Felix & Arno in the US

Hi folks, I just arrived in New York again.

Westcoast, especially San Francisco, were a real blast. The city felt a bit like Berlin and I enjoyed the company of my host Cesar, Tina and Charlotte from my school in Berlin. I rode my bike over the Golden Gate Bridge and saw a hispanic gay pride parade in Dolores Park. I did like SF so much more than LA, because it feels very european and open-minded. You dont have as many chic and snobbish neighborhoods and the public transportation is far better in comparison. Instead there are tons of burglars in the street, which gives San Francisco the name of “capital of the homeless”. Its a kind of sad thing, especially to see worn-down 65 years old hippie drop-outs, but they are just everywhere. Sometimes you cant even tell there are homeless or just crazy folks . One guy at the bus gave us the hint to go to the “Saloon” in little Italy and we followed his recommendation and experienced one of the oldest bars in SF playing awesome Live-Blues at 6pm.

I actually had a free flight this morning at 7:15am, sponsored by my Couchsurfing Host John from Buffalo, but I missed it. We re-sheduled it to 12:15 and so I stopped over in Las Vegas to change planes, played some slot machines at the terminal and am heading towards Long Island Airport right now. I will sleep at my friends Kieran’s place this night and arrive there at approx. 1:30am. I got 5 days in New York before I leave on 29^th 5:15pm back to Germany and im really looking forward to spend these days in New York at the very end of my 7 weeks voyage. Traveling for so many weeks, you start missing your home and I think I reached that point somewhere in LA. I really wanna go back, seeing my loved girl Janett again and just feel like being where i belong to again, sleeping in my bed….. It will be lots of fun though, to hang out in New York again. But I miss Berlin, weekends of party, Germans everywhere and just the special flavor of my City in fall. Will be a huge change for sure, after spending 2 weeks at the westcoast, beaches, palm trees and lots of sun, but I will figure it out.

Im sorry again for not uploading new pictures, I already sorted and picked them, but it takes hours to upload them and so I never really was in the mood to do so. Maybe I gonna find an evening to do so before I come home.

hey doods, im leaving san diego right now, but i didnt find time to write a real big post, which means that i had lots of fun in this city! today i was in Tijuana and din-dashed(zeche geprellt) a bar there because i forgot my wallet in the car and my host had only 8$ left. now im heading to a electronic music festival the “Nocturnal Festival” and dance to some european Djs and then i will be in LA for couple of days and there i will post all the pictures and some more impressions.

sorry, but i will miss richie hawtin when i dont leave right NOW!

Yeeehaa! hey people, im really sorry for letting you wait so long for this post. I’ve been on my own in the last 7 days, sometimes kinda remote in the rocky mountains. The City of Boulder was really funny and the friend of our NYC Host Christy, Billy made my stay in the Nedarland mountains a real experience.

After spending 4 days in the Rockys and Boulder i headed towards Las Vegas, made a stop in Breckenridge,Colorado, a small ski-resort-town in the very mountains and met some skater- and snowboard fans of Billy. The drive on the I-70 in the mountains was really a mindblowing experience.  I started at 4:30PM and the sun was rising just in my back and made the whole scenery glow in beautiful dawnlight.  After some 8h of drive a arrived in Vegas and hooked up with my local CS buddy Tony and his room-mate Chris. On the very first evening we went to a real nice bar and met up with some of his friends and family and crashed at least 8 bars and a stripclub. Ive also seen the biggest LED-Ceiling, video will follow. In Vegas i had the chance to shoot! yeehaaaa. I shot a Glock-23 14x .45 rounds and a Heckler and Koch Mp5 ( better known als B3,1). Video-footage exists. On the evening we went gambling to the world-famous Bellagio Casino and walked the Strip. Now i’m in Grand Canyon Village, at the Bright Angel Lodge. When i arrived here earlier today it rained and was very cloudy. So i gonna get up early tomorrow to catch the canyon at dawn, walk some miles and then head for San Diego and Tijuana.

Thats all for the moment, i gonna elaborate on vegas later on and upload some pictures/video.

Hey guys,

this is like the last entry I will do from the United States, cause I gotta leave later the day. Right now I’m sitting with some NY friends (Thanks Steph, for letting me stay at your place, though you’re not even @home!) in a Cafe and gettin’ soe breakfast. Later we want to go to Time Square once again, but this time at daytime.

The flight from Denver to NYC was kind of boring, nothing really happened…

I’m gonna miss all those people we met and the US itself, too. There are so many more things so see, but it’s just not enough time for all. It’s a pity.

The weather is once more great. We got like summer here, 80F I don’t know how much Celsius it is, but it’s hot ike hell! “Wear sunscreen”

Hell yeah, gotta say Good Bye for now…

See you back in Germany,
Greeeetz Felix

P.S. THINGS DEFINITELY NOT TO DO IN NYC

Yeah dudes, it’s me again. Kind of unforseen I’m still in New York because I missed my plane back to Germany. Damn it!!

I didn’t knew, that Monday is free in NY, and there is U.S. Open taking place right now, which is all in the very same direction of Kennedy Airport. Therefor everybody was goin’ to beach, U.S. Open and the Airport the same way and it took me like 2h instead of the usual 1h to get to the Airport.

My next flight is scheduled for Sunday 31st August 5.45p.m. hopefully I will catch this in time.

The good thing is, that I just had to pay $75 re-booking fee and everything was fine. Yeeha!

So I got two more days to spend in NYC, which is not thaaaaat bad, though
Cheers.

ein grosses SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO am Anfang, die gefuehlte Haelfte des Trips ist rum. Gerade hab ich Felix zum Denver International Airport gebracht und er sitzt im Flieger nach NYC, von wo aus er morgen wieder nach Berlin fliegt. Bin nun also “allein” obwohl es das wohl nicht nicht richtig trifft, denn hier in denver findet grad der Parteitag der Demokraten statt und daher sind viele Couchsurfer hier, die gegen den Krieg protestieren. Da werde ich mich doch mal anschliessen. Vor einigen Tagen haben die Leute an einer unangemeldeten Demo teilgenommen und wurden mit Gummi-Geschossen gestoppt, obwohl alles friedlich ablief. Darueber hoert man in den Medien aber leider nichts.

Zurueck zu Kansas City. Eine grosse Stadt im Midland, eigentlich eher die Hauptstadt der Langeweile, aber unsere Couchsurfing-WG bestand aus 3 Kunst-Studenten,  in einem tollen Haus mit riesiger Veranda und so haben wir doch spontan ne Party mit gut 30 Mann gestartet. Durchaus eine Ueberraschung und mehr als ich erwartet hatte.  KC war in den 30er eine grosse Jazz-City und im Kneipenviertel hoert man ihn aus allen Clubs und Bars toenen. Ich hab die Zeit auch ein wenig genutzt um schon mal ein bissel zu shoppen und mir eine schoene Windstopper Softshell Jacke von NorthFace fuer 120$ gekauft, die von Jack Wolfskin Nach 240EUR kostet. Nach 2 Tagen gings dann weiter nach Denver, die laengste Strecke bislang mit 600 Meilen hat gute 9 Stunde40n in Anspruch genommen. Ungluecklicherweise hat mich State Trooper Mr. Brown mit 30 mph (fast 50km/h) zuviel in ner baustelle geblitzt und mir 450$ abgenommen. DOOH!!

Aber ich hatte mit sowas ja schon halb gerechnet, war natuerlich trotzdem aergerlich.

Unser Host in Denver hat ein Jacuzzi im Garten, was nach den 9h straight driving mit country music und Cheeseburgern wirklich eine sehr entspannende Sache war.

Soviel fuer den Moment. In Zukunft muss ich mir mehr Muehe mit den Fotos geben, weil mein persoenlicher Fotograf ja abgereist ist. Ich werd nachher nen paar uploaden!

Der einsame Arno

Welcome to “Gotham City” folks!

As usual we arrived after sunset in Chicago, rollin’ towards its impressive skyline, which at nights even look more impressive. You can erally image how Al Capone had build his empire in the dark backalleys.

Finding Aaron’s apartment was very easy, as the city is structured like a chess field. So you pretty easily find your way. But if you still manage to feel lost, just drive by some suburb houses and you will find some open Wi-Fi for sure.
Google Maps is your mate to ask…

Aaron told us, that he’ll be at home at 11pm, which fitted quite nice as it was just 10 pm, we thought. A public clock at a street made us realize: We had moved into another timezone and needed to adjust our watches to gain another hour. We were now MEST – 7h. This probably will get a hard trip back home!

Finally we arrived at Aaron’s place, an apartment on 1st floor near a hospital. The easy part was done, now we still needed a parking lot, wwhich was quite difficult to find, without pazing $18 a day.
But now for the fun part: Guys, I’ve never seen such a huge TV in ones room! And not enough calling yourself a home-cinema-owner it was also fitted with some 800 channels to choose from, where 50 of them were even in HD. This promised to be a nice weekend. Sadly I had to stay at home, because my foot hasn’t got any better. So lots of Ice, some Internet and this huge TV were under my occupation for the next days.

Still kind of boring because of advertisement, some channels were quite watchable… For dinner we took the Pizza delivery service the one day, to go Downtown and check out the real Chicago Pizza the other day. Hmmmm, tasty! Everyone should get this to know one day – Pizza like a cake and yummi, too. After dinner we went to Navy Pier 2 to watch the weekly fireworks they organize in the summertime. It was really awesome what the guys are able to paint in the dark sky at night!

Today it’s Sunday and we’ve packed our stuff to go for St. Louis. It is about 300 miles away from Chicago, so we prepared for a 5h trip on the road.

In the end, there are not enough words to express the impressions, but….
still, we’ll keep you updated and picture speak for themselves.

Greeeetz,
Arno & Felix

Chicago, auch Windy City genannt, hat sich seinen Namen redlich verdient.

Durch die Strassenschluchten, die sehr an New York errinnern, weht eine kraeftige Brise. Man ist ziemlich damit beschaeftigt sich die Haare aus dem Gesicht zu wischen, wenn die Sicht dann frei ist eroeffnet sich eine architektonisch wirklich einzigartige Stadt. Viele der Wolkenkratzer in Downtown sind gute hundert Jahre alt und verspruehen mit den Gargoyles, Fresken und Verzierungen einen ganz besonderen Charme.Man fuehlt sich doch glatt ein bisschen wie in Gotham City.Aus diesem Anlass werden wir vielleicht auch mal in den neuen Batman Film gehen. Eigentlich eine ziemliche Zeitverschwendung bei den vielen einzigartigen Events die hier in der Stadt laufen. Ich habe mal durchgezaehlt und es sind doch glatt 8 Festivals die gleichzeitig stattfinden. Und dazu noch die taeglichen kostenlosen Konzerte im Millenium Park. Heut Abend findet ein Konzert des Chicago Symphonic Orchestra statt und dazu wird ein Film des Adlers Planetarium gezeigt.

Felix hat leider immernoch mti seinem Fuss zu kaempfen und daher war ich nun erstmal allein unterwegs, um die Stadt zu Fuss zu erkunden. Wie bereits gesagt, bin ich bislang sehr angetan von allem und freu mich auf die naechsten 3 Tage in der drittgroessten Stadt der USA. Auch das Viertel “Lakeside” in dem wir untergebracht sind ist sehr lebendig mit vielen Bars, Clubs und kleinen Boutiquen. Der Host ist nicht direkt von Couchsurfing sondenr der Bruder eines Mitbewohners des wunderschoenen Hauses in Detroit. Aaron hat einen Plasmafernsehr mit einer Diagonale von gut 1,70m und ueber das Kabelfernsehnetz mehr als !!50!! Kanaele in HDTV. Dazu kommen noch die ueblichne 700 “normalen” Programme. So laesst sich also auch mal ein Tag “zu Hause” verbringen.

Die Bilder gibt es wie gewohnt in der Galerie zu sehen.

Good day guys,
“How’s going?”

This is like always the first sentence people say, when they see you. “Fine, thanks.”, will do fine, but don’t believe that it is of real interest. It’s their way of saying “Hi”. Still need to adjust…
But now let’s get to the more interesting parts!

Yesterday in the late afternoon, we arrived in Detroit, after first trying to find a beach at Lake Erie, which was finally kind of successful after searching for quite long time. Taking a quick bath was not possbile, though due to lack of water quality. Sad but true.

Detroit has some very nice houses, one reminds of a little castle, another of an old “Herrenhaus”, most of them are even made of brick, which I think is not very common in the U.S. for those types of houses.

Our host Amanda is working at a radio station and doing the news there. Unfortunately the mayor of Detroit is just in trial r some crimes, so she had to work late, but despite that we had really nice dinner with her at a place called “Bronx”. After that, we decided to have a lazy evening on the couch with american chips and dips watching advertisments, interrupted by “David Letterman”. For me, a one-time experience.

Today we had a long sleep, getting up at 11am and going on the streets to catch some open Wi-Fi, surfing a little bit in the internet, doing some home-calls. Afterwards we met up with a roomate of Amanda, Mike and went up to a nice beach, chilling there for the afternoon. This really felt like holidays!

Now we went to “Mexican Town” and had a nice and cheap dinner at a restaurant there. Amazing how much food they put on your plates, for so few money!
3 persons, 2 appetizer, 2 beer, 2 coke, 3 huge meals = $41
Definitely worth a ride.

But despite hard tries, there’s still no Eletronic music party in sight…

So long
Arno & Felix

Dear fellow readers, if there are any at all,

in two days I will start writing a longer article about Detroit and afterwards you will get an update of our stay in Toronto. Arno’s version maybe has been a little bit short, so I’m adding one or another side-note.
Ooooppps, we’re already in the middle of it. Let’s get it on…

We arrived at Jason’s house at about 7pm on August 17 entering the city via Q.E.M. Having some nice looks at Toronto downtown with its skyscrapers and CN Tower, the world’s second-largest free-standing structure in the world. Guess who’s on top? Right, Dubai and they’re still raising the bar.

First we sat in the nice backyard and had some beer with his roommate Chris and their nice neighbors Christian and Andrew. For dinner we went to Toronto downtime, but first went up on the CN Tower, probably we won’t get another chance! A $23 each is not called cheap, but it’s also not supposed to be.
And in the end: the nice pictures were worth the money.

Jason was a perfect host, telling us the best spots to be, what should be seen, what can be left out. And the room was perfect, too. We felt like actually being in a hotel. Jason spent a lot of time with us, although he had to work. Really great!

The next day, we had a lazy start on 11pm with a fresh coffee. I still tried fixing my laptop running SpinRite, but it merely progressed 0.5% during the night. Jason told me he wanted to got to his Chiropratician so I could go with him and have a look at my still-hurting foot. This sounded like a good idea – better go to the Doc, while still in Canada, nobody knows what’s going on with U.S. Health care!

$147, 1 X-Ray picture and 3 hours later I found out, that my heel was no broken but injured uncommonly when I jumped on the concrete. I shall cool it down and keep it low, as much as possible. In at least 5 days I should feel better, damn. We gotta go more often by car. Yeeeha The American Way! Thanks to “Cruise Control” I could still even drive.

For dinner we decided to stay at Jason’s place to have a nice BBQ with our new friends in the backyard. While burning the grill, pouring rain suddenly began to come down, with flashes and all stuff you need for bad weather. But sitting on the porch looking at these poor people trying to get home a quick as possible, was fun, too. Original Canadian pork and beef, salad and good german beer quickly brightened moods again to stop over in the living room, for a concert of our new-founded “Rock Band” on PS3.
This game is sooo funny. I will remember this evening, for sure!

Up next on our list we got Detroit. I’m very curious of how it will look there….

That’s all for now, fellow readers. Stay tuned!
Arno & Felix

Wir wollen euch ja auch nicht jeden Tag mit “wir waren hier und da” langweilen, deswegen nun mal ein paar Gedanken und Dinge die doch sehr anders sind.

We don’t want to bore your guys with all these daily business, so here are some more general impressions and thoughts.

Die Spanne zwischen Arm und Reich ist viel groesser als in Deutschland. In Brooklyn haben wir Haeuser und Geschaefte gesehen, die man nicht mehr guten Gewissens zur “1st World” zaehlen kann.

The gap between rich and poor is much wider than in Germany, so you sometimes don’t feel like actually being in the industrialized world anymore. Many things look like “just good enough for the job” and would never been allowed to be operational in Germany!

Vieles ist provisorisch dahingefuscht und gefriemelt und wuerde so bei uns niemals eine TUEV-Abnahme bekommen. Die Menschen dagegen sind sehr freundlich und teilweise anstrengend ueberhoeflich.

In den Geschaeften und Restaurants arbeiten meistens doppelt bis dreimal soviele Leute wie in Deutschland, aber leider verbessert sicher der Service dadurch nicht proportional. Er ist auf jeden Fall besser als man das von zu Hause gewohnt ist, aber oft fragt man sich doch, was die Leute eigentlich machen und wofuer sie bezahlt werden.

In all the stores and restaurants there are more than twice as many people employed than there would be in Germany and the service is way better. But mostly one asks himself what all these people actually do all day long and what they do get paid for

Wir haben’s leider immernoch nicht hinbekommen, die Bilder hochzuladen. Ich werd da aber gleich mal was machen. Felix hat grad einen XP USB-Stick dahingebastelt. Hoffentlich kann ich nachher endlich mein geliebtes Windows wieder haben. Das Linux hier drauf ist zwar anstaendig aber das isses dann auch schon.

Unfortunately we still didn’t manage to get the pictures uploaded, but I will just right now take action. Felix has prepared a USB-Stick and maybe we’re able to get my beloved Windows installed. The Linux here is just ok and does it’s job, but nothing more…

Momentan sind wir ja in Toronto, Kanada und ich muss wirklich sagen, fuer eine Stadt mit 2,5 Millionen Einwohnern und noch einmal 2,5 Millionen im Umland ist es wirklich eine total huebsche, saubere und entspannnte Stadt. Die Menschen sind sehr natuerlich und fast schon provinziell gemuetlich

At the moment, we’re in Toronto, Canada and I have to admit, that for a city of 2.5 million inhabits and another 2.5 million in the suburbs, it is indeed a really beautiful, clean and relaxing city. The people here are very natural and even nearly as easy as on countryside, don’t putting much stress on their lives.

Felix hat sich in NYC die rechte Ferse ein laediert, war aber heut beim Doctor gewesen und sich roentgen lassen. Soweit ist alles Ok, aber die langen stadtspaziergaenge und Partynaechte sind erstmal gestrichen. Der Doc hat ihn erstmal fuer 5 Tage krank geschrieben, hoffentlich dauert’s nicht ganz so lang, bis er wieder fit ist.

Felix has been jumping around a bit too crazy in NYC, so he has injured his heel and has been to the doctor as well as taking X-Ray pictures. To all our relief, nothing is broken, but nonetheless hurting badly, so he has problems walking around to much. So Partys and long city-walks are on hold for the time beeing. Hopefully he will recover soon, so we can once again go to “full trottle”.

11am Ortszeit werden wir Richtung Detroit aufbrechen und dort hoffentlich gegen 4pm ankommen - eine kleine Abkuehlung im Lake Erie inklusive

On 11am (local time) we will go to Detroit. So hopefully we will arrive there at 4pm – including a quick jump into Lake Erie!

Bislang haben wir ausschliesslich enorm offene, lustige und interessante Leute kennengelernt und hoffen, dass es auch so bleibt. Yeeeeha!

So far, we’ve only met enormously open-minded, funny and interesting people. We hope that this is also true for the future, but we’re sure, though.

Achso Bilder hab ich bei Picasa nen paar hochgeladen!/ Ive uploaded some more pictures!