Saturday, January 05, 2008

Corona


When I'd just turned 22 I lived in Canada for almost 2 years. I'd travelled there with a long term Australian boyfriend but shortly after arriving fell passionately in love with a Canadian. We lived together before he followed me back to Australia when my visa ran out. He couldn't get work here so I returned just shy of a year after he left to be with him again. My travels in getting to him (he was in Alberta) started in Pennsylvania and continued up through NY, New England, into Canada at Montreal, all over Quebec, across the Prairies, into Alberta - back into his arms briefly, through Washington State, down through California and in San Francisco I met up with my friend Christelle from Paris. We then made friends with a groups of others at the hostel in Fort Mason - Laurent (French), Merve (German) and Magnus (Swedish).

Cutting a long story short I had a fleeting romance with Magnus, a true holiday romance -brief. He worked 6 months of the year doing some kind of forestries job in Sweden and then travelled for the other 6 months. He cooked, baked, was sensitive, read clever books, was Swedish.

We travelled alone into Mexico, through Tijuana into a town about half an hour from there. I can't remember the name but it had Rosa in it, Rosita, Rosarita.

One day we spent on the beach in a little shack restaurant, open at both sides and one end, the other end formed the kitchen. We stayed in that shack talking for most of the day eating real tacos - soft small tortillas with beef they chopped with a rolling chopper while it cooked on the grill. There were baskets on the tables with the toppings - chopped chillies, raw onion slices and tomato, I think that was all. We sat there all day eating tacos, 3 for 50c, and drinking Coronas, 50c each.

Every time I drink a Corona I think of that shack - not the guy, just the tacos and the beer, which I can only ever drink and enjoy when it's stinking hot - as it was today.

1 comment:

Pina said...

I was thinking about this post for quite a while. I know how to tell you in Slovenian what's in my mind but it is so difficult to tell it in English.
There are so many such moments in my life when I remember people or places from the past when I see certain object. I think that I write a lot about such things on my blog. Perhaps too often. :) Many times just the smell of the air reminds me of a place from the past. What's interesting too, that I don't know many people who would feel the same - I mean, who would remember and think about the people or places from the past.