Mexico City
Follow-up to From Heinrich Heine´s 'Vitzliputzli' from The Midnight Heart
We arrived in D.F. yesterday for the journey home. Straight away a taxi driver tried to con us. The taxis in Mexico City are very dangerous, at least for gringos anyway. He made us pay an extra three hundred pesos for the journey and we had to pay him or he would have dumped on the side of the road. All the time he continued to smile as though nothing was wrong. I began to feel very negative about Mexico, or at least about Mexico City. That is until the next morning we walked out onto the zocalo which was a cacophany of different sounds. A piano recital of Rhapsody in Blue was in one corner, while in another there were bouncy castles and a fayre for children. In another corner, Mexicans were protesting about the 'murder' of a politician who was involved in preventing the drug trade. In another corner, huge pictures of Communist Russian thinkers and leaders were hung.
Marc
Mexico city is pretty safe. You just need to hire one of the pre-paid taxis from the taxi stand. Hailing a taxi in Mexico is never a good idea. The METRO is also pretty darned safe between 9 am -8 pm.
I wonder why they had Stalin in the poster? I understand the philosophers Marx and Engles, and even Lenin, but Stalin has been totally discredited.
23 Dec 2005, 18:30
Yes well we heard that the taxis were dodgy so we did pre-pay but once we were driving off down the road, the driver extorted us for triple the price with the threat of dumping us on the side of the road in a dodgy neighbourhood. And yes, it's funny that you say that about Stalin. Everyone who has seen this picture has said, 'Why is Stalin there?' I guess that Mexico City is a long way from Russia and the painful events that happened there must seem pretty distant. I guess that I took a picture of the square that day, because I was shocked by the spectacle of it.
30 Dec 2005, 13:22
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