Back in the snow

After an 18-hour busride from Oaxaca to Mexico City followed by a couple of hours on the plane I made it back to New York. On the plane I sat next to a tall, cute, boyish-looking blond who, after five minutes of conversation, told me all about how his girlfriend broke up with him over the phone that morning. We got to chat pleasantly up to the point when he explained to me that eating meat is, in his mind, is equivalent to keeping slaves. He became a vegan a couple of years ago almost as an act of rebellion against his lacto-huevo vegetarian upbringing...Strange, he was such a sweet boy otherwise.

Back here it is cold and icy and today my "boss" (the moronic one) came into my office and rambled on for about half an hour about the stellar, ten-year human rights carreer of the man who got "my" job, which I, naturally, did not much care to hear about in such detail. He did not disappoint; I guess it would have been surprising if he had been able to just say thanks for all your work, you are pretty good, but we wanted someone with lots of experience (who also happens to be a friend of one of the big boss's best friends at the office). Anyway, I accepted one of the law firm jobs and they are just "thrilled" to have me. At least someone is...

Beach & Other

My last two days at the beach were wonderful. I even went on a snorkeling trip to the neighboring beaches. We were promised some sea turtles and dolphins; hordes of dolphins appeared only inches from our boat, but no turtles this time. I guess that is some kind of an unspoken rule - you cannot see everything at once.

Some of my fellow passengers on this trip was a strange trio: a butcher from Florida, who has been at the beach for a month now and decided not to go back to his butcher shop and take an early retirement instead; a dodgy-looking sixty-something American from Virginia who - I am convinced - is probaly wanted in the US and is hiding out in Zipolite (the beach town); and a French woman, who could have been anywehere between 35 and 50, lives in New York and claims to be a special events organizer, which only surprises me because she had few teeth and seemed to be having a serious alcohol problem. That, actually, was a problem all three had in common. On the trip we got to see lots of colorful fish and even jump off of a 4-meter rock (scary), but afterwards the freaky trio invited me and an English guy (he had the longest eyelashes I have ever seen on an adult and resembled the actor Billy Zane in a lighter version) to have a few beers with them. We could not keep up either with the drinking habit or with the drug habit or with the conversation so Billy-lookalike and I escaped and hung out for the rest of the time in the comfortable knowledge that we would never end up the way these people did...

On the other end of the spectrum were a lot of seed-eating, new agey, yoga maniacs on this beach. (I had no contact with them, but I saw them doing their sun salutations every night at sunset on the beach) and .... the nudists. I did not know that this was a nudist place, but the first morning, as I walked out from my cabana to the beach to watch the sunrise (yes!), the first thing I saw was a middle-aged white (German?) guy with a leathery skin, his balls hanging for all to see. I guess that was the first hint and later I got to see many more of these. When I was little, my parents (and especially my French parents) used to take us to these nudist beaches and I hated them. By now I am more tolerant, but the only time I was wiling to fully denude myself for a bit of skinny-dipping in the wavy and ominous ocean was two nights ago, under the moon and the stars, upon the invitation of a cute 21-year-old New Zealander. The boy assured me that I need not worry, he was used to hanging out with "older people" because he had shared an apartment with 24-25-year-olds, no less.

I am now on my way back. Tonight a long bus ride awaits to Mexico City. Tomorrow - back to the cold and the snow, which I have a hard time imagining as I am sitting here by a fan boiling up in the heat.

Accident

I spent about 8 hours on a long distance bus yesterday from Oaxaca on a quest for a bit of beach-time. I accidentally got off at the wrong stop and thus ended up at one of the best tropical beaches I have been to. It is much like some of the Brazilian places I got to see last year, only less crowded and more "laid back" (a word I hate when used to describe people, but it is accurate in this case). A tall, geeky Mexican engineer guy convinced me that I should come here and I am certainly not regretting it. I am staying in a very ecological cabin right on the beach and nothing bothers me, except for the mosquitoes and the Mexican engineer -  both of which are quite difficult to hide from.

My last two days in Oaxaca were equally entertaining. I spent them with my new American friends: Charlie, a slightly chubby, very blonde and quite pretty, loud 25-year-old, who does everything from construction work for her father in Michigan and photographing weddings to waitressing in Yosemite in the summer and (mostly) traveling around Mexico and Central America; Cheryl, a cute brunette, who escaped her Seventh Day Adventist family and upbringing in Idaho when she was 16; and Chris, her husband, who grew up everywhere from Dubai to South Korea thanks to his international school teacher parents and who now works as a firefighter for the Federal Forest Services in Oregon, where he lives with Cheryl. They turned out to be excellent company. We went to Monte Alban together, to see the major Zapotec ruins and also to some weaving villages around Oaxaca, which were serene and had beautiful handicrafts (including a carpet that I now have to shlep back to New York). This is why traveling alone is so fun. These people were up for dinners and drinks and by the last night, the girls and I bonded over a couple of margaritas over the inexhaustible topics of relationships and family.

Oh, and I think that I am now absolved of putting the crazy little thieving Japanese girl in the hands of the Brazilian police last year. One morning in Oaxaca, as I was sitting on the main square enjoying the sun, a fifty-ish, aging hippie type American man with a dog, accompanied by two tourist policemen and one policewoman came up to me asking if I could translate. The police was ready to take him to the station because his dog had just crapped on the newly planted Christmas flowers that were surrounding the beautifully renovated main square. The police were arguing that it would be wrong not to take him away because then people would say that they were not doing their job. I convinced them not to do that, translating as Steve (the dog owner) was pleading with them and swearing on his mother's grave that it would never happen again. So one in and one out. Granted, the Mexican tourist police are not nearly as scary as the Brazilian ones...Still, I am now at peace with myself.

Oaxaca

I arrived to Oaxaca yesterday and got food poisoning or some such thing right away, so I spent my first night in the bathroom. It is a very nice bathroom with ornate tiling an all, but I would rather have spent the night in bed.

The firm outing to the pyramids was a great way to get to know some "real" Mexicans. Jorge's colleagues (mostly women) were so nice to me and they all explained how great a boss my cousin is. I met his 27-year-old wife (they are technically not married, but in Mexico if you live with someone for over a year then you are automatically considered as married), and his adorable one-year-old baby daughter. The wife, a pretty, light-skinned Mexican girl with braces was a little standoffish; she just may not be as chatty as some of the other women. The guide to the pyramids was very informative and we had a really nice lunch at a fancy-ish Club Med hotel nearby. Jorge and his family left early, but I stayed on with the colleagues and one of the women's 24-year-old daughter, Carla, offered to take me out on the town.

Saturday night in Mexico City is pretty lively. Carla, who looks like a very cute little hamster, came to get me by car accompanied by her tiny, geeky-looking boyfriend and the boyfriend's somewhat taller and cooler 18-year-old brother. The whole latin friendliness thing is true; they were so sweet, welcoming and interested - I am always surprised that people are so nice to me. We went to a sort of upper-class bar in an upper-class neighborhood, where they played everything from techno to Luis Miguel (the South-American Robbie Williams, according to Carla, but I would describe him more as a cross between Julio Iglesias and Ricky Martin) and, of course, the obligatory "I will survive." The little boys were corteous and gallant and pretty good dancers too. We stayed out until 4 in the morning and by the end of the night they were convinced that I must have a lot of "admiradores" because of the 10 guys who were above 5'9 three or four attempted to, let's say, court me.

I spent the whole day on the bus yesterday and when I got here I went out to the very lively and intimate main square, where I refused a couple of septuagenerians' offer to have coffee with them and accepted a couple of young Midwesterners' offer to have Margaritas with them. Now I have to go and find them, because we agreed to meet up this morning, but I just could not stand up, on account of my stomach problems. Hoping to get better today though.

Family

I am at my cousin's office right now; it is a firm called Rockitcargo and I am going to their Christmas outing tomorrow, which happens to be to Teotihuacan, the largest and oldest pyramid near Mexico City. Their offices are on Platon street, the same street where my hotel is. This whole neighborhood feels like a trip back to ancient Greece and Rome and European literature. When I get off at the closest subway stop (which I did yesterday for the first time because everyone says taxis should be avoided), I have to make sure to walk towards Horatio and not Temistocles. Then I pass Seneca, Edgar Allan Poe and Oscar Wilde and by the time I get to Juan Batista Moliere (sic!) I know that my cave is not far.

Jorge and I spent the last couple of hours trying to figure out our family history; I am much better versed than him, but he had all sorts of old passports and birth certificates in Hungarian, which I translated to him. His grandparents left Hungary in 1947 on a special emigration passport, which was valid for Europe (except Spain and Turkey, God only knows why) and Uruguay. They chose Uruguay and made it there via Switzerland and France, boarded a ship in Marseille and ended up in Uruguay only to move over to Argentina a couple of months later. There are still lots of blind spots on the family tree though, so I am planning on doing more research to get to the bottom of things. What especially intrigues me is this mysterious family conflilct, which I am convinced existed...if I can't find out the real story then I might just make up one. Watch this space.

As for Mexico City, I sometimes feel like a movie star. Yesterday on the tour bus I was the lone passenger sitting on the top floor of the double-decker and people kept waiving at me like I was some kind of celebrity. I enjoyed it until the cold wind turned me into an ice sculpture (I stupidly over-estimated the warmth of the weather) and a couple of tree branches hit me such that I almost lost my new sunglasses. Today, at the exceptionally well laid out Museo de Antropologia hordes of little children kept taking pictures of me instead of focusing on the story of their ancestors: the Mexicas (Aztecs), the Mayas and the rest of them. I got a little overdosed on the native culture, but one of the Oaxaca tribes made amazingly beautiful gold and jade jewelry and exquisite pottery so I take that with me. I also saw Diego Rivera's murals of the history of Mexico and the projected victory of the proletariat and walking around in my neighborhood (the equivalent of Ipanema in Rio) I got confirmation that there are a lot of filty rich Mexicans. Someone has to be shopping at Max Mara and Versace after all. At least, I don't stand out as much over here. The city center is a whole different world; it reminded me of La Paz, only in a better-kept version.

Oh, and by the way. I got word. No human rights job for me. I expected it, I guess, but it still sucks. No matter. At least I don't have to feel guilty about going for the money.

Mexico

On an impulse, I decided to come to Mexico 2 days ago. Thanksgiving and the looming prospect of working 80-hour-weeks at a law firm for a lot of money prompted the decision...and also the inefficiency and rudeness of the human rights people who do not seem to want to make a decision. Now I got two offer letters from the two law firms that interviewed me (a 150k and a 170k offer) and I must admit that the money is very tempting. I would, without hesitation, take the 50k human rights job, if offered. But I am not banking on that (no pun intended).

So now I am in Mexico City. Internet cafes are not as omnipresent as they were in Brazil or Bolivia, but I found one. I flew in last night from New York, via Houston. My long lost relative, Jorge K, came to get me at the airport. He first found me on the internet about 10 years ago and we had been in touch on and off, but I was surprised at how helpful and enthusiastic he was when I gave him about 2 minutes' notice of my arrival. When I walked into the airport pub where we agreed to meet, I recognized him instantly. He is like an older, thinner, bearded version of my brother: he has similar blue eyes and features that all the men (including my father, grandfather and great-grandfather) in my family share. It was kind of eerie. He is a pretty distant relative, my grandfather and his grandfather were cousins. He is Argentinian, 43 years old, just had a baby with his third wife and owns a company that moves equipment around the world for rock concerts and other cultural events. He smokes but doesn't seem to drink. He is handsome and easy to talk to and totally clueless about his Hungarian-Jewish origins because his grandfather, who left Hungary in 1944 with his wife and his brother for Uruguay and then Argentina, refused to talk about anything related to his former life in Hungary. Oddly, my third-cousin, Jorge, is a Hungarian citizen. He asked for it and received it without any problem in 1992 - it made his life easier when he had to travel around Europe for work. He has never been to Hungary. When his grandfather found out about it, he refused to speak to him for 6 months.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, memories of being a Jew in nazi-occupied and Hungarian nazi-run Budapest are, to say the least, unforgettable and the perpetrators unforgivable. Most of my relatives (not including my grandmother) who lived through that era are not comfortable talking about it, as if it was something embarrassing to them. I can sort of understand that; I recently read the - very honest and informative - memoirs of 70-something Hungarian jewish man and that helped me understand even better. And, though many of them have lived outside of Hungary much of their lives - none of these relatives or acquaintances have a passionate hatred of or resentment against their birth-country or Hungarians. That makes me think that something else might have happened that made Oscar K (Jorge's grandfather) act the way he acted. I guess we will never find out, the old man died a couple of years ago at the age of 92 or so.

Jorge booked me into a very nice apartment-hotel and today I made my first new friends at the Aztec ruins in the old center of Mexico: a pair of Hungarian women one of whom is engaged to a Mexican and has been living here for a couple of months. I overheard them talking in Hungarian at the museum and though I usually run in the other direction when that happens, this time I - rightly - judged them to be intelligent and friendly based on their brief conversation and looks so I hung out with them all day.