VIOLENCE BUILT MEXICO, WHERE EVEN THE GROUND TREMBLES. ITS PAST WAS BIZARRE AND TRAGIC; ITS PRESENT SEES HOPES OF PROSPERITY FADING
More than 17 million people live in MEXICO CITY, capital of Mexico. It is the largest and fastest-growing city on earth. So rapidly is Mexico's population expanding that its people are flooding into the United States - either legally or illegally. Over 10 million Mexicans are estimated to be legally resident in the USA. No one knows how many more have crossed the border off the record.
Mexico can be a wonderful place to visit -as booming tourist figures prove. It can also be a wonderful place to live. Sadly for many, it is also a great country to get out of. For despite - and perhaps because of - social and political reforms won by centuries of blood and tears, the population is outstripping the country's ability to support its people. Every year more than 2 million newborn Mexicans must be provided for. Mexicans joke that in crossing the US border they are just winning back California - which used to be part of their country, along with Texas, Arizona and New Mexico.
America responds with strong border patrols - and counter-invasions by millions of gringo tourists bound for ACAPULCO and other superb resorts on the Pacific coast. Tourist attractions include more than 10 000 awesome monuments to ancient civilizations that pepper the country, and the Latin attitude that makes for maximum enjoyment of the many feast days and fiestas throughout the calendar.
Nowhere are these festivals celebrated with more enthusiasm than in Mexico City itself. Appalling slums it may have; air made barely breathable by millions of smoking exhausts; whole areas destroyed in the 1985 earthquake or subsiding gently into the spongy ground. But style, exuberance, treasures of art and architecture and a talent for living it also has.
The city's 2357 km2 (nearly 910 sq miles) embraces the last great temple of Montezuma's Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan, the palace of his Spanish conqueror Cortes, Olympic sports stadiums and the world's biggest bullring, seating 60 000. Modern buildings decorated by Diego Rivera and other Mexican masters of the monumental mural live with Spanish-colonial churches and the quiet, elegant plazas of secluded neighborhoods that could be in another time, another place.
Mexico was literally born of violence, for it lies on a particularly sensitive part of the earth's crust and remains prone to earthquakes. It is a land of volcanic mountain ranges and high plateaus, with lowlands only along the Pacific coastline, the Gulf of Mexico and the YUCATAN peninsula. The spectacular 5452 m (17 887 ft) volcano POPOCATEPETI, dormant since 1802, looms south of the capital; beyond it rises 5699 m (18 697 ft) CITLALTEPETL (Pico de Orizaba), the highest peak in Mexico and perpetually snow-capped. About 70 per cent of the country is over 500 m (1640 ft) above sea level. In the northwest the SIERRA MADRE OCCIDENTAL mountains lie between the coast and the great central plateau, a region of high plains and great deserts, merging into broad valleys, lakes and dormant volcanoes towards the south. The SIERRA MADRE ORIENTAL range rises between the eastern edge of the plateau and the coast. South of Mexico City the SIERRA MADRE DEL SUR extends to the Guatemalan b
order, broken by the narrow Isthmus of Tehuantepec.
Locals hypothesize that the legacy of Italian blood and culture in Cologne, colonized by the Romans more than 1500 years ago, makes the people more jovial and lighthearted. Cologne is the largest city on the Rhine.
Kolsch is not only the dialect spoken here but, also the name of their own top-fermented beer. There are more than 4,000 pubs, restaurant's and brewery taverns in Cologne.
Unlike many of the world's large cities, Cologne, with a population of over a million, gets better every day, there are more things to do and see, more new and innovative buildings... more
Travel is an opportunity to learn, whether geography, languages, history or other subjects.
Cologne is situated on the beautiful Rhine River.