June 10. This is a big city.

The bus penetrates Mexico city profoundly. I can walk up to the central square (Zocalo) where the cathedral and the government palace are facing each other. I’ll do that tomorrow. First let me arrive in this city, so tenderly called “Deye Effe” by its twenty-one million inhabitants. The bus is parking, I get out, strap my backpack on and start walking. Walk, walk. Through a neighborhood that was supposed to be dangerous, but looked very safe to me. Don’t gimme dangerous I’ve been in [Guatemala city]. You can use this yourself, just substitute the name of any badly reputed city like Freetown, Baghdad, Nairobi, or a dangerous city like New York. Anyway, I arrive at that central area and find the subway entrance. I’m couchsurfing again and it will be good.

It means that I am part of this city from day one. It means that I’ll go out with a group of Mexicans and adventurous European exchange students, stand on the roof of their appartment building chatting in Spanish, big bottles of beer in our hands and a very cute dog to cuddle. It means we’ll all go out walking the streets of D.F. in search for a nice bar which we only find dangerously near closing time (they close ridiculously early here, like 2am) and it means that we all retreat to the same appartment where I crash on a comfortable red heart-shaped bed – alone. Welcome to Mexico City.

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