More time in New York City and environs

On Monday, the kids took some time off work and we had brunch together with Lissy's parents, then all went uptown to look at the Park Avenue Synagogue where the wedding will be held next January. They have recently celebrated 125 years in existence as a congregation, in which time their history, posted in the foyer, shows they have merged several different congregations, moved uptown and across town in stages, and moved through being Orthodox and Reform-Conservative to their current Conservative affiliation. The Sanctuary is quite imposing and very suitable for a lovely ceremony, and it seems a very good plan to hold the wedding party in their reception area after the Chuppah so we don't have to go anywhere else, given how nasty New York weather can be in January. Then we checked out a nearby hotel , The Wales, where Lissy had arranged to reserve a block of rooms for out-of-towners coming in for the wedding. It is just a few blocks north of the Shule, and is a venerable older hotel nicely refurbished. There are not too many hotels in this part of the Upper East Side, and their suites are very nice though the standard rooms are quite small.

Actually, the weather was a bit nasty that Monday also - it was like the weather Melbourne used to be famous for ("if you don't like the weather, wait 5 minutes"). From somewhat humid sunny weather to dark clouds rolling in, flashing lightning and the drumbeat of thunder, we proceeded into intermittent deluges of pelting rain. Fortunately we were indoors for the worst of it, and able to stay there till it reverted to streets steaming in the sunshine. We just got to Bubby's for brunch as the first thunderstorms hit, and it was not bad to be munching my muesli and enjoying a fruit platter while it was bucketing down outside. Later, as we were about to leave the Wales, it started up again - and again, we were able to sit it out in an attractive foyer until it stopped, peering out at unfortunate pedestrians with inside-out umbrellas and very soggy shoes.

Lissy's parents and Barry had left a bit earlier, before the storm, so I was on my own as the kids went off to work and other activities. On Mondays, the Metropolitan Museum (which is just a couple of blocks from the Park Avenue Synagogue) is closed, so a visit was not on the agenda. But I chose a route home which took me up the buzzing 181st St in Washington Heights, as there seemed to be some pretty spectacular shoes in the windows of some of the shops and I am in the market for a pair to go with the dress I will be wearing to the wedding. Alas, despite my Spanish being up to enquiring about heel height, size and colour, there was nothing available with less than sky-high stiletto heels, out of the question for my feet and spine, which at this stage of my life both need some cosseting. So the quest for stupid shoes continues.

When I got home I went out for a walk round Fort Tryon Park in my comfortable Berkeley-purchased Brooks. I followed a pair of young women down a totally different path than I have taken before, and found myself at the very farthest end of the Park, almost on the street. I was able to get back home by following the signs to the Cloisters till I was back on more familiar territory. It is a very hilly park, a great workout for the calves, quads and glutes whether climbing or descending by turns. They are running an anti-litter campaign with amusing signs in English and Spanish, and I still get a kick out of understanding the Spanish. With the wet summer, it is all pretty lush and it is good to see so many people out enjoying it. I also enjoy seeing all the dogs - this walk took me past the dog run I have visited in the past with Joan and her dog, and I do find it very amusing to see Great Danes, pugs, chihuahuas and every kind of mongrel playing together - the doggy melting pot, I guess, very appropriate to New York's ethnic and cultural history.

Barry returned to Berkeley on Tuesday around lunchtime. As he had very little luggage, he decided to take public transport to JFK- the A train from Joan's goes all the way to connect to the Air Train, but not all A trains go all the way to the end of the line - so it took a bit longer than expected. He made it just on time, apparently, though he had left home before 1.30 for a 4.40 flight. He always likes to be early for flights, so it was a bit fraught.

After hanging out with him till he left and wasting time on the computer, I headed off for another long walk in the park. It always lifts my pace to have music with a strong beat, and I couldn't find a 60's rock station. So this time I was listening to songs on a couple of Spanish language stations on my radio. But while searching, I did also encounter a long diatribe about 9/11 and a conspiracy theory about explosives having been laid all along the central core of structural steel in the buildings, with a coalition of engineers and architects presenting evidence of this - I guess if you want to know more about it, you could Google. It was rather nice to hear that the loony conspiracy theorists are not all on the Right, took me right back to my days in NYC in the '60s!

On Wednesday I took the Broadway subway to Marble Hill in the Bronx, which is just half a block away from the Metro North Station on the way to Emily's. I suspect it may be quicker to go way downtown and get an express from 125th St, but I like this neighbourhood connection. I expected the fare to be more than the $3.75 I was charged as a Senior off-Peak one way, and paid with a $20. The machine gave me a whole lot of lovely shiny new dollar coins in my change - I felt like I'd hit the jackpot on the Pokies! But ever since I have had to convince people to let me pay using the coins - they seem to prefer the tatty old greenback. Coming from Oz where we haven't used notes for smaller denominations than $5 for decades, it seems peculiar that people should mistrust coins. Surely they must be harder to forge than the very old-fashioned paper notes which have not yet been plasticised, hologrammed, clear-windowed or in any other way updated for yonks.

Emily met me at the station and we hung out at her place for a while, giving me time to eat large quantities of really delicious apricots from her farmers' market and to compare gazpacho recipes. Then we headed off to visit Joan's summer cottage. It is part of an old socialist bungalow community called Three Arrows - they still have the Norman Thomas Social Centre where they have film nights and all kinds of get-togethers. It was a gorgeous day so we got in a swim in her lake, Barger Pond, where you swim off a dock with life guards, kayaks (with lifejackets) and assorted other recreational equipment. The swim was very refreshing , the water warm and cold in patches, but it is quite brown - not milk coffee like the Yarra, whose colour comes from finely suspended colloidal clay particles, but more like weak black coffee from algae. I had my goggles on and couldn't see anything at all through the water, but Joan says the algae are really good for her curly hair! Afterwards I donned a life jacket and joined Joan and Emily on a trip across the lake to view the wetlands. Never having kayaked before, I discovered it was way less uncomfortable than it looks, and apart from a few dodgem car type snarls, the others were very kind to me as I wobbled my way in their wake.

We had a few nibbles and a glass of wine after returning from the pond and showering, then went for a bit of a wander round the estate. Joan is considering moving up to a bigger house than her bijoux cottage, so she took us past it to check it out. She had invited us to stay for dinner of grilled chicken and vegetables and salads, but the gas bottle ran out so she transferred from the outdoor BBQ to the indoor broiler and we had a delicious meal anyway, all working harmoniously on the vegies for grilling, the potato salad and the caprese salad with wonderfully fragrant basil Emily had brought up from her garden. Then Emily went home and Joan and I spent some time lazing about reading before heading off to bed. See photos - I didn't take any by the lake - as Joan said, why would you take photos of 3 women of a certain age in bathing suits!

Dogs are not allowed in the swimming area, so we had left Joan's small Maltese Terrier Lille Ting behind when we went to the dock. When I changed into my bathers, I had unwisely unpacked my small backpack and left my travelling tube of Vegemite alone in the house with the dog. I went to get it for breakfast in the morning, only to discover tooth marks in the tube - and at last Joan understood why the dog had been so thirsty the night before! I intend to experiment with Vegemite's self-sealing properies (I am sure the amount of salt in Vegemite doesn't permit many living things, including bacteria from a dog's mouth, to survive) and may update you later on whether I actually decide to discard the tube or press it back into service!

New York, New York

We decided on a flying visit to New York City from Berkeley to see Ben and Lissy for the first time as an engaged couple. Barry could only spare a few days as his semester starts in a couple of weeks, but I decided to stay for 10 days. I find that my trips to NYC are a bit like merging onto a freeway on-ramp: you have to get up to the speed of the traffic, and it always takes me a few days in the City to get moving fast enough to get up to the pace of New York, let alone pack in all that I want to do. Fewer than 10 days is just not enough time to catch up with family and friends from when I used to live here in the late 60's and early 70's.

It is great to be in New York again. It is so good to catch up with old friends, though now we are spending more time in the Northern hemisphere, we are seeing our US-based friends a lot more frequently than in past decades.
We are staying at Joan's - she is at her summer house in Putnam Valley so we have the place to ourselves (I say "we are" - in fact I am writing while I am still here, but Barry has left - he has already returned to Berkeley to get set up for his semester's teaching.) We went to Jay and Ellen's for brunch on Sunday, all-American blueberry pancakes, sausages and maple syrup. We last had the pleasure of their company in Melbourne in February, when they finally made it down under to Australia and New Zealand . Ben and Lissy joined us for a while when they returned from visiting Lissy's sisters and their families in the Washington DC/Maryland area. Here are Jay and Ellen and Lissy, sitting on the deck, and Ben and me in a tiny video Barry shot by mistake, .

They have an amazing tablecloth made for table with an umbrella. As well as a hole in the centre to accommodate the umbrella pole, half the cloth unzips to open out so you can take it off the table while the umbrella is still up! I was impressed with its ingenuity: though I have cut a hole in the middle of a cheap plastic cloth to use at home, I can't say I ever shopped for an outdoor cloth equipped with a hole so it may not be anything new to the frequent outdoor diners amongst you!

Later we came uptown to Joan's apartment and I gave the kids some stuff we had brought for them, including a photo album from Ben's childhood, which we all enjoyed looking through. Ben and Lissy had taken their first ever Zip car to Maryland (a short-term rental, modelled on bike pools in European cities) and found it a great success and reasonably priced. They had to return the car to its garage in the Chelsea area - not the nearest to their apartment, but the closest place which actually had a car available at the late stage they had booked). The fuel and tolls are included in the tariffs, paid for by a card which comes with the car, and you are meant to leave it at least 1/4 full, so we detoured via a gas station to fill up. I forgot to note the price of petrol, which is still considerably lower than in Melbourne, I believe, and way lower than anywhere in Europe, of course. We are considering using a zip car in Berkeley, but there are no garages close to where we live, but maybe with further research we'll find somewhere more convenient to our house.

Bob and Emily met us at the garage after their day's activities which had brought them into the city, and we walked down and randomly chose a restaurant that looked good for dinner together. With Daylight Saving, it doesn't get dark till nearly 9, and it was a balmy evening though we did encounter some thunderstorms on and off during the day and when we were on our way home. I decided to go all Sex and The City and ordered a Cosmopolitan as a pre-dinner cocktail. It was very ordinary, certainly not worthy of its delicious reputation: the food was also very ordinary, the great quantities not compensating for the lack of any flair in the cooking or presentation. We won't go back there again! The kids walked home, and we dropped Bob at Grand Central to catch the train back to Briarcliff while Emily brought us back uptown to Joan's, where she spent the night with us, as she needed to be in the city the next day anyway. Sorry, no photos as I forgot to take any!

Settling into Berkeley

We had a busy day on Wednesday. We walked down to Cal (which is how the locals refer to the University of California at Berkeley) campus, which took us about 25 minutes, then found our way to the right building by a combination of consulting campus maps and asking people. Barry had to go into the History Department to fill in a lot of forms. This may not sound difficult, but the Dwinelle Building reputedly has undergraduates who have been wandering about for years trying to find the room they need. It is a rabbit warren, rather like those old hospital buildings in Melbourne where wings have been added over time and the same floor is referred to differently in different lifts. Rooms in one direction are numbered in the 100's and around a bend on the same level are suddenly in the 3000's, and there are rooms off other rooms and corridors off rooms and rooms off corridors. And at least one wing has a peculiar smell that transported me directly back into the Old Arts Building at Melbourne Uni in the 1960's.

The campus is very hilly and really lovely, but very large and confusing. You really need a map to tell you where the maps are. The admin staff were all very helpful, but as it is vacation time, and summer school is still in progress, no space is yet available for Barry's office in the History Department, though later in the day when we visited CLAS (the Center for Latin American Studies) where he is also affiliated for the semester, he was assigned a very nice office complete with their Mexican library, so he will feel right at home. There is an extensive programme of visiting scholars, seminars and activities at CLAS, and again, the staff were very helpful and welcoming. It is located just off the campus, around the corner from the hotel we stayed at when we were here briefly last November, so we had no trouble finding it.

Likewise, the local bank branch where we added me as a co-signatory on the account Barry has had since we were in San Diego about 25 years ago was a couple of short blocks away in familiar territory. The quirks of the US banking system, state-based rather than national, always confound us. For example, when we tried to access account details earlier this year at a bank branch in Philadelphia, they couldn't find out whether I was a co-signatory already as those details were only available in California. At least there are now branches on the East Coast, but unfortunately I won't have my own ATM card before we head off to New York tomorrow.

We consulted the Yellow Pages a the bank to find an AT&T office, a bit further afield but near the Berkeley BART station. As we usually visit the US for short periods, a mobile phone contract doesn't really work for us, so we get pre-paid SIM cards to use in our tri-band GSM phones. There are few GSM suppliers, and coverage is not brilliant, so though we are not wild about AT&T's service,there are not many options. It is annoying that in the US you get charged for incoming as well as outgoing phone calls, so our phones ending up costing more than they do at home, even though Australia is notorious for having expensive mobile phone services. At least with the chips we now have, we can call each other free, but there is a daily charge for using the phone at all.

We wandered home via the supermarket: Barry was planning to take the bus home with the weighty stuff (not much of it) and I the very light stuff. We stopped off to check out the JCC, and somehow walked off in the wrong direction. This would be par for the course for me, but Barry is usually much smarter. And also he didn't realize that the bus turned off Spruce St rather than continue all the way along it to and from campus, so when we eventually got back to Spruce after quite a (hilly!) detour, there were still several uphill blocks to negotiate before we found a bus stop. I carried on walking uphill all the way home, taking photos of neighbourhood homes and gardens on the way (some posted here, other shots of the 'hood yesterday yesterday - this bear a couple of blocks away is carved directly from a tree that must have been there before, while all other garden sculptures I saw were metal), and Barry's bus passed me about half way back. It was a very warm and sunny afternoon, and I only got home just in time to change out of my sweaty top and head to the party next door.

Tom and Janet are our new downhill neighbours and had offered to host a welcome party for us to meet them and the other neighbours in their garden. It was a lovely idea and we spent a completely delightful few hours, getting to know the people in the immediate vicinity and eat delicious food (we had brought some Australia wine to complement the supplies laid on by our hosts), including a home made san choi bow using turkey mince. Several more people arrived after this photo, including Krista and Mike with their 3-year old Kit, who took a while to warm up and after many people had left, kept the stayers in stitches. Monica (one of our landladies) is on the right.

Thursday morning I got up early and walked down to the over 55's exercise class at the JCC. It was fun but harder work than I am used to, and I am a bit stiff today (probably be worse tomorrow). The class members were pretty friendly, and I met a woman who lives in our street, so if it is pouring rain I may be able to cadge a lift in future. I also had a coffee at Berkeley institution Peet's with Sonia, who will also be travelling over the next few weeks but I hope will turn into another new friend. With her help and advice from a friendly merchant in a shoe shop nearby, I was directed to a store close to campus where I bought the new Brooks shoes I needed. The guy in the store gave me a pair of socks as a wedding present when I mentioned my son was getting married during this trip! He also offered to call me if end of season stock became available in my size and model at sale prices. This is what I call customer service! He is across the road from the Berkeley Sports Centre, so I checked out the facilities and membership options there before wandering though campus, getting lost for a while, then walking back home.

I raided the garden for some beans, pattypan squash, cucumber, tomatoes and herbs, and got to know the kitchen a bit better as I made pasta sauce and a salad for dinner. I am still totally blown away by the view from the kitchen window, and have pretty much taken up a spot at the kitchen table where I can view this spectacular panorama as my workstation. It is nearly 2PM as I write and the sun has only just come out, and I can even see the San Francisco skyline mist-free. Time to get out amongst it.

Here we are in Berkeley

Ah, jet lag! It is 3.38 AM Wednesday in Berkeley and I was unable to keep sleeping off my travel weariness, so I am eating cherries, drinking chamomile tea from a fine china mug, and looking over the East Bay towards San Francisco through the kitchen window in our rented Berkeley house. We arrived early this afternoon, driven expertly through light traffic from San Francisco airport by an Ethiopian taxi driver equipped with a large enough cab to fit our 5 suitcases and using the GPS on his phone to find a very direct route to our door. It looked like a great neighbourhood from the cab window: attractive individual houses, the hilliness encouraging some interesting architecture and making for wonderful streetscapes.

Sally and Monica, owners of this lovely house guarded by a Xi'an warrior, are shortly off on a sabbatical trip to Brussels, and were here to greet us and show us over the house, which is high up in the Berkeley Hills area. Like the apartment we love to rent in Coyoacan, it showcases the advantages of choosing to rent a place which is someone's home over living in commercially rented accommodation. Sally and Monica have done a much better job of clearing out space for our stuff than we have done for Rob, Kirsty and their kids, who are minding our house and pets while we are away. They have cleared several metres of shelf space for books in the study, emptied drawers, cupboards and wardrobes all over, and left us a nice starter supply of teas, herbs, spices, sauces and staples in the kitchen. The garden is in full bloom and the veggies are spectacular: we must eat an artichoke before the ants do, and there are plentiful yellow and red cherry tomatoes as well as ripening larger varieties, cucumbers, squash, beans, berries, eggplants, different types of basil, parsley and salad greens, peppers, potatoes, a tangerine tree, several not yet ripe apple trees ... and a wireless network for which we now know the password. I hope I remember how to blog - at least I am having less trouble inserting photos than I did on Barry's Mac last year in Mexico, though I have been less than careful about placing them.

Sally also drove us around some key routes, showing us more than we can possibly absorb in such a short time - best restaurants, take-aways, groceries, hairdressers, banks, etc. We are going to try and get by in California without a car, though we will be able to drive hers on occasion, and we'll look into the various zip car/smart car options in the area for special needs. So she showed us the best walking routes to the key shopping and eating areas, and to and from the Berkeley campus. Unfortunately I kept nodding off in the car, but with the aid of a local map and a bit of practice, I'm sure I'll learn how to get where I need and back again despite my notoriously poor sense of direction.

We had some of the garden produce for a snack lunch, with crackers and my own imported Vegemite and cups of tea once they left us to get settled, then Barry napped while I unpacked partially (I had intentionally prepacked one suitcase for our trip to NYC in a few days, and left most of this in place) then I had a very short nap. Around 6.30 PM we walked out the door and headed for the shops, Barry navigating, of course. Our first impressions from the cab ride were confirmed - the very individual styles of the houses and the gardens, where Obama placards sprout alongside apple and lemon trees and all kind of colourful and sweet-smelling flowers. It is pretty hilly, the steepest downhill streets hard on the knees and uphill great for the heart and glutes. We picked up a very few things from the supermarket, noticed the Jewish Community Center which I intend to explore for activities, and had supper at a deli where I had chopped liver and chicken soup with a huge matzo ball and Barry had a pastrami sandwich (really good pickles!)

Because of the hills, the views are gorgeous, and as we took a different route home through the sunset , we had a fabulously red sky, just the perfect start for what we expect will be a very interesting and pleasant 5 months. I have posted just a few of the gardens and houses I photographed on our second day here to give you an idea of the neighbourhood, hoping it will encourage you to visit us!

Unfortunate encounters of the medical kind

It is nearly Christmas, and the fact is unavoidable, here as at home. We don't celebrate Xmas ourselves (but are glad to accept invitations!). However, I went out to Polanco a few weeks ago with my cousin Elias and bought a small menorah so we could light the candles here for the eight days of Chanukah. But our celebrations have been somewhat overshadowed by various medical encounters, so I have not been keeping up with travelblog entries, though there is a draft of our trip to Zacatecas waiting my attention. As recent events have impacted on my return to Australia, I thought I might depart from my usual theme and sequence to tell you about what has been going on.

As any of you who have visited Mexico City know, the pavements here are a disgrace. A combination of geological factors (e.g. Mexico City used to be a lake and is fundamentally unstable and prone to subsidence, as it is to earthquakes); totally unsuitable street trees whose roots destroy pavements; lack of maintenance budgets for repair or street lighting; allowing vehicular access to the narrowest lane ways leaving virtually no footpath; loads of construction and development ( apparently you are responsible for providing your own driveway across whatever footpath was there, so there are steps, tiles, bricks, spoon drains, deep fissures, huge cracks, smooth or sudden changes in level) - you get the picture. And this is without considering the need to dodge the abundant dog poo, the cars, trucks and motorbikes stopped or parked on the pavement, the street vendors of food and other merchandise while negotiating your way through the streets. Unfortunately for Barry, nearly 2 weeks ago on Saturday evening we were walking in the dark on our way to the movies from a friend's house when a particularly vicious piece of pavement disrepair got him. He tripped and fell heavily, and while trying to break his fall with his right arm, fractured his right humerus near the shoulder.

He said he couldn't move his arm, got a severe cramp in one leg, and was just lying there in the filthy dust-covered street while I tried to get him back on his feet. Several passers-by obviously thought he was a drunk and avoided us. But three people stopped and helped me get him upright. I called to alert Margarita, as we were still only a couple of blocks from their house, and we managed to walk back there. She and Enrique helped get the worst of the gravel out of his cut hand, gave him a brandy as he was deathly pale and obviously in shock, then, after checking by phone with our medical insurer, Margarita drove us to the emergency department of a nearby large private hospital she has used in the past and trusts. I have since come across 3 different friend who have had surgery on arms or legs right there in the past two years, and our experience has confirmed that it was a good choice.

Saturday nights in emergency are similar the world over, except in private hospitals I guess there are fewer drunks and victims of violence. It certainly was interesting in the waiting room! Poor Barry was pretty much out of it, and Margarita and her family were due to go to Acapulco the next day, so by about 11PM when he had been X-rayed and we were waiting for an orthopaedic specialist to arrive to prescribe the treatment, I suggested she go home and stayed around to handle the admission procedures myself. A bit of a challenge under stress and after midnight, when my Spanish seems to deteriorate, but by asking people to go slower and reading the fine print, I coped.

The orthopaedist who came in to review the X-Rays insisted that the only treatment for a patient over 60 with a humerus fractured in three pieces was surgery, and when he pointed out the damage on the X-Ray, we didn't think we needed a second opinion. Once we had agreed to the surgery, there were tests and other procedures needed till Barry eventually got into his room (where I had taken his things and had been napping for about an hour) by about 2AM. I then got a taxi home with his filthy clothes, and returned in the morning before he went into surgery, with the usual gear one needs in hospital. Being totally unaware of the Mexican hospital system, I did not realize that I could have got an extra bed for myself and stayed there, and I believe our medical insurance would even have covered it! But even after this first night, I still didn't realize this would have been a good idea so went home again the next night.

The surgery took place as scheduled at noon on Sunday, and the surgeon professed himself delighted by his handiwork. I am going to try to photograph the "after" X-Ray and post it here:

Barry's arm looks like a violin ( puts a different slant on the old "but doctor, will I be able to play the violin" joke). Herzonia came in to sit with me while Barry was in surgery and recovery, and we went out to lunch and read newspapers and novels and even napped a little till he returned. Maggui also came in to visit - Barry was very groggy and depressed after surgery so once I had fed him a little supper and lots of fluids, and checked he was functioning OK, we left him to sleep and went out for dinner (chicken soup and tacos) before going home.

To my surprise, Barry called early Monday morning to say he would be discharged that day, so in I went again (by pesero and Metrobus) with clean clothes and the documentation I needed to reclaim all but about $20 of the very large deposit I had paid, as the insurers had come good and picked up virtually the whole bill. We were hanging about for a while till we got release forms signed and the doctor's assistant came by with the prescriptions for antibiotics and painkillers, and when we were finally discharged, Maggui came by to pick us up and drove us home.

Barry was pretty down, and quite uncomfortable, so bed seemed a good idea. After sleeping for about 4 hours in the afternoon and a light supper, he went off to bed again, but not before dictating a few emails to me changing his plans. For example, he has withdrawn from a conference in Chicago in January where he was on a panel, and we had to cancel our planned beach holiday in Playa del Carmen on the Caribbean coast. Also I had to start contemplating changing my own plans - I was due to return to Melbourne in early January, but given Barry's need for assistance over the next few weeks at least, eventually (on doctor's advice) I have decided to stay on in Mexico till January 20th with Barry, and then accompany him for his 3-week fellowship in Philadelphia. Bye-bye Melbourne summer, hello winter in the North Eastern United States, not my favourite time of year to be there.

As you can see from the opening photo, Barry is up and about now (the shot was taken at The Museum of Interventions, situated in the ex-convent of Churubusco in Coyoacán about 20 minutes' walk from here, a week after his fall. It is a very interesting museum and the ex-convent has been restored in parts and is also interesting. We contemplated returning in the evening for a concert but thought better of it. ) He has started physiotherapy with the recommended therapist (Kandy from Condesa - sounds a lot racier than she is). I went along to his second session - she is off on holidays for 2 weeks, so I am helping him with some of the exercises in her absence, though of course I can't do any of the laser, Tens machine or ultrasound treatments she started and probably will continue when they resume in January. We are hoping Barry will have 70% of his functioning back in the right arm by the time we go to Philly, but putting carry-ons into the overhead bin will probably still be out of his range of movement.

Still on the medical theme, I had an attack of shingles (called herpes zoster here) which started while we were on a short trip to Acapulco. Fortunately the worst of it was over before Barry's accident, because when I was at the most painful stage of this, I also was useful for nothing except sleeping. I figured out what the rash was likely to be when we got back to the city (wonderful thing, the Internet) and as I was still studying, I was able to use the UNAM medical service's Emergency Department (free - I was registered with the service as I had previously needed to get a full medical check to be allowed to use the UNAM pool) to confirm my diagnosis when I was in a fairly early, but already very uncomfortable, stage of the disease. I got the anti-viral treatment that stopped its spread and shortened its duration, and hopefully will avoid the longer term enduring pain that often follows.

For some other tests I needed I used the local branch of a clinic, at which the health insurance we have through Barry's work offered a 30% discount. (Don't worry, I am not posting the ultrasound of my bladder!) From the size of my bills, it seems to me that Mexico has a first-world health-care system at least in parts, but I don't know who can afford it. Only very few people have private medical insurance, and the costs seem comparable to US (in pharmaceuticals and hospital care costs) and Australia (in doctor's appointments - only there is no Medicare rebate). I now really appreciate Australia's Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme - my shingles antiviral pills, 9 days' worth, and a small anti-viral spray cost close to $90 Australian. , at a purportedly discount pharmacy. Also I now appreciate that "major medical" means cover as a result of an acute or sudden incident, like an accident, rather than an alarming symptom that requires investigation. Before our next trip I will think harder about whether to get Australian travel insurance for medical events, or to use local cover, which is expensive. In Barry's case he has had his money's worth - in my case I might have done better with Australian cover.

In any case, it is never nice to have to go to hospital and undergo surgical interventions, and paying through the nose is the paradigm case of adding insult to injury. It has certainly been less fun than a beach holiday and the other activities that we have not got around to, but Barry ended up not missing any classes. He actually thought it would be easier to go in to his session where students were presenting, rather than try and contact people very late to try and cancel or reschedule, and thanks to Herzonia's offer to drive him in to the first class the day after he came home, and the use of his sling, he managed. He still can't use public transport because of the risk of getting his arm bumped - but as we don't drive here anyway, his inability to drive is no added burden. So in all he is doing very well, and we are a bit wiser for the experience.

Dancing in the Streets, Zacatecas style

We went to Zacatecas for a long weekend , 3 of the 4 day's break for Day of the Dead (1st and 2nd November) here. It is a beautifully restored colonial city, very hilly, with lots of building facades in pink stone and many hidden plazas and charming tiny streets to explore. Its rapid development and richness in its heyday was due to the discovery of silver, as Melbourne's was to gold. Among the other tourist delights there is a tour available to a former silver mine. There is also a discotheque/ nightclub in this mine - given our aversion to very loud noise and smoking, we decided to give it a miss. The tour is interesting but I struggled a bit to make out the Spanish of our guide against the noise of other groups, not helped by wearing the obligatory hard hat. (There are currently major works going on in our neighbourhood as they replace all the major drains, digging up the cobbled streets. There are a few machines and a lot of manual labourers, but I have barely seen one in a hard hat, let alone a pair of Blunnies or other decent protective foot gear, ear muffs, safety harnesses when climbing poles or descending into pits, any kind of appliance to stop the ingestion of the vast amounts of dust and worse, etc. I am sure their work is more dangerous than our mine tour was, but I guess the local government is not worried that a hurt worker might sue!)

There are quite a lot of Huichol people in the region, and one of the most enjoyable museums has a large display of the ethnography of these not very easily colonised people, who still follow the traditional lifestyle, including a kind of pilgrimage to search for peyote, which is used in their rituals. The photo below does not do justice to the huge beaded work that hangs in the entrance hall, which contains many million beads and tells some important stories.
Their artesanias are particularly colourful and beautiful. Beading in very tiny glass beads and spectacular yarn pictures are traditional, and the techniques are now used by many Huichol people to supply the market with gorgeous beaded earrings, bracelets, necklaces, bags and belts. There are also wonderful animals, real, totemic, or fantastic, beaded all over. I know we have too much stuff, and I try not to buy anything these days unless I can get rid of something I already have to make space for it. This gets to be a problem as I am quite attached to all the Mexican artifacts we already have! I was unable to resist buying a very small beaded bowl, made from a gourd, in the museum shop, however.

There is a large collection of ethnographic research, including a collection of photos by European and US anthropologists from the early 20th Century who revisited many years later, and some of their original informants. Obviously funded by some US foundation, the information about the people and their customs has been well translated into English, and I found it very informative and totally fascinating. There is also a large collection of embroidery showing all the traditional themes, some of it from the late 19th Century . The work is not quite symmetric, there seems often to be an unfinished area or a piece or corner which looks very different from the rest, clearly not accidental. One of these days I might look up some of this stuff and find out what part of their belief system leads to this style of work.

There is another museum we visited which is especially renowned for its collection of masks. This is located in a partially ruined, partially restored ex-convent, whose original building materials have been looted over time to construct housing or streets or whatever they were needed for at the time. The parts being used as galleries have been restored, and the displays were very well curated. As well as the enormous collection of masks, pottery, etc, there was also an interesting collection of puppets and costumes from traditional street theatre companies from the 18th through early 20th Century which I found tremendously evocative, and a collection of some of Diego Rivera's collection of pre-columbian artefacts, donated by his daughter. I think the founder of the museum , an artist or sculptor himself, was also Rivera's son-in-law.
As in most museums, no flash photography is allowed (though this is largely ignored by the Mexican public). As I am not much of a photographer and don't know how to take photos other than point and click, I don't know how to suppress the automatic flash so usually only even try to take a photo where there is lots of natural light. So apologies for the lack of good photos!

One of the magic things about beautiful Zacatecas is the Callejoneada: literally, dancing in the laneways. I did not know what to expect at all, but when we came back to the hotel after sightseeing on our first day there, I saw some very colourful local dancers performing in the square near the hotel (see photo), and wondered if this was it.
It certainly wasn't! I have video but I can't upload it with the software I have available, so one of these days will post it on a website and you can look at it there!

I saved a bit of a draft about Zacatecas ages ago to start this entry, and was quite sure I had written about the callejoneada, but when I finally got around to work on the draft, there was nothing there about it at all. But then I remembered, I had actually written it up as my Spanish homework one day, as part of an exercise to write a letter home. So just to show you I can, I am going to post the Spanish version right now for the Spanish speakers on my distribution list (with apologies for the deficiencies in my Spanish prose), and then will roughly rewrite and expand on it in English.

Aquí en México, seguimos siendo turistas los fines de semana. Recientemente, fuimos a Zacatecas, una ciudad preciosa con una herencia colonial. Le han renovado bien las calles , las fachadas y muchos de los edificios – ¡que buenas son las vistas! Hay una tradición muy pintoresca en Zacatecas ¡todo el mundo baila en las calles por la noche! Hay orquestas que tocan y los bailadores, ciudadanos y visitantes, se juntan y van detrás de los músicos mientras caminan por las callecitas, bailando. El fenómeno se llama la callejoneada.

Hay muchas placitas coloniales lindas en Zacatecas, y las bandas se paran para tocar un poco en cada una, y donde hay más espacio, los participantes bailan más, y más espectadores y participantes siguen reuniendo con el grupo durante la noche. Estuvimos en una callejoneada con un grupo de turistas y residentes – muchos fueron de una familia que habían venido para una reunión familiar, porque era Día de Muertos.

Por el día, hubo muchas personas en las calles vestido de disfraz, para Halloween o Día de Muertos: unos se juntaron con nosotros, pero hubo orquestas más grandes con mas bailadores que la nuestra en el Zócalo, al lado de la Catedral, donde además hubo un burro con barriles de tequila para atraer las masas. Pero preferí nuestro grupo, con nuestra propia tequila y unas cocas, porque cuando la orquesta terminó a las diez, la familia nos invitó a acompañarla a su hotel, donde Barry y yo también estábamos hospedándonos, para comer tamales y tomar atole, todos hechos en casa, que la familia había preparado para la fiesta.

Por casualidad, encontramos un hombre de la familia cuya esposa (que no estuvo con nosotros debido a una cita con su hijo en una fiesta de su escuela) es Australiana. El es dueño de un hostal en Zacatecas, y una de sus huéspedes también es Australiana, y escribe para la editorial Lonely Planet. Pasamos el día siguiente con ella, pero estas aventuras son para otra carta.

Rough translation and further commentary: we have been going away on weekends, and recently went to Zacatecas, a beautiful city with a strong colonial heritage. They have done a great job on restoring the city centre, many of the facades, streets, and squares, and like many silver towns, it is very hilly and has beautiful views. There is a very colourful tradition called the callejoneada: people join up with a band and follow them, gathering more followers as they dance their way through the streets in the evenings. The many small streets and lanes open up into little squares, often on several levels, where an open plaza is surrounded by beautiful colonial era buildings and where there is more space. The band stops walking and the dancers can let go and fill the space available.

We joined a group just across the road from our hotel, and discovered as the night progressed that many people in the group were from just one extended family living in and around Zacatecas, and had come into town for a family reunion over the holiday weekend. The family included a guy who has lived in the UK and Australia: his Australian wife was at another party with their children. At present he is back in Zacatecas running a back-packers hostel, and one of the other people in the group was one of his guests, Kate, who turned out to be an Australian who writes for Lonely Planet. What are the odds! The photo beside the Spanish text is one taken of our group dancing in one of the small plazas.

Because it was the night of Day of the Dead, which is now a bit mixed up with Halloween (we see syncretism in full swing here, with the traditional skeleton and Catrina costumes very mingled with kids dressed as pumpkins or carrying little pumpkin-shaped containers instead of the traditional skulls) there were many more people out on the streets in fancy dress than one would normally see. Here are some typical folk watching the dancing in the zocalo.

Our band was just one of many. There were many larger bands, including a couple which seemed to be permanently stationed in the zócalo, which had way larger followings than ours. The many onlookers were watching or joining in, and in the zócalo we also enjoyed another traditional feature: a burro bearing large flagons of tequila;

as this was dispensed, the crowds got less bashful and quite a scene developed there beside the Cathedral (a photo of the Cathedral's impressively carved street facade - its less imposing side faces the zócalo - showing some of the sculpture niches, which I took during the day, follows).
But after a while our band moved on and we followed. The hostel owner had bought a small bottle of tequila to share, and we had bought some soft drinks at a local convenience store, so we were well catered for. A group of people joined us from a bar in one of the squares, unfortunately including a very drunk and rather obnoxious fellow who eventually left the group when some police appeared - we were not unhappy to see him go as he kept propositioning the women, none of whom was remotely interested in being propositioned.


The band stopped playing at 10PM. This is a photo of some of the dancers who lasted till then: the drunk is in the front row, left.
I assumed we'd tip them or somehow pay for our entertainment, but they just melted into the night - I still don't know whether the family group had paid for them in advance or they get remunerated some other way. There were then two proposals to continue our evening - a visit to a cantina in the centre of Zacatecas in which the hostel owner has some interest, or a return to our hotel, where many of the family members from out of town were also staying, to eat tamales and drink atole, the traditional foods for Day of the Dead, which the family had waiting and warming in one of their cars. While Barry and Kate wanted to go to the cantina, the family-based low key celebration was all I wanted to do. So we all joined in and had some tamales and atole, and a bit of a chat, then when that party broke up, I went to bed and Barry and Kate went off to the Cantina.

We discovered that one of the women was the mother , and another, the aunt, of a senior official in the local tourism department. These family connections led to us being included in an offer to chauffeur Kate to a couple of destinations within a few hours of Zacatecas on Sunday.
We saw both an archaeological site, La Quemada, whose origins are somewhat mysterious, but it seems more allied to other meso-american sites to the north than to Teotihuacán or Mayan sites I have visited.

After touring this site, we proceeded to another charming town, Jerez, complete with cowboys, where we had lunch and wandered about while Kate did her Lonely Planet research, assisted by a very helpful American woman who lives in Jerez. I took lots of photos of shops full of cowboy boots and hats, but only managed to catch a couple of guys on their horses:

There were some lovely old buildings with wonderful stonework and timber carving, a beautiful church or two, and several lovely squares filled with lots of people making music, meeting their friends, and selling and eating street food. We decided that because it gets quite chilly and is somewhat lacking in cultural activities, Jerez, for all its charm, won't ever be a Mecca for US retirees like San Miguel de Allende.

Queretaro, San Miguel de Allende and Tequisquiapan

In October, we went away for a weekend in Querétaro with Maggui and her mother Romy, to the holiday house Maggui bought when she retired. It isn't that far from Mexico City but getting out of town on the Friday afternoon was horrendous - it took 2 hours to get to the start of the toll road, then about 2 hours more to get to Querétaro. Our return trip late on Sunday was a bit quicker, but very nerve-wracking especially after dark. Barry and I both feel that we couldn't cope with the volume of traffic and how hard it is to get out of the city by car - not to mention how stressful we would find driving in the intense city traffic, with cars double parked everywhere, no lane discipline whatever, and people disregarding red lights at will if they feel they can get away with it. The traffic and fear of owning a car and driving here would be one of my major arguments against living in Mexico City long term, however much I enjoy it short term.


One of the reasons Maggui chose Querétaro is that she has family living there who can keep an eye on the place when they are not there, in the form of Gerardo, one of her nephews but like a much younger brother. For a few years of his childhood Romy cared for him, so they are very close - in fact when I first met him some 30 years ago, I thought he actually was one of her brothers, and it has taken me years to get the family straight. He commutes into Mexico City usually on Sunday night, where he works for Pemex (the state owned petroleum mega-enterprise), returning Friday night. Latterly he has been going by bus but formerly he drove. Now he is considering looking for work in Querétaro, which seems from appearances to be booming, but there is not really that much opportunity - there are small Pemex offices around the country, but all the major bureaucracy and functions are centralised in Mexico City. His wife Marisela works at the local university, and their 2 sons are finishing high school or in junior college there. But they do not want to return to living in the Mexico City, and enjoy the pace in Querétaro a lot better. Some of the photos show how attractive the downtown colonial areas are.

We had brought food with us from the city, but also went out in the morning for fresh bread and hand squeezed orange juice (brought home from the corner store in 1 litre plastic bags!). Maggui had brought the makings for chilaquiles, and I had a lesson in making this typical Mexican treat. It consists of layers of several alternating layers of fried tortilla strips ( home made in this case, but I guess you could use corn chips in Australia), a fairly mild green salsa - home made again, shredded cheese (most Mexican cheeses are not very strong and melt well. I will look up a recipe to confirm what type of cheese is used), and some cream (Maggui had a low fat version , and didn't use a vast amount). The baking dish is heated in the oven till bubbling, with the cheese melted. I have eaten chilaquiles several times (including breakfast at the wedding I blogged about earlier this year), but these were far and away the best ever. This was teamed with scrambled eggs, home made frijoles and potatoes with rajas (chilli strips), and fresh rolls and/or tortillas to mop up the sauce. Plus we had the juice and heaps of fresh fruit - I had brought huge mangoes and a decent melon, Maggui added bananas and grapefruit. I had brought some strong teabags for us from home - if you want a strong cup of black tea here you need the imported stuff , or else 2 local teabags.

As well as having family there, by now Maggui her mother have formed great relationships with their neighbours - in fact one of the neighbours popped in to thank Maggui for the birthday present she had brought from the city and given to her 8 year old daughter, and, this being Mexico, she stayed to eat a belated breakfast (there was of course a huge quantity) and I had a chance to practice my Spanish. Then an hour later, Gerardo and Marisela arrived and another round of breakfast was served for them - by now it was about 12. Then Maggui left Romy in their care, and took us into the centre of Queretaro to have a look around. We had gone in to have drinks and coffee in a lovely old hotel the night before (the first photo was taken then), and noted how beautifully the colonial city centre had been restored, but everything looks very different during the day. We took in a museum in an ex-Franciscan convent (see photos) and the artesanía market in the very central section, and noted how many different cultural activities were listed for that evening - I noted a choral concert early in the evening and Barry a Cuban Band playing later in the evening, at various of the outdoor plazas. And of course Barry found a book shop where he just had to buy a few books!

We then headed off to Gerardo's house, which is in one of the many recent developments all around Queretaro. In this case all the streets are named after the stars of the Golden Age of the Mexican movies and radio, really evocative names like Jorge Negrete, Pedro Infante, Maria Felix, Dolores Del Rio - I have since learned more about lots of them from my Cancionero Mexicano course.

We collected everyone, and spent the rest of the day with the family, now also including Daniel, the younger of her nephew's sons, driving to San Miguel de Allende, which is a fairy tale of a place. Viewed from the lookout point on our way in, it looks like the original on which Walt Disney modelled Fantasy Land.

There is a lot of gorgeous pink stone and the crenellated towers of the Cathedral look exactly like Sleeping Beauty's castle in Disneyland. It is hilly and unbelievably charming, full of colonial buildings and streetscapes , very hilly and therefore full of gorgeous views. Many retired and artsy Americans have retired to San Miguel, so the prices have been pushed up, and there are many stores selling art, pottery, clothing and textiles not strictly along the lines of the usual handicrafts. The night life and music scene looked interesting, but we weren't there in the evening. I know Bev and Judy enjoyed their few days here, as their first port of call in Mexico.


A highlight of our return drive to Queretaro was stopping for dinner at Chilo's, a local seafood place, where Maggui got the band to serenade Barry (she had missed his actual birthday by a couple of weeks, but that wouldn't stop Maggui!). I have video footage of the serenade, but have had the usual problems downloading it. One of these days I will manage to move the video to somewhere you can actually view it, but probably not till we are back in Oz. See the picture I took to show the relative sizes of a normal bottle of white wine, the oversized beer bottles they served to the table, and a fish fillet Gerardo ordered.

The seafood was excellent, fresh and cheap. We met the owner, quite a young guy, who said he trucks in the fresh fish 3 or 4 times a week direct from the coast at Tampico. It is a huge barn of a place, completely unpretentious, and was full of families, who were mostly just leaving as we arrived, as their business is serving Mexican lunch, and they close about 8. Driving back the final half hour or so to Queretaro, there was a beautiful crescent moon illuminating the landscape, the mountains just visible on the horizon by starlight under the absolutely magical deep navy sky. Too gorgeous!

We returned to Gerardo's then just Maggui, Barry and I carried on into the centre to catch the last half hour of the Cuban band. The quality of the amplification was excellent: I've noticed how clear the sound often is at large outdoor events here, not sure how they do it and avoid the distortion I often associate with this kind of concert. The city was absolutely full of people: family groups with lots of small kids, asleep or awake, and young people in couples or packs. Everyone was eating something or other from the street vendors, from packet snacks, corn and ice cream to plates heaped with food. Kids had balloons and were blowing bubbles, or playing with marionettes and other toys bought on the street.

Echelons of men earn their living from tips earned by managing the parking - guiding you to spots on their pitch, helping you park in the tight spots by whistling, waving their rags about, thumping on your car, or whatever other means they have invented. In some cases they will wash your car while you are away (this happens a lot in Mexico City), thereby increasing their tip, and the presence of a watchful eye ought to discourage break-ins and car theft, so drivers cheerfully pay the guardians. I often wonder how the various guys in this informal economy claim and retain their particular pitch, and if there is a mafia of sorts which controls them and claims a cut of their takings. (Likewise I wonder about the street vendors - I photographed the Indigenous women below in San Miguel.) Outside the smarter restaurants and hotels there seems to be a bit more formality to the system, which even runs to valet parking, but it is amazing how people create a market and find a niche in the most straitened circumstances. Maggui had negotiated the parking system, having dropped us off near the plaza before she went off to park, and only rejoined us in time for the last song. Walking back to the car, she met some of the inevitable ex-Nestle crowd - she worked there for well over 30 years, in increasingly senior executive assistant roles, and seems always to run into former colleagues wherever we go.

On Sunday morning after breakfast Maggui dropped us off at a lovely park which has a museum and a few large statues of heroes of the Mexican Revolution, so we could have a look around for a bit, then picked us up and we packed up the car and Romy and headed off to Tequisquiapan, an incredibly charming village which used to be famous as a spa, but whose water has largely dried up as a result of lack of attention and poor environmental guardianship. After wandering around the zócalo we chose a place to eat lunch. Paella was on that day, so I had to have it, but I was a bit disappointed: the version cooked by the grandmothers at El Hogar Español in Johnston St in Collingwood at home is very much better!

We then had a wander around the place, taking in the artesanía market and ending up at the retirement home of Maggui's former boss, who was away in Europe . His chef, who is caring for the house and the rather overweight poodle, is a great friend of Maggui's and took us on a guided tour of the lovely house, pool and gardens, and regaled us with tales of Tequisquiapan in the old days. He also gave Maggui a huge bag of avocados from the garden in various stages of maturity: she passed on half a dozen to us which we consumed with relish as they ripened over the next couple of weeks. From there we negotiated our way through the extensive and very dusty roadworks back to the main toll road, and back to Mexico City. Maggui and I had both noticed "Speedy Gonzalez" playing over and over in the very small play list of a local radio station we had been tuned to, which neither of us could really explain! We just changed the station to something classical and a lot more calming for the journey home.