Packing

Packing is a b… under the best of circumstances but packing for a 1-year absence is a different ballgame altogether.  Between the three of us we have 4 suitcases (thanks to my Gold status I get to take a second, which – I was told from the beginning – I was not to consider my second suitcase but the family suitcase) 50 lbs each plus the usual carry-on.  So 200 lbs of luggage minus weight of suitcases to haul a year’s worth of stuff – that focuses the mind – or at least one should think.

Packing focuses the mind: the magic number is 50 lbs right now.
(c) Tina Baumgartner

My first instinct was to pack some favorite memorabilia, lots of clothing so we don’t have to buy anything there plus  all the important business cards I need for my job, jewelry, documents, paper work – until I noticed (and, really, I should have known this before and somehow did but repressed the knowledge) that a) paper is heavy, b) shoes are heavy and c) winter clothing is – you guessed it – heavy.  Since any additional suitcase costs $200 to ship the tasks has changed now from: let’s take as much as we can so we don’t have to get it here to “is it cheaper to buy a pair of jeans for my son here and take it or cheaper to buy it here?”  Now everything I put on the “take with” pile is second guessed, weighed in my hands, critically compared to other stuff of similar weight: wool sweater vs. 2 pairs of sandals?  The poster I wanted to take for decorating the apartment vs. Mexican and Japanese spices I am not sure I can get there? Business cards vs. documents?

Once you start paring the list down you start wondering whether it is worth taking anything.  If only very special things get to go, what makes something special?  Some things are easy, I know my son will not leave without his bear, he is 10 but he loves that raggedy old thing that he had since his first day.  My husband will not travel without at least two computers and a spare monitor but will probably think three t-shirts are plenty.  And I, I don’t know what is important anymore.  I know I need a computer, and a few business suits, my camera and iPhone but in addition to that everything else is in a grey zone – important? yes, but that important? Important enough to claim one of the “by invitation only, limited edition” spaces in my suitcase?

I am sure I’ll figure it out – and if not, I can always get a pair of shoes or a sweater – but it is weird to have to make these decisions and oscillating between “I have to bring this else life isn’t worth living” to “nah, it does not make the final 50lbs after all” and the ultimate: “am I willing to spend $200 for a fifth suitcase to take this?”

One thing is for certain, packing suitcases and packing up part of the house is certainly an exercise that should be undertaken more frequently.  There is so much stuff  that just accumulates and never gets dealt with and now we are forced to do it.  Besides the superficial clutter of piles of sweaters and socks lying around getting ready to be packed up the house hasn’t looked so clean and airy in a long time!

 

 

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!

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.

Starting the Process

When our son was 3 1/2 we took a six month sabbatical and traveled to six different countries (the blog for that adventure is here) around the world.  We rented our house and rented apartments, houses wherever we went – so one should think that I know exactly what to do when it comes to planning long-term absences.  Yes, I do – and that’s exactly why I am, well, scared of the task ahead.

I am afraid that soon, this could be me. pic: acccbuzz.wordpress.com

It took me months the last time, literally, to get it organized and a lot of it was on the home front, so to speak.  Just getting the house ready to be rented out was a major undertaking in painting, fixing, cleaning, tossing, organizing. Then finding renters and doing things like canceling what ended up being 20 magazine subscriptions, dealing with the DMV over the driver’s license renewal which was due smack in the middle so I couldn’t do it before or after, paying property taxes, dealing with the cars,  health insurance, etc.

Abroad the situation was both easier and more complicated than it will be this time.  Easier because wherever we went, we didn’t really move there, we were visitors on a somewhat extended stay, we needed visa for India – and that was an annoying day in the embassy in San Francisco but it was just that an annoying day and then it was over – but no other paperwork was required.  This time things will be different, since we are going to spend a year and the Germans are somewhat anal when it comes to paper work and permits and such like.  For example, you can’t just up and leave and move to a new place in Germany (even as a German) you have to go to a special city office and hand in paper that you don’t live there anymore and then in your new place you have to do the same, you have so to speak, enroll in the new city.  And don’t even think about not following that rule, if they catch you it is going to be really expensive.

This type of stuff used to be normal to me but after 15 years here the mere idea of having my name and address in some computer at the local authorities makes me nervous.  What the heck are they doing with that?  Why do they need to know?

Bad thing is I have forgotten a lot of that stuff and new rules and regulations are now in existence.  I will have to do some real research on that – and the mere idea virtually puts me to sleep.

So, and now I will return to the garage where the cleaning activities have begun.