Ulaan Baatar, Mongolia: WWCD (What Would Chingis Do)?by Randi / July 22, 2017
Once we decided to do the Trans-Mongolian instead of the Trans-Siberian (Mongolia and China instead of just lots more Siberia? not a hard decision), we knew we had to line up our dates so that we landed in Mongolia in time for Naadam, the most important festival and event in the Mongolian calendar (I mean it’s the only festival and event in the Mongolian calendar that I know, so I could be wrong about that but I’m probably right). The three-day festival is like the country’s own Olympics, celebrating the Three Sports of Men, or the Three Sports of Chingis (Genghis) Khan, something like that. In our English language pamphlets handed out in the stadium it says “Three Manly Sports” which is hilarious so let’s say it’s that one. Those three exalted sports are wrestling, archery, and horse-racing. Seems straightforward enough, right? Ha!
Naadam is held from July 11 to July 13, although the closing ceremony occurs on the night of July 12 and stuff still continues the next day or so but don’t worry your pretty little head about that. Naadams are held all over the country like each little town’s and region’s own little special olympics (lowercase for both is really important). But the big deal is in Ulaan Baatar, and it is CROWDED. All the city’s 1.5 million residents seemed to be in that stadium meant for maybe 5,000, plus all the people coming in from the countryside to see it. The three sports of men are a huge deal, apparently.
we’re men manly men we’re men in tights! yessss
We got tickets to the opening ceremony, the closing ceremony, and wrestling. A whole lot of wrestling. We would learn that you don’t actually need tickets for the sporting events, so we rocked up to watch a good amount of archery and the Mongolian version of beer pong as well.
The opening ceremony was very exciting — outside, milling about the endless rows of food and drink stalls (mostly selling khuushuur, the meat-filled empanada looking traditional food that is apparently like the official food to eat at Naadam), were TONS of people, and mostly Mongolian people, so there was this strong air of patriotism and excitement and just overall camaraderie – that is, until we went to our seats. We had seats in the so-called ‘tourist section’ because it’s in the shade (bless whoever made that happen), but it was as unorganized and chaotic as you could ever imagine. People were sitting in the wrong seats, in the aisles and on the bases of pillars and on the barriers to the entrance/exit. And I don’t just mean people. Whatever number you are imagining in your head as composing this crowd, multiply it by 10 at least. We had to literally climb over dozens of people to get into the entrance (like a regular stadium gate-by-gate open entrance, but in a stadium from medieval times)and then do the same through the aisles to get to our seats, where tourists were sitting because they don’t know how to read tickets but who even cares when Mongolian and foreign people are just sitting wherever the hell they want with no regard for safety? And there were plenty of stadium staff, volunteers, and police everywhere, so the people you hoped would get things in order – or at least form a path for when people had to exit – didn’t bat an eyelash at the scene. It was a terrifying thought, but we realized during this ceremony/scene of absolute dire chaos how, you know whenever you hear about a terrible accident in a third world country where hundreds or thousands more people die than seems correct or possible for such a building or type of accident? We realized that if anyone at all went wrong in this stadium, there was no way we or anyone could get out. It was really scary, actually. I couldn’t even leave to pee! I mean I tried eventually and stepped on or over 57 people and the only bathroom was halfway around the entire stadium (cool designing, guys) but I waited for so long. I was not eager to return afterwards because what if there was a fire!
the crowd just trying to get in
Luckily, there wasn’t! Thank you Chingis! Aside from the constant fear and the terrible bladder pain, the opening ceremony was pretty entertaining! The organizers had conscripted literally every single Mongolian child, teenager, and really adult to be a part of it. Every time we thought the performer crowd had reached its limit, another group of 100 people in a different costume would run out onto the field. There aren’t that many Mongolians. I really mean it, every single citizen was either on that field or sitting in my aisle.
I’m not really sure what story the ceremony told because the voice booming over the speaker system for two hours was of course speaking Mongolian but I’m going to try my best to relate what I saw. First, lots of men in costumes reminiscent of the dolls working for Lord Farquaad in Shrek came out on horseback for celebratory lap around the track. People lost their shit seeing horses gallop, I’m not kidding. I was sitting next to a midwestern American woman who was either on drugs or just simple because every little thing made her squee with glee. She also had the loudest clap I’ve ever heard and like it actually hurt my ears sitting next to her. That’s enough about her. So after the cavalry, 100 tweens dressed in white came out and did some weird modern dancing for a bit before they released doves, which made people lose their shit even more than the horses. I was the only person not screaming my aggressive approval, because that shit is super cruel. How long did you have those doves crammed in your pockets, you little shits? Some of the doves weren’t able to fly out of the stadium because their wings had been so damaged, so for the next two hours there were half a dozen doves just on the field. It was heartbreaking. I’m sharing all of this so the monsters among you reading this who are planning an event and want to release doves decide not to. For those of you reading who would never dream of doing such a bullshit thing and are as sad as I am now, I’m sorry and here is a picture of my doggie:
HI I’M THE CUTEST BEST DOG IN THE WHOLE WORLD YES I AM
that bird is a liar
So then lots more men in hilarious I mean very stately and regal period costumes came onto the field. We’re talking hundreds. As far as I could tell, they were telling the story of how Genghis/Chingis inspired his armies to fight against the Roman legions, and he brought about the fall of Rome. I’m not sure the dates line up for that to be historically accurate, and again I have no idea what was being said so the chances of this being what was actually on display are extremely low, but you try figuring this out.
After the Romans were sufficiently vanquished, Chingis and his manly men had to deal with the, um, wizards, and their dragons. Chingis whistled for a giant silver bird to lead his men to victory, and the giant Chingis float and the giant dragon floats moved about slowly and awkwardly but overall impressively until the Mongolians cheered their approval and another round of horse riders took a victory lap around the stadium. The only good part about the frequent horse laps is the group of men who come out behind them with brooms and poop-collecting pans.
WATER FIIIIIGHT
Then they had to vanquish the um gold alien men? So they called back upon the giant silver bird to help win that battle. Guys I really had to pee.
I LOVE GAAAAAAHHHHLD
But then it got even more exciting! Somehow they set up a huge stage in the middle of the field and DOZENS of people came out from underneath. How long were they cooped up in those holes!! Oh my god! Much worse than the guy in Ocean’s 11 and I’m sure much hotter. Dayum they just kept coming and coming more and more out from under the stage I feel bad for them but it was kind of hilarious in the pure clown-car aspect of it. BUT IT GETS BETTER. Because guess who Chingis had to fight next?
DINO-MITE
THAT’S RIGHT THE DINOSAURS! He didn’t even move from his giant float seat; Chingis was all ‘get out of my kingdom, dinosaurs! Go back to chilling in the Garden of Eden with Adam & Eve like they teach happened at the Creation Museum in Kentucky!’ And Chingis is so powerful and manly that they listened.
this one guy managing the tiny white bird is my fave
But the hell demons loved the dinosaurs and the dino banishment made them angry! Hellfireeee!
It’s okay! We will dance the demons back to hell!
But then that damn Roman army returned!
But then that damn Roman army returned!
And again, dancing will be the answer.
To celebrate, the bull and the elephant statues rocked around and then hundreds more people in various costumes danced (how did people remember all this choreography!) and balloons were released (don’t do that either!) and all these medieval-looking army people waved flags and then literally 200 tweens with rainbow umbrellas came out just to stand with their umbrellas around the track for everrrr. It was so hot and boring for them, just standing there. One little boy was not about to waste his time standing still when he was a part of Naadam. He twirled his umbrella, he danced, he did the funniest poses – peace signs, waves, even dap lol. He was my favorite part. He was everyone’s favorite; the whole section was laughing and loving him. It was so funny.
Next, I just still can’t believe. It was the presentation of all Mongolia’s animals. They literally walked oxen, camels, horses, sheep, goats, ibix (what is the plural of that…is that plural?), cows and bulls, freaking yaks, all around the track. Real ones. Those poop scoopers were busy. I thought we were being punked by this point. But it got even better! Just like at the Olympics, small groups of representatives from various organizations paraded around the track, each waving their banners and holding their signs. But instead of it being the athletes from each country, here it was just representatives of the companies sponsoring Naadam. At least I think it was sponsors. It might just have been all the Mongolian companies. Oh my god. Like all the airlines walked by with their flight attendants and pilots in their uniforms, various restaurants. Even Harley Davidson wheeled by, at which I overheard the most nauseating conversation from the old white American men sitting behind me: “You know, the Harley Davidson corporate office is now just a mile from where Julia lives!” “Oh that’s GREAT!” IS IT???
Just when you thought it was over, hundreds of young girls dressed in ice blue costumes came out and danced more.
Then everyone, all ten thousand participants, danced together and everyone was joyous and we figured that was it.
But then this guy came out.
I can’t make up a reason for this guy.
Okay, on to the Three Manly Sports! First of all, let’s forget about the horse-racing. It takes place 30km or so outside the city, so we weren’t going to see it anyway, but more importantly horse-racing is a cruel and inhumane torture method masquerading as a ‘sport’. Second of all, the three sports of men are really, apparently, four sports, because there’s a pavilion for ankle-bone shooting. What the hell is ankle-bone shooting, you ask? How can you not know? It’s when non-athletic men lounge around and flick sheep’s literal ankle-bones at targets. It is a drinking game from a USA state university gone official.
As for the two remaining and more legitimate sports. I was super excited. Not that I like wrestling, but it would be interesting to see it in a country that adores it so much. And archery! I liked doing archery at camp. And I like Robin Hood: Men in Tights. It would be just like that, right? Lol no. The rules for the Mongolian versions of these sports are unlike anything you’d have guessed. We’ll start with wrestling.
We were sitting in our seats in the tourist section of the main stadium (the second day was like a whole different place; no aisle sitting or anything! so much better!), waiting for some matches to start, before we realized…it had started. What looked like men in diapers and boas just wandering around and warming up was actually Mongolian wrestling. See, there is no time limit to their faceoffs, and no boundary limit, and they had multiple pairings going at once! So like 30 Mongolian men were on the field all walking around the entire length and width of it, biding their time before making a quick move that would knock their opponent down. They can go on forever! And it was hard to know who was actually going because there were so many at once. So awkward!
Every once in a while the crowd would roar and we’d catch the tail end of a brief but exciting bit of actual activity. It was interesting and so unlike any wrestling you’ve seen. Unless you’ve seen Mongolian wrestling. So the English language pamphlet we received says this: “Many foreigners are confused by Mongolian wrestling and may find it boring or too long. On the contrary, wrestling is actually the most interesting and entertaining Naadam sport.” OKAY I GUESS THAT’S THAT THEN.
I can’t even tell if the pics I’m posting are different
All the wrestlers are wearing speedo underwear and a frilly shrug around their shoulders. The goal is to have the biggest bare skin-to-clothing ratio, apparently. The wrestlers also wear important hats – red, with yellow stripes. The yellow stripes signify how high their ranking is. They take the hats off when they are about to actually wrestle, which helps you realize that they actually started the match and aren’t just still standing around. But they still are. Little bursts of action happen every now and then, but despite how long the matches can take and usually do take, the match (is it called a match? squirmish?) ends as soon as someone’s elbow or knee touches the ground. So it’s not like the man-on-man-on-mat type wrestling you may be imagining – it’s mostly just like pushing with hands while standing, and as soon as someone goes down at all, it’s over. And they are allowed to touch anywhere they want – except the head.
As for archery, we had even less of an idea what was going on. This was mostly due to the hour and a half of interpretive dance (soo weird) that began the archery trials on Day 1. We hurried over in hopes of seeing an arrow or two hit a target, and it was like two hours before they started actually shooting arrows and even longer before we realized that they don’t shoot at targets like we know archery to do. They shoot their arrows in high soft arcs that land in a pit of little red and brown leather jars! And they try to knock them over. It’s like bowling but with archery! It was so ridiculous!
the interpretive dance at archery
The archers have 40 shots, which seems like a lot! They have to get their high soft arc to land on the cylinders – any of them, there are no extra points for hitting the red ones in the center, which seems wrong – and push the cylinders away! They don’t get any points unless the arrow pushes cylinders at least eight centimeters away from its starting position! It is SO bowling!
archery bowling
The best part of both of these sports is that there are teams of judges dressed in traditional costume that surround each of the wrestlers, like their little entourage in their corner of the ring. But instead of smacking them and toweling off sweat, they are singing traditional phrases and songs about their performances. And in archery, the Greek chorus of judges stands by the targets and sings and does certain hand signs depending on whether and how many clay jars the arrow hit. HILARIOUS.
We heard that the champion of wrestling was given a Land Rover, another car, and an APARTMENT. No idea what the archer got.
Okay, so about that Mongolian version of beer pong, or when boys fold up paper into little paper footballs and shoot them at people during high school. Ankle-bone shooting is a team game, like bowling, so says the pamphlet, though I wanna be like, your archery is the bowling. Anyway, teams are crowded into tiny spaces and everyone is super friendly and sportsmanlike, to the point that no one is allowed to curse or get angry or say anything rude, and instead of disappointment when someone messes up, everyone – you guessed it – SINGS!!!
As you can see, Naadam was really interesting, overwhelming, and mostly fun. I’m really glad we got to see so much of it. Now I don’t need to go back to Mongolia. Despite how much fun it was to fear for our lives in a poorly constructed and managed stadium and how interesting it was to learn about new sports, my favorite part about Naadam was that one of the stalls had bubble tea. I had a strawberry tea one one day and a mango tea the next. I love bubble tea. I also had this super fun potato tornado!!
NO OMG my favorite part was this amazing Mongolian baby! He was so cute! I made Z pretend he was taking a picture of me so we could sneak a pic of the baby. Enjoy!
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More of St. Petersburg: Random Sights, More Museums, and Peterhof
There’s so much more to talk about from St. Petersburg! Russia fun is only just beginning! We had a jam-packed less-than-a-week in the ‘bourg, seeing everything on our must list and most of the stuff on our maybe list. We really enjoyed our time and would happily return one day, maybe for a more leisurely visit, maybe to do all the clubbing we missed out on (“well I wouldn’t say I’ve been *missing* it”). I covered all the main highlights in the previous post, but there’s still so much cool stuff we saw. I want to share the last of the museuming we did in Peterbourg, a few random things worth commenting on (at least from my perspective), and our day at the Russian version of Versailles.
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Like this random street market that was decorated with umbrellas when we were scrambling trying to find umbrellas for sale. No one could reach these to sell to us. So cruel, decorative umbrellas in the rain! This market had a burrito truck, a Dippin’ Dots stand (for real!), and then about 48 matryoshka and wooden whittled goods stands.
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I know I’m a nutter but one of my favorite things was this ambulance. The word on the back is pronounced ‘reanimatsia” – like reanimator. I was cracking up. So morbid!
How do they not have a series of action movies called the Reanimator?
There are statues everywhere, and not just of past rules but of famous writers too. Here is Pushkin all like ‘hey I don’t really know what’s over there but there’s a bird on my head’.
THAT BIRD IS A LIAR
And here’s Gogol being like ‘I’m so morose but in a high fashion way not a depressed way look how fashionable my downward gaze is maybe I should model instead of write.’ First name Hansel.
Gogol. So hot right now.
So St. Petersburg has the deepest subway tunnels I’ve ever seen. Are they the deepest in the entire world? I would bet on it. OK I just looked it up and they have the second deepest in the world and some of the longest escalators. Seriously, on the way to the metro we would be standing on that escalator for like a full four minutes! That’s INSANE! And I thought the tube had some deep lines! I usually run down the escalators in the tube but hell if I was going to even walk slowly down this one when I couldn’t even see the bottom for 3 minutes! It was kind of scary. The metro was pretty easy to use though with really user-friendly token machines. You just put money in and for every 45p (the cost of a one way token) it counts, it spits out a token. So easy, no screens or language barriers or anything.
longest escalators in the world!
Okay so every statue we saw of Peter the Great (and there are a lot) gives him a tiny Beetlejuice style head! What is up with that? Did he have a tiny head? Because he was really quite tall, right? Poor tiny headed tall man
Okay that’s enough Rand(i)om Thoughts, let’s get back to touristing! One rainy morning (cough every morning so far cough), we walked for a while across the Neva to see the original cabin of Peter the Great when he first found the land and was like hey I wanna live here and name it after me! His little cabin was so cute! It was built in 1703 and he liked for it a little but then he was like nah boys let’s make a huge city and have my palaces be approximately 1 billion times bigger than this one room schoolhouse. The cabin was closed the day we went up but I don’t think it’s necessary to go in anyway. Cool to see, cool to see.
Pretty fancy for a log cabin. Ron Swanson would not approve.
When we were up by the cabin, we decided to check out the cruiser Aurora, which served in the Russo-Japanese war in the early 1900s and now serves as a museum. On a ship! Of course, as we’ve come to learn is super common in Russia, the cruiser was closed the day we went, even though the info we had in advance said it was closed a different day. Oh boy, things are always closed on random days. (Wait till you see what we’ve had to deal with in Moscow! Soon.) At least we got to take a picture of it.
Museo warship!
St. Petersburg has some beautiful green space, such as the big central park called the Field of Mars. This park has beautiful gardens and trees, as well as the Eternal Flame, which was lit on November 6, 1957. Ten years later, it was delivered to Moscow’s Kremlin for a similar site near the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier there – which you will see in the next post!
IS THIS BURRRRRNING AN ETERNALLLL FLAAAAAAME
Our last museum of St. Petersburg came at the suggestion of friend-of-the-show Liz, who said the Ethnographic Museum was not to be missed. It was a really surprisingly extensive museum. At first the building looks like it has maybe one room but then it goes on literally FOREVER. We were there for 2 hours before I conked out and had to stop museuming. Two hours is really my limit for museuming, especially when we are going to like at least one a day, which is a shame because it really was a very interesting museum. There were tons of dioramas of dress and housing and other aspects of life and culture from literally every ethnic group in the entire region of Central Asia. And best of all, it was the first (and only) exhibit of Jewish stuff we’ve found so far, which made me haps.
yay jews
#4 that Frasier tho |
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my real favorite part of the Ethnographic Museum – a wee wittle baby woolly mammoth!
The greatest thing we did later in our visit, though, was a day trip to Peterhof, like the Versailles of Russia. Peter the Great ordered it to be built in the early 1700s, probably so he could summer there when the Winter Palace/Hermitage just wouldn’t do. Like Versailles, it’s very much a good weather destination, with the outside grounds of endless gorgeous gardens and impressive fountains the real draw. So we were nervous about going when the forecast for our last day, the only day we could go, was rain rain rain. Luckily, our hostel receptionist Anastacia (the nicest person we’ve come across like ever) said it was better to see it in the rain than not at all, because we went, and the sun came out the entire time we were on the grounds. It rained on our journey there and back, but we super lucked out once there. Amazing!
To get to Peterhof from the city, we walked about 30 minutes (literally everywhere we went was always a 30 minute walk, it was like some kind of weird wizard universe) to a certain metro line, took the metro to a bus stop about 10 stops away, and then took a minibus – really a 15 person van, so weird – that went to Peterhof. The minibuses/vans were indeed legitimate, with numbers of their routes on the windows and full of locals getting off along the route – but it just seemed so fake. But it was fine, and got us there in less than an hour. Once there, we spent about 4 hours at the site. It was so beautiful! The fountains were ridiculous, as were the gardens. The interior of the palace, the fancy af rooms, required a separate ticket, which we didn’t know until we tried to go in. The line to get interior tickets (at the actual palace, not the outside ticket office) was suuuper long, and then once you had those tickets you had to queue in another super long line to get inside. So annoying! The rooms are gorgeous though. No pictures allowed, so you’ll have to go yourself. But I’ll share tons of pictures from the lovely grounds! They went on forever, and even though the site was packed, there was so much of it that you could walk a mile all alone like you were in a forest. Such a great respite.
pretty cool
Peterhof was built right on the water, so after you walk through the acres and acres of gardens you are in the sea amaaaz
a little aviary on the grounds
the pyramid fountain
SQUIRREL FRIEND
Chessboard cascade!
my favorite little house on the grounds! like 1/1000th of the main palace but it’s my fave. These bridges split the water around it into four pools i would LOVE four pools
I definitely recommend spending a day at Peterhof as a break from the city. We loved it, though I must admit we still haven’t been to Versailles, so I can’t say whether you’d be similarly blown away by the beauty if you’ve been primed by Versailles. But I’m going to say that you would still enjoy it because come on so beautiful!
So St. Petey’s was a great real first-stop on our adventure. It felt very comfortable, without any of the culture shock that we are expecting to come at us in the (very!) near future. It is still very European, which explains that feeling. We would probably be happy to return one day, especially because there is still much to see. We really wanted to do a night boat tour, on many strong recommendations. See, at night, the bridges on all the canals lift up from about 1:45am to maybe just before 4am, so there are boat tours that go around the freed up canals and show off all the lights of the city. It’s supposed to be awesome, but there just wasn’t a night that we could dedicate to being up then because we had such full days planned, we couldn’t sacrifice a whole morning (as we would need to in order to recover from such a night!). So we’re sorry to have missed that, but we did so much sight-seeing that we are happy overall with our visit. And now we have a good reason to return! After Peterhof, we had a great final dinner at Ukrop (read about it here!) before getting on the midnight sleeper train to Moscow. Next post!
Vegan In Mexico City Part 2: Coyoacan! Frida! Nacho Libre!
What’s up party people! We’re back and ready to talk more about Mexico City! We have so much to talk about because as usual we packed an absurd amount of Activity into our short time there. (Okay other practiced travelers are probably saying ‘no you do a normal amount of Activity for a travel blogger since we need to see as much as possible when visiting a new place’ but you forget how much sleep I need.) As I said in Part 1 of the CDMX posts, we’re breaking up the info roughly by neighborhood to give it at least a chance at making organizational sense.
ok these might not be bears but you get it
In this post, we’re moving south to the Coyoacán neighborhood of Mexico City, where we find the famous blue house of Frida Kahlo, Casa Azul. I mean I guess it’s the famous house of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera but he seemed like a bit of a wanker so I’m going to focus less on him. Just a few blocks away is the Leon Trotsky house, where the Soviet revolutionary/Marxist/politician/Bolshevik/ Communist Party leader/&c lived and died in exile but not before partying with the Kahlo fam bam. I almost used a photo of the Trotsky house as the banner picture for this post but thought that might be weird/get me on lists. Anyway, aside from those two house museums we’re gonna eat great food and then go to a spectacular spectacle that I shockingly loved: Lucha Libre, the crayballs Mexican wrestling extravaganza.
Let’s start with the Commies!
THE LEON TROTSKY MUSEUM-HOUSE
Since I’m American, let’s start with the commies. You know how into all things Russia we’ve been for the past few years, learning as much as we can about the people taking over America, &c (and their language! правда!) so we weren’t missing this. I recommend a visit – it’s pretty quick and fairly interesting. It costs 40 pesos and would not take you more than 40 minutes to visit, so it’s like a peso per minute, a ratio that bothers me much less for museums than it does for theatre, strangely.
Trotsky was kind of a big deal in the USSR in the early 1900s, which is pretty much the time of all the big Soviet leaders whose names you know, like Stalin. Trotsky did not like Stalin. I mean no one ‘liked’ Stalin but he did it to his face. I really want to give him the nickname ‘The Trots’ but he’ll probably haunt me for that so no. Okay, so Leon was big into Marxism as a teen, as all teens are (?) and helped form the South Russian Workers’ Union. Since that sounds kinda nice, unions are good, he was exiled to Siberia, while I on the other hand paid to go there which is hilarious. (It’s not bad.) An enterprising young Trotter escaped to England, changed his name to the one we know now, and met up with fellow Bolshevik revolutionary Lenin, and they drank and argued in all the classic English pubs every night till closing about which of them would be commemorated in the future in every single Russian village and city with a giant and I mean GIANT bust of his head. (It was Lenin.) Mista Trotterrrr returned to Russia in 1905 for the Russian Revolution and was again exiled to Siberia and again escaped. This f-ing guy, am I right?
His radicalism got his azz thrown out of lots of otherwise nice places like Paris, Spain, NYC, and Switzerland (I mean but ‘neutrality’ favors the oppressors so fork you) (I know I know it is bothering me too that that list goes city, sovereign, city, sovereign but that’s how the source material I’m referencing does it ugh) and then he went back to Russia in time for the 1917 revolution. I mean he shows up for the important events, you gotta hand it to him. He was instrumental in the Bolshevik’s successful power grab, and he became Lenin’s secretary of foreign affairs. He did lots of stuff, yada yada yada, learned English from Seinfeld, and seemed to be the successor to Lenin, but as The Death of Stalin taught us, once a leader gets sick all hell breaks out and the succession struggle falls into chaos. When Lenin died, Stalin emerged as leader, and since Trottingham East didn’t like him and in fact openly criticized his polices, Stalin propagandaed him, removed him from his posts, and then exiled him from the Communist Party and then the Soviet Union. After some time in Turkey and a few other Euro stops, Trottingham North was granted asylum in Mexico! Yay Mexico! He and his fam first lived at the Casa Azul with Frida! Did you know! Trotavarius had an affair with Frida, a fellow Communist (Alexander did you know), but like who didn’t (we will get there). I imagine he also ate some amazing food that must have been a welcome respite from cucumber-tomato salad (what I had all throughout the former USSR). After a few years and a few too many fights with Diego (I can imagine what about), the Trotskys moved a few blocks away to their own house, which is now the museum. Despite being probably as far away as possible, Stalin was still mad and prob jealous of the food so he ordered Trotsky’s assassination. The first one, using guns, was a failure, but the last one, with an ice axe, well, the details make it seem like also a failure (I wish I didn’t know the details) but he died the next day from his wounds.
So the museum! So fun! The entry building has lots of photographs from Trotsky’s life and info about his work. It was fun to practice reading Cyrillic again and to listen to all the Russian tour groups (I think when we were there it was just us and Russian tour groups). It’s not super informative but some of the photos are interesting. The real focus of the museum is his actual house and gardens. It has been kept just as it was when he lived there, which means it’s dark, due to bars and shutters on the windows. That also means some of the interior walls still have bullet holes from the failed attack. In the kitchen, his pots and pans are still out; in the bedrooms, shoes are still lined up; and in Leon’s study, his papers and glasses and books are still on his desk. Out in the lovely gardens is his tomb.
So, it’s not the most popular tourist attraction, but I definitely recommend a quick visit before the Casa Azul, especially since his relationship to the Kahlos can help you understand them more.
CASA AZUL: THE BLUE HOUSE OF FRIDA KAHLO
When you visit the Frida house, you buy tickets online in advance. It’s too busy and popular to risk otherwise. But even so, you’ll wait in an endless line snaking around the house, around the block, and several blocks away to enter. Yes, when we arrived in what we thought was good time for our ticketed slot, ticket holders were waiting in a queue for almost an hour. In the SUN, guys. It was rough. If it was for the theatre I would have missed most of the first act and demanded an exchange and better seats.
Is it worth it? I mean I’m not a Frida nut but it’s pretty interesting and, ya know, it’s the big f-ing thing to do. If you really don’t care, then by all means skip it; there’s no reason to set aside a whole afternoon for it. But if you have the time, it’s fairly interesting. You learn a lot about Frida, what she went through, what kind of person she really was. And the house is lovely.
Once you enter, they will try to shuffle you straight into the museum part of the house, where you look at Frida’s and Diego’s paintings with lots of tourists taking selfies with them even though, if I recall correctly, you aren’t allowed to take pictures. Don’t let them manhandle you though – there are no bathrooms until you finish the entire inside tour of the house, so find them first and then go back. It’s a MADHOUSE, wall-to-wall people, and you’ll get agita trying to read about all the works when people are blocking everything. There are some interesting works in these initial rooms, but the better stuff awaits when you see the rooms as they lived in them.
I especially liked the kitchen. I don’t think we were allowed to take pictures but we have this one, so.
Surprisingly, the super long video that’s playing on a deck out in the garden space was incredibly interesting. I usually zone out in museum videos, especially ones that are this long (it’s like a whole movie) but it was great. As we already learned, Frida had an affair with Trotsky, but did you also know she probs had one with…Georgia O’Keefe? Yah. More important than her affairs is the information about Frida’s chronic pain. She had polio as a small child and its effects changed her body forever, leaving her with one leg shorter and significantly weaker than the other, due to muscle atrophy. As a teenager, she would suffer even more after a streetcar accident, which left her with fractured ribs, spine, clavicle, pelvis, leg, a crushed foot, a dislocated shoulder, and an iron railing through her hip and pelvic floor, causing the infertility represented in many of her paintings. They didn’t think she would survive the accident, but she did, and was left with a lifetime of pain.
Her father encouraged her to start painting as she recovered, and that’s how she met Diego. If you’re more familiar with her art than I was, you’ve seen her pain and suffering, as well as her strength, in her works.
In fact, her famous clothing style was a direct result of that: her corsets were really back braces helping her stand up. The square tops of her Tehuanan ethnic heritage could fit over and hide the brace. Flowers in her hair, her famous braids, and other interesting adornment above the neck would lead people to look up instead of down at her broken, withered legs, which were also hidden often by big skirts.
She went through a lot, is what I’m saying. And I knew some of her famous work and some generalities about her life, but I never knew she was disabled. She was an artistic pioneer in large part because of her pain, and it’s worth noting how her disability is largely erased from the popular narrative (and of course the cinematic portrayals). Of course, she still had quite a life – people long thought of her as a victim to Diego’s infidelity, but girl could get it too, and did – but you understand a lot more about her when you know how she was constantly suffering.
Also, she and Diego were Communists. I think it fairly hilarious how much she would despise the capitalist pigs who make endless tee shirts and tote bags with her face on them and how bewildered she’d be by the people wearing them. She’d hate the gift shop on her property selling all kinds of shit with her face. I think she’d hate the Christmas ornaments most of all, or she’d find it all utterly hilarious.
Okay, that’s enough of the serious stuff for today, right? Let’s switch to Arizona trash-bag mode and talk about food and wrestling.
VEGAN FOOD
Coyoacan is a fantastic neighborhood for vegan food. We planned on eating lunch at Aura Vegana (at Malintzin 199), and we stick to most plans, but we were almost enticed away to several other vegan establishments we discovered just as we wandered!
First, we saw Pan Gabriel, a bakery billing itself as entirely vegan! According to HappyCow, it is all vegan, but heads up – inside, we found several products with egg, and several others that reminded me of that one doughnuttery that appeared at the UK Vegan Fest like 9 years ago and told everyone that their giant amazing doughnutty things were vegan even though they looked exactly like another company’s products that were not vegan and then they disappeared from the face of the earth, so, ya know, be wary.
They have a lot of gorgeous bread products, cakes, rolls, sweet empanadas, all kinds of bakery treats that made me absolutely lose my shit and overpurchase in a glutinous fit. However, the actual goodies were disappointing. Everything was very bready, even the things that weren’t supposed to be bread, like doughnuts and cookies and brownies and cakes and well I guess that’s everything. And nothing was sweet enough. Honestly I would skip unless you hear of improvements, or unless you like your treats to be shiny bread.
LITERALLY NEXT DOOR to Pan Gabriel is a restaurant called Temictli, which is billed as ‘Plant-Based’ on the awning but even though I despise the cowardliness of people using that phrase all the time now instead of just saying vegan, they get a pass because they sound amazing and the lady was so nice (also because it’s not in an English speaking country so they can do what they want with words). Temictli’s menu looked OFF THE CHIZZ:
This is not even all of it! We were so tempted to stay put and skip Aura Vegana, but unforch the lady explained that even though she let us in and gave us a menu to look at, they weren’t actually open yet. Oops. Next time Temictli, you sound AMAZ.
So that means we stuck to our plan of Aura Vegana, which was pretty good.
Aura Vegana is a small cafe on the ground floor, right at the entrance, of a larger building with a bar up top and other restaurants inside. They have English versions of their menus, and they have green juice. I was sold before we sat down.
I assume I ordered an ‘Emerald’ juice, which mixed my classic hits like celery, orange, coocoomba, kale, spinach, parsley, and lemon, but I have a slight memory of husbo saying something like ‘you always have stuff like that at home’ so there’s a chance I actually had the ‘Turquoise’, which is celery, parsley, grapefruit, prickly pear, and pineapple. Either way guys, they have various green juices and it’s cool.
Since apparently I share pictures of menus now, here’s one from Aura:
I don’t know why these are called ‘Morning Dishes’ and the next page of the menu – all food from other cultures, like ravioli, various hamburgers, curry, hummus, Vietnamese noodles? – was called ‘Afternoon Dishes’, but definitely stick to Morning because you’re here for Mexican food.
We decided to share an order of enchiladas and an order of chilaquiles. This was baby’s first chilaquiles, which means I didn’t realize what I was getting into: it’s like, fried tortillas with sauces and junk on it, and it’s pretty delicious but was pretty heavy for me. Also, for being called ‘tofu chilaquiles’, there wasn’t much tofu. In fact, there was one piece on top, so, you know. The enchiladas were great, a bit more my speed though it was all heavy, creamy, filling food. We chose the little hogweed and portobello version, although there was not enough little hogweed – I found one strip of greenery which I’m assuming was the little hogweed. Maybe that’s why they said little.
It was all delicious, if heavy, but I should have known that going in. The cashew cheese on top was excellent, as was all the sauciness. Mexican food is amazing.
Outside, we passed a local park that was literally covered in paleta and gelato shops. Paletas are the Mexican ice pops that are made from incredible fruit purees (if you are cool and want vegan ones), which we enjoyed throughout the Yucatan. We decided on watermelon and horchata sorbets from one of the parkside shops, and we liked it, and we loved it.
LUCHA LIBRE
Alright I’m here, she’s here, we all made it to the craziest thing we did in Mexico City, the thing you have to do if you visit CDMX even though it seems ridiculous and if you’re like me you are probably like ‘really?’ but if you are like me you will give it a shot and you’ll be glad you did because it’s HYSTERICAL and SO FORKING ENTERTAINING. On a Friday night after our exploration of Coyoacan and communism and everything, we took the metro to the Arena Mexico for some Mexican wrestling, straight out of the Jack Black movie Nacho Libre but probably not entirely like that but honestly I’ve never actually seen it so shh but it doesn’t matter because now I’ve seen the REAL THING, BABIEEEES!
Lucha Libre is Mexico’s professional wrestling, of the sort you’d see on TV where you know they were faking it but it doesn’t matter. The wrestlers wear masks and costumes and have specific characters to play. The wrestling is as boisterous and raucous as the crowd, and they favor dramatic flips and crashes and bams (I don’t know all the terms) over rule-following and it is RIDICULOUS and it is HILARIOUS and it is AWESOME. I cannot recommend it enough.
When we arrived at the Arena Mexico, there was a line longer than the Frida house line, but it moved. We didn’t have tickets, and neither did the many western tourists in line with us. We had fun talking about our travels and Nacho Libre with the other tourists (I’m really good at lying about movies), and we also bought some amazing swag. Ingeniously, the sidewalks along the side of the building/blocks and blocks where the line travels are filled with souvenir stands. We bought husbo’s brother a Lucha Libre mask, then a few minutes later at another stall we bought him a cape (he’s a fan), then a few minutes later we got t-shirts. It’s like a neighborhood version of the rack by the supermarket checkout.
When we got to the main entrance, we were told there were good 200 peso tickets left for great seats. If you want to spend less, I’m sure you could. The place is freaking enormous, and I don’t think it’s possible for it to sell out, so don’t worry about tickets being available. There were lots of high sections that remained empty.
The only downside to going to Lucha Libre is the venue security, worse than any I’ve dealt with yet. Not only did they take my water – and they didn’t have any free water in the venue, only bottles for sale, which is illegal??? – and my snacks, they took MY GUM. My gum that I can only get in the USA and needed for the plane home so I didn’t vom! Dammit security lady! So so weird.
Aside from that though, it was stellar. Such a spectacle, such a loud ridonk spectacle, and so much fun.
We saw a lineup of 5 matches, I think, including group fights, a random parade of women? I forget, it was bright and loud. But it was awesome. We had recently enjoyed season 2 of Glow so we were jonesing for some well choreographed wrestling that looked painful but wasn’t.
I honestly can’t believe how much I enjoyed this. I definitely recommend it for a touristy but fun cultural experience that you kind of cannot miss. Once we were seated, it ran from about 8:30pm-11pm, about the length of a regular show we’d be at on a Friday night anyway, so it was a new super fun kind of evening entertainment for us.
Here’s my absolute favorite part: all the Mexican babies that are not only up so late but exposed to the UNBELIEVABLE NOISE of this place (bring earplugs if you’re sensitive…not that this baby had any…)
Alright, that’s it for this post! Which of the things that you are probably surprised to have found in this post did you enjoy the most, the Communism or the wrestling?
Oh oh one more thing, found in a shopping mall:
