Mexico City DF

To begin with, I must say that Mexico City Districo Federal was oh so good for my ego. I was the centre of attention in a way I had never imagined before.
On the street corners the cops would stop whatever it was they were doing and look, not stare, but absorb the sight before their eyes, almost every third person I walked by on the street would have this amazed look on their face and it would make me feel so good, so alive, so amazing.

Now that the moment of vanity is over, let me tell you a little bit about Mexico City DF.

As we were landing in the city, I could see that this was a place of many, many people, later to find that a whopping 22 million people currently called this place home. From the air, the ant-sized city seemed over crowded, busy and highly concentrated. This didn’t bother me at all, as I thought I knew business, I thought I knew over crowded and overpopulated, but oh my, DF definitely showed me that I knew nothing. I thought Johannesburg had crazy traffic, oh no, no young one, Johannesburg traffic is nothing compared to DF. Peak traffic started at about 15: 30 and ended around 19:30. Coming from the airport at about 19:00 was absolutely manic. Thankfully we were in a big vehicle, where we felt we could trample all over the other little cars if they didn’t get out of the way. (from this you can tell I’m a terrible driver)

DF is about 7200 feet above sea level; therefore the air is extremely dry. When I was told about this big number I didn’t care much because that didn’t mean much to me, until of course I experienced what thin dry air means. My eyes were watering and red for most of the time, my sinuses started playing a game of ‘I hate Akona’ which I’m pretty sure was a lot of fun. My lungs felt like they were going to disintegrate into nothingness and leave me dead, but I’ve come to realize that I’m a rock star. After about three or four days of excruciating pain, I came out of it well and truly appreciating the organs that I have been given as super accessories for my body.

We lived in an area called Districto Historico, very cool, ancient, full of um, history, strange artistic beauty and some entertaining traditional mariachi here and there. A couple of big and beautiful churches, some art galleries, some stalls just off the street where I bought some great earrings – did I tell you how much I love earrings?

When I arrived in DF I discovered that the airline had lost my luggage, oh my what a disaster. I’ve lost luggage only once before, and only for a few hours. It was a domestic flight and the airline was able to return my very valuable and priceless items on the same day. This time it was a long and international flight from Buenos Aires to Mexico City, instead of my clothes and other very important things coming with me, they took a little holiday from their seemingly demanding master and ended up in Sao Paulo, that’s a step ahead from me because that is where I was supposed to go after DF.

So, for the four days that I was without my precious belongings, I had to shop. I don’t mind shopping, but it’s not one of my favorite things to do. Shopping for toiletries wasn’t too bad; the worst part came when I had to find clothing. Oh dear…

As a woman with curves in all the right places, it seemed that my curves were all wrong. I had to try on at least 20 pairs of jeans to find the one that was halfway good enough to fit over my behind. In the T-shirt department I was mortified to find out I was considered a large. What?? Yeah well. I’ve learnt my lesson and hopefully a good travelling tip from now on, carry some underwear and an extra outfit in my hand luggage for each flight.

It was so much fun going out in my new clothes though… Went to the finals of selecting our ninth member of the Smirnoff Ten, or rather soon to be Ten…. Audette- that’s a whole other blog on it’s own, for now, I have to have dinner with Kung- diddy aka DJ dizzy D aka Kung Foo noFighter aka rock lobster.
Oh and remind me to tell you about the trip to the pyramids, where the Smirnoff Eight soon to be ten failed to take a picture of us doing the pyramid….

Buenos Aires Part Two

The tango – the art of body language.

Buenos Aires is the home of the passionate tango and knowing this I wanted to drown myself in all that was tango. So I went to tango lessons, watched a show, listened to live tango music players in the market and danced on the streets. Every minute was priceless.

The tango is a really beautiful dance of passion, love and sensuality and it was awesome to watch and take part in, however, I saw a side of tango that I really never expected. I’ve heard people say jazz is heavy with heart and tango is light with lust, I don’t totally disagree with this except to say that the sadness and heaviness I expect from jazz, was something I saw and heard in the tango.

The movements and the sounds were of love and sensuality, yes, but even more about loneliness and longing. In the dance, the woman has all these sexy and feather-light moves, the man firm and steady. To me she is saying, ‘look at me, I am desirable, I am yours, desire me, want me, please’ and he is saying ‘ Look at me, I’m strong, I can hold you, I can keep you safe and I can let you fly, desire me, need me, want me, please.’

In this dance I saw people longing to be needed, wanting to be wanted, screaming to be accepted, begging to be desired, to be loved, to not be alone. A dance of beauty, of sadness, of love, of lust, of desire, of longing. The story of life. The story of intimacy. The story of love.


Talking about the shopping. I noticed that the fashion sense wasn’t extravagant and refreshingly so. People were somewhat comfortably dressed, even the so-called trendy ones. Hardly saw people dressed top to bottom in big status brands. It was always a good mixture of original personality and individual expression. There weren’t any fads or people wearing the same or similar type trends. Their looks got me very excited to go find my own form of fashion expression. When I shop for clothing I like to find items that’ll either scream the essence of that city or can’t be found anywhere else. Sometimes a simple T can be dressed in a way that is exclusive to you. Big brands and mass production department stores aren’t usually my thing, individuality is key.

The food is Buenos was pretty good, somewhat similar to what I like having at home. One surprise was finding tongue on a restaurant menu. I don’t know a lot of people that love it as much as I do and was glad to see it.
Wait a minute, there were two disappointments!
It was very difficult to find take away food, or light meals on the go. Not a train smash, but I like eating on the go.

The other disappointment is an on going argument with my fellow travelling buddies, none of them agree with me, yet I stand firm on this.
As you may or may not know, Buenos Aires is revered for its steak. Yes, the portions are served large, smell absolutely delicious, look so juicy and taste so wrong.
All four times I tried to have steak it was never exactly as I wanted, medium to well is not bleeding and definitely not hard, dry and close to burnt. Great looking steak isn’t the point, it has to taste just as good.

Well, I walked the city and tried as many things as possible without any regrets except my lack of Spanish. Buenos Aires will always be in my heart.

Buenos Aires – Part One

My walking city – Beautiful Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires to me is a walking city. A place where you will miss out on the texture and vibrance of the city should you spend too much time in the confines of a car, a bus, a hotel room, or hostel dorm. By walking you expose yourself to its love, to its beauty, to its story and most importantly it’s people

The people of BA gave me the welcomed impression of being warm, friendly and inquisitive. Everyone I came across smiled and said a hearty hello. Even though there was a language barrier, it didn’t stop them from being so friendly. Just a smile made a whole world of difference. Being in an unknown city, the people always make the biggest difference for me. People would stop, try chat to me, ask where I am from and offer up priceless information and insights about their home, they would chat as though they had all the time in the world.

The people seemed to carry with them this unmistakeable sense of content. Like their world was just as it should be. Peaceful content. I could see it in the faces of the old ladies walking their dogs, the young couple jogging on the pavement, the shop keeper tending to his wares, the twenty somethings in the coffee shops and it was contagious.

For the short week that we spent there, we lived in a wonderful area called Palermo. I fell absolutely in love with Palermo, with all of its bars and restaurants, corner cafés, markets, and some of the most exquisite clothing stores with items by local designers. Of course, I spent a little bit too much money shopping. I especially loved the market (I wish I could remember the name), which opens on Sundays. It had a huge variety of handbag stalls, earrings, trinkets and antiques to name a few.
Palermo seemed like a district that called out to its inhabitants and sang a song to all, saying ‘You are home’. I felt safe, I felt welcomed and I was at ease. Peace has many shapes and forms, for me it was walking Palermo.

MOSCOW

Moscow

I have been trying, in vain, for the past week to write about the experience in Moscow. For some reason, I seriously couldn’t pop out a single word to describe the four days I spent there, and I still can’t explain why I am blocked when it comes to this city.

Moscow is very different from London, London being my first trip outside of South Africa ever. London, however, has very many similarities to home and I might as well have been another city in South Africa, one that I hadn’t yet managed to visit in my 22 years. Of course there are definite differences and those differences give both Britain and SA character that belongs only to each. Moscow, then, was technically and in a way I hope to be able to explain, my first experience outside my home country. The cultural differences made quite an impact. I had so much to absorb, so much to take in, so much to think about, so much to analyse, so much to accept, so much I didn’t understand. It was in many ways a humbling experience, this whole year is going to be a humbling year with a lot to take in and I guess I realised this in Russia. I might have been overwhelmed.
At this very moment, I still haven’t actually figured out how exactly I feel about it.

So I’m half way down the page and I still haven’t really said much. It seems I am trying to avoid this blog even though I have started, funny. It really is difficult to put down or even express my thoughts and feelings towards Moscow. It is a whole other world and I haven’t quite put my finger on what it is all about. So far, I don’t think I have had this many mixed feelings about a place. I’m a naturally indecisive person and it usually takes me a while absorb and analyse new things. I like to take my time. Sometimes I just want to be sure that I make the right choice, yet here, there is no right or wrong. The way you feel is the way you feel, what you think is exactly that - your thoughts and opinions. (I wonder - does a thought only become an opinion once expressed?)

What might have had me even more lost was the fact that the Moscow I saw and the Moscow I had imagined were nothing alike. It was as though I had imagined the most extreme north and what I actually experienced was an extreme south. There were no similarities at all. I wish I knew how my mind let me go so far from the truth?

What I thought I would see in Moscow, as I have mentioned, is the opposite of what I actually did see. In a way, I was a bit sceptical that we were being taken there in the first place, what on earth were we supposed to do there? Wouldn’t it be dead? Oh well, you find originality in the most unexpected places and what one expects might not be the case, as I found out, so the point is to do everything with an open mind and never stop seeking originality, seek the unusual and make the most out of even the simple.

To begin, the next few sentences are jam-packed with pure ignorance, ignorance I am ashamed to admit, however, I will continue. Moscow and probably the whole of Russia in my mind was a place that for the most part was covered in pure white snow, weather so cold that the breathe coming out of my nostrils would freeze, and made to succumb to the all powerful force of gravity and fall to the ground, a soft pillow of snow. I wonder if I considered hypothermia and losing my body parts due to the low temperature. That would have been a funny story…

My image of Russia was of a war torn country, a country ravaged by brutality that was fuelled by the patriotism of people loyal to their country. Images of aged tanks; larger than life, parked on the side of a quiet street for all of eternity, soldiers carrying firearms patrolling fenced areas and dark streets. I thought I was would see a nation of sad and broken people with no life in their eyes, probably old women covering their unconditioned hair with autumn pallet scarves, dressed in layers upon layers of dreary grey clothing.

So I was in Moscow, a city I knew very little about except for the fact that it is in Russia, one of the biggest countries in the world. Was it a war-ridden country of angry gun-wielding beings who were stuck in a system they could not escape? Would I see buildings that no longer looked the way they were made to look. Would the military trucks, left to rot, be parked on the side of the road or the middle? At this point I will admit that I really knew nothing about the city we were about to attend an original party in, a city where the story of Smirnoff journey began.


What I did see was the centre of Moscow, the heart of the city so to speak, a vibrant place, rich in colour and screaming wealth and the need to be prestigious. I saw beautiful women, with confidence second to none I had ever seen before, with delicate mannerisms, gorgeous well-dressed bodies. There were developments happening, business districts, high rise buildings, plush hotels, bustling shopping areas and some of the worlds biggest and priciest cars, concept and luxury vehicles. The architecture was detailed and expressive in ways I had never been exposed to before.
I was exposed to a history so majestic I was embarrassed to think about the little or non-existent knowledge I had of this city. I was surprised and enjoyed the first day before the initial novelty wore off and I began to notice things below the surface.

The party scene was an interesting experience. During the limited time we were able to visit a club called Vodka Bar. Wouldn’t be able to tell you exactly where it is in Moscow, but it is somewhere there. The club itself was easy on the eye, not too much going on in terms of décor, but comfortably so. After coat check, you walk into a jaw dropping show of choreographed dancers on a raised platform above the bar area. The first of the dancers was a group of three people; two tall and very well built men, with a short and very energetic woman. Every muscle on each of their bodies was so well defined, they seemed to have been sculpted. Their show was crazy, the guys throwing this miniature lady up on the air followed by a couple somersaults and moves that would probably leave me paralysed. The next dancer we saw was a tall blonde woman with legs that go from here to Timbuktu, dressed in leather and chain getup with neck breaking high heels. As she was jiving out of beat to the music, the barmen started their entertaining thing of juggling bottles Tom Cruise style, ending off with an amazing fire blowing stunt which lit up the edges of the raised platform where the tall blonde was trying to find the rhythm. At first I was a bit scared that we would all burn alive in this club, after a short while realised that this was all part of the act and it helped to put less focus on the blondes two left feet antics.

All in all, Moscow surprised me in many ways, one of them being their general sense that they weren’t a people that were very open to letting outsiders in. Seemed as though the people were set in their ways, liked things just the way they were used to and those that were not part of it.

I would like to visit again, see the hidden parts of the city, experience more of the nightlife and enjoy being a celebrity.