Around the world in Mexico

This photo was taken at a kiddie fair in Guanajuato.

So was this.

It had been years since I'd last been to Cuernavaca, but I went last month to attend the wedding of a couple of friends. It didn't even occur to me that in a climate famous for being "eternally spring," there would be a Viennese restaurant.

The bratwurst was about as good as bratwurst gets.

In keeping with the Austrian theme, I noticed this bakery named after Salzburg's most famous composer.

However, the cakes on display looked about as authentic to their origins as those kiddie rides.

Hail to the warrior

This monument to Giuseppe Garibaldi, by a sculptor named Brooke Wright, was unveiled on April 10th, 1864, on Avenida Chapultepec. Although Garibaldi was most well known for being an irregular in the Risorgimento, the movement that united the various states of Italy, he was in fact widely admired in Latin America. During a fourteen-year exile he fought in two wars in South America. The statue is a block from Avenida Cuauhtémoc, next to a down-market shopping center, in an area where stores sell gargantuan refrigerators and other restaurant equipment. The Plaza Garibaldi, where squadrons of mariachis trawl, looking for customers interested in paying them for a melody, is not named after Giuseppe, but for his son, Giuseppe Jr., who fought with Pancho Villa in the Revolution. I'll post about the Plaza at a later date.

More mannequins

Mannequins are an integral part of the cityscape here. I have posted about them before.

Actually, I have posted about them several times. I'm not exactly sure why they are so fascinating to me. But I was transfixed outside this mannequin store in the San Rafael neighborhood the other day.

You might even say they are as vivid -- or more vivid -- than the people who live here. Some of the people, anyway.

This is from the window display at Uniformes Oskar around the Day of the Dead.

I have posted about mannequins so often that, last week, I was sent an email by a person who identified himself as Yoyo, from the Top-Eagle International Trade Co., Ltd., in Xiamen, China. He said it was great to know that I was "on" the mannequins business, and wanted to let me know about his product line. Click here for a link to his website.

The mannequins in the Liverpool department store are as delightfully perverse as ever.

You've got to love the hand gestures. I'd like to meet whoever's in charge of the mannequin department over there.

I hate this

Until recently, Cinemex multiplex movie houses would post a list of the films they were showing on their marquees. Suddenly, they stopped taking the trouble. Now they suggest that if we want to know what movies they're exhibiting, we go online and look it up, or call them, or get the information through SMS. Lovely, no? Maybe we should return them the favor and stop bothering to patronize them.