Five wonderful weeks in Ami-Land

With the time in Florida, the first three weeks of my total of five were already over. At that point, I had to force myself not to think about saying goodbye. Especially because I didn't go directly from Florida to St. Joseph. On Monday, our flight from Orlando back to Kansas City. We spent the afternoon there and then I went straight back to the airport. By the way, on that day I ate the best vegan chicken wings. In KC, there is a restaurant of the chain 'Yardhouse'. In the afternoon during happy hour, you can eat well and, most importantly, at normal prices. The beer menu is really overwhelming. I surrendered immediately and ordered a white wine - the best I've had in the USA. Sebastian fought his way through the beers and ended up ordering a wheat beer, which was also very good. Yardhouse has over 100 beers on draft. You can try to imagine what the drink menu looks like. I had no idea where to start. For food, we decided on pizza and the vegan chicken wings. I've never eaten anything like this before, and if someone reading this is ever in the USA, they must order the wings at Yardhouse. They are sensational. :D

So I was well fed and headed back to the airport to continue on to San Francisco. It was a good thing I had eaten before because, like almost all of my flights, this one was also delayed. This time, the weather was to blame. We were able to take off with a 2.5 hour delay, and during the flight, I understood why it took so long. I would say that about 80% of the time, the flight crew had to sit down. I had never experienced such wobbling and rolling. Two extremes in one day. The best food and the worst flight during the five weeks. The landing was quite eventful. San Francisco airport is located on the city's border, right on the water. So the plane got closer and closer to the water in the dark and was rocking like crazy. I thought we were going to make an emergency landing on the water. But luckily, we reached the runway. During the day, under normal conditions, it would have been interesting to fly so close to the water. In that moment, it was just meh.

Once I had solid ground under my feet, I took the train into the city and went straight to the hostel and fell tired into bed. In San Francisco, I spent a total of three nights or two full days. In hindsight, I would describe these two days as educational. I think the title of "world city" is not an exaggeration for San Francisco. The city is world famous and everyone associates it with the Golden Gate Bridge at least once. You may have also heard about California and San Francisco's very liberal approach to drugs. Now, I'm not an advocate of the strictest drug policy, but those two days were, as the English term suggests, mind-blowing. The contrasts I experienced there were truly crazy. On one hand, San Francisco is very beautiful for a city, especially for an American one. I have rarely taken so many pictures of buildings. The hills, some of which are so steep and give the city its own flair, make it charming with their ups and downs. It was also a very cool feeling to see the typical houses - greetings from my generation with Full House -, the cable cars, and Alcatraz, and to walk through Golden Gate Park. The emotional highlight, of course, was the Golden Gate Bridge. When you've seen something so often in books, pictures, and movies, and then you stand on it, it's an incredible feeling.

And yet, San Francisco managed to stay associated with many negative memories. Since I started traveling, I have slept in some strange places and have traveled alone or with others through many countries, places, and regions. Many of these situations were not safe in hindsight, and I won't go into detail about them for the sake of my parents' nerves. But San Francisco was the first place in the world where I felt uncomfortable almost all the time. I have never seen so many homeless people anywhere else. But nowhere else have the homeless people drifted so far into a different atmosphere as in this city. From half-dead to talking to themselves, seizures, shouting, jumping around, or almost attacking and insulting you, everything and more was there. It must also be said that I mostly stayed in the city center, where it is surely the worst. In the suburbs and outskirts, people are certainly 98% normal. Nevertheless, the city felt like one big drug frenzy to me. Alcohol and weed probably no longer count as drugs there, but rather as desirable consumables. The streetside residents there shoot up on crack and crystal meth as a matter of course. And they do it right on the street or on the stairs to the subway. And they don't care if the police happen to be passing by. It is unimaginable for us in Germany. Drugs and their consumption are omnipresent there. If we're honest, alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana are common drugs in Germany too and are consumed in excessive amounts by many people. But what was so much worse in San Francisco was the way the high played out. Due to their hallucinations, these people, if you can still call them that, are completely unpredictable. If you see someone like that in Germany, you simply cross the street. But there, they were often everywhere. There was simply no other choice but to walk past them. And of course, they would yell, jump, and talk to you. I often felt extremely uncomfortable because these people were no longer predictable to me. If you're there with two or three people, I can imagine it would be extremely funny. Maybe you won't find as many curiosities in any other city, and with some distance, it is certainly fun to observe them together. But for me, it was a bit too much. It was a feeling of relief when I left on the bus from Los Angeles on Wednesday night. I was completely relaxed when Sebastian and his French friend Yacine arrived on Friday.

But first, let's talk about my last day alone in Los Angeles. I arrived there in the morning and had one more day before the three of us went to Long Beach for a reggae festival. The bus in Los Angeles stopped on the outskirts, and from there I took public transport to Hollywood Boulevard. My hostel was right on the street. On the first few meters, as usual, I passed homeless tent cities. But luckily, it was just like a ride through the zoo. I was on a public bus. Some of the "zoo residents" were also on the bus, but they were harmless. You can compare them to monkeys. A bit strange in behavior and sometimes a bit creepy, but certainly not hungry predators that attack you. The comparison with the zoo may seem a bit macabre. In my opinion, however, it is not far-fetched. Many of these people are driven solely by drugs. There is no longer any free will in their lives. Everything they do or do not do revolves, in my opinion, solely around drugs and getting high. Well, anyway - I could observe the hustle and bustle in Los Angeles from the bus.

I didn't want to spend my one day in the City of Angels as scared as I did the last two days. So I didn't spend much time in the city. I spent most of the time at the beach. I walked from Santa Monica Beach to Venice Beach and then back to Hollywood in the evening. I "checked out" the Walk of Fame or rather walked on it. It wasn't really impressive. But I had gathered enough impressions in San Francisco. However, the two beaches were really beautiful. There was also a lot to see there. It was exactly what you imagine the surfer lifestyle in California to be like. People were walking along the beach with skateboards and surfboards, and you could observe all kinds of different people. That was a reconciling farewell to my time of traveling alone. The next morning, as I said, Sebastian and Yacine arrived, and we went to the 'One Love Cali Reggae Festival' in Long Beach at the Queen Mary dock. It not only sounds cool, it was cool. All the reggae music I listen to was playing there, and there was no difference between the live performances and the studio recordings for most of the bands. Musically, the festival was fantastic. With $9 or $11 for a beer and at least $6 for a meal, the prices were not as good as the music. But that was okay. After the festival, we went to a bar in Long Beach all three evenings that had a happy hour. Cheap food and drinks were always a hit after the festival. With the palm trees, the skyline of Long Beach, and the Queen Mary in the background, the festival was also a pretty big highlight in my festival chronicles. My personal favorite from the festival was Rebelution. If you're interested, you can look up their performance on the internet. There are surely videos from there. J

Then Sunday evening everything was over, and on Monday morning, the three of us flew back to Missouri. If I remember correctly, this flight was also on time. With this Monday, my last week in the States began. Sebastian and I enjoyed the remaining days together and went hiking in the nearest state forest one day. On the last evening, both of us went to a bar with a few friends. There, there was relatively cheap, good beer, and there was also live music. The evening was great, and Sebastian's American roommate Andrew got completely wasted, as befits an American who just turned 21. This included throwing up from the moving car during the ride home. Unfortunately, only a part of the group saw that. Because the two of us and two others lasted a bit longer.

My last meal in St. Joseph was a delicious brunch on Saturday before saying goodbye. The farewell - as you can imagine - was pretty bad, BUT fortunately not for as long as last time. J What was great on my return flight was my last neighbor. She still needs a little practice with personal space and boundaries on the plane, as you can see in the pictures. ^^

Thus ends the narrative from the USA. The time there was super, super nice, and even now as I write, I can feel how good it was for me. Getting away and seeing something different helped me to live a little more relaxed again in China. The 30-hour return flight was long, and I had a lot of time to think. That made it difficult to leave the USA behind. When I arrived back on campus, it was - you won't believe it - a feeling of home. Now the fifth week of the semester is over, and compared to the beginning of the last semester, things are going much better. Many things are still annoying, but the five weeks helped me see everything a little more calmly. It's so much easier to go through life when you're relaxed.