If I had to migrate back to Mexico, which inevitably abandon in four weeks, live, without thinking twice, in Condesa.
When my circumstances (yes, those that vary as much as a teenager undecided) forced me to find a place to deposit my humanity and six bags with my clothes and four dozen books, traveled half the city looking for the perfect place to move (first mistake, the "ideal" does not exist, it is only a pretense of our minds, claims useless but indispensable, as love, happiness or eternal life).
reviewed tens or hundreds of economic announcements, made so many calls that irritated me the ear and walked the streets and avenues of Mexico in the most devious and processional schedule that can be imagined. For starters, my circumstances (again) attempted against me, a guy who wants to rent an apartment for five months is suspect, uneconomic and uncomfortable, it is not uncommon negative soon began to happen. Then find a spacious but not huge, comfortable but not luxurious, small but claustrophobic, it becomes a way of the cross, so that among the "no" to those who have never been my home and "not" mine, the result was a disaster. Finally, something closer to despair than an epiphany led me to revise my notes and call back to the hotel that was ruled by the bizarre propaganda ("Your home away from home") and because their rates were a clear threat to my budget . Expert
already reading the ads that appear in newspapers and the Internet (which a "secured parking" was "the space you find on the street" and a "bathroom" infamous shower under a ladder) I was not surprised that the bar and gym were just in the imagination of the writer and the friendly staff actually be "fluent in two languages, English and Mexican ... None of that was important, the place was clean, had been doing relatively little remodeling, furniture were quite good and the "junior suite" had enough space for ten paces separated the table of the king bed that was offered generous. Josefina have known that not only was responsible for cleaning who negotiated politely but washing my clothes were the last reason I needed to decide.
Until then Condesa neighborhood was like a completely unknown which had heard a thousand things (bars, restaurants, bohemian nightlife) but where there was only gone twice, the first by half a bar on the roof snob recycling an old hotel where neither the sushi or the attention justified the amount of a bill that canceled the gold corporate card of one of the guests (those were the days!) and the second, a bar room where I was listening to delight Rejas voice, my student, one of the few names I carry in his pack of Mexican souvenirs.
go on both occasions had been nothing more than an adventure, streets and parks and avenues were crossed with no apparent order, made strange circles and lost rookie, each time, three or four runs were necessary to find the respective premises. In addition, parking is impossible and must submit to the goodwill (and price) of the valet parking, an institution in Mexico. So decide for that quarter (with the little information that we had) was little more than a loose cannon, to my luck, hit home the only duck that flew over the site.
I soon discovered that Countess is walking, so I decided to recover I had lost the habit in my laziness. I was determined to wear out the streets, as Borges said, giving me no other guide than a couple of points of reference and some common sense to walk every street, every room, every park, going into every shop, every café, waving and asking, kindly letting Mexicans inalienable foreign guided steps lost in the middle of the streets of a friendly and beautiful neighborhood, but Mario says no, I found your Barranco and Miraflores my old and decadent teens. An old space but definitely not old, because with lonely ladies who walk their dogs and gentlemen solos melancholy drinking coffee in the same place as always, also coexists a multitude of young couples with children excited about excess blood sugar that roam the gardens hysterically happy (nothing is perfect), and it also looks like someone is an appearance, running dozens of girls in tight pants (to rejoice more and gain less) by a huge park not only has the natural scenery of trees but has a tireless supply vendors offering from a juice fresh fruit and tortured to a delicious slice of greasy french fries.
But what I fell in love with Countess were not its parks and its streets taken by trendy bars, cafes and restaurants that can not keep up because they look permanently crowded the Mexican middle class that can be spent between ten and forty dollars without jeopardizing the family budget. No, what I fell in love with Countess were the four or five streets around the hotel where I live (whose inhabitants, as far as I've seen and as far as the concierge told me, are a varied fauna ranging from the employer who uses sexagenarian modosita shelter to foreign-prostitute-and high-flying home established here in the months remaining in the city and the environment, temporary workers, students from the provinces, migrants seeking home, lovebirds and even a noble discreet old woman who has decided to spend his last days in a bathrobe and curlers sharing his room with memories and ghosts). About
"home" is possible to find a butcher shop (those in the neighborhood who sell meat only and not intended to act as supermarkets, and whose services will no longer use because I do not cook-), an academy of flamenco (in which I inscribe only by sharing "tablao" with women, arrogant and stylish, whose silhouettes, which are behind the curtains, with that gesture and the rudeness with which I imagine all the gypsies), a bakery pretentious (not only smells delicious hot cakes but also has an oven bodeguita and up from where some chickens worthy of note and whose door of the bakery, not the oven-positioned vendors offering unforgettable avocados, tacos the way, crackling crispy and sauces and dressings "home" I have not tried but the ladies of the neighborhood buy in huge quantities), a pharmacy unserved mildly (which still serves the owner, as is de rigueur, is old and cranky and always cleaning the glass in the futile effort to improve their image), a movie rental store (which I can not access because I have a utility bill and the border of the window does not include "live in a hotel, Miss"), a "beauty salon (which I always empty), an ice cream (which, like all ice cream shops in Mexico, is called" Michoacan "), a fancy restaurant ( I say "the boys in the valet parking to those who provided health-specialty is duck, which I love, and which I promised to invite me before the end of May and with it my Mexican season), a library old (full of used books, filled with shelves and shelves where lies the wisdom of mankind at a bargain price, which sometimes I go just to remember the combined aroma of wood, cardboard the covers and leaves worn and hands of thousands of volumes that lie there), two cafeterias (one modern and apparently comfortable that no one goes and the other with old furniture and stiff wooden chairs, which always is full), a chocolate (which prepares a delicious hot chocolate is superb along with a cake of the same flavor and Homeric proportions whose only fault is the pile of shredded pecans with which I deal with for a long time before such delicacy wage a dispensable ornament and annoying), a center of "spinning" (whose schedules whimsical cross-happy-with mine), a therapy center slimming (where the promoter me lustful looks from your desk and not because my slender figure but tempted by the juicy commission would imply a contract to get off weight), two stations (one I have ever used and another whose only virtue is my attachment to the more mundane routine customs), a seafood restaurant (which I would never go for the absurd but pervasive prejudice that Mexico is "very far from the sea"), a Japanese food (not tempt me) and another pasta (which I have not entered because it is always full and I consistently refuse to queue for a youth trauma left me President Garcia in his first term, where supply and shortage symmetrically increased corruption).
That's it. Condesa love because it reminds me of my youth sites, the directions of my early years. Condesa love it preserves the serenity of the old neighborhoods illuminated by the vitality of its young tenants. Most conservatives are complaining about the proliferation of shops, the traffic every day more complicated, the buildings standing on the corpses of old houses that housed families that the time apart, the bars and music, the plans to build more parking lots and dark intentions to close some avenues for the benefit of traders. Maybe
doomsayers are right, it may be that traditional Condesa is dying, but I've never seen a more flowery decay. Ever, as now, I have returned to those parks and those streets beat my childhood, where I believed in dreams, where he was a child.
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