After 24 hours of daylight and 35 hours of February 1, we arrived in Mexico City. I am not sure that it’s anybody’s concern but I’ll still say it: Fikret and I had never had to “overcome” a worse flight than this. Bear the name Iberia in your mind. And keep as far away as you can. Uncomfortable planes, rude flight attendants, horrible and meagre food, and they are skimpy as a principle.

Fortunately, Mexico City – called DF here – is a delicious place.

First of all, everyone is Mexican here. Really. It is a stupid sentence when you say it out loud, I know. Yet, as we found out, a place where everyone is Mexican is a funny place. You feel like you are in a permanent movie set. Everyone has a deep, theatrical facial expression. Everyone looks like the lazy, sympathetic, saintly, or criminal looking Mexicans in Hollywood movies.

And, probably as a result of a hallucination caused by the revolutionary tradition of this land we have memorized, we saw a bunch of Emiliano Zapatas in the streets.

Since Fatmanur hasn’t joined us yet, we keep grizzling “Fatmanuuur, Huuurry uuup!” It turned out that even the word “Yes” doesn’t mean anything to these friends in here. Everything is in Spanish. In fact, if she wouldn’t be joining us in a few days with her magnificent Spanish and vast knowledge of Central/South America, we would have to force ourselves to learn the language in every possible way.

Everywhere is crowded with policemen. In only one hour, the number of the policemen we saw amounted to the total number we saw in the States in twenty days. It’s like we are in İstanbul on May 1. Security is a big issue here.

According to Lonely Planet, we have to follow these rules to be safe: We should take a cab if we want to enter a quiet street. But it is also very common to get robbed or killed by a cab driver, so we have to be selective and careful while choosing. We can be stopped and get robbed in the streets at nights, so we shouldn’t take our ATM cards and money with us. But it is also not safe to leave it at the hotel.

Last night we walked around and the streets were filled with homeless. Moreover, they didn’t look like the homeless we had seen before. They were in groups and looked cool. They were brimming with confidence like they had a lot of properties. To be a homeless like that must have difficulties, I’m sure. The hearsay that they turn into robbers at nights and start asking for money with the help of a knife seemed unlikely. We’ll let you know when we get robbed.

Fikret summarised the security issue with an academic approach: “They all seem shrewd.” Yes, shrewd, but in a helpful way. I asked for a lighter, and they almost followed me to the hotel.

They have the same x-ray craze we have in Turkey. I used to say it was impossible to find a more paranoid country than Turkey. Think for a moment: do you know any other country that you get searched while entering a shopping mall?  Or have you seen an x-ray apparatus while entering an airport? (I am not talking about getting on a plane.)

And here it is! An x-ray heaven! It’s even more paranoid than Turkey. The first time in my life, my bags passed through an x-ray apparatus while I was LEAVING an airport.

At 10:30 AM, sixty percent of the shops were closed – and closed by double shutters. Besides, the shops are weird. Apart from the ultra helpful employees, they are clean and have wide range of products. You hear music coming out of most of them. For instance, it was interesting to hear loud Mexican pop coming out of the pharmacy next to our hotel or out of a gadget store in the street.

It’s our first day here, so it’s acceptable for us to talk nonsense. But still I will tell you about the obsession for coloured shoes in here. Every corner is full of ostentatious shoeshine boys. When I say “full”, I mean it. They are not waiting for customers. They are all very busy. For instance, a minute ago, we saw a policeman who was in a deep conversation with one of them while he was having his shoes shined.

Toilets and 7-Elevens are two more things that are not hard to find.

As for bon vivantism… There are a few people sleeping in the streets with their faces covered. Most of the shops are closed. Even the dogs are bon vivants. They all have a kind of Clint Eastwood attitude, and they are so cool that they make me feel like it’s my duty to show them affection

And we came across a show that I can’t skip without mentioning. In Taksim Square (of course it has another name but I haven’t managed to memorize it yet) there a lot of tents, so we joined a crowd of people going that direction and shouting out slogans. We tried  some of the slogans but couldn’t do it. We tried our best to understand what was going on, but for the moment all we could do was to flirt with a few friendly demonstrators. We could only “sense” from the slogans and the writings that there was a leftist thing going on. We took some pictures and will ask Fatmanur about it. You don’t get anything when you as the demonstrators themselves as, you know, their knowledge of English doesn’t go past “Yes” or “No” and that is only if they are enthusiastic about the language.

We took swine flu seriously. I cleaned my hands with antibacterials. Then I put on the mask you see in the picture for about twenty minutes. If there was any virus in that environment, I surely avoided it. Thankfully, they have these masks and antibacterial gels around in here. But of course, since I am not the Prime Minister of Turkey, I had my swine flu shot before I came to here. Fatmanur and Fikret are both prime ministers and more immune to swine, so they didn’t have any shots.

We will drink rakı tonight. We don’t know where. But the good news is that we made contact with Tülay, a buyukkeyif.com member. We’ll meet her. Luckily she will take us to some places.

As a result, that’s it for today. Now we will go and meet Fatmanur at the airport. You know, she is flying in from Lima today. I have a hunch that her hyperactivity and knowledge of Spanish, fuelled with the fact that she hasn’t seen anyone from the home country for months, will give us a sudden acceleration.