EPISODE 10: EL DIA DE LOS MUERTOS
EPISODE 10: EL DIA DE LOS MUERTOS
VINYL MINT: "Mexico? That's great! I used to watch a very touching Mexican telenovela with Maria la del Barrio and Soraya in the 90s.
FILTHY DOG: If you like Mexican dramas, you may like to watch a great film of 1950, "Los Olvidados".
VINYL MINT: Ok, I 'll check it out. Well, let's get to the point, could we maybe find in Mexico the Fire and Steel LP?"
FILTHY DOG: Mexico is on the other side of the Earth, so it is very difficult to find there such a rare Icelandic LP. However, someone could find many metal treasures there too!
VINYL MINT: Let's go to Mexico then!
FILTHY DOG: Impossible! I strictly avoid transatlantic flights. I can not live without smoking for so many hours!!! Moreover, we don't have enough money for that trip. In order to be able to afford a trip to Mexico, my friend, we have to clean toilets for the next 20 touristic seasons.
METAL MISSIONARY: VINYL MINT, maybe you could come with me. The stop in Mexico will be a full time tour around it with the pensioners' biriba&golf club. My mother is a member and offered me the trip as a birthday present. That means that we will have no chances for metal hunting or hot experiences with Mexican metalheads, but only time for cultural places and tasting Mexican cuisine until we find La Mexicana somewhere in the Caribbean and go to the USA to continue our metal mission. The only thing that is needed in order to join the pensioners' group is to speak Spanish, as they are looking for an extra person who can communicate with the local people and translate. This way you can gain money in order to come and buy records in the USA trip.
VINYL MINT: Are you sure that it is a good idea to travel with the biriba&golf club? It sounds like a bunch of privileged human beings with strange, boring habits. Cleaning toilets with Filthy Dog sounds more interesting to me.
METAL MISSIONARY: Come on, they may be even worse than you can imagine but just ignore them, this is maybe our unique chance to visit an unknown to us place, so far away from here, with great civilization and interesting traditions. We will also experience "El Dia de Los Muertos".
VINYL MINT: Ok, Ok, I will join you as a translator. Thanks to IRIS I am able to speak fluently all the official languages in the world.
METAL MISSIONARY: That's great! And you Filthy Dog?
FILTHY DOG: I am making an one-day stop in Czech Republic to buy records and then directly back home to receive our stuff from Berlin...
VINYL MINT: I don't know much about metal from Czech Republic...
FILTHY DOG: Just listen to this, it will blow your mind:
VINYL MINT: WOW! That's fucking awesome! Great, dark song, metal attitude, kickass videoclip, fantastic concept! And that little bird flying out of the bassist's mouth! What a brilliant artistic idea!!!
After sharing some more music tips, Filthy Dog said goodbye to his friends and told Vinyl Mint to keep in touch. He also advised her to search for Metal stuff also in Mexico in case that she manages to sneak out while the pensioners will be drinking their afternoon tea. He was sure that she could find there stuff that wasn't easily available in Europe, not only stuff from Mexico but also from Chile, Argentina, Colombia, Brazil and other ''nearby'' countries...
About a couple of weeks later VINYL MINT sent the following email to FILTHY DOG from Mexico, as she had promised him that she would keep in touch...:
"Hey Filthy Dog! It has already been a few days since I started touring around Mexico like a nomad. Every day I visit at least one new destination, every night I sleep in a different place. Intensively touring with these spoiled tourist-humans of the group is a real pain in the ass for a solo traveller like me, they often make me feel embarrassed with their rude and childish behavior on the working people. Last afternoon a lady of the group hysterically complained that our Mexican tour guide didn't predict that it was going to drizzle so she didn't take her raincoat with her and now she may catch a cold. Another lady complained that the same guide didn't informed her about the humidity levels of the air, therefore she didn't put her frizz control spray on her hair and finally humidity made her hair frizz and she couldn't update her profile picture with "such pathetic hair"...
I suppose that those are the so called luxury problems of the privileged world on Earth...
Anyway, let me tell you a few things about our experience until today in Mexico. I am sending you a few photos that I took, as well. We are continuously on the road, something like a band on tour. First of all, we visited Queretaro, a beautiful city with a huge aqueduct.
On the next photo you can see that Queretaro had already started the decorations for the upcoming Dia de los Muertos when we arrived there.
Then we visited San Miguel de Allende, an amazing town with historic, colorful buildings and paved roads that seems to attract not only tourists but also wealthy foreign residents from other countries who buy properties...exactly just like what happens on Crete where you live...I hope that after these massive tourists' and investors' ''invasions'' that the local people will manage to keep untouched their unique traditions, cultural heritage and mainly their own desired way of living...
Our next destination was Guanajuato, where the famous Mexican artist Diego Rivera was born.
It is one more beautiful Mexican city with great buildings of architectural interest, many underground thoroughfares and colorful, small plazas.
Then we visited a city called Lagos de Moreno where we had a small tour and ended up in an interesting art exhibition.
Afterwards, in the town of Tequila we learnt about how the famous drink is produced and we tasted three categories of Tequila: blanco, reposado and anejo. The adorable Mexican at the bar was continuously refilling our glasses, I have never drunk so much alcohol for breakfast in my life!
I also really enjoyed watching the vast fields of blue agave, while drinking my Cantarito made in this Jarrito de Barro that helps keep the drink cold. The quantity I consumed made me feel like an endlessly-swallowing kitchen basin.
Maybe we could move here and work as farmers one day...I didn't know that the heart of this plant is used for the tequila production...The next city that we visited was Guadalajara, the capital in the State of Jalisco, amazing city!!!
In Tlaquepaque we walked around to see the impressive decorations for el Dia de Los Muertos.
We listened to a great Mariachi band while eating Chiles en Nogada, a Mexican dish with the colors of flag of Mexico as it consists of green chile, white sauce and red pomegranate.
Yesterday, on 1. November, a very special experience started as the whole day had to do with the celebrations of the Dia de los Muertos. I found very interesting the symbolism behind the traditions of this celebration which has to do with the temporary return of the dead to the Earth. Many people make altars, the so called Ofrendas, usually in their homes or in cemeteries to honor their dead relatives and loved ones. A typical Ofrenda includes photographs of the deceased ones, personal belongings that the deceased ones used to love, food and drinks that they used to enjoy, candles, papel picado, water, sugar skulls, marigolds...At the beginning of the day we visited Santa Fe de la Laguna.
The streets that were leading to the ofrendas were already covered with bright and fragrant marigold blossoms in order to help the souls find their way. After taking a gander on the beautiful handmade colourful pieces of pottery that the inhabitants produce we went to Tzintzuntzan, where we visited the Yacatas and then watched a kind of parade where groups of people carried graveside items and decorations on their way to the cemetery accompanied by music bands who played live music loudly.
After that a little boat on Patzcuaro Lake took us to the Isla de la Pacanda. The local people lit fire outside their houses to cook and offer to the visitors corn, quesadillas and tequila and Mexican bands were playing live traditional music until the time comes to go to the cemetery late at night, where the local people were respectfully sitting around the decorated, full-with-candles graves of their beloved ones. The mystic atmosphere there could bring you goosebumps.
After leaving the island of Pacanda we visited another Cemetery after midnight. At that time I fully confirmed how catastrophic tourism can be for the local societies when tourists do not respect. You could see everywhere on this cemetery tourists making photos or videos or selfies between the graves, speaking loudly and jump upon graves because of the overcrowding, destroying this way the whole atmosphere. I felt so embarrassed for this disrespect on the local people's life that I left the place. We spent the second day of the festivities in Morelia, which was also fully decorated with Catrinas and Ofrendas.
At night the Plaza de Armas in Morelia was full of people with painted faces taking part in the festivities and the highlight of the night was spectacular fireworks in the sky. On the following photo you can see "La Llorona", I am sure that you have already listened to the famous relevant song.
As you noticed I haven't mention the words "Metal" or "Records" anywhere in my email.
In order to visit all these places that I mentioned, everyday we started touring at 5 o'clock in the morning and finished after midnight!!! On this trip I get full education about architecture, history, arts and traditions in Mexico everyday. To tell you the truth I was hoping for a free time in order to search for metal stuff in record shops or markets but we are moving so fast from another place to another that there is no time for anything else. I am enjoying my time here though, as the places are amazing, the food is perfect and the Mexican people that I have met are really nice, friendly and openhearted. As you can see in the photos the METAL MISSIONARY also seems to enjoy her time here...
BTW, I am sending you the recipe of a tasty green liquid that a nice Mexican guy gave me in Guadalajara, I drank it in order to quickly recover from an alcohol overdose.
Tomorrow we will go to Mexico City and we will spend the whole day in the National Museum of Anthropology. As you can easily realize, there is absolutely NO POSSIBILITY for me to find anything that has to do with METAL there...For now I am just going to listen to kickass old Mexican metal stuff on my headphones...
I'll keep in Touch!
Vinyl Mint"
(...to be continued...)