The nature of travel

After being gone for over ten years, visiting occasionally to catch up with family, my country doesn’t seem to be my country anymore. It is an odd feeling altogether, everything seems so familiar yet everything is strange to me now.
I still feel home here but in a disconnected way. I know how German works but I do not work German anymore.
Each visit becomes a great philosophical journey.
Now that I have an outside vantage point I can observe objectively, amazed and fascinated by the culture that I was a part for the first 22 years of my life.
At the same time I can reflect on the society that I belong to now. Listening to my friends, by passers on the streets, people in coffee shops sipping their Milchkaffee, discussing life, I get an outside view on my American me. I get so startled by the lack of insight or critical thinking I observe in myself at times. I find it frightening when I notice myself oversee vital arguments that I should have made when we talked this over months ago at home.
This really is the beauty of travel: it gives you the opportunity to shed day to day life and habits, enables you to step out of old patterns and gain new insights on yourself, your life and the society you live in as well as the society you are temporarily part of on your passage.

On a lighter note, there are the small scale oddities in behavior and action, mostly charming, that one encounters on travel:
Like Lizette marvels at the ordeal of facing a 5-locked South American door, Europeans find it extremely odd that the American check is put, quite indiscreetly, on the table just minutes after the main course arrives.
It is a well known fact that the Germans get up at the crack of dawn to throw their towels on the deck chairs of the hotel pool, thereby supposedly reserving the seat, returning after a follow up snooze and breakfast to claim their prime real estate, finding a bunch of pissed off Brits standing by the pool for lack of available seating.
The number of greeting cheek kisses in France is three, in Italy two (or the other way around - I will never learn, forgive me France and Italy), Germans don’t kiss at all, Irish hug. The list goes on...

On my last visit here I learned that Germans are immune to fatness. Paul and I made it our hobby to count the number of pastry eating Germans at any given time. It came out to about 80% of Germans snacking away their day. But hardly anybody is overweight, probably because everybody is walking everywhere. Walking is big here.

Evidence is hardening that the service industry is not about service in (North) Germany. I have been suspecting this for years dealing with extremely unfriendly sales personnel in stores, rude waiters and difficult public transport vehicle operators like bus drivers.
When I was a kid I was convinced that the local tram driver was determined to overtake the tram ahead of him.
On this visit, I learned that taxi business is not about taxiing:
If your ride is in any way walkable, think twice before hitting dial on your phone!!
They may ask you straight away where you are and where you are heading and if they deem your ride not worthy the comfort of a hired automobile on this frosty night because you may make on foot, they will eat you right there, lecturing you on the atrocity of your humble request: How dare you even think about wasting their precious time, have you no sense at all? Just because they get paid for it doesn't mean they need to take your shit. Clearly, you should chose to struggle your way home manually in the oncoming blizzard after a hard days work (ok, that's my sister, not me)!! This is an outrage, an insult at large to the very core of taxihood!!!
And if they don't ask you right away, god help you deal with the monster of a cab driver that you will have on your hands when he finds out where you are trying to get him to take you.
He may just tell you to get lost and speed off into the dark, shouting abuse out of the window, manically honking his horn in much exaggerated anger.

Now, that did not happen at all to us last night. Indeed, we chatted to a lovely lady filling us in on the latest Hamburg celebrity gossip.
But just the fear on my sisters face, phone in hand, ready to dial a cab, told me that things could have taken a different turn...
Seems to me that services here try their best not to provide the service they boldly claim to offer.

And how I love it all :-)

Germans BeGone

This morning I dropped Britta off at the Flyaway bus in Westwood that will take her to LAX. So for the next two weeks we'll be German-free! Britta will be home in Rostock, refreshing her impatience, organizational skills and other German qualities, so we'll be seriously in trouble when she returns.

Until then, I'm in charge of this blog! Muahahahahahahahaha! Let the zaniness begin!

Sat night at the Getty

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Woah, I am not feeling my writing vibe today:
nice sunset in the staff quarters (for quietness sake), cheese, bread and trimmings for dinner overlooking the west side of town, fog rolling in and the night sky looking somewhat like a Aorora Borealis, fine company and fine art...

Art Walk Pics

BUSTED!! (Nov 15)

Mid November in LA, it is 20 degrees above average and the fires are raging. As we are nearing downtown, we can see the thick cloud of smoke rising above Orange County.
Brentt and I are on the way to Linkoln Park’s largest thrift store to meet up with Michael and Amy who have been protesting the passing of a controversial proposition of the last presidential election.
After shouting things like: “Hey hey, ho ho, that bigotry has got to go” for the past two hours they are now ready for retail therapy. Michael needs shirts and I am glad to provide second hand guidance, he is a first timer and this is my territory.
Three hours, two thrift stores, three shirts and a pair of pants later we are back home for pasta dinner and a chill out before heading out into LA underground night life.

Downtown LA is littered with warehouses, perfect venues for noisy after hour parties. Tonight’s is an old time favorite with the trio, not so much for the music but for the people and the vibe they bring.
I say: “Music super cheesy but quirkyness levels of attendees unsurpassed. Entertainment value: excellent”.
Myke says: “Music awesome but pretentious “Burner” vibe puts downspin on fun”.
Just goes to show, flavors are a matter of taste.
The four of us get there just in time for the party to liven up. We find hiding spots for our coats, go to the bathroom, look at the two huge snakes in the terrarium under the bar and start dancing… blinded by the bright ceiling lights that just went on when the music went off and about 10 police officers start walking around telling everyone to clear out.
Ah well, if you charge a bunch of costumed hip(pies)ters to get into a warehouse without liquor license intending to serve such up to all illegal hours you gotta count on being busted as one possible outcome…
Not tired we head to my old hood for a night time walk with view of down town.
Back at home, we relax in the kitchen with some chai and good talking until finally, tiredness sets in...

Sunday serves a lovely scrambled egg breakfast, well Britta does, a lot of coffee and more sitting around, this time in the shaded beautiful yard.
Conversation topics range far and include world politics, depression, sickness and disease, the meaning of life
and
an actual interview for the position of mini Asian:
The interviewers Dr. Spiegelman, Prof. Newman and Ms Daudert are impressed by the ambition and determination of the interviewee, Ms Goodwin. She proves to have recent experience in racial portrayal, taking on the task of being Mexican for a summer. She also willing to look hungrily at passing dogs and train hard to start hating carrots and mushrooms.
The panel decided to offer a temporary internship to the candidate with a re-evaluation for a full-time position of Brit-Nerd, scheduled at the time of return of the real( and really irreplaceable) mini Asian.

Downtown Art Walk

This past Thursday we decided to go to the art walk downtown. We (Ayren, Eric, Cassanna, Lindha, Souri, Britta, Susanne, Amy [our English Lizette replacement] and I ) met at Susanne's place downtown, had wine and cheese and then set off to the art walk, which is just a short walk from Susanne's loft, with Brentt meeting us along the way. Amazingly enough, when we got there, the streets were PACKED, and with hipsters rather than homeless people. We meandered among the streets, darting into different galleries and cafes to check out the art, and being entertained by singing drag queens in one of the spaces (and they were pretty talented!).

The best thing we found was a table set with marshmellows, chocolate sauce, strawberries and bananas. You could eat the food with a camera trained on you that projected your mouth eating up on a big screen so everyone could watch. Britta and Amy volunteered me to do it, so I obliged. I'm sure it was incredibly SEXY!!!

After the art walk we wandered back to Susanne's and ate a tasty yet random dinner of Chinese food, Ayren's famous pasta salad, tasty German cookies and other delightful things, accompanied by more wine. We hung out for a bit more, then escorted Britta back to her car through a thicket of homeless men, and headed home.

A nothing weekend

A Speegly needed cheering up after an extremely rough week at work, a social hike and a dinner were canceled and a Britta supered her way out to the west side for some irratable jew handling on Saturday afternoon.
Finally, the Jew could retaliate and pay back with some prime moodiness and the German was ready to be at the receiving end for once after all those friends-to-the-rescue-when-Britta-in-mess moments of the last year.
So, the German and the Jew spend one of the most uneventful weekends together. In the words of the Spiegel:

"So as far as I can remember, here's what we did this weekend: ate an overly expensive dinner and breakfast, got mild food poisoning, drank wine, didn't get enough sleep and sat around watching television. And yet somehow I had a lot of fun. It's great that we can go out to party together and have a great time, but in a way it's even better that we can do absolutely nothing and STILL have a really good time. "
...
Sometimes doing nothing is doing all...