The National Anthropology Museum and the Forest of Chapultepec

After spending most of yesterday writing (with a visit to the lab to take care of my cells, and with take care I mean fixing them (if you work in a lab you know what I mean)), my roommate today drove me up to Reforma Street, so I could go to the National Anthropology Museum.

Reforma Street is a completely different part of the city, the sidewalks are incredibly wide, and everything is clean, there are high buildings, it kinda looked like Europe. There were also some bikes you could rent to go from one place to the other. Funny thing is that those bikes were the exact same model that you find in Barcelona (the dreaded Bicing). So I walked down the street to the museum. The walk includes an enormous park known as the Forest of Chapultepec (which will be referred as the Forest from now on, because writing Chapultepec is way too difficult). It was really really nice, because it was sunny (obviously) and even a bit warm (again), I mean it's December already and I had to go around wearing a tank top during several moments of the day. 

The museum was crowded, with tourist and with kids doing homework (well, rather with parents doing the kids' homework). In the museum there are like two different parts, one shows all the old cultures that existed before the Spanish Conquest, and the other shows the remaining indigenous cultures. The part with the old cultures is awesome, they have several art forms, either originals or reproductions, including some really big stone pieces. Seeing those I wondered how could they work such rock blocks, although some of them were made out of volcanic rock which weights much less. Another thing that struck me, was that some statuettes, specially the ones from the oldest period, had a striking resemblance to the first art in some other parts of the world (ok, in Europe), they even had cave paintings! So, I just think that, it is curious how, regardless of where they are, human kind ends up starting to express art in a similar manner. I also wondered what would have happened if we, Europeans, hadn't come here to mess with what they had. How would the civilization had evolved? How would the art had evolved? Because one thing I noticed is that they were really good at making animal sculptures, but there weren't too many real human statues, some were anthropomorphic, yes, but not really human. 

After the museum I had to go take the metro so I decided to cross the Forest and see a bit of it. There were some places that were completely crowded (as most of the things in this city), but I found a really quiet path, were I could breathe the smell of earth and trees, I had missed that more than I'd like to admit and it was nice, however the sun was setting and I had to go back home. 

The metro was an experience on its own. As usual there is people selling stuff, from sweets to music, to different kind of house supplies. There were even two boys who were asking for charity while doing a spectacle that involved one of them breaking glass with different parts of his body. If you have never been on the metro in Mexico City you can't imagine how it is like, there is people selling stuff every two minutes, but it's part of the adventure.