to add to the name of a person in a formal conversation, appeals like "licenciado" (licensed specialist), "maestro" or "ingeniero", for example.
The unemployment rate is quite high, and men often work in areas that are traditionally considered to be "female" in our country - for example, there are a lot of male hairdressers here. And in Mexico City there are millions of parking attendants, shoemakers, people who put your purchases in supermarkets. The workforce is quite cheap, so a much larger number of people than in Russia have cleaners, including live-in workers, babysitters, drivers. In good houses during construction they even provide rooms for them. Women often do not work, but, for example, during a divorce, local legislation is completely on their side, and a man will have to ensure his wife for as many years as they were married.
At first we planned to live in Mexico for a couple of years. But her husband extended the contract for another year, then another. All this time I have been writing for the Russian media, almost four years ago I gave birth to a child here and now I'm trying to get used to the fact that he prefers to speak with us in Spanish (thanks to the kindergarten). Sooner or later we will, of course, return to Moscow, but it seems I will miss Mexico a lot.
They say that Latin America can either be very fond of, or hate, but there are no people who have been here indifferent. I was lucky: as it turned out, this is absolutely my country, I like to live here. The main thing - do not be too nervous.
Photo: Morenovel - stock.adobe.com, NoraDoa - stock.adobe.com, William - stock.adobe.com
