To keep me from falling asleep in mid-day due to jetlag, I’m compiling some words on my trip. This won’t be a lenghty day-by-day travel-story, I promise – just some things that come to my mind. For the record, I’ve been to: San Francisco, Zion National Park, Bryce Canyon, Laughlin, Las Vegas, Laughlin, Grand Canyon, Sedona, Los Angeles, Santa Maria, Santa Barbara, Carmel.
Nature At some places, you can randomly point your camera somewhere, and every shot seems like a postcard – nature in California and Nevada is rough, beautiful and always with a glazing blue sky. At length, it’s even a bit too much – after seeing so much impressive nature, Grand Canyon was just “another kinda big valley”.
Civilisation I love the way Americans deal with “public design”: totally weird traffic-signage, very colorful storefronts and emergency-cars that look like they’re out of a museum. Everybody seems to be crazy about giant shiny cars – most of the SUVs on the streets could easily transport a Smart in their trunk…The waste of energy and water is hilarious: It’s one thing to build a two-million-city like Las Vegas far off in the desert. But Americans don’t give a damn about recycling their precious goods, even if they have to import everything hundreds of miles into the desert: E.g., in most restaurants, plates and dishes are plastics, thrown away together with dinner-leftovers and glass-bottles – WTF?!. Another thing: Apple is everywhere! Windows-laptops are the absolute minority in hotel-lobbys etc., and you can’t drive two miles without hitting a larger-than-life iPod-ad – it’s fantastic ;D Then, Americans try to imitate europe whereever they can: hotels look like english 19th-century golf-clubs, the waitresses proud themselves with their “coffee from Holland” (I always knew the best coffee-regions are at the north-sea…g). In Vegas, Malls and Hotels are mini-replicas of Paris or Venice, complete with indoor sunsets – just, well…crazy.
Customs American breakfast (ham, eggs, sirup, bacon, muffins, fruits) rocks! I hardly eat any breakfast, but I bet I would be fat as a whale if all that was common in Germany ;)
Places I never thought I would say that…Vegas is the place to be! I played only once, winning 45$ out of 5$ – I’m hooked ;) If I ever would choose to live at the U.S. westcoast, it’d probably look something like this: doing my master at UCSB in Santa Barbara (beauuutiful indy-student seaside-town), work a few years in Palo Alto (or Cupertino), win some millions in Vegas and retire in Sedona (always-sunny and quiet creek-town).
OK, so everything in the U.S. seems to be bigger, colder, hotter, fatter, sweeter, cheaper, low-carb-ier, more colorful – but better? Hm, I’m happy to be back in good old Germany, to be honest ;)