The city of Atlanta

I feel like I'm starting all over again, only this time it's my first month in the city of Atlanta and I got used to the American lifestyle in those 5 1/2 months I've been here. Life in Atlanta is obviously a lot different than Athens, the weather is much nicer, and I'm really enjoying it. I try to do as much as I can around the city and explore new areas, however, on some days I'm just relaxing on my balcony after work, reading my book (which is American Gods, I can highly recommend this!), or I go swimming in the pool. I would've never thought that I would get used to a city like Atlanta so quickly; by now I don't even care about the 8 lanes on I85 anymore, which is my way to work. It can be a bit overwhelming though, since there are simply so many possibilities and things to do around Atlanta and Georgia, but I try to explore it step by step with the help of my lovely coworkers who are always there for some good recommendations.

Today I had my midterm exam, which annoyingly interrupted my weekend, but I did it early in the morning, so I could have breakfast on the balcony afterwards and then drive to Arabia Mountain to go hiking. Arabia Mountain is part of a national park in South-East Atlanta, and is basically a giant rock with a forest and lakes around it. Even though it was, as usual, really warm and it felt like the humidity was at 150%, it was a great adventure for this Saturday. I took a lot of pictures because it looks fascinating; the website also describes it as moon like, with tiny and not so tiny puddles and ponds all over the rocks, little cacti, and the coniferous forest around. In this forest there are cicada all over the place so it actually can be quite loud, but besides that the nature was simply beautiful and it was peaceful and very relaxing. I walked around the mountain and enjoyed the sun until it got way too hot up there, so I went to the nearby lake in the middle of the forest to sit down and have a little picnic.


Every weekend I try to see a different part of Atlanta, so far Virginia Highlands is one of my favorites; I've been to so many street and summer fests, which the people down here seem to love and I met a lot of unbelievable friendly people. The amount of people who complimented on my nail polish, outfits, hair, necklace, or whatever it might be is astonishing and makes me really happy. One of my favorite spots in Atlanta still is the beltline, which is a boardwalk with little shops, cafes, restaurants, playing areas for dogs and so much more, pretty much right in the middle of Atlanta with a phenomenal view on Midtown and its skyscrapers. Right next to it there is also a shop with my favorite ice-cream around here, King of Pops, which are, big surprise, popsicles, in the craziest varieties which are really tasty and the perfect addition to a walk on the beltline. Atlanta is an amazing mixture of all kinds of people, beautiful nature, an exciting city, and simply a place to discover new things everyday, and I'm falling in love with the city a bit more each day.

On American Transience and German Fears

When I wander around my neighborhood I walk on hastily laid concrete slabs, grass growing out of the cracks in and gaps between them. When I shower, I stand in an eroded plastic booth tarnished by chalk. When I drive my car through never-ending suburbs, I pass by buildings revetted with fake brick walls and wooden houses in advanced stages of disrepair. The floor of my room resembles parquet but is in fact imprinted synthetic foil, and the sink I wash my hands in is faux marble. My old apartment even had wooden window shutters that were unmovably mounted on the walls and even if they were to be moved, their size wouldn’t cover all of my window. 

One thing is for sure. Here, it is not about the real thing. It is about an illusion of the real. The fact that it is a replica, in most cases a pretty obvious one, doesn’t seem to bother much. But the fact that a lot of things aren’t what they seem or promise to be isn’t something uniquely American, although it’s one of the big stereotypes about the U.S. It’s something that one encounters on every continent. To me, more importantly than the illusion itself, is that the illusion is short-lived. It’s meant to be. There is not much interest in building something touchable, visible with the aspiration of it being long-lasting. As opposed to ideas, concepts, and dreams of which this country seems to live on more than on anything else.

I don’t know any other country I’ve been to that is as obsessed with the future and fixated on the new, the innovation as this one. Get up. Move on. Don’t look back. There’s a bright future ahead. Yes we can. These are the kind of phrases that are thrown at you constantly. To be fair, so far I’ve been to only about 20 out of over 190 (sovereign) countries and some memories are kind of blurred, for this or that reason. But the longer I am here the more I realize how much architecture charged with history and things that are or at least seem long-lasting and meaningful matter to me, and how much the U.S. lacks them. Leipzig’s cobblestone pavement. Riding a bike on it is a pain in the ass (literally) but it looks gorgeous. Actual parquet. A metallic bathtub. Gründerzeit houses.

These things gives confidence and reduce fear, fear of the unknown, and especially the uncertain. These cities I live in and agglomerates I drive through in this country are not only new but are built precipitantly and lovelessly. The result is an occasional sense of despair, a feeling of being lost in a place that utterly lacks meaning and consistency. The fact that all of this matter to me is quite telling, I’m more German than I want to be and admit. But maintaining, preserving and caring for structures, institutions or the environment, in short the tangible things that are at hand, is something we, and I, find pleasure. It’s not a coincidence that we (not me particularly) have elected a chancellor three times in a row whose conduct was always more characterized by maintaining the status quo instead of governing and who faces the strongest opposition in her political career after switching to actually bold policies. The flipside is that we are, and I am particularly, occasionally afraid of uncertainty, progress and new things, and therefore clutch at the past, (perceived) present and try to (sometimes desperately) find meaning. One can say that this is what leads to German cravenness, but it has something soothing to it, and yes, something slumberous as well.

Welcome to Rubber City

What do tires, methamphetamine and Bhutanese refugees have in common? They all are integral parts of the community I now live in – the City of Akron, Ohio.

When you drive around the city a little, you notice pretty quickly that this place used to be way bigger than it is now. Coming from Athens, I took I-77 northbound. Usually, you notice bigger cities in the U.S. early on by the endless suburbs that are lined up along the highways. Nothing of that in Akron. Just woods and fields which haven’t been mowed in a long time, high blades of grass withered and brown from the heat of the early summer. The city really starts when you leave the highway and drive through the spoiled neighborhoods. The big spaces between the ever-present two- or three-story wooden houses point to the fact that Akron had to cope with a massive population decline in the last 50 years. Around 1960, the city was a sprawling place with a population of roughly 300,000. The big rubber boom of the early 1900s brought a ton of workers who were driven to the city by the rapidly expanding tire-manufacturing businesses. The world’s biggest tire companies – Goodyear, Goodrich, and Firestone – all had their headquarters and production facilities here. But as other Rustbelt cities like Detroit or Cleveland, car manufacturing and related businesses in Akron entered a steep decline after peaking in the 1960s. The new American middle class found itself deprived of its livelihood, manufacturing. From the 60s on the population declined rapidly and reached an all-time low in 2015, when only an estimated 197,000 people still lived in the city. Today, only Goodyear still produces tires in Akron. As opposed to the majority of Ohio’s counties, however, that development did not translate into broad support for Donald Trump in the last Presidential Election. Summit County, in which Akron is located, voted clearly for Hillary Clinton, as one of eight Ohioan counties out of a total of 88. But still, distrust in politics also prevails here. An old lady behind the counter of a tiny convenient store on the outskirts of Akron laughed bitterly when I said that I study American politics, before telling me that “it’s all crooked, and that’s really the only thing that you need to know about it.”

Economic decline and increasing poverty do not only drive people out of communities, they also attract, cheap drugs for example. By the mid-2000s Akron was dubbed the “Meth Capital of Ohio,” and in 2009 the Akron Beacon Journal reported that Summit county was “trailing only two other counties in the country” in terms of the number of discovered meth labs. While the DEA, local law enforcement agencies and other organizations don’t have a clear explanation for the drug’s popularity in the Midwest, it nevertheless has been linked to poverty and a lack of economic opportunities. Easy to make with legally obtainable ingredients it enjoys popularity among Mexican drug cartels and local producers alike. And although local, state and federal agencies are stepping up their countermeasures, there is not a decline of the drug’s popularity in sight.

But besides the negative aspects of postindustrialism and methamphetamine, there are also success stories. And they seem to follow a constant in American history: immigration is a blessing for both the community and the economy. The vibrant immigrant community of Akron plays a major role in reshaping the local economy and turning around the negative demographic trend. Especially Bhutanese of Nepali origin, forced out of Bhutan during the 1990s as part of an ethnic cleansing campaign initiated by the country’s monarch, have been successfully resettled in Akron’s northern neighborhoods. In North Hill, small businesses have been popping up at a fast pace, tapping into the immigrant community’s demand for Himalayan cuisine and groceries. As a result, many immigrants from Bhutan and Nepal living in other parts of the U.S. have moved to Akron and now contribute to the booming community. Also due to immigration, Akron’s population decline has hit an all-time low in 2015, and is likely to be reversed in the near future. This example once again highlights the (economic) benefits of immigration that America has always enjoyed without exception, and it makes the recent calls for more isolationism of conservatives, who always want a strong and vibrant economy, look all the more absurd.

Roadtrip to the South

After an almost death scenario that included me having the flu and being unable to leave the bed without mourning and cursing life to its mere nonsense, the drive took Theresa and me from somewhere in North Georgia to Greenville, where we stayed with a friend of mine for a night. A small town that is close to the BMW factory in Spartanburg – which my father pointed out several times thus I feel obligated to mention it as well – and where we watched a baseball game that was tremendously drowsy. However, all of us enjoyed dinner and a romantic walk along the river. When we left the next morning, we figured that stopping by the Peachoid in Gaffney, South Carolina, would be a necessary experience. Being crucial in the third season of House of Cards a stop was indispensable for the whole American experience that we are getting here. As one might expect, it was a gigantic water tower in form of peach. America! Leaving the Peachoid behind and taking the interstate directly to Charleston, South Carolina, took around five hours with a beautiful church and bible quote scenery next to the road. At the beginning of this road trip, I was terrified of driving because I have not done so in over three years. By now I am a somewhat comfortable driver with sudden panic attacks but of course immersed myself completely into the American driving culture that ignores speed limits in general.

Charleston is such a beautiful city, and Southern architecture and sunsets are just worth driving down there. One of our friends invited us to stay with her and her family which I am still incredibly grateful for (very lovely people!). We spend hours at the beach, eating, tanning (not myself – I just got sunburned), reading, swimming/drowning, and were very much afraid of the southern wildlife. We expected snakes, sharks and stingrays to attack us any second. Luckily they did not! But after finals, it was nice to hang out with people, picnic and enjoy abstruse conversations with friends. We drove down to the Isle of Palms and observed turtles in the natural habitat. Also, Kiawah Island is a top secret tip if you do not want hordes of Americans next to you but would instead like to spend some time far away from human beings. Staying with Khabo’s family was a wonderful time. Her mother cooked us food for days, flooded us with presents, and is the most generous woman on this planet earth. Additionally, we were asked a million questions by Khabo’s father who was stationed in Stuttgart back in the days, on Germany, German culture, German cabs, family, food, German efficiency and cleanliness. At some point ‘Deutschland’ and how ‘great’ everything is there became a running gag. We experienced three wonderful days there and then left for Atlanta, where I spend around four hours until my plane left for New York City where I will be for the summer and my internship.

            

A new start

It’s already been a week since I came to Georgia to start a new chapter of my journey in the city of Atlanta. I was a bit sad that we had to leave Charleston, South Carolina, simply because it was incredibly beautiful and so relaxing, and we had such a great time (you can read about this in Annika’s post!). However, I was excited to go to Atlanta, since it meant living in a completely different environment than I had encountered it for the past months in Athens. My internship started Monday, May 15, and so far I’m very much enjoying it; there are 7 other interns who work with me and I really like them. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you too many details about our clients, since I am working for a political consulting company which includes a lot of confidential information about candidates and campaigns. It is fascinating to work this closely with candidates who are running for city council, state representative, or even senator, and I’m learning something new every day.

Besides my internship, I very much enjoy living in the South. The weather is great, we have around 30 degrees every day and the sun is always shining, except for some showers and the occasional thunderstorm due to the heat from time to time, and I feel like the sun is giving me some energy and motivation back I sometimes lacked in Ohio. Summer classes have already started and it can be quite stressful sometimes to go to work and have school at the same time. However, there are millions of great places to explore, and things to discover in this beautiful city, so I’m taking my time to really explore everything by wandering around town (to be honest, I’m mostly driving everywhere because people don’t walk here). This weekend I’m moving into my apartment, which is in Decatur, a lovely part of Atlanta with lots of little shops, bars, restaurants, and spaces to hang out and relax. As I sent my new address to a friend at home, she sent me a screenshot of a Wikipedia article where Decatur is described as “one of the South’s Tastiest Towns”, and by the New York Times it was called “Atlanta’s gastronomic equivalent of Berkeley or Brooklyn”. I’m very excited to live there over the summer, and now you might understand why that’s the case. Until now, I didn’t have the chance to take a lot of pictures of my new neighborhood, but this will definitely be something you can look forward to in my next post. So far I've been living with my dad in his hotel, since he's in Atlanta for two weeks and this is the view from our room; I'm sorry for the blurry photo but I just wanted to share this great view on Midtown and Downtown with you!

Off to new adventures

We're on a road trip! It's hard to believe sometimes, but we actually survived the semester and finals week! To say the least, everybody was relieved and ready for some new adventures. Since we have some time left until our internships as well as summer classes will start, Annika and I decided to take a road trip to see as many places as we could until we have to start working again. At first we wanted to go north, to see the Niagara Falls, Cleveland, Toronto, and Detroit, but then we decided that we needed some sun and nice weather to relax for a while. So here we are, so far we've been to Nashville and Chattanooga and it's already a great adventure. We rented a car in Columbus and started our journey to Nashville, Tennessee. I didn't see much of Ohio so far and, to be honest, it isn't that exciting, but it was a great start for our road trip and we very much enjoyed the sunshine and the endless highways. Our first break was in a very small town in Kentucky, where we stopped along the road to eat something and relax for a few minutes. After a while, however, a car stopped besides us and we already panicked a little that we did something illegal, and a 70-ish guy with a Vietnam Veteran hat stepped out of his car, approached us and asked if we were okay. Certainly, we were a little surprised by that but he just wanted to know if we needed help since apparently it wasn't something ordinary that two girls just stopped with their car. After we could convince him that we were really okay and that we only wanted to take a break, a very weird five minute conversation followed of which we understand about 5 words because he had a really thick mid-Western-ish accent which was almost impossible to understand. We soon took off and by accident drove through the beautiful town of La Grange, Kentucky. Before that, I didn't know anything about Kentucky, I don't even know if I've ever seen a picture.
Surprisingly, Kentucky actually is really pretty, at least in this season, and we enjoyed some iced tea in this beautiful little town, which pretty much was coffee shops and second-hand shops.. After our break we continued our journey and a couple of hours later we arrived in Nashville.

Since our road trip was very spontaneous we didn't do much research about what to do in town, so we walked around and enjoyed the nice weather. We walked down Broadway and as you would expect it, there is an enormous amount of bars with young musicians playing country music inside of them, and more shops which sell Stetson hats and Cowboy boots than I have ever seen. You don't have to be a major country music fan to enjoy the city of Nashville, because the city itself is beautiful and you can, as we did, spend time by the river and look at the skyline and enjoy the great view. We stayed in Nashville for three days and left on Thursday morning to go to Chattanooga; unfortunately it rained the entire time and Annika was feeling sick, so we took time to relax in our beautiful hostel and read our books, which, luckily, weren't for class but simply for enjoyment. This morning we hit the road again to go to our beautiful cabin we rented near the Smokey Mountains to hopefully go hiking and enjoy the time in the middle of the forest.  Our drive was somehow exciting since we didn't have cell service for most of the time and we lost our GPS for about an hour in the middle of the Cherokee National Forest, but we stopped several times to admire the breathtaking views. Finally, we arrived at our cabin! It's raining today, but it's supposed to be sunny tomorrow so I'm hoping for some good weather to go hiking or even renting a canoe if Annika is feeling better.
We'll stay in our cabin until Sunday and I'll keep you posted regarding more adventures or interesting people we will encounter. I took way too many pictures to post all of them, but I wanted to give you some impression of what our road trip looks so far. I'm sure there will be a lot more funny and interesting stories at the end of our journey, but right now it is time to cook some dinner and enjoy the peaceful environment of our cabin.

68 Hours on the Road (or rather: on the Tracks)

Wednesday, finals week at OU: I have just finished my last essay, and wrote my final exam, but I don’t have any time to relax. I have to be in Seattle on May 1 for my internship, and I decided that I don’t want to fly there. Airports look the same everywhere, and when will I ever have the chance to get a glance at the Midwestern and Northwestern countryside again?

So I decided to take a train. Or to be exact: to take the bus to Cincinnati (3 hours), walk to the other side of town with my 50 pounds of luggage, take the train to Chicago (9 hours) and then take another train to Seattle (46 hours). In case you’re thinking that that sounds a little insane – that’s exactly what I was thinking. I was sure that I would hate myself for my decision at some point of the journey. But to my surprise, that did not happen. In fact, I enjoyed my train ride so much that I was actually a bit sad to exit the train in Seattle (while at the same time looking forward to finally taking a shower again).

The bus ride to Cincinnati did not take long. The weather was nice and I looked out of the window, to gather impressions of Ohio for a last time. What I saw can be summarizing pretty quickly: Churches, dollar stores, trucks, potholes, cows, retirees in golf carts.

At a gas station, I picked up a free magazine with the title story: “10 Tips for a Happy Marriage”. It’s never to early to educate oneself! In case you were wondering, the first tip was to "nurture the spiritual side of marriage": "make it a habit to attend church together, study the Bible together, and pray earnestly and frequently with and for each other". Good to know!

In Cincinnati, I had to walk to the train station, and of course I got lost several times. But if I hadn’t, I would not have asked this pastry chef who worked an overnight shift for help, and he would not have gifted me a freshly baked cookie! In the end, I still made it to the train station in time.

The sightseeing car of the train

I have to admit that I might have been biased against American trains, but I was very pleasantly surprised. You get to check your bags in the beginning, so I did not have to worry about them for the next three days. Everyone is guaranteed a seat, and the leg space even in the coach class would make our beloved Deutsche Bahn green with envy! You also don’t have to spend all the journey in your seat, there is a “sightseeing lounge car” with huge windows, a cafe and of course the dining car. I had brought 3 books with me, but I ended up only reading one of them, and spent most of the time looking out of the sightseeing windows and tracing how the landscapes changed over time. In the sightseeing car, there was also a very friendly atmosphere, and it was easy to get into conversations with strangers. I talked to an artist, for example, who passed the time by drinking vodka out of a one liter water bottle, and to a female forest fire fighter, who told me all about controlled fires.

The sunrise over North Dakota

We rode through Wisconsin, where I saw mainly puddles, cows and lumber mills. And an astounding number of scrap yards. Then we crossed the Mississippi river into Minnesota and rode along the water until the sun went down. I did sleep surprisingly well and woke up, when the sun rose again and illuminated the prairie of North Dakota, which is as flat as if God shaved every unevenness off with his holy razor. 

The magazine rack in the train station in Minot, ND

Even the one-story houses seemed to duck down as if they wanted to hide. We crossed one fallow, muddy field after another. After another. After another. What stood out the most were the enormous silver silos, glistening in the morning sun. I fell asleep again, and two hours later, the landscape had already changed again. There were some hills now, and I saw rusty oil pumps. A lot of oil pumps, pumping slowly and steadily, no human beings were in sight. 

Then, the hills got steeper, and stonier and furrowed by the weather. Some looked like enormous scruffy feet. Just one more step, and they could crush our tiny train under their rough soles. Yes, these are the kinds of thoughts coming to one’s mind after spending the first 24 hours on a train!

Somewhere in North Dakota

Then we crossed Montana, in one almost straight line, which took around 12 hours itself. A lot of the houses in the small towns and in the country side seemed abandoned. Sometimes, I looked out of the windows and did not see any signs of human life for a few hours at a time, besides maybe from a few wooden fences - about to collapse or already collapsed. When I saw a lonely farm house in the middle of nowhere, I tried to imagine how living there must feel. I spent all my life in places that were shaped and governed by their human inhabitants, but here, in the middle of Montana, it suddenly felt like humans were only a footnote of the story.

Somewhere in Montana

The scenic highlight of the train ride was without any doubt the Glacier National Park in Montana. Snow-capped peaks, thick fir tree forests, crystal clear streams in the valleys. Suddenly, the sightseeing car was filled with retirees, excited chatter and camera shutter sounds. Many said that they had never seen anything comparable in their lives.

When we left the National Park, the sun already went down again. I overslept Idaho, and when I woke up, we were in Washington! That meant, that it was time for me

Somewhere in Washington

to pack up my stuff and get ready for the next adventure: the city of Seattle.