It’s been more than an month since I came to Mexico City. It’s a chilly evening (even though it is still sunny and warm here during the day in December, the nights get cold) and I’m seating on the terrace of the hostel where I’m volunteering in exchange of a place to stay for free. It’s situated in the hip district of La Condesa, an area which feels very different from the other central parts of the city, it is much greener and less chaotic, in the past it used to be a hippodrome which gives it a unique spatial arrangement. I’m looking at the palm trees growing tall in front of the buildings and listening to the sounds of the city that never sleeps, the traffic, the street vendors on bikes playing their advertising songs, the hum of the passersby and their conversations, the music coming from the balconies. I’m reminiscing about my Icelandic experience, because ultimately, when I think about it, the main reason why I’m here is that I had spent so much time there.
I'm also feeling quite homesick today. Since I moved to Iceland almost 2 years ago, I have been visiting Warsaw frequently and each visit felt like gaining some ground beneath my feet, reminding myself of who I am and where I come from. After moving out of the island, I spent around a month in my hometown and once again, it was very difficult to leave, but at the same time I knew that I couldn’t go back home for good just yet, that there was, and still is, something pushing me to go and explore the unknown.
Even though I was mostly feeling miserable during my last months in Iceland, right now it all makes much more sense to me and I am grateful for all the things that happened to me there. Maybe writing about it will be a good way to process it and maybe I needed to escape to another continent to be able to do just that.
It still seems unbelievable that I’m here in Mexico. That I was able to save up money while working random service jobs, to buy a plane ticket and do whatever I want for at least half a year. That during one of the drunken Reykjavík nights I was listening to a friend talking about her time spent in Mexico City and I thought - ok, why not go there as well, and that I did.
Before coming to the hostel in La Condesa, I spent the first two weeks in the overwhelming Centro Histórico. It’s a bustling area and stepping into it feels like logging into the internet, you can find everything here, but you have to dig your way through and there are a lot of distractions and dangers ahead. At first I was scared, asking myself repeatedly if I had finally lost my mind - I chose to relocate to the other side of the world, I’m not really able to communicate that well in Spanish and at the end of the day, I’m on my own here. I forced myself to jump into it with full force, renting a bike and cycling along with the traffic, going to the museums, the markets, the biggest local electronic music festival. Then I started meeting and connecting with people. It still feels unbelievable that I managed to also play a gig here.
Tomorrow I’m leaving Mexico City to start my further journey into the country and I’m having a lot of emotions. Will changes always feel this terrifying? Life at the hostel resembles a bit life on an island, it’s a safe space in the midst of the chaotic city. I’ve met people here, from around the world, those who decide to exchange their daily routines for some excitement, one of the forms of escapism which might bring meaningful results, if you’re so inclined. I’ve observed that many travellers are operating in the mode I would call “the kindness of strangers”. The brief encounters away from the rules of “normal life” make most people much more open and kind to each other. Of course, if you are in this hostel bubble for a longer time, it all gets repetitive, you feel like having the same conversations over and over again. It means it’s time to move on and I feel ready to do so. I heard a lot of amazing stories about this country from locals and travellers alike and I have a skeleton of a plan for my further journey. Will see what happens.
One day I received a special gift. A guest at the hostel who was coming back from San José del Pacífico, the small town in Oaxaca state well-known as the place where you go to find magic mushrooms, gave me a whole jar full of them, as he was leaving and didn’t want to take them with him on the plane. It’s funny that they came to me first, as I was planning before to visit this town and I feel that I should get them back home and take them there, not anywhere elese. It's sad that I won’t have a chance to have this experience with the people in my life I care about the most, but maybe it's supposed to be this way.
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