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

We are on a road trip right now.  A very American thing to do and – I have to admit – I like them, too.  I spent too much time in air planes anyway and the idea of just throwing stuff into the trunk and not debating with my son whether we can take this book or that, and be able to add this extra pair of hiking boots makes things easier.

Also, road trips are much more educational.  On one many years ago (before the son) my husband and I ended up in a small town in Utah.  It was Saturday night, we’ve had early dinner (there were two options: early dinner or no dinner, so we choose the first) and now felt ready to crash in our Motel with a book and a bottle of red wine.  So we went to the local store and started rummaging the shelves coming up empty handed.  I asked the cashier where he kept the wine.  He made a very serious face, said “come with me”, walked us out of the store, pointed south and said: “if you take this road and drive south for about 200 miles – that’s where you can buy wine.”  I learned something there – I never go on a road trip again without a few bottles of wine.

Today, we ended up in a town in the south-eastern Sierra, outside Sequoia National Park but not in Death Valley National Park yet.  The claim to fame of this town is a naval base, which is somewhat surprising as the Pacific is about 180 miles away and the promised lake is no more (it has been dried out for many years).  It is one of these places that lack all charm and character and are populated by a very surprising number of auto parts stores.  But then, maybe that isn’t surprising after all: we were looking for a place not too far away where we could go on a little hike and ended up in a interesting area, full of boulders, and low shrub, tumbleweed and some Joshua Trees and huge RVs with trailers with dirt bikes on them.  Pretty much everybody from the kids onwards was riding dirt bikes around (the motorized kind, of course), creating huge plumes of dust by spinning the wheels around.  Also there seem to be a good supply of small, all terrain like cars which they used to drive around as well.  As we walked through the camp, I told my husband that I assume that nobody in this whole group will walk more than a mile in a week in the wilderness (and the fire wood piles looked like they would last a week).  we hike up a small hill to enjoy the view at sunset and as we left a whole succession of cars came spinning up the little hill, apparently the idea of actually hiking up that thing did not occur to anybody but us.

The views we got from the RV crowd as we walked back to our car confirmed that much.  This is a world completely foreign to us, the whole idea of driving a huge-ass RV to the high dessert and then sit around all day or drive dirt bikes around the camp all day long, then take drive up the hill after sunset, then sit by the fire and do it all over the next day, and the next is rather unappealing to me.  However, here, we are clearly in the minority (and would be on all topics related to god, guns, politics, gay marriage, abortion, birth control, sciences education and untold others).  It is always strange to come from the liberal coast to places like this and feel so completely outnumbered.

Glass Half Empty

This very typically little story happened to me just the other day and I thought it was, well, very typical of the difference in culture between the US and Germany.  So here it goes.

General German sentiment: things will be worse tomorrow and even worse later.

I am on the LinkedIn Alumni list of my old/first university, the one in Germany.  As you might or might not know alumni relations is rather new to Germany, and in general people graduate and then pretty much forget about their universities.  So when they slowly started building closer relationship with their alumni I felt honor bound to at least sign up and participate.  The group is not very active but every once in a while an interesting post comes along which is worth reading and commenting on.

So the other day I saw that somebody had posted a ranking of “new” universities (those less than 50 years old) and my good old – or should I say new – university secured a spot among the top 15.  Pretty darn good, I thought for a small university in a provincial town in southern Germany.  I commented positively and tweeted the article.  Exactly the behavior that is expected from and commended in every good American.

The reaction I got should not have surprised me but still it did: the next person responding to my comment basically wrote: it ain’t all that great, in 5 years the university will not be “New” anymore and where will that leave us?  On the list of all universities this places is only “whatever not so stellar number) and the German universities in general aren’t doing so well, worse than the Dutch, blablabla, etc.

How very German!  Instead of focusing on the positive, the good ranking now and thinking that we have a few years to improve the overall ranking the focus is on the bad, the negative, the problem.  Maybe the typical American focus on the forever positive outlook, the incessant “everything will be alright” attitude is not realistic and at times outright annoying but the relentless focusing on the negative, the automatic assumption that whatever can go wrong will go wrong and that it is downhill from here is depressing. Why is that the automatic negative reaction, why forever focus on the bad?

I hate to say it, but it seems almost German nature.

Tragedy

Yesterday a seemingly healthy and – from what we read and hear in the news – exceptionally smart 20 year old grabbed three guns and shot 27 people – 20 elementary school kids among them – in a small, affluent little town in Upstate New York.

Some facts about guns, pic: http://www.thenation.com/article/169295/gun-control-dream#

This tragedy is incomprehensible and hits especially close to home for us as we have a kid in elementary school, too – albeit across the country.  But outside the shock and sadness I feel and the deep empathy for the family members whose lives are destroyed as mine would be if my son was murdered, I feel rage and despair and a deeper disconnect from this country as I have ever felt.

In the wake of this tragedy what we hear is the call to stand firm by the Second Amendment clause giving the people of this country to right to bear arms.  What we hear are the same old stupid lines repeated such as “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” and “we need to get the crazies off the street, then these things wouldn’t happen.”  This phrase were stupid and superficial and  deeply hurtful even in the instances of shootings where the gunman was somebody who struggled with mental health issues.  In all those recent cases of  “crazies” shooting up schools and movie theaters, apparently the system failed to keep people who – after the fact where called crazy or mentally ill – from buying guns.  In all cases the system failed to recognize the severity of the mental health issues in people and to get them off the street and to provide them with help.   Curiously enough, the same people who want no gun control also often hate the government and want to “starve the beast (of government)” thereby effectively doing away with organized mental health treatment options.

This case, though,  is different again.  The guy wasn’t crazy, or maybe he was but there were no signs unless you count being shy and very smart as crazy (in which case I know a lot of crazy people).  Even if we got every single person worrying about alien invasions, speaking incoherently to themselves or drawing pictures of bombs off the street this tragedy would have happened.  The only thing that could have prevented this is if the guy did not have access to a number of guns and ammunition.

He could have still killed, that is another lame argument by the gun lovers, with a knife, or an ax or a dagger.  True, he could have, maybe a few people before being overpowered or running out of steam.  I have no personal experience with this but it seems logical that killing with a distance weapon like a semi-automatic gun is entirely different from stabbing somebody to death or running after somebody with an ax.

The reactions across the political spectrum was interesting.  Most notable I found that the right wing press (which I sometimes read to try and understand how the other side is thinking ) has ignored the shooting to a large extent or argue that God let this happen because people weren’t pious enough.  Red State.com saw fit to bemoan the fact that as a nation we only come together during events like this shooting rather than for happy occasions like sporting events.  Seriously, is that all you have to say in a situation like this, “let’s applaud our Olympics gymnastics team more energetically”?  I won’t even comment on the highly offensive comments made but the ultra-right fringe, their God is way to hate- and revengeful to  pay any attention to.

Most shocking, though, I thought was some of the main stream reaction I saw on Facebook, etc.  “nothing will change”, “this is how it is”, “People will not give up their guns” etc.  20 kids and 7 adults are dead in an entirely preventable tragedy and the American people collective say a prayer for the families, hug their children and shrug their shoulders.  Where is the wide-spread outcry, where the demands to stop this madness?  Where is the horror over this and where the empathy for the victims and those who will inevitably follow behind?

I read an editorial in the New York Times, written by a father of a young man who was killed 20 years ago in a killing spree and who struggled and fought for gun control and eventually gave up realizing that Americans as a nation – not all individuals – seem to be willing to accept such tragedies as they price they have to pay to own and carry around their (concealed) guns.

What a terrible and disheartening testament.  What a cruel message to the families of the victims, these and the ones before and after, a message that says “what happened to you is bad and I sure wouldn’t want it to happen to me or the people I know but I accept that you pay the price so I can buy my 13 year old a semi-automatic weapon for his birthday.”

And this message, this fundamental disregard of life, this utter lack of empathy and sense for the greater good I struggle with more than with anything else in the country I have ever struggled with.

Destination Imagination – Or How to Stifle Creativity

I was wondering where to post this one, here or on my other blog called America explained (I admit, I am not lacking ambition), but decided to post it here.  Check out the other blog, though, if you are interested.

My son is a geek, he likes sciences and is good at math.  He is similar to his mom, who likes sciences – and isn’t all that great at math.  This year we signed him up for a program called Destination Imagination (in short DI) which is a nationwide contest in which teams complete a challenge – often engineering-related but for variety there are also plays and more social type challenges.

The not so creative creativity contest. pic: hongkiat.com

We liked the idea of elementary school kids using their imagination and creativity to solve problems.  That is the theory.  The practice is – the opposite.  The team of youngsters has to pick one of five challenges, if it was me the challenge would be something like: “build three small cars propelled by different mechanisms which can go a predetermined distance.”  I might add something like “Don’t use nuclear power to propel them.”

In real life the challenges reads something like: “build three small cars propelled by different mechanisms which can go a predetermined distance.” and then follow about 10 pages (literally) in 8 point print detailing every last aspect of the challenge.  The size of the care down to the quarter inch, how much it can cost, what materials can be used and not used, how much the vehicle can wobble and still be considered running smoothly – a condition.  Also the cars don’t just have to go a predetermined distance, they have to follow some excruciatingly detailed path inside a 20′ x 20′ feet square in which certain areas are marked off.  The ways to propel the cars are spelled out (so much about thinking creatively) and everything that is fun is explicitly forbidden.  Geek mom that I am my first thought was “firecracker tied to car”.  I thought it was brilliant – but, of course, the Safety Rules prohibit that.

Not only spell the rules every aspect of the challenge out , they are also subject to repeated revisions and so the parents will enjoy immensely the opportunity to compare different versions at various times and adjust the project.  Wait, the parents are not supposed to participate at all other than in a facilitator’s role (basically keeping the kid’s from smashing each others’ heads in)  – so the 8 year olds seem to be expected to read the rules, understand them and act accordingly.  No idea in what universe the people who came up with this live.  One thing is sure, thought, they do not have kids and where born middle-aged.

Somehow this whole mess is in some ways indicative of – and here I can’t speak for all of the US but certainly for the engineering driven culture of Silicon Valley – where creativity seem to be to follow very detailed rules and dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s.  The challenges couldn’t be more contrary to their alleged purpose if they tried.   To us it is painful to read the rules and see the kids struggle with trying solve the challenge, have some fun and stay within the narrow confines of the rules of this alleged contest in creativity and imagination.

If it was just my son I would encourage him to use a firecracker and a few more things that sparkle, bang and stink – even if it means he gets disqualified, at least he would have some fun and go out with a bang.  But as a member of a team of little geeks we’ll play by the rules.  Just this year, next year I am thinking of a challenge myself.

Weather

You have no idea (or maybe you do) how many time I had to have the weather discussion.  It goes like so:

Person: “Oh, so you are German.  Why did you come to the US?”

Me: “To go to graduate school in Boston.  Afterwards I came to California.”

Person: ” Oh, interesting.  Why did  come to California.”

Me (thinking “duh”): “Because the weather is better than in Germany.”

At this point people reliably think I made a joke – not a very good one, but a joke nevertheless.  Thing is I didn’t, I meant it – Weather. Is. Important. Period!

It ain’t quite that bad in Germany – most of the time. but stil …
Pic: thegoddessblogs.com

Of course, weather wasn’t all, there were many other factors involved in the decision to move to california, but the weather, honestly, played a big part for me since I am one of those Vitamin D deficient, seasonal-depression-suffering sun lovers.   Since I came to California I have only been back to Germany twice in winter.  Once early on – and regretted it immediately and vowed to never repeat that foolish mistake again.

Just last week, though – mid-November – I had to go to Germany for a conference.  Why anybody would chose to hold a conference in November in Germany is a mystery to me, there are lots better places I can think off,  southern Spain, for example.  The whole experience was – frustrating.  I am just no longer used to freezing temperatures and what the Germans I spoke to considered fairly decently warm weather almost froze my behind off.  I no longer have long underwear type things, the soles of my shoes are thin and 90% of my tops sleeveless.  Here I thought I was doing a decent winter packing job by bringing a jacket and an overcoat, a scarf and shoes that do not fall into the strappy sandals category.  After 10 minutes waiting for a taxi cab I was frozen stiff, the cold air literally crept into the sleeves of my coat making me realize how useful long underthings can be.

I am back now in California and sitting here in a sleeveless T-shirt and barefoot, it isn’t really warm – only about 20 degrees Celcius and the sun is shining.  I am loving it!

Tipping

What is enough and what is too much or too little? pic: people.howstuffworks.com

Tipping is a well-known contentious  issue between Americans and Germans.  Americans tip a lot and find Germans and their tipping habits (or lack thereof) cheap bordering on the offensive and Germans find American tipping habits patronizing and claim that they ruin the prices for everybody (and that, of course, everybody should be paid a decent wage so you don’t have to tip somebody so they can pay their rent).

Now, none of this is new.  If a German planning to visit the US picks up a travel book it will have a section about tipping and it will clearly state a number between 15 and 20% as the expected amount.  Likewise an American traveling to Europe will find cautionary words about over-tipping.  And still Germans under-tip and Americans over-tip.  They just can’t help themselves.  It seems to be such a deeply ingrained cultural norm that it is hard to shake.

I had an experience along this line a few times:

German guest: “how much should I tip?”

Me: “let’s see, the bill comes to $51 …”

Guest: “How about $55?”

Me: “Ehmm, no, that isn’t quite enough, that’s not even 10% , more like $60.”

Guest: “WHAT????”

Me: “Well, I told you15-20% is normal, so okay, $59.”

Guest: “so you really mean it, you have to tip that much, I really didn’t know that …..”

Me (invisible eye-roll): “We did discuss this before, this is just how it is here …”

Guest: “sure, yes, I just didn’t realize that it actually really is the case, I thought is it sort of a suggestion …” (trails off)

I could, of course, relay a bunch of experience where I am leaving a restaurant/bar after my American company has paid the bill and see this huge grin on the face of the waiter. “Oh oh, over-tipped” I think to myself.  “Didn’t I just tell him/her that 35 Euros is good enough if the bill comes to 32?  Did he/she have to make it 40 again? Sigh!”

Just, those encounters are all around less dramatic and antagonizing.

The thing is, I can’t just blame others.  After all these years in the US I still have trouble with tipping, I, of all people know, how much to tip (and have figured out the trick to make the calculation easy: in California to tip twice the amount of tax you pay – that gets you in the right ballpark) but I have to remind and force myself to do it right every time.

Some things just aren’t as easy as they seem.

The Great American Indoors

Me, in a restaurant in California during the summer, pic: http://foodtrainers.blogspot.com/2010/12/shiver-yourself-skinny.html

There is something very strange about the American indoors for a European such as myself and here is what it is:  on a random hot Silicon Valley summer day my family might decide to have dinner in a nearby restaurant.  I am in shorts and sleeveless T-shirt so I go to my closet and get a pair of long pants, a T-shirt with sleeves and a cardigan.  I also pack a jacket for my son and ask him to put on socks.

I am not crazy, I am just going to a restaurant with air-conditioning which will be keeping the room at a nice and steady 60 degrees Fahrenheit which for me, especially when sitting instead of moving, is right around the temperature where my toes start to lose any feeling and any uncovered spot of skin shows a serious case of goose-bumps.

Fast forward to winter – not that dramatic in lovely California – so let’s fast forward to winter in Boston, where I used to live.  It is cold, so you layer: underwear, t-shirt, sweater, maybe cardigan and a down jacket, hat, gloves, two pairs of socks and lined boots.  Then you walk, let’s say to the next T station (subway), enter and proceed more than 10 steps form the entrance where you start ripping the down jacket off.  By the time you get to the platform and then into the train you will have ripped off pretty much every piece of clothing that can be ripped off without getting the police involved and sweat is running down your back.   As you leave the subway the process reverses itself at a frantic pace;  sweater over the head, cardigan on, down jacket on top, sweat running down the back and then the onslaught of cold air.  Five minutes later you enter the office building and start peeling of again in a lovely 80 degree environment.

I have never quite understood why we have to have winter temperatures in summer and summer temperatures in winter.  If I have to sweat, I’d prefer to sweat in summer.  If I have to freeze, then winter would be the time to do so.  It would save a lot of energy and I wouldn’t have to have my entire wardrobe available year around.

Water and Refills

The more I think about it the more I realize how American I have become – or maybe just even more un-German.    I like my water with plenty ice, in fact drinking pretty much anything other than hot tea and red wine not ice cold is unpleasant, let alone the idea of a Diet Coke that isn’t almost frozen.  My German friends scrunch up their faces when having American style water and can barely keep it in their mouths because it is too cold for them.

Water, all cold and free. Pic: Dreamstime

Speaking of water: I love free water in American restaurants and have come to really resent the prices for teeny weeny little bottles of sparkling water in Europe.  I feel like I am being tricked and cheated if I go to a restaurant for lunch, order what seems to be a reasonably priced, sometimes even cheap meal and then end up paying twice as much overall because the beverage costs as much as the food.  If you don’t believe me try going to a restaurant in Germany or Austria (not even talking about Switzerland where everything is outrageously expensive) on a hot summer day with a boy who just finished playing in the sun and downs two large glasses of water/juice before lunch arrives.  He eats his 5 Euro Wienerschnitzel with Pommes (French Fries) but his two large Apfelsaftschorle (apple juice with sparkling water) set you back 7 Euro.

And, behold the beauty of the common soda refill.  What a relief to be able to get another if I am still thirsty and what a relief not to have to worry about ice in the glass (which you always have to worry about in Germany because the more ice, the less beverage – so ice is not a way to increase enjoyment but a way to cheat you).

The question I frequently hear in Germany is “aren’t people abusing that system terribly?” and my answer is – after some careful reflection – always the same “not really”.  Will people get a refill if they strictly speaking don’t need it anymore and leave some?  Sure, they will.  Does it bankrupt restaurants – haven’t heard about it.  Will people drink two gallons, just because they can?  Probably not on a regular basis, although there might be a time in a teenage boy’s life where this might be something they consider – just for the heck of it and because Jack over there does it, too.

But that is a different story and has more to do with teenage boy mentality than with free sodas.