Paavo Monkkonen is a third year Ph.D. student studying housing policy and urban economics in the Department of City and Regional Planning. He has been in Mexico City.

Paavo is surprisingly unwary of “Moctezuma’s revenge” and claims “damn those tacos were worth it.” In fact, he recommends “several Tacos al Pastor at El Tizoncito in the Condesa.” Most of Paavo’s wariness stems of navigating the challenges of Mexico’s transportation system. He recommends car insurance, because “when your car gets stolen, you really wish you had it” and cautions that real, rather than pirate taxi cabs “have a colored line across the bottom and the number should be a letter followed by 5 digits.” Perhaps the newly added ten lines “of the Metrobus, a great Bus Rapid Transit system installed by the ex-mayor and presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador” will offset some of Paavo’s transportation challenges.

In his research, Paavo finds that it’s possible to be “underdressed even though I was wearing cufflinks” and that he “often had ask for things directly in order to get them.” Nevertheless, he had many interviews involving the phrase, “el nuevo sistema hipotecario.”

Above all, however, Paavo recommends visitors to Mexico City not to “leave without buying pirate CDs on the metro – now you can get 170 of the greatest cumbias in mp3 format for a dollar.”

To talk to Paavo more about his research and travels in Mexico City, you may research him at paavo (at) berkeley (.) edu.