Talk thirty four.
Mexico City, 26th February
- I am very happy to be here. This is my second stay in this fascinating city. I hope you’ll get impressed you, too. And you'll find fascinating Ciudad de México or if you prefer Mexico City, despite multiple opinions of the capita which aren’t always positive.
- I don’t take them into account. I go by what I see and do here myself, watching and experiencing. As of now, I see a huge metropolis that at no time is more dangerous for tourists than any other big city in the world.
- The number of police officers and security guards is quite depressing and slightly frightening. Sometimes I had the impression that in the capital a state of emergency was imposed.
- Let it be a state of emergency, if it ensures the safety of the local community.
- Where is the democracy here?
- Is it possible to talk about democracy in Mexico? In the country of such powerful social differences? We can see here great wealth and extreme poverty.
- In the streets of the capital, at least in the centre, it is not so conspicuous. Mexico City has about 28 million inhabitants. For Europeans it’s unimaginable!
- Mexico seems a tourist friendly city. Metro works fine. Tourist information as well. Policemen and policewomen are willing to help a lost tourist. In the center there is a lot of automatic points summoning police in an emergency. But the distances in the city! Those are really tiring!
- And the permanently jammed streets. Fortunately, we mainly use public transport. Or sometimes we use our friends to give us rides.
- Do you want to talk about the friends? Do you want to find out something?
- Have you got anything to hide? Is there anything I don’t know?
- Go ahead. Ask.
- I put off the questions until the end of our stay in Mexico. Something else might happen.
- Let’s enjoy the city and all we can see here.
- Is your cold over after the therapy at the Zócalo[5] square – the main city square - during the great festival on the occasion of the Mexican Flag Day? A group of Indians with huge feathered head-dresses used some mysterious smoking herbs to get people waiting in a long queue, incensed. You didn’t look particularly happy.
- Somehow I didn’t die of it!
- We also survived participating in a Mass in the New Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe[6] which can accommodate as many as twenty thousand believers, and where Pope John Paul II frequently celebrated Masses. He is worshiped here as well as in Poland. And maybe even more. The number of monuments of his in the whole country shows it.
- The church next door, a very old one is the Old Basilica which was partially destroyed during the earthquake.
- The new Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe is currently the largest Marian shrine in the world. Twelve million pilgrims come to Mexico annually. For comparison, the next largest pilgrimage sanctuaries are Lourdes with 6 million, Fátima with 5 million, and Jasna Góra with 4 million pilgrims each year.
- From churches I prefer attractions offered by the city. Those which are not only for tourists. In a beautiful park next to the Museum of Anthropology, we could watch an Indian performance – the dance of the "Voladores"[7].
- In the Chapultepec park, each Sunday you can watch the „voladores” ("flying men"), a pre-Colombian, Mexican religious rite of the Totonaca tribe who live around the Papantla town by the Mexican Gulf. Five men in their best folk suits climb up a thirty-metre pole, one of them is at the top playing in the drum and flute, while the other four, with ropes tied to the ankles throw down, spreading wider and wider with a slow speed. There are exactly thirteen rotations, which multiplied by four dancers give fifty two, the number of years in a traditional "century" in the pre-Colombian calendar. In 2009, the ritual was listed by UNESCO as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
- We learned in the Museum of Anthropology that the so-called The Mayan Calendar[8] is the Rock of the Sun, and the true role of this finding is not known.
- An interesting fact: The theses that the end of our civilization is to come on 21 December 2012, remains under a question by the discovery, which was made at the end of last year by Andreas Fuls. It is clear from the Dresden Codex that the world will end 208 years later, in 2220 years, though.
- Are you afraid of the end of the world? Do you believe in this?
- I my bad with all beliefs. I do not believe in anything. Sorry, correction. I believe in humans. Only with the large H. So far, I believe in you.
-So far?
- How was it? Do not praise the day before sunset.
- There mustn’t be any sunset in our relationship!
- I remember such an declaration of yours in Mainz, where you kept me company at a foreign languages conference.
- Remind me what was that I said?
- It was in May 2001, I caught an awful flue and you had to take care of me. You took a very good care of me. One day you saw a young man pushing in the street a wheel-chair with an elderly man. Apparently after a stroke…
- Now I remember. They looked like a gay couple.
- You said you were prepared for such a situation.
- I must’ve expressed that in a nicer way, though.
- It was important what you had in mind. And your preparation was a result of your taking care of your father’s sister who had muscle atrophy.
- After returning from Sweden, we went back to our activities. I worked and studied part-time, and you kept running your PROGRESS with Alek and the rest of the company.
- Have I heard some jealousy in your voice?
- Even today, I am jealous of that friendship, because I know how much THEY meant for you. I never understood and did not accept their behaviour a few months later, after my arrival to Szczecin for good.
- It was sad that we all failed in finding a remedy for the rapid negative changes coming up in our relationships.
[1] Zocalo
[2] Mexico Guadelupe
[3] Voladores Mexico
[4] Aztec Calendar Stone
[5] Zocalo, Mexico
[6] Mexico Guadelupe
[7] Voladores Mexico
[8] Aztec Calendar Stone
