After leaving the Bosque Village I was excited to be back on the road… all the way to Patzcuaro, merely an hour away! There I ended up staying for three nights, and felt way too comfortable. The city is not too big, but big enough to be interesting. The city centra is more beautiful than most cities I’ve seen, and so picturesque you can sit for hours sipping coffee watching birds and bees in the two plazas. Between there it is packed with small shops, which in their turn is packed with pretty pretty crafts and jewellery, hard to resist even for a roughened backpacker with little cash. But the best thing about all the travelling abroad is also found everywhere in Mexico; the closeness to food! I love street food, I love not having to find a restaurant, be table placed, read a menu, and pay way too much. Just walk up to a small stall and point; this this and that and then smile greedily when you hear the price. Ah, Sweden need a bit more of that culture. In Patzcuaro I met some other tourists, the fun thing is that all of them have been Jehovas witnesses, and they have also been extremely nice and interesting people. I ended up spending 5-6 hours talking to an elder Canadian couple thinking to establish themselves in the city after retirement. Looks like many North American do that in this area, cause there are many English speaking religious Mexican around. Discussing spirituality, happiness, views of life and travelling is something I probably could do for days, so to me, Jehovas witnesses are like the ideal conversational partners. It’s all about respect, people!

However, after some extremely touristic sightseeing in the island of Janitzio, totally exploited by the Mexican affluent families around Michoacan, I felt it was a good time to get back to a real city. The semi-upper classes of countries like Mexico or India is doing a little too well to be humble and is often very loud and disrespectful. If they speak English they will flock around you and do their best Hollywood-lines; Hey Baby, come over here, bla bla bla. Nowhere else in Mexico I have had that from the locals; quite the opposite, they have been treating me like nothing interesting at all. Which I prefer any day compared to that kind of attention. Back in Mexico City, I mostly hang out with my host and his friends if he’s not in school.

Hanging out with a Mexican is really relaxing, I don’t have to push my horrible Spanish-constantly-slipping-to-French into peoples faces, but just let him do all the talk! The friends of my host have all been way too sweet, they don’t get to practice their English that often, but really knows much more than they admit, being nervous but eager to speak with me. I think living in a city as huge as this one, really pushes you to do something different and be inventive. There’s not enough jobs, houses or possibilities to suffice for all these 20 million inhabitants, so many of them are more or less forced to find ways to profit from a talent or special skill. It’s in many ways inspiring to see how people can invent “jobs” if there isn’t any around. In Sweden I guess most of that would be illegal and black money, etc, and therefore most people are left to companies, structures and governmental solutions. We try to adapt our talents to what is needed and sought after, and may therefore suppress what we really could be good at and happy doing. I know, that’s the system. We don’t have that many options if we want a job, just as these people are forced to be inventive and many of them live under poor conditions. It’s just the small differences, that’s all.

This weekend, I’ll travel south, I gotta get moving. This city is so huge and full of experiences I could easily stay another week or month not having seen half of it. But travellers are supposed to travel, so hey ho, let’s go!