Brief: My take on the risk of another food crisis

Chapingo: A Local Outing

This week, a CIMMYT outing took us to Chapingo, the campus of Mexico's major agricultural university, 20 minutes from the CIMMYT campus. It is housed in a lovely hacienda, complete with grand inner courtyard. Not only can you visit the Diego Rivera-decorated ex-chapel - surely the only chapel worldwide to feature communist symbols - but also the newly renovated Agricultural Museum, which combines exhibits of ancient farmers' implements with contemporary artists' interpretations of pottery/ceramic arts, which depict rural scenes.

There is something intriguingly naive about Mexican Art. The colors, the shapes, the subjects ... there is much humour, a comics dimension, often a political or social meaning - you know, art with a message, with a socialist state flavor sometimes. The Rivera (ex)chapel amazes with its references to the Sixtine Chapel and Renaissancy symbolism of fertility, translated into easily readable, beautiful coloured wall sections. Very nice buttocks, too, as the male among females on the outer wall attests to.

As a digestif, do enjoy the Mexican take on recycling.

Mixed Mexican Bag (Fin de semanas)

Sunday two weeks ago, I agonized, anticipated and then celebrated the Spanish EUFA win in a restaurant, majority-occcupied by Spanish supporters, on Plaza de Madrid, in Mexico City (naturally, I was on the Italian side; they did a shitty job!). It wasn't a huge crowd, given how many Spaniards live in this city, though a joyous one!

That same weekend, my German neighbour Alexandra brought me to the Mercado San Juan, close to the Centro Historico. After enjoying an excellent cappuccino, we strolled the stalls, whose owners are highly adept at the traditional "try this, so fabulous; try that" routine, slicing and cutting up fruit etc. etc., so that, fool that I am, I bought! You can also enjoy a freshly made baguette sandwich with a plastic cup of wine there (we did, of course).

Last weekend, I finally made it to the Franz Mayer. The Franz Mayer? you'd ask. It is the museal legacy of a German immigrant from Mannheim, who settled in Mexico City in the mid-19th century, obviously had a fable for the arts decoratifs, made quite some money (finance) and spent it on building a collection, to be revered to this day. The museum space is lovely, a bit of a mixed bag collection, though with extraordinary exhibits, which you can then digest, sitting in a gorgeous courtyard, with your cup of tea of coffee. The current special exhibit focuses on the depiction of theVirtues and Vices/Sins, in the New World. Somehow so topical .... . Contemporary ceramics were exhibited on the first floor of the inner courtyard, which some striking pieces to enjoy! (The ceramic TV sets did it for me!).

Thanks to some friends from work I also enjoyed the first pop (as opposed to classical) concert in D.F.! The women (mostly) singing along with Carla Morrison, the folksy tunes so well arranged, t'was most touching to see. She's a passionate and a little chubby young woman, who moves and dances in a most wonderfully natural and engaging manner on the stage. No chi chi, no bla bla, just lot's of 'the man I love', 'the pain of having boyfriends'-type songs (or so I thought, my Spanish being what it is - I missed a lot - she's also passionate about changing her country!).

You may note I write ofweekends. As I have joined the 9-5 crowd, add an hour or two and having become a commuter, during the week there's nothing I'd rather do than 'chill'; Jan will appreciate that, being in the same boat in Hamburg, when I wasn't ... . 

This weekend, I had an errand to perform: Buy perfumes from a small stall in the city's main cathedral for Judith in Marseille. So I took the Metrobus 1, got off at Revolucion, stumbled on an open-air concert in a pretty square, hopped on Metrobus 4 to somewhere near the Main Square, finally got there, did my stuff and walked around the centro historico a little more. The Farmacia de Paris I'd seen before. This time I walked in. I was NOT alone! This is surely the most amazing pharmacy-cosmetics-household cleaning needs shopping experience to be had! I took the one photo of the cash register lights, but no more, as it is company policy not to allow photos being taken. Moving on, the Calle Regina is a very handsome pedestrian zone, along which stands a church, which, by its exterior walls, truly hides what it holds in store inside. In fact, this is very much a Mexican, and probably Spanish thing, this rather bland-facade-not-giving-you-a-clue-what's-behind type of architecture. Italians have balanced it a little better, the outside-inside relationship and were much better city planners besides. Be that as it may, as the only visitor to the church I was left alone with my flabbergastedness.

Last but certainly (1) not least, I came across a facade - a completely grotesque facade - full of grotesques! The Auricular kind (shell- or metallic-type forms), which was surely passed on from Holland, then Habsburg-Spanish, to the Spanish New World! What a feast this facade is, over-saturated with arty fats. Let's see what the next weekends will have in store?

Mexico City's (Hidden) Treasures

An airline magazine article featured 5 quiet green spots in the city. Fortunately, the article did not include the secret garden in San Angel, so it can stay a bit of a secret. Over time, I've visited 4 of them. A pretty one is Plaza Gomez Feria, situated in a village neighborhood, whose street names refer to well-known painters. You'd never know you were in 25Mil Mexico City.

Next door is the Mixcoac quarter, which features a handsome church, which I failed to find. To compensate, I came across one of the many verdant courtyards behind high walls, in which some D.F. people are privileged to live. Wouldn't I like to have that key ...

A recurring pleasure in this city is to discover architectural details - of just about any period in the 19th and 20th century -which make you marvel, or smile. How about this 70's (?) letter box-cum-apartment bell/intercom system? So often, my eyes catch some such little treasure, but I don't capture it on camera.

Summer rain in Mexico

The most exciting thing on my routine commuter trip to Texcoco / CIMMYT - apart from being able to see Popo, the volcano, fuming - is the railroad crossing near the airport.  Once in a while, a very, very long cargo train moves slowly across the completely unprotected crossing, whilst the cars left, right, and center get ready to storm across first once the last cargo wagon has passed. 

As I write, a thunderstorm leaves its mark on Mexico City. T'is the rainy saison in Mexico, so a trip to Guarnevaca, the city of eternal spring, was a wet one. A friend of mine and I dropped into the local hacienda restaurant, enjoyed a Sunday pre-lunch drink whilst sitting under an awning, watching the rain wet the garden (and the peacocks). After a good half hour, we were taken to our table across the garden (under those parasols over there) and digested a very good lunch. Guernavaca is nothing to write home about, it's a pretty ugly city, nonetheless surrounded by beautiful hilly countryside, lying in an expansive valley, which you drive down from in serpentine fashion, coming from Mexico City. The pass between the two cities lies 3100 meters high.

Traffic, traffic, traffic, that's Mexico City, if you want to get around. If you stay in Condesa (where I live), no traffic to speak of (but the Thu-Fri-Sat bridge and tunnel crowd driving in to have some fun, blocking the avenues, as they have their cars valet-parked; I've yet to understand where all those cars are placed; somehow, the valets manage. Virtually every bar (!) has valet-parking). But if you want to go some other part of the city - generally there's a bit or a lot of traffic any day of the week. If 500,000 of the 25 million inhabitants want to move, I suppose that's enough to jam the roads a little. 

There you have it, endless clouds hovering over the endless city. Life goes on. The street sellers sell, the commuters hop into small buses at every corner, the metro runs (I've never yet hopped onto it) and the cars jamboree.