The 14 hour bus tour to Mexico City was surprisingly easy. I had two seats for myself and actually slept some hours, which I did not really expect. The bus and its passengers was checked by highway police and immigration three times on the way - once even with a drug search dog - and 3 or 4 guys where taken out by the authorities. Luckily I weren't one of them.Mexico City is just as expected: Above all it's endlessly huge, quite hot, there's always a thick brown smog layer over the city (which seems to be less thick on Sundays) and the traffic is chaotic and aggressive. Cultural (and Night-) life seems to be more diverse than anything I have seen before and the people are surprisingly helpful, friendly and seem to show quite some solidarity with their paupers and beggars. The poverty was actually the most striking thing to me and I could hardly pass by an aged man or woman or child begging or selling chewing gum without leaving a few Pesos. At the same time the third richest person in the world is a Mexican. Something seems to be going completely wrong in the world.

Mexico city's public transport system is quite good and extremely cheap, with a Metro ticket costing less than 20 Eurocents and the buses being similarly cheap. I made a lot of use of it and visited some of the more relaxed and snug outside neighborhoods which until not long ago had been independent villages. Of course I also visited the SAP offices, which are situated in a modern building on a former garbage dump on a hill over Mexico. The modern architecture business centre is called Santa Fe and - according to Sven - is designed in the style of "La Defense" in Paris. One eye-catcher there is an office building that looks like a huge washing machine. There's also a huge shopping centre, which looks just like any other shopping centre in Europe, the US or Asia, with prices mostly beyond what an average german household could afford. Luckily shopping is one of the pastimes I can very well live without - so we just had lunch at the (evenly exchangeable) "food court" and then I continued my sightseeing trip.

One striking impression of Mexico is the endless number of (mainly inofficial) street markets. You can buy all kinds of stuff here: clothing, food, all kinds of cheap plastic junk but above all original-looking music and software CDs and movie DVDs for very competitive prices. So I bought some fantastic Jazz, Blues and Latin CDs - and obviously was completely surprised when I discovered that it was all pirate copies.

The Mexican fiesta was another positive surprise to me (although it was nothing positive for my health). Sven (my host) and me were invited (indirectly) to the birthday party of somebody completely unknown. It turned out to be a really enjoyable evening with loads of dancing, singing and Tequila - and the Mexicans ending up calling me "Pepe", since they could neither pronounce nor remember my real name.

See Mexico pics under "Digicam5 Mexico" and "Film17.." to "Film19..".