four or five years ago, about two seconds before john mayer became a radio/stadium phenomenon, i took an insane trip from k-town to ny via the t-dot to see him play an intimate sony employee christmas party at the village underground in greenwich village. i spent a day in the city wandering around on my own, waiting for my cousin to get off work. while riding the subway to canal street, an older couple approached me and asked for directions. isn´t being mistaken as a local the ultimate form of flattery for a traveler?
it happened again today in puebla--twice!
i was walking along the paseo bravo when a group of older men politely asked if i knew where the public washrooms were located...then a lady with her son in tow asked me the same question in the casa de la cultura...
this got me wondering--maybe these people were just so desperate to find a washroom that they didn´t even care whether or not i was a local?! or maybe they didn´t notice that i don´t exactly look like your typical mexican...
nevertheless, i couldn´t help feeling a bit guilty letting them all down with a sheepish, "no sé."
puebla is definitely giving me the city-fix i needed so badly. i wouldn´t exactly want to live here, but the buildings and the buzz and the streetwise people are precisely what i want to be surrounded by right now. this city has an interesting blend of both the colonial and modern urban feel, which is appealing to me. the weather´s a bit cold, which is perfect b/c i´m used to seeing people wearing scarves and winter jackets at this time of the year, although it´s a bit unsettling for tj (who´s lived in L.A. her whole life).
we arrived yesterday afternoon, and right away, in the zócalo, we found a mindblowingly-simple-yet-brilliant art exhibit called el museo peatonal / the passerby museum (there´s also a short description in the first paragraph of this review); i was almost giddy, and felt like we´d found the holy grail--culture!!!
just a few steps away was another funky-looking exhibit called radio global.
now here´s something random--across the way from radio global was a little shop teeming with newspapers and magazines...i felt compelled to browse (as i always do when i see these things), and at the very top of a magazine rack, i spotted the february 26, 2006 issue of the ny times magazine--the one that features the toronto music scene and broken social scene in particular. what the heck?! i bought it for 15 pesos (the man who sold it to me probably thought i was nuts), and proceeded to read it in the lobby of my hotel. i´d read the article before, as it was posted on stillepost (is that thing still alive?) even before it was published, but there´s something about the tactile and reading...in any event, it made me freaking miss toronto like crazy (yeahyeah, you cynical readers out there are all like, "bss and blocks and all that junk is so ten centuries ago," but i don´t care!)...i missed t.o. and so i decided to go out for a walk in my stand-in city instead. (actually, there are moments where i feel i could be in ny when walking in the zócalo here...)
i strolled around aimlessly (but carefully) for about 30 mins., marvelling at the well-lit, imposing cathedral (that can be found on the 500-peso bill), and just as i was about to head back to the hotel, two guys approached me and asked if i wanted to do a survey on smoking. they looked pretty earnest (and had forms to fill out and everything), so i said sure, but then they figured that i probably didn´t speak spanish all that well (which i don´t--i really do understand a lot more than i can say). i didn´t end up taking the survey, but we did have a nice little conversation about learning languages (one of the guys was learning english and he was actually better than he thought he was; he had the opposite problem of mine--he could say more than he could understand), and that short, typically urban, random encounter was all i needed to cheer up and be content with where i was.
[p.s. i want to put up some photos of my trip so far, but this computer isn´t registering my usb key, so i guess it´ll have to wait.]
it happened again today in puebla--twice!
i was walking along the paseo bravo when a group of older men politely asked if i knew where the public washrooms were located...then a lady with her son in tow asked me the same question in the casa de la cultura...
this got me wondering--maybe these people were just so desperate to find a washroom that they didn´t even care whether or not i was a local?! or maybe they didn´t notice that i don´t exactly look like your typical mexican...
nevertheless, i couldn´t help feeling a bit guilty letting them all down with a sheepish, "no sé."
puebla is definitely giving me the city-fix i needed so badly. i wouldn´t exactly want to live here, but the buildings and the buzz and the streetwise people are precisely what i want to be surrounded by right now. this city has an interesting blend of both the colonial and modern urban feel, which is appealing to me. the weather´s a bit cold, which is perfect b/c i´m used to seeing people wearing scarves and winter jackets at this time of the year, although it´s a bit unsettling for tj (who´s lived in L.A. her whole life).
we arrived yesterday afternoon, and right away, in the zócalo, we found a mindblowingly-simple-yet-brilliant art exhibit called el museo peatonal / the passerby museum (there´s also a short description in the first paragraph of this review); i was almost giddy, and felt like we´d found the holy grail--culture!!!
just a few steps away was another funky-looking exhibit called radio global.
now here´s something random--across the way from radio global was a little shop teeming with newspapers and magazines...i felt compelled to browse (as i always do when i see these things), and at the very top of a magazine rack, i spotted the february 26, 2006 issue of the ny times magazine--the one that features the toronto music scene and broken social scene in particular. what the heck?! i bought it for 15 pesos (the man who sold it to me probably thought i was nuts), and proceeded to read it in the lobby of my hotel. i´d read the article before, as it was posted on stillepost (is that thing still alive?) even before it was published, but there´s something about the tactile and reading...in any event, it made me freaking miss toronto like crazy (yeahyeah, you cynical readers out there are all like, "bss and blocks and all that junk is so ten centuries ago," but i don´t care!)...i missed t.o. and so i decided to go out for a walk in my stand-in city instead. (actually, there are moments where i feel i could be in ny when walking in the zócalo here...)
i strolled around aimlessly (but carefully) for about 30 mins., marvelling at the well-lit, imposing cathedral (that can be found on the 500-peso bill), and just as i was about to head back to the hotel, two guys approached me and asked if i wanted to do a survey on smoking. they looked pretty earnest (and had forms to fill out and everything), so i said sure, but then they figured that i probably didn´t speak spanish all that well (which i don´t--i really do understand a lot more than i can say). i didn´t end up taking the survey, but we did have a nice little conversation about learning languages (one of the guys was learning english and he was actually better than he thought he was; he had the opposite problem of mine--he could say more than he could understand), and that short, typically urban, random encounter was all i needed to cheer up and be content with where i was.
[p.s. i want to put up some photos of my trip so far, but this computer isn´t registering my usb key, so i guess it´ll have to wait.]
posted by oxymoron @ 1:35 PM
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