Why Mexico City?

A trip to Berlin reminded us why Mexico City is so special

Two years ago, Stephanie and I purchased an apartment in Roma Norte in Mexico City, fulfilling a long-time dream to split our time between the United States and some international destination. Until that time, this dream seemed unobtainable because we focused almost exclusively on Europe before the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. It just wasn't clear how we could afford to live at least part-time anywhere in Europe, let alone at our favorite places, like Paris or Barcelona. And so we just put it off: We had lives to live, work to do, and kids to raise. And it all seemed so far off anyway.

The pandemic changed everything for all of us. It put an end to our annual three-week home swaps in Europe, and the other trips we regularly took there. We tried to restart our home swap tradition in mid-2021, but the U.S. didn't yet allow visitors from Europe, so that was out of the question. After researching our options, Mexico City appeared as a curiously perfect choice, one we had never previously considered. We've discussed the history since then a lot: We visited multiple times, fell in love, and then randomly discovered an apartment for sale up the street from our Airbnb in early 2022. We put in an offer, and four months and multiple trips and money transfers later, we were handed the keys.

This sudden shift confused everyone we knew. Family, friends, and coworkers all assumed we'd end up in Europe, given our many years of travelling there again and again. But Mexico City came out of nowhere and clicked. One year after we bought the apartment, we summed up why that's true in Why Mexico?, also available in video form on our YouTube channel. Most of this is fairly obvious--affordability, climate, and incredible food are on every list of why one might want to visit or live in Mexico--but there's more to it than that. Mexico City is special to us for so many reasons. I often describe major life decisions like this as a matrix of choices, each of which you weigh independently. No place is perfect, but Mexico City checked so many boxes for us that it was off the charts. This became even truer the more time we spent there.

But that was two years ago. Since then, we've moved closer to realizing our dream of splitting our time between Mexico City and the U.S. Our son has graduated from college. Our daughter will graduate later this year, though she'll continue her education, and is mostly independent and lives out of state. Our dog, sadly, passed away, and now that our daughter is living alone, she took in our cats, who she'd grown up with. We are empty nesters in every way imaginable.

We still have to deal with life. We're not retired, and we still work. I used to travel for work quite frequently. That ended with the pandemic, it seemed, but it's picked up again this past year, leading to some difficult decisions. One recent opportunity, a week-long trip to Berlin, Germany for an industry trade show, was too good to say no to. Since the pandemic, we'd only been to Europe one time, to Paris in October 2021 for a much-delayed 30th anniversary celebration. We've been to Mexico City dozens of times. So Berlin was an exciting change. Somehow both familiar and unfamiliar.

We had a fantastic time, and I'm glad we went. Berlin is a wonderful city, one we'd not visited since 2018. It was at the top of the list for future home swaps before everything fell apart. And being there again, walking the streets, seeing the sights, and eating the incredible food, I was reminded of why Europe was so special to us for so long. But I was also reminded of why, in that matrix of choices, Europe is also less viable overall than Mexico City. It's still special. But it doesn't add up, doesn't check enough boxes.

Travel changes us. Sitting outdoors at a restaurant in Berlin that spills into a beautiful plaza and watching people go by that week, I was transported to a familiar emotional place I understand all too well. I could feel that pang, that tug, that guided us during our decades travelling to Europe. Where some people are checklist travelers, visiting a place once and then moving on to the next, Stephanie and I always found ourselves assessing whether each place we visited made sense. Not as a place to visit, but as a home. The places we liked most we visited repeatedly, year after year. We stayed for longer and longer, moving from being tourists to just being there, experiencing life as a resident would. Shopping at local markets, getting to know people, just having a normal day-to-day existence.

We've always loved Berlin. And those feelings came to the surface as soon as we arrived. We had no plan, no to-do list, just a desire to walk, to see, to be there. To eat the food, reacquaint ourselves with the places there that we knew the best, and maybe find some new favorites. We did what we'd always done, in other words. We assessed Berlin, weighed its pros against its cons. And we love it, still. But we also found it lacking, compared to Mexico City, this other place that had more recently stolen our hearts. And that triggered several deep discussions about why that is so. How could a place be so wonderful and yet fall short so obviously?

That may be unfair to Berlin. Or maybe it's just the wrong question. To reframe this, we compared this experience to visiting Mexico City. We reviewed the points we had made in Why Mexico? and debated how Berlin fared using the same criteria. And while Berlin has notable advantages over Mexico City, it also has some notable disadvantages, some of which are specific to us and our situation. This is important: We all have different wants and needs, and different preferences. This was personal. It was about us.

My first impressions were interesting. Riding in the back of an Uber from the airport into the city, I was struck by how clean and modern Berlin was. The roads were perfect, the cars more expensive, newer, and in better shape. Mexico City is ramshackle and rundown in many ways, loud and addicted to noise, and chaotic. But Berlin is curiously quiet for a big city. Orderly. The anti-Mexico City.

But Berlin's not perfect. There is a lot of smoking in this city, something we don't think about all that much in the United States or Mexico City these days. It's horribly expensive, not just compared to Mexico City but also to U.S. cities we've lived near, like Boston and Philadelphia, and that makes it feel unsustainable as a future destination. The weather, too, is horrific, brutally hot in the summer--it was nearly 90 degrees each day, as it had been on our previous trip, in 2018--and cold, wet, and miserable in the winter. Meanwhile, Mexico City is the eternal spring that inspired the name of our publication, nearly perfect all year long.

In the video above, you can see how Berlin fared compared to Mexico City using the 10 criteria we established previously. But the short version is that Mexico City was the clear winner in 6 of those criteria, Berlin didn't win in a single category, and there were 4 ties. So the final score was 10 to 4, with Mexico City emerging as the obvious choice. Thank goodness, given the decisions we've made. But also not surprising: This comparison was a helpful reminder of how and why Mexico City is the right fit for us in so many ways.

Mexico City is affordable, with a near-perfect climate. It has incredible food and drink scenes, sits in the center of an incredibly diverse country with lots to explore, and is rich in history and culture. The Spanish language that predominates in Mexico is relatively easy to learn for us Americans, much more so than German. And you can't beat the accessibility of a 4- to 4.5-hour direct flight in the middle of the day with one or two time changes. The incredible safety and security of our Roma Norte neighborhood. Or, most importantly, the wonderful people we're surrounded by in Mexico City, what really puts this place over the top.

There's so much more to this, we know. And Mexico City isn't perfect either: The altitude, air pollution, poverty, and ever-looming possibility of earthquakes are just some of the issues that face anyone coming to this place. But we're clear-eyed about that. It's been factored into our decision to be here.

And we wouldn't change a thing.

Why Mexico?
Why Mexico? (YouTube)
Why not Mexico? (YouTube)