It is getting real

“The Golden State” – what’s not to love about it?

What I thought would be the biggest obstacle to our move has almost overnight solved itself.  A combination of my superior powers of persuasion and tenacity (in other words, staying on my mom relentlessly to use her network) and dumb luck (or as my highschool drop-out father likes to say charmingly to his Ph.D. daughter “girl, you got more luck than smarts”) I found us a house to rent.  It is expensive and compromises will have to be made but to the utter disbelieve of my local friends I found us a house in one of the most desirable neighborhoods.  I should be ecstatic.

I am glad.

I am freaked.

I will have to leave California.  I am not sure I can.  I love California.  The weather is wonderful and where will I get sushi, and Pho and there are no TJ’s in Germany and I can’t go shopping on Sundays and – oh my god, the weather, its freezing there now and I walk around in a short sleeve T here.  For a year I won’t see the Pacific, or the Sierra Nevada (Alps, I know), no Yosemite, no desert, no Redwood trees, no San Francisco, no … so many things.  I don’t know where to start.

My liberal friends and I (just to get one thing out of the way, I wear the label liberal with pride!) have complained so many times about politics here in this country but now I am thinking, it ain’t so bad, there are idiots in Germany, too, who have a tendency to flock into politics.  Moreover I don’t really live in America.  I live in California, coastal California.

It’s stupid, I know, I should be thrilled and on one level I am but the idea of leaving California is very unsettling.  I keep mumbling to myself  “I’ll be back” and then reminding myself that I really shouldn’t quote Arnie, like, ever.

Today I hit on another permutation of the theme.  We went to have Mexican food for lunch.  Not my favorite food but I do love Mexico.  We spent quite some time there years ago.  So I started thinking “Germany is so far from Mexico.  I’ll miss Mexico, darn, I miss it already”  and then went back to the comfort of  “it’s only for a year.  I will be back.”

Maybe I was right when I first came to California all these years ago and thought, knew and felt instinctively  “this is where I belong.  If live was fair, this is where I would have been born.”

Las Vegas

I risk dating myself here but I’ll say it anyway: the last time I visited Las Vegas before this trip was in the early 90s.   I didn’t like it then, but it provided a certain amount of fun and entertainment and it was cheap, which then , traveling on a tight student’s budget was worth something in and by itself.

This place ain’t for me. Pic: discoverthetrip.com

This time I absolutely hated the place and couldn’t wait to get out.  I know I am in the minority on this one, vastly outnumbered by people who love Vegas and everything about it.  But, seriously, what is there about it?

What bothered me most the first time around (just like in Disneyland, btw) is the fakeness of it all.  This is probably my German side – forever seeking for authenticity – that is so strongly reacting to fake Eiffel Towers, fake Venetian canals, fake Statues of Liberty, fake everything.  I remember about 10 years later – I was by then living in California – a colleague of mine taking a long weekend trip to Vegas where she staid at the Venetian coming back to work and marveling about Vegas in general and the hotel in particular “just like Venice, only cleaner” were her words.  The words of somebody, I might add, who had never set foot into Europe.  One thing is true, the streets in Venice are dirtier than the halls of the hotel, but they are streets, not hallways kept spotless by an army of underpaid mostly Mexican cleaners.  But anyway, that was then.

This time I was prepared for the fakeness and willing to try to just go with the flow and enjoy it.  But this time the problem was a different one, it was what Umberto Eco describes in his Travels through Hyperreality so very aptly with the words “behind the facades lurks a sales pitch”.  And that is exactly it, Vegas has become a expensive make-believe luxury destination for those who can’t afford the real thing and unlike before one pays dearly for that illusion.  With the exception of parking and the spectacles some casinos put up, e.g. a fake volcano eruption every half hour starting at 5 pm,  everything in Vegas is expensive and wherever you turn somebody wants to sell you something.  Now maybe there are still cheap lunch buffets in parts of town where one doesn’t want to be, serving food that one does not care to eat, but at our Hotel at the Strip we spent almost $70 for a three Pho soup lunch with tea and a soda – I can get this in Silicon Valley for $25.  The da Vinci exhibition at a hotel was $52 for the three of us – that was after we used a 40% off coupon – and it was okay, not great.  What irked me was that they were trying to upsell us on some cheesy picture of us taken in front of a green wall with brushes in our hand that came out looking like we were painting the Last Supper.   I mean, seriously …

The other thing that disturbed me was the vengeance with which the hordes of people embraced this whole spectacle of conspicuous over-consumption.  Huge alcoholic drinks in silly shaped plastic containers where hauled around on the street (and not just by 21 year olds – that I would understand but by people in their 40s and 50s), as well as  shopping bags (do other cities not have the usual array of clothing stores?), people dressed up (or tried to) walking around in the silliest combinations and I have seen more than a reasonable share of naked legs in sandals at around 0 to 5 degrees Celsius – with other words: freezing temperatures.  I think we were the only people on new Years Eve not wearing a 2013 tiara, other head gear, glasses, necklaces, whatever.  Everything is about consuming more and more, everything needs to be bigger, everybody seems to want to outclass the rest, live the high life, be fake-rich and show it off.

Okay, I am am done now.  I won’t go back if I can at all avoid it.  Maybe somebody who has been to Vegas and liked it can try and explain to me what you see in it.  I can’t wrap my mind around it.

Road Trip, Part II

Darwin Falls, just outside Death Valley National Park at the very end of a Canyon, pic: mine

I love National Parks, Monuments, Forests, whatever – they are grand, wonderful places with unique landscapes – or as in the case of Death Valley it seems more like a moonscape – stunning views, and sights that can simply not be found anywhere else in that abundance and perfection.

National Parks are also wonderful places for people watching – believe it or not.  How people approach National Parks is rather interesting.  Let’s leave aside for a moment those, who do not ever visit National or State or any other Parks and focus on those who go.  There are a few noteworthy types.  One type I always marvel about are the Indian ladies in their saris and sandals.  Now that makes sense in summer in Death Valley but I have seen them in the middle of winter at Lassen National Park, walking on what must have been 8 feet of snow.  So here I am in an undershirt, a t-shirt, a sweat shirt, a light jacket and a down jacket and three pairs of socks in my sturdiest hiking boots on snow shoes and there they are in a sari, a knit cardigan and strappy sandals.   I saw them again in Death Valley – and mind you in an unseasonably cold December temps where close to freezing.  I shiver just thinking about this choice of outerwear.

Another type are the gear heads.  They are predominantly male and seem to hail from all races.  We were puttering around the sand duns in Death Valley – a smallish area in the bigger scheme of the park, where mainly families go so the kids can play in the wonderfully fine sand and roll down the dunes – and there I saw two guys, decked out like on a Himalaya expedition hiking (walking really) into the dunes.  We are talking 2 pm and they have head lamps at the ready, hiking poles in both hands, performance clothing, water for days, backpacks large enough to have food for a three course meal plus wine and digestives in them.  And I wonder whether this is because they actually believe that leaving the car in a places as inhospitable as Death Valley is a virtual death sentence or whether they just like to buy gear.  I think it is the later, judging from the males in my life ….

The type that puzzles me are the rest area only visitors – which I think is by far the largest group.  They basically drive from vista point (as we call it in California) to vista point, preferring those with pick-nick tables and/or views of waterfalls.  They seem to make it a rule to never walk more than 200 feet after they are out of the car, then they have a quick glance around, take a dozen pictures or so and retreat to the car to drive to the next point of interest.  Daring things, like actual walks/hikes are not on the program.

Then there are the like so us, who actually hike, ideally to the end of the canyon, even if it is blocked by boulders, or icy areas.  Our rule of thumb has been for years now that you loose about 80-90% of the people for the first  mile you go.  So of 100 only 10-20 will still be with you at the 1 mile marker. After that, the attrition rate is lower, as these are often pretty determined individuals but I would still put it at about 50%.  So you do the math but one thing is for sure, it does not take terribly long to be almost alone.

Every once in a big while you come across an extreme hiker, one of those “crossing the Sierras with a daypack” guys, who have been on the road – or rather path – for days and look unwashed but exceedingly fit and healthy.  Those I envy a bit, as I can’t put up with that level of discomfort just to be able to say “I crossed the Sierra Nevada in winter on skies.”

But whatever the visitors – National Parks are amazing places!