south africa 2010, here we go!

germany 2006 was undoubtedly a huge success. it’s been a while since a world cup was held in a country with such a big crowd of football fans (italia 90? cuz i wouldn’t put the french in the same fan-league as the italians, the english, the spanish, etc.). that, together with the excellent infrastructure, reliable and efficient means of transportation (within the cities, within the country, and in and out of the country), having so many neighboring nations with big names in football and a great deal of supporters... all of that has contributed to the success of this world cup.

it’s not even over yet, but it is kinda over for my friends and me. mexico lost in the eighths against germany in a great display of good football. unfortunately, winning requires more than good football. it requires goals, and maxi rodríguez’s sublime goal in the overtime was definitely most welcome by the argentines. we never stopped cheering, though. the chants went on and on and we didn’t shut up even in the half-time. the italians, the swedes, the germans... they all sided with us and even learned some of our chants. it seems like the one they like the best was the one we sang when maradona came on the screen, ¡olé, olé, olé... diegooo... coca! cuz they did learn that one very well and chanted along every time they showed him on the big screen. i even lost my voice by the half-time and was really sore for the next three days. right after the game ended i wondered whether it had been worth it. only the gute spiels the people on the street said to us and the thought of having lost not with a stupid error or in penalties but with an unbelievable goal by argentina provided some consolation.

so, mexico lost and we all left germany yesterday. and even though the tournament is still on for another 10 days, it sort of feels like it’s over. (plus, there’s of course wimbledon to watch! :-) however, we have already begun planning our trip to south africa in 2010. that will be a perfect excuse to visit julita and joel! and so that we remember, or in case you ever go to a world cup, don’t forget to bring as much paraphernalia as you can fit in your luggage! the crazier the better! the most popular items were undoubtedly our sombreros and the wrestler masks. the flags are a classic and it was fun to wave them while running around the old city in hannover before the mexico-angola match. they were also very useful at night when we were still outside and it got a bit chilly (and it was definitely useful to héctor, who exchanged it for a swedish flag with a gorgeous swede!). and the green, white, and red paint were great! they got chicho a free beer after he painted some random guy’s face and they made me famous! (i now know that i became tv azteca’s sex symbol and was on all of their tv ads in which they announced the times of the games and persuaded the audience to support el tri. of course, showing me crazily cheering and yelling after one of mexico’s goals in their match against iran was definitely a good method of persuasion—i should get some money for that, no? jaja...)

i’m in salzburg now. just got here yesterday and i love this place already. for being the second touristic city in austria, it’s rather small (about 150,000 people). yet, the amount of cultural events it hosts is unparalleled. every day there’s some concert or opera or play or something. and although i didn’t see that many americans in germany, here it’s full of them. must be the world cup craze in germany, which probably most americans decided to avoid. i must say, though, i’m surprised that here in austria, it’s pretty big too. in the old city, just by the residenz and the dom, there’s a wm-arena—kind of like the fanfests they have in the world cup host cities in germany—with a huge screen and several stands selling beer, pretzels, sausages, and also world cup souvenirs (and i bought a half-liter glass of white wine for only 2.40!). i went there last night to watch the france-spain game and i met two mexicans there, ángel and carlos (lópez? he said he was jennifer’s brother...!), both from df. after the game, we walked around the old town and looked for a kebab place. we found a place, which looked open but was in fact closed. the owner was having some sort of party inside, with 4 or 5 friends and some turkish music. he apologized and gave us directions to go to another place that might be open. then carlos said, oh, but they told us kebab places are always open for mexicans! and the owner said, oh really? ok, come in! so we went inside and he fixed us something. the kebabs weren’t great but i still appreciated his nice gesture. we met a guy from texas, will, who is studying here in salzburg for about six months, and he recommended that i go to a town nearby called halstatt (or something like that). will try to go there on my way to vienna. the owner was super friendly and when we were inside he blasted some shakira and that song they always play in european bars and i don’t remember who sings it; the chorus goes ay, ay, ay, ay, ay, amor, ay, mi morena de mi corazón. who sings it?! the funniest thing, though, is that when we left, everybody said good-bye to us, super friendly. the owner was outside with his wife or girlfriend, and as we left, i shook his hand and said adiós. then i reached for the girlfriend’s hand but she wouldn’t shake hands with me and the situation got immediately super tense. the owner just shook my hand again, looked at me very seriously, and said again, adiós. and we left.

tomorrow i will take it easy. i will probably just go downtown and walk around, maybe go to mozart’s house, and then in the evening i am going to see the opera die hochzeit des figaro. i had to see a mozart opera here in salzburg... although my favorite is the magic flute and the papagena, papageno aria... but they are only showing that in july, after i’m gone...

fast tschüß!

that means almost good-bye. and i am not leaving, but my homies are. rahul leaves tomorrow for india, then we drive to munich, and in 3 more days, noel flies back to dc and héctor and noel go back to cologne to take their flight to the metropolis of mcallen, tx.

we've had a great time so far, though. the football craze is just too good. and mexicans are all over the place. literally. even when we arrived in bielefeld, right after we left hannover, and just to be close to halle (westfalen), where we were going to see the final of the gerry weber tennis tournament... well, there we thought we would not find one single mexican. but ooooh were we mistaken! it was packed. we are like cockroaches. and it's great!

yesterday in gelsenkirchen (another super small city, like 100,000 people), we went to the fanfest right after the portugal-mexico match, and all the locals kept saying that mexico's is by far the most numerous group, even more so than the portuguese or the poles!! who also played there. and they also say that our contingent is the most fun. that's good to know and i guess they like us a lot since every game we've been to, the germans are always rooting for mexico, they wear our jerseys and paint their faces in green, white, and red! and as we walk by stores or on the street, people come out or honk their horns and yell at us mexico! mexico! just too good.

the games have been just ridiculous. the match vs iran was probably the most fun because it was our first stadium experience and also because we won 3-1. and nürnberg was a fantastic place to host a game... it is rather small and mexicans were just everywhere. for the angola game we didn't have tickets. so we watch the game at the fanfest, and it was still super crowded, and a great atmosphere. a couple of people mentioned that 130,000 mexicans without tickets for the match arrived in hannover. i don't know if that's true but it definitely felt like it was! it was just unbelieveable. although the 0-0 vs angola was hard to swallow, even harder than our 1-2 loss to portugal in gelsenkirchen. mexico played a lot better in this last match against the portuguese, but we also made a lot of mistakes. we totally controlled the second half but bravo missed a penalty kick. what a moron. the worst was when he and the goalie came out after the game was over, to thank the crowd and cheer us up. everyone was booing them. after our 3-1 victory against iran, everybody went crazy and everybody stayed for at least another half hour after the match was over. not this time. although one hour later, everybody seemed to have forgotten the loss, and we all celebrated that we made it to the next round. or that we were in germany. or that there was lots and lots of beer and sausages. it didn't matter, everybody went nuts, mexican-packed trams literally jumped up and down all over the city, and random mexicans ran in the streets waving their flags.

our diet has consisted pretty much of kebabs and sausages. it's the cheapest option and it tastes great. in wuppertal, we had big-ass kebabs for 1.50€! and that was enough to fill you up. even in mexico, it's hard to find a place that sells an order of tacos for that much!

for the round of 16, we are playing argentina. despite the 6-0 loss that the serbs experienced against the argentines, there is a bizarre optimism amongst the mexicans. everybody keeps referring to the argentina-mexico semifinal in the confederations cup last year, when mexico almost beat the albicelestes, except they scored at the last minute to tie the game and then beat us in penalty kicks. it is possible, people say. doesn't sound as though they are lying. they want to believe it and they want to persuade themselves and others to believe it, to believe that the great team of la volpe can make it to the quarters.

now i'm off. we had some frankfurter specialty for lunch, grüne soße, some sort of green sauce made out of 7 green herbs and then served with eggs and potatoes, and i'm still a bit hungry. perhaps i'll get some (more!) ice cream!

tschüß!!

coming back

the truth is i keep coming back to grenoble and every time i amaze myself at how little i appreciated the french alps region. i just left my second hometown a little over an hour ago, changed trains in chambery and am now on my train to geneva to visit kristel. during the whole train journey the view from the train is dazzling. the picture here is one of the lakes on the way to geneva. and i’ve taken this train before a couple of times and i didn’t even remember there was a lake on the way there. funny.

my stay in france was spectacular. it was a combination of meeting again with my past, desiring things for my future, and getting a break from the present. one evening, madame masrobian came home for dinner. she has been moeke’s piano teacher for years now, taught francis too, and helped me once or twice in my piano entry contest at the conservatory. francis always said she was chiante (literally, shitting), and i often agreed, but she is incredibly nice and i was most surprised when i picked up the phone and she talked to me for like 15 minutes, asking how my life was, what i was doing, etc. monique invited her for dinner only because she kept asking about me and when she came over, she continued with her questions with the utmost interest and not in an irritating way. we even spoke about daniel berthez, a piano teacher that heard me play once when i was playing randomly in one of the classrooms at the conservatory. i was playing mozart’s rondo alla turca, and he interrupted me and yelled at me, “non! non! c’est comme ca” and showed me how it should be correctly played. when he learned who i was (some random mexican who always loved playing piano but never was able to afford proper lessons), he suggested i entered the contest and said he would help me a couple of times at no charge. and he helped me voluntarily and never charged me a dime. il a vendu son appart de cours beriat et il n’habite plus grenoble. and that’s the last news i heard from professeur berthez.
my visit also made me realize that i want to live in a city like grenoble: big but not huge, walkable, and pretty. a river (with water) is a plus. i’d like to be near places where i can go hiking and that has good weather. nonetheless, i keep talking about going back to monterrey. is it just the family thing? after almost 8 years in the states i’ve begun to miss my life there. i wouldn’t exactly call it “home sickness” although the symptoms are undeniably similar. but there’s more to it. it’s the realization that you’ve been going places incessantly for years, always restless, and the only real relationships you have are your family and a couple of friends here and there—and most often that not, there and not here. you can keep jumping from one place to another. you become an increasingly integrated member of this global society, a true world citizen. and then what? when does it stop? i’ve had enough of that.

but then i think my desire to go back is just a self-defeat in my struggle to become a better, more social, more educated, more complete, and successful person. but all of those things—save the success part—either i am already or i just can’t be, at least not as long as the restiveness goes on. success is a different animal where i live, relative to where i am from. in philadelphia, washington, new york, new haven, boston, there are just too many people like me. i feel like people in this american society i’ve lived are not people. they’re more like ants, all alike, all storing food for the winter, all in an inexorable rut that is both wearing and aimless. i don’t know exactly what i wnt, but i least i know that that i don’t want.

my train is approaching geneva. i don’t want to go without at least summarizing the things i’ve done and what still awaits me in my journey in europe. my activities in grenoble are reduced to very few things: pigging out (especially on cheese and chocolate! and of course, pains au chocolat and croissants aux amandes! mmmh), drinking wine every single dinner (yummy), swimming, playing with tilka and the tilkitos (you have to see the videos, i will upload them soon!!), and of course work on my last two papers for the spring semester. i’m now meeting kristel in geneva, will go to some music festival by the lake, then i’m leaving for stuttgart tomorrow, meet chicho, sebas, and hector there, then drive up to nuremberg to get ready for mexico’s first world cup match against iran!!!

i’m getting more excited about this whole world cup thing by the minute! too bad i didn’t get to see the first match (in fact, it’s happening right now). at least i got to see federer in the semifinal at roland garros.

and as i cross the french-swiss border, i’m wearing my swiss flag t-shirt. will be cheering for you at the final, roger! go kill’em!

goooooooooooooooooool!!

it's our third day in germany and too many things have happened. to begin with, our debut at the world cup was marked by a clear victory over iran in nürnberg! the town was p-a-c-k-e-d with mexicans... and the feeling from hearing the crowd chanting cielito lindo in the altstadt was simply sublime. every bar, every restaurant, every corner in the streets was full of us!! and the germans walking by us and standing on their balconies, they all yelled at us viva la mexicooo!! and wore the characteristic green jersey!! and i almost felt sorry for the iranis being so few. they were sooo nice, though. some wanted pictures with us. some wished us luck. after their defeat, some even said to us, good game, cheers, which i doubt any mexican would have done had we lost... so, yeah, we are bad losers. but at least it didn't show this time...!!

sooo much fun!

yesterday we arrived in berlin and the city is going bananas with the brasil-croatia match tonight. and even though mexico is not playing, we still feel the love from our fellow germans... and croatians... and costa ricans... and brazilians. even yesterday, when none of us was wearing a mexico jersey but noel was wearing his santos one, people would still shout viva la mexico! and cheer us up...

so off we go now, to eat some good kebabs and visit the famous alexanderplatz before we head off to the fifa fan fest by the branderburg gate to watch brasil and croatia battle to death for the first place in their group.

ooooooh!! and i was on tv!! my cousin saw me, my face all painted green, white, and red and yelling mexico! mexico! jajaja i'm famous, i'm famous!!!

vive la france (et le vin! et le fromage!)

i am a bit worried that i have become an alcoholic. when this thought troubles me, i reassure myself—like those chimneys who content themselves after declaring they are only “social smokers”—by stating that i am only a “travel alcoholic.” or more specifically, a “france-travel alcoholic.” at home, i usually drink one or two glasses of wine every one or two weeks during dinner, and perhaps a couple of glasses of scotch during the weekend at a party or when hanging out with friends. here, my dinners and parties seem to start at noon and extended way into the evening. there’s been wine at every single dinner i’ve had since my arrival and it’s just too good. during lunch, i’ve also had a bit of wine, although not every day. it’s amazing how it brings out the flavor of all sorts of dishes... and it helps when you are surrounded by experts who know how to pair up appetizers, entrees, and desserts with the right wine.

today, annick and mika invited annick’s parents, monique and gerard, for lunch. i can’t even remember all the stuff we ate, but we had 4 or 5 courses with 3 different wines—one white, one rose, one red—and it was just fantastic. mika bought a piece of beaufort and a saint-marcelin cheese that were just ridiculously good. it just made me sad to think how bad is all that “good” cheese i buy in the states when i want to get fancy. and, of course, since today is sunday, there’s always bread and pastries straight from the near-by patisserie for breakfast and steak et frites (belgian style!!) for dinner. of course, i had my one pain au chocolat and my croissant aux amandes, my two favorite pastries, for breakfast. not including the pieces of baguette i had, one with fig, the other one with cherry marmelade (no wine, though!). then for dinner we had pieces of duck, chicken, and beef steak, together with belgian-style fries, cooked broccoli topped with melted (and slightly burned, mmmh!) cheese, and carrots. strange mix but delicious. all with wine. aaaagh!

and every day’s been like this (do you pity me?). thank God i have little money and i won’t be eating like this in germany. otherwise, not even all the slim-fast in the world will be make my pants fit ever again.

the rise of india

for the past four years of my life i've been surrounded my indians. once and again i've had the conversation on the multiple similarities between mexicans and indians, from the food to the way we interact. one particular example that i find very funny is the way we do things together—even if it results in a quite inefficient use of our time. perro gave it a name the other day—what was it?—when acho, he and i were walking back home and he suggested that we enter our building through the back door, just to accompany him for another 15 meters as he walked to his place. that’s it, he just wanted us to walk with him for another 10 seconds just to stick together the longest time possible. quite ridiculous when i think about it in retrospect. but then i remembered the time when a bunch of us (paula, sabrina, ana gabriela, ignacio, ... all latin americans) and sofia (moroccan) were running errands around penn as we were walking back towards our dorm. one had to stop by the library, another one had to pick up a check, and so on... and we all walked together and stuck together. sofia said she had noticed this several times, “it must be the most inefficient way of running errands, although it is also the most fun.”

so for a while i’ve been surrounded by indians and i’ve talked about visiting india but other places have been in my priority list of travel destinations. yes, it is true that india has been continuously rising in the charts. friedman’s claims that “the world is flat” and all those articles in the economist, businessweek, and the new york times have not gone unnoticed. and, of course, those endless conversations with true and fake indians have also had their marketing effect on me. still, a trip to the balkans, northern africa, or the far east would clearly be my preferred option had i the time and money to go.

until today. not that india has become my top travel destination with certainty, but it is now close in the competition for that hot spot. i am now at stansted airport waiting for my flight to lyon. i just took my first air india flight from new york to london and my indian friends had warned me that it would be a great introduction to “naco” india. that some indian baby would be crying next to me while an old man farted on the other contiguous seat. that the entire plane would smell like cardamom, clove and cumin even before an old air hostess stopped by my seat only to splatter some nasty curry on my tray. on the contrary, i got an emergency exit seat (window, thank you), the two seats next to mine were empty, the reclining degree of the seats was better than in most u.s. airlines i’ve flown, the hostess was super nice, and the food (indeed, curry) was quite decent. i even got a drink before takeoff and tea at least three times later on. the plane was not too crowded and a lot of the people aboard were non-indians.

still, it was the first time i saw that many indians together and several things caught my eye. for instance, the saris and red dots worn by, not only the female passengers, but the hostesses. i don’t even know if these are worn due to comfort, tradition, or some unknown religious meaning. the submissiveness of most indian women was also remarkable. most notable, though, was perhaps the physicial contact amongst men. i am in general very physical with my friends, both male and female, but to me the way one man laid his hand on another’s or how another man, during an entire conversation, talked close to his friend’s ear while hugging him with one hand was invasive and disturbing. the disturbing part is not even the seemingly gay thing but rather the intrusive aspect of it, how they invaded each other’s space and seemed to hold their conversation in such an uncomfortable position. granted, if such closeness is what implicitly reveals trust and intimacy between them, no other non-pda-type position would. on the other hand, it is also interesting that i didn’t see such proximity between two women or between a man and a woman, even married couples.

and none of these or the other things i noticed on the plane were actually new to me. i had heard about them before, i had seen them before, i had even discussed them with my friends before. but only now, when i saw all of them at once, when i was sitting there by myself and did nothing else but see and reflect on these differences, did i realize that i want to discover the subcontinent by myself, that i don’t want to read or hear about what guju food tastes like or about narrow lanes with honking cars that have no side mirrors or about urban street-crossing elephants. i want to see, hear, smell, and taste all these things by myself.

the india trip is being planned for 2007. in the meantime, i will have to make do with perro’s stories of the average indian who owns three cars and doesn’t pray. let’s pray that these stories are gone by next year or, at least, that i’ll be able to contest them with some stories of my own.