24th of July
We had been taking the bus for the whole night, and when we arrived at Zacatecas many of us fell asleep in the movie room, but some of us went sightseeing for the whole day. We went to the mines and the cable cars over the city. In the mines we had a funny guide that talked real good English, he was joking all the time. It wasn’t very informative about the mines, but still we had a good time. Then, the whole group ate together at one of the local restaurants. It wasn’t very good. In the evening I sat up at the sunroof talking with a bunch of people. It was the best experience in this travel. They told me all kinds of crazy things. They were very interested in what we were doing, and wanted to know a lot about Norway. It was fun to tell them, and they obviously didn’t know anything about Norwegian culture. Phillip was the one I talked the most with. He is 43 years old, and originally comes from a little place outside of London. His life story was quite amazing. He started hanging out with some bad people, and his life went to hell as he said him selves. He started doing drugs, robbing people and actually also doing armed robbery in banks. Then his mom died fifteen years ago. He got very spiritual and started believing that there is a God that is watching after him. He always feels safe, and he said that knowing that somebody is watching after him is the best drug in the world. For the last 8 years he has been travelling around the world, meeting new people and working a little bit every now and then. He doesn’t owe anything except his cloths. He loves to go scuba diving, and thought that we were very spoiled when we were going scuba diving in the Great Barrier Reef. He rated that as the best place to scuba dive, except some of the caves he had been diving in. So I’m really looking forward to it. When I told them that we’re going up in the north, they told me many of their experiences while travelling. One of them had taken a train in the Grande Cobber Canyon, or whatever it was called. They had taken the first class train, where they did have lots of armed guard, which they didn’t have on the second class train. Therefore the second class train used to be pretty popular to rob. When these guys that I talked to drove past the second class train they saw bunch of bullet holes all over the place. The standard had become much better in the last years, so I guess we won’t the bullet holes and so on. By the way he also told me about a ferry trip he had been taking a while back. It was a small ferry with 400 passengers, and it only was four toilets, so they flooded after a couple of hours, and the trip actually lasted for sixteen. The ferry was also leaking, so there were about fifty members of the crew that was filling up cans with water, and throwing it out in the sea again. And the worst of all was that it wasn’t seats for everybody, so many people had to sit on the ground for sixteen hours.
While sitting up and talking to these lads I learned about the backpacker life, and it absolutely seems like something for me. Many of them had a very strange way of living, and they surely were very social people.
25th of July
Today we had this assignment, so me and the Swedish lads interviewed three Spanish speaking people we met in the town. It actually was quite funny, and we learned about their lives as well. The presentation also went ok, even though we probably could have prepared more. At the night we had this totally crazy “walk in the streets party”. We hired live musicians, bought a lot of cheap mezcel (similar to tequila, only stronger and cheaper) and we payed of the police to be allowed to drink in public. What a fantastic experience. Our group payed everything, but I guess 150 people joined the train. It was quite like 17th of May in Norway with drunk Mexicans and South American dancing. It was really great fun, the Mexicans are real party people. The drunker they got, the more did they tried to pick up our blond good looking girls. It’s a tradition to do this in Zacatecas. It started ages ago when they had found a lot silver in the mines. The workers then hired a lot of hookers, stripped, drank tequila and danced in the streets. Strange people these Mexicans. By the way, I love the way we just paid of the police to get permission. Corrupt where?
26th of July
Today I slept pretty long, which was very good regarding to the party yesterday. Then we went to the Corona brewery, which by the way is the worlds 2nd largest brewery. It was like an entire city, totally crazy. We did some mathematics, and found out that they produce 168 billion liters of beer every 20th day. So beer obviously is big business. They had 5000 workers on the brewery. We also got to see some of the commercials for Corona, and we learned how they do their branding. They don’t make commercials just for the beer, but for the whole Mexican experience you’re supposed to get when you’re drinking their beer. It was fun to see, and very relevant to our course that’s about Intercultural marketing. The souvenir shop was really cheap, since they want people to wear their trademark all over the world. I actually bought three t-shirts, since they looked neat and I love Corona as well. In the evening me and OC was watching a movie. It was nice to just chill out. I talked a bit with Phillip about movies, and we liked the same movies so we’re probably watching one of his favorites tomorrow.
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