CA Days 2 & 3 – Attachments

There’s so much to write … I want to add some little things to the last post. First of all I didn’t quite work out enough how great Sonya was. I was her first surfer and she really did a great job making me feel comfortable around Berkeley. Today we walked around the city the whole afternoon, having some delicious icecream, browsing her favourite bookstore and a games shop and generally having a good time. She also showed me around the campus of famous University of Berkeley, where we stumbled upon SQUIRRELS. I GOT SQUIRREL-MOVIES! Arrr! Talking movies and stuff, I’ll try to get some photos online as soon as possible, but it’s somewhat tricky. Public wifi is usually working but kind of slow and uploading the photos takes some time as well. But fear not, I’ll go make that happen.

Yesterday evening was great fun. Alex, Megan, Al, Sonya, a guy whose name I forgot (SORRY!) and I went to a pub for some pitchers of ale, which was … well, interesting. At least the first pitcher. “Dragon Milk”, very dark, very bitter, coffee-flavoured. Uhm, well, at least it was strong (7,something%). Second pitcher was way better. At around 1.15 they called last order, which we missed out on, so we got to a supermarket and bought some more beer and Sonya got some household-stuff, like toilet paper and that kind of things. I found a czech pilsner that I thought might be the most european thing, I just couldn’t take Beck’s.

The evening ended back home, we were emptying some more beers and generally having a good time. I introduced the gang to the very superior Richard Cheese and except for Sonya everyone was excited, as expected. Good ol’ dick kicks major ass.

I also got in touch with Melisa, who’s going to host me from today on. As of now I’m back in SF downtown, in the bigger Starbucks, to wait for her calling me. Things got a little complicated – we planned to meet at 7.30, then she wanted to move that to 8.30, so I met up with Sonya and the gang again for indish dinner, when Melisa called again and asked me to meet her at a BART-station to go to a friend’s place and watch a movie, but I was in the middle of the gay district and didn’t quite feel like running around there, due to recently happened stuff.

After dinner I did that walking-thing, because the gang headed for a comedy show. By the way Alex, Al and I are going to open a pub of madness. The plan is to make the whole thing revolving and the most important part will be a Clown who will jump out of one of the toilets every like 30minutes and randomly beat someone up. We’re sure it will be a great success. If you ask nicely I might can pass you an invitation to our opening-party. I was thinking of making the clown appear every 10mins on that special VIP-night, just to get a more intense feeling of how the place will feel like.

Sonya and Alex are probably joining me for Las Vegas, we’ll see if this is going to work out with dates, because of course I don’t have any idea when I’ll be there by now. By the way I’ll most likely arrange my Las Vegas stop to Andi’s dates, the son of Julia’s father’s partner (got it?), because he’ll be there for a business trip somewhen within the next weeks.

Now talking america a little more. First of all things aren’t that different around here. Look down a lane of parked cars and you’ll find BMWs, Hondas, Toyotas, VWs, Mercedes, pretty much everything. Probably more Ford Mustangs and huge trucks than back home, but not that much. Streets are streets, just most of them are bigger. The biggest difference, and pretty much the only one you really feel, is the city layout – checkboard-style, very easy to navigate through.

Another thing is credit cards. You can pay everything with your credit card. Everything. Food, groceries, subway-tickets – you name it, they charge it to your visa. When I explain that around back home even furniture stores don’t accept credit cards the locals kind of shake their heads, which they are totally right about. I still remember standing at Lutz, paying like 1.200 euro for our couch, and they’re telling me they don’t accept credit cards. What the hell? Guess what: The ATM-machine has got a limit at around 1.500 or something. I remember paying for my PowerBook a few years ago. I called and they said “and please bring 2.000 cash” – “uhm, don’t you guys take bank-cards?” – “sure, but there’s a limit. you can’t pay 2.000″. Of course they didn’t take credit cards. Kno’s advice: You wanna rob a lot of money real quickly? Wait in front of an Apple-Store and ask people if they’re going to buy a Laptop.

The rest is small differences. I love how they handle the ticketing for public transportation, it’s real clever: At every ticket-receiving-machine-unit there’s an alphabetical list of all stations and the price to get there. You then throw in either exactly that amount or some more if you feel like having a charged ticket. Then you get a magnetized card which you can use until it’s empty and you can recharge it anytime. If it’s empty, the machine will eat it and back it goes. No trash. Talking busses you already should have read that there are no tickets, you just pay. Kind of environmetally friendly and real flexible to use. Good practice.

One downside of US-cities might be crime. People keep telling me that their neighbourhoods aren’t that safe and one should avoid walking around alone after midnight. There’s a lot of robbing and assaulting obviously, and it’s pretty much everywhere. So locals get really excited about vienna when I tell them it’s like the safest city in the world and you can walk around anytime alone, except for some small areas that is. Also those guys here only have about 2 weeks vacation, which sucks. It’s finally good to live in austria, for some things that is. Oh, I got a US-Powersupply-cable for my powerbook, pretty nice, they only exchanged a small part so it was just 15$, which isn’t quite much.

Funny little thing to know: Flo arranged a nice emergency-package for me, with wine, schnaps, a chunk of bacon and sweets from back home so I can grab a little home-feeling on the way. The bacon seemed to be a problem because usually you’re strictly not allowed to bring meat to the states. However, on the form we got on the plane I didn’t check that “I bring meat”-thing. The plan was that if they check the luggage and find it and all get mad on me I’m going to tell them that this package was a present I got just at the airport before leaving and I forgot to check it. However, no one cared about no bacon and so everything got here with me and I’m still carrying the package around.

We already took care of the wine and the schnaps. You just can’t risk those things get all weirdish when carrying them around for too long.

Now I go meet Melisa. I love you all.