Author Archives: caislas

Ciudad de México en septiembre 2023

Week 43, 2023
Turku, Finland

It has been a long time since I wrote in this blog.

Today I activate myself to write here, because it is the most suitable space to share my world to the people I care about and are distributed across our amazing planet. Thinking particularly, those of you who do not know Mexico.

From week 34 to 38 I was in Mexico. My mom needed some support. Then, my time was busy at home. I didn’t even have time to see my generational friends.  However, the most important thing is that mom started to recover ??. In this blog post I share some visual highlights of my time back home, which is not tourism, but daily life.  I organize the photos in four categories:

  1. My neighborhood
  2. Food
  3. Daily life – errands
    1. Metro and Downtown Mexico City
    2. Driving and Parking
    3. Church
    4. Hospitals and medical services
  4. Daily life  – grocery shopping

Let’s start by fling to Mexico City. A sign, at least for me, that I am reaching “Aztec land” is when I am reaching Mexico City’s international airport, Benito Juarez, which it is in the middle of the “town”.  The ocean of lights is just something unique. 

Reaching the international airport Benito Juarez in Mexico city

1. My neighborhood

Mexico city is a big metropolis. When possible, you do your activities in the area where you live. In my case, I grew up in Colonia del Valle and during my time there, I was mainly in this area of the city or in the hospital where my mom is treated. The hospital is in the alcaldía Tlalpan.  Here a couple of links of the area of the city where I grow up: link 1 and link 2. Below photos of what I could see almost everyday.

A view of the city within the city

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Walking in the neighborhood

City birds and their facilities

Park for all to enjoy

What surprised me the most during this visit is to realize how many houses, which I saw as a child, now are turned down and instead there are building buildings.  The city keeps growing.
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2.Food

Mexican traditional cuisine was declared Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by the UNESCO. For me, to share about Mexican food is challenging, because in my opinion all our senses should be involved. Additionally, I am not an expert and I do not know how to clarify certain ingredients which I only have seen in Mexico.

However, in this post, I will share food that I ate.  For example,  each time we were at the hospital, we treated ourselves.  The cafeteria was/is really good. Below some photos of the dishes.

Sandwich

Sandwich 2

Enfrijoladas

On Sept. 15th, Mexicans starts the independence celebration.  Hence, it is common to find diverse dishes or desserts utilizing the independence theme in their decoration. As the following jello utilizing the colors of the Mexican flag.

Jello with the mexican colours

Also in September is quite popular and very special to eat Chiles en Nogada.  My aunt makes them DELICIOUS!

Chile en Nogada

Mexican candies in September are also a must have. We had a beautiful meal on the 15.9. but I do not have photos only from the delicious food. However I have one from the sweets:

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Also we ate at the Parroquia:

La parroquia

and some Tortas Don Polo:

Tortas Don Polo

Well, I could have photos and more photos of food….. of course plenty of fruits were also eaten 😉

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3.Daily life – errands

In this section I share random photos of daily life. During my time in Mexico, I needed to run different errands. A glimpse of those are in here.

3.1 Metro and Downtown Mexico City.

I needed to do some paperwork in downtown, which I could not do via internet. In my opinion, it is faster and more practical to go to Mexico City downtown with public transport. For me the metro is the best.  A trick, or advice, is to avoid the busy time,  even though it is busier most of the time nowadays.  I mainly travel on the female section of the metro.

Metro station

What was new for me this time, which I only have seen in Asia earlier, were the stickers on the floor indicating where to wait for the metro and leaving the space for the passengers to go down.

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To find art or culture in the metro stations is relatively easy. At least in the “old” metro stations.

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Note: things were not that empty all the time, but I try to take photos when there were not people around to respect privacy 😉

Also in this trip I took a metrobus, which now the network is bigger than the last time I was in downtown.

Parada de metrobus

Downtown is BEAUTIFUL and INTERESTING and MAGICAL in its own right.

Next photo is from the main “square” of Mexico City: el Zocalo. Behind you can see the cathedral and presidential palace is on the right. There is a Metro station below so it is easy to come out from the metro and admire this spot of the city.

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Walking in downtown Mexico City is to walk through history, a mixing of cultures and one walks having a full sensorial experience including sounds, smells, images, symbols, etc. It is just something to experience.

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In the next photo, one can see the torre latinoamericana.

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Theater of Bellas Artes:

Palacio de Bellas Artes

Reforma, el caballito:

Reforma

In downtown, shopping areas are peculiar. One find the street that focuses on particular category, e.g. of electronics, or tiles, or jewelry, or bathrooms, etc. If you are curious, yes I stop in couple of these shopping areas. ??

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3.2 Driving and parking

To go to the hospital and other errands we needed to do it by car. Traffic is crazy if I compare it to the traffic in Offenburg, Joensuu or Turku (my other hometowns I would say).  It is just not comparison, they are different worlds in our same planet.

Traffic of the first photo was when we were heading to the hospital.  Here you can see a metro station that runs at ground level.

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Each time we were heading to the hospital, we passed through the estadio azteca.

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Parking is an issue in many areas, so they are looking for different solutions constantly, even inside buildings.

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That parking place is from the following building:

Mexico City zona sur

Or those tower parking places also can be found in supermarkets:

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3.3. Church

I also visited the church where my dad is resting.  The Mexican flag is in the altar, because it is September, as I mentioned above, it is a month of “Mexico”.

Parroquia de Jesús Sacramentado

Crypts:

Parroquia de Jesús Sacramentado

I found the following sticker interesting. It reads: “United in the distance.

Actually in the service, when people access the church, they use face masks and wash the hands.

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3.4 Hospital and medical services

In my opinion, we have EXCELLENT doctors in Mexico. We also have very good public hospitals.  A challenge Mexico has, again in my opinion, there are not enough hospitals for all Mexicans. The health system requires a lot of investment.

In our case, we can can do things in public institutions, which my mom has paid through her taxes during her working life. However, we need to complement certain services with private practices. The prices of those private ones can vary.  In the following photos  I want to illustrate architecture of the hospital where my mom was operated as where her rehabilitation is. I really love the Mexican architecture, across time. One can can see  mexican murals, and in my opinion the hospital is EXCELLENT.

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Hosptial en Ciutad de México

 

Hospital en cituad de México

The people must use mask in this hospital. It is mandatory.

The photo below I found it in one of the hallways. It reads: While they said to each other “it could not be done, it was done”.

Hospital en Ciudad de México

The photo below is from another organization, which I discovered because I needed to do some studies for myself. Then, aI was guided to go to Salud Digna.It is a foundation that offers medical studies to accessible prices. Amazing service and also A LOT of people.

Salud Digna

Even that there were plenty of persons at the same time,  the service was quick and good. They also have chairs reserved for different type of groups, as below you can see sits for pregnant women.

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Finally an entrance of a private hospital. Another style.

Hospitales en Mexico

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4. Daily life  – grocery shopping

Before heading to Mexico, I was asked: what type of fish do we eat there?, for example. Which I do not have an answer for. I am ignorant to the topic.  ?  Therefore I decide to share some photos of our supermarkets and “mercados sobre ruedas“.  I will be paying more attention to those important details step by step.

Below is the first supermarket I went right after landing. There the watermelon was huge:

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Here some fruits that we will not find in Finland or Germany, for example: mamey and Tuna (Fruit no fish)

Supermercado ciudad de México

It is easy to find plenty of avocados among other fruits and vegetables:

La comer - supermercado - Ciudad de México

Supermarket fish display:

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Bakery in supermarket:

La comer - supermercado - Ciudad de México

Alcohol is also sold inside supermarkets:

La comer - supermercado - Ciudad de México

Personally, I ENJOY A LOT to buy at the “mercados sobre ruedas“. I was not able to find an article in English clarifying what are “merchados sobre ruedas”, but in brief: they are temporal market installed for one day on specific streets, where one buys closer to the producer. If you want to read more about them, here is an article in Spanish.

Mercadito sobre ruedas - Ciudad de México

I was lucky because there were still some  mangos manila (yammi ??):

Mercadito sobre ruedas - Ciudad de México

Mercadito sobre ruedas - Ciudad de México

One can also eat prepared food at “mercado sobre ruedas”. I found interesting how they keep having covid practices.

Mercadito sobre ruedas - Ciudad de México

A couple of things happen in my food-hunting trips, which were new for me.

One, I had an earthquake drill in a supermarket. To put some in context. We had very bad earthquakes on  Sept 19th in the past. So we have a National Earthquake drill on this day. At the day and time of the drill I was in a supermarket. So we were to the safe zone customers and employees. It was interesting.

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Another new things for me was to realized how many dogs, as pets, are nowadays. The number has increased so much that even supermarkets welcome them.

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The blog post is a bit long but I hope it transmits a bit of my world in a daily life in Mexico city. Missing other stuff, as we play board games each Sunday  – and some other days when possible- , cleaning the house, etc. However maybe in another post we can talk about other details ??  .

-Yop!

Pasta de salmón al horno

Week 43, 2020
Turku, Finland

Sé que este blog no es de recetas de cocina. Sin embargo, acordé con mi familia de compartirles una receta que preparé para ellos en agosto, la cual les gustó mucho.  La receta la descubrí en el app de k-ruoka: Uunilohipasta  (Nota: admito que uso mucho ésta aplicación para descubrir nuevas recetas, es EXCELENTE).  También es posible leer la receta original en la revista  de esta cadena de supermercados (k-Ruoka #9 del 26.8.-29.9.2020, pág. 41).   Ahora busco traducir la receta al español y espero la disfruten. Realmente es una receta sencilla y  deliciosa.

Ingredientes  (6 porciones)

  • 650 gramos de salmón
  • 2 cucharaditas de ralladura de limón
  • 1 cucharadita de sal
  • 1/2 cucharadita de pimienta negra
  • 2 decilitros de crema (aquí especifican la crema sin lactosa (15%) de la marca de la tienda Pirkka)
  • 1 cebollín picado (la parte de verde)
  • 1/2 taza de jugo de limón
  • 80 g (aprox. 1 dl) de queso parmesano rallado
  • 500g de espaguetis
  • Approx. 1 dl de agua que hirvió con la pasta
  • 65 grms de espinaca o rúcula

Receta de Pasta de salmon al horno

En la foto están todos los ingredientes de la receta y  mis herramientas de trabajo 🙂  Nota: en esta ocasión utilicé espinaca y rúcula, porque tenia un poco de las dos. 🙂

Preparación (menos de 30 min)

  1. Limpiar la superficie  y retirar la piel del salmón.

Receta de Pasta de salmon al horno

Nota: Lavarse bien las manos si se van a utilizar también. En mi caso usé el cuchillo, peor en ciertas areas me era mas fácil utilizar mis manos.

2.Rallar un limón

Receta de Pasta de salmon al horno

3. En un refractario poner el salmón. Sazonarlo con la ralladura de limón,  sal y pimienta.

Receta de Pasta de salmon al horno

4. Agregar la crema

Receta de Pasta de salmon al horno

5. Hornear a 200 grados durante unos 20 minutos.

Receta de Pasta de salmon al horno

Mientras tanto:

6. Cocer el espagueti en agua

Receta de Pasta de salmon al horno

7. Exprimir el jugo del limón

Receta de Pasta de salmon al horno

8. Lavar el cebollin y la espinaca (o rúcula)

Receta de Pasta de salmon al horno

9. Cortar el cebollin y la espinaca (o rúcula)

Receta de Pasta de salmon al horno

10. Ya que la espagueti está listo, guardar un poco de agua.

Receta de Pasta de salmon al horno

11. Sacar el salmón del horno, y cortarlo en trozos con una cuchara.

Receta de Pasta de salmon al horno

12. Agregar el cebollín picado (y mezclar un poco)

Receta de Pasta de salmon al horno

13. Agregar el jugo de limón.

Receta de Pasta de salmon al horno

14. Agregar el queso parmesano rallado.

Receta de Pasta de salmon al horno

15. Agregar la pasta escurrida.  Si es necesario y requiere mas líquido, agregar el agua que se reservó anteriormente (Nota: a mi no me ha hecho falta ). Mezclar.

Receta de Pasta de salmon al horno

16. Agregar la espináca o la rúcula.

Receta de Pasta de salmon al horno

17. Mezclar todo bien.

Receta de Pasta de salmon al horno

Listo para comer 🙂

Receta de Pasta de salmon al horno

Collaboration with our first post: Örö

Week 40, 2020
Turku, Finland

NEWS!  for first time in my life, I start to collaborate in writing articles for a more established blog. The name of the blog is:  Out in the Nature and their URL is this one: https://www.outinthenature.com/

A brief story behind this milestone.  I discovered Out in the Nature’s blog last year, when doing some research for umaze.  We were preparing ourselves to visit the labyrinth in Nagu, and the team behind Out in the Nature, had some information about this location in their post: Troy Town rock maze in Nauvo archipelago.

After reading more of their blog, I thought to myself: maybe if I start collaborating with them it will allow me to share some of my discoveries, from my Finnish adventures outdoors. I have this good intention of sharing since long, as you can see in some of my posts as this one in paddling or this one in Koli. However, I confess, it is mainly a good intention. Many times I start to write, but “n” things happen and either I do not start or I leave a post in the middle.  Only few adventures are able to pass the publication’s challenges threshold. Actually, my life, I could say is so similar to the following cartoon of developers….

My reality

I believe a collaboration with Out in the Nature might benefit us both. To me, it will help me to actually finalize articles and share things to an audience, and I will do quality content for the site.  After some emails, we agree to give it a try.  Then I start to write my  first post for them.

Then, guess what?  Yes, the post was al: most ready and my chaos hit my desk, leaving my article in hold. The only aspects  missing were address, some tags, and to activate a plugin needed to activate an interactive story, I made with ubium’s MINE editor. Yes, there were small details, but of those that require time.

Then the collaboration started to bring fruits, as a colleague from  Out in the Nature reach to me, and helping to fine tune the details that were missing. Then voilà the article is out for the public to enjoy. The title is: Örö – Military history and a fragiel ecosystem. You can fin d it in following this link: https://www.outinthenature.com/oro-military-history-and-a-fragile-ecosystem/ Feel free to visit the post and let your comment.

I am so happy.

In my agreement with Out on the Nature is that the interactive stories that I produced can be also share in other blogs. Hence, here is the story I did about Örö

I truly believe this collaboration will be positive for both parties. We will find synergies due to common interests. And most importantly I start to feel it will also allow us to build friendships. Now to move forward in this share journey!

Arrival - Örö

This photo is  our arrival to Örö. First marina of this new collaborative journey!

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Paddling at Kuuskoski

Week 21, 2020
Turku, Finland

Even in pandemic times, there are many things happening during one day. Furthermore, the days continue passing by quickly. I believe if one day I am able to harness the challenge to cope with time, I can say I succeed in one of the biggest quests in life. Anyway, this post is not about time, but about paddling at Kuuskoski.

Thursday May 21 was a public holiday in Finland, the Ascension day.  In this day, Mikko and I decided to go paddling as the weather was perfect: sunny and “warm” (note: warm can be a relative to interpretations depending the context). I didn’t review how warm was it, however for this post I researched this information and according to the Finnish Meteorological Institute and should have been around 13C, as we left late in the afternoon

Weather in Turku on May 21, 2020

 

The follow up question after taking the decision to go paddling was:  where to go? . To give answer to this question, Mikko shared with me a map  (Side note: this map is well done by the  the Foundation of the river Aura). The selection was: Kuuskoski.

Map Aura river

 

We reached our destination, approx 40km from Turku center. The first sign we saw was the placate from http://koskipirtti.com/

Kuuskoski, Finland

Due to the current regulations for covi-19,  we were not able to visit the the museum (behind the yellow house of the photo above) as it was closed. Next time we will visit it. What called my attention was the private home next to the museum, which is BEAUTIFUL.

Kuuskoski, Finland

At first I thought it was a church. However, a sign down a road (next photo) indicated that it is a private property. Nevertheless, I got many questions about this unique construction.

Kuuskoski, Finland

 

The next decision was: which direction to paddle ? We had two options up stream or down stream.  Down stream was a family already enjoying the water, as you can perceive in the photo below. With this photo serves as evidence that in Finland to keep a distance between people to avoid covid-19 transmission is relatively easy 😉

Kuuskoski, Finland

While searching for our start point for paddling, we got a closer view to the rapids” . Note the following photo with my shadow 🙂

Kuuskoski, Finland

We decided to paddle upstream. Thus, a large rock was our departure spot.

Kuuskoski, Finland

 

In total we paddled approx 10km. I can’t believe it!

The following screenshot indicates the point where we return from our paddling.  Where the Jalkalanjoki intersects the Aura river.

returning point

That was approx 5kms in one direction and 5 kms back.  The river was calm and beautiful.

Kuuskoski, Finland

For the human eyes and ears, it is undeniably we are in the middle of spring. Many trees still do not have leafs, at the same time the “lemon-green” starts to be noticeable in the landscape, and one can listen birds singing. This is, unquestionably, a beautiful time.

Kuuskoski, Finland

As we advance paddling the landscape changes.  The naked tree photographed below was magnificent. The photo does not transmit its grandeur.

Kuuskoski, Finland

Suddenly, one could see more  spruce trees as we can observe below (I think those are spruces, I need to ask).

Kuuskoski, Finland

Of course Risen Bear was present all the time 🙂

Kuuskoski, Finland

In the next photo has the purpose to show a bird house hanging from a pole, which in my opinion was a big bird house with a large hole. Wondering who could be the tenants of such a house? (my knowledge of birds is literally nonexistent).

Kuuskoski, Finland

The following  bridge also call my attention. Wondering if I can find information about it. Apparently is a wooden bridge, and with all the calmness of the water look alluring to my eyes.

Kuuskoski, Finland

A closer view to the bridge.

Kuuskoski, Finland

A photo after we just cross it, underneath in our way back.

Kuuskoski, Finland

In this trip I called my mom, who has been inside her flat since mid-march, with the intention  to bring her along and let her see the beauty and calmness of nature.  Also I attempted that she listened to the birds.  However the build-in mic of a mobile phone does not have the quality to capture the birds’ signing. Something to look for: a good mic.  I hope she was able to enjoy some of the landscape.

Kuuskoski, Finland

In our way back the calmness was more evident and the birds were louder, maybe indicating us that it was time to go to sleep.

Kuuskoski, Finland

Getting close to our departure spot.

Kuuskoski, Finland

It was a wonderful and recharging time. No wonder Finns are happy, quality time in nature is unbeatable.

— Yop!

Micro droplets

Week 18, 2020
Turku, Finland

A personal wish within the current covid-19 disruption is that more people increase their interest in science and philosophy in addition to art and culture. These are the foundations of our development and innovation.

We need to learn to make questions and look for answers. In addition to be open to hear and offer constructive feedback.

By now, maybe some of you might be wondering: why can’t we gather? (e.g. restaurants, theaters, classrooms, concerts )  Well, the following video gives an insight of a potential reason behind this rational.

Petapixel wrote an article reflecting about this video in reference to covid-19. In their article, they embed a tweet with a link to another article from the LA Times, which describes an outbreak case of a choir   probably through air.  It is worth the read both articles.

Keep healthy,

Yop!