At the end of August, we flew to the US. Land of the free, because of the brave. Or something like that. Here are the very earliest observations and experiences, reflections, wonder, and love about and towards a country that is reviled and called out, caricatured and outright hated, even.
But first, we have to arrive. Our journey to America began in Hagen, a town outside Hannover in Germany, where we have some truly wonderful friends: a German-American family. Funnily enough, the father is from California, our first destination in the US. Right before our time with them, we had spent most of a month with an English-American family, where the mother, who has lived in England for twenty years, is from the very same town we were going to visit. The way things sometimes align!
We drove from Hagen early one morning, doing the five-hour journey to Frankfurt, where we left the car at a long-stay rooftop car park and were shuttled to the airport by a man in his thirties who didn’t speak a single word of English. It really is strange in such a modern country to meet a younger person who doesn’t speak what has become the lingua franca.
At the airport, it was the usual routine: dog papers, travel documents, bag checks — all of it just takes hours and is annoying, but whatever. We ended up at the gate two hours before departure and caught a bit of sleep. On the plane, we sat for an hour waiting for take-off because a thunderstorm just had to pass through. Not the best thing right before an eleven-hour flight.
We flew in sunshine all the way. Truly incredible, amazing actually. Lots of light flooding in through the window, lots of impressions. Flying over Greenland in particular was epic, even if we saw neither Santa Claus nor a polar bear, because we saw icebergs, pack ice, mountains, and the ice cap for hours on end; the vast expanses, the snow, the light. Greenland just jumped quite a few spots up our bucket list! Beautiful!
When we landed in San Francisco, the sun was setting over the airport as we taxied in, and it felt only natural that the day was drawing to an end now that we had arrived; although we were pretty exhausted. Border control took an hour in the queue, and then a good while answering questions about travel plans and canine health, but Americans are immensely welcoming and friendly, so it wasn’t arduous. It just took time. The jet lag was starting to hit hard, and we were glad to have booked a hotel room nearby. Picked up the car, drove while fighting to stay awake, barely made it by the skin of our teeth, checked in, took a shower, crashed out, and got far too little sleep, because jet lag is no joke.
The good thing about waking up absurdly early in a hotel room is that there is plenty of time for all the other things you need to recover. You can drink endless amounts of morning coffee, you can go to the gym, you can have another shower, you can have a proper chat, you can catch up on all the water you're dehydrated for after all those hours travelling. You can head out and buy supplies for the day, walk the dogs, and have a quiet, leisurely breakfast in the breakfast café.
The first impressions of the US are the same. The roads take up an enormous amount of space; huge, lots of lanes, wide lanes — everything looks like massive European motorways, even when you're just in some half-insignificant place. In this case, Dublin, California, which was fairly disorienting. The cars, naturally, are gigantic; there are Cybertrucks and all those crazy pickup trucks that nobody really needs but drives anyway. You feel vulnerable and small as a pedestrian; you feel brazenly reckless even when you have right of way at the pedestrian crossing. How often do you normally cross a motorway? Will you actually make it to the other side? Have the drivers turning right on red seen that you’re there — a mere wisp of flesh and blood in a vast world of tarmac, steel, engines, and diesel?
Went for a walk with the dogs and my daughter and saw hummingbirds drinking from a fountain where a homeless person was sleeping right outside the hotel. A land of contrasts. It is eerily quiet in the US, especially in the streets. Is there a shared sense of dread? Is it actually dangerous? Or does nobody simply use the pavements? It is a little hard to grasp on such a first morning, and we ignore it, watch the hummingbirds, laugh at the size of the cars, and embrace the sense of wonder. The American flag is flying outside the hotel, the sun is shining warm and lovely, we're in shorts and sunglasses; we are ready for an adventure.
The US is strange. Wild. Different. Like something you understand even though you don’t. The wildest culture shock to date. We are on a journey of discovery in this mysteriously familiar yet completely alien country; a place where we speak the language but don't know the cultural codes, a place where things make sense and yet don't at all, where what could have been crystal clear turns sleek, polished, and cryptic like crystal magic and coded speech. We are ready with our sense of wonder. We are ready to observe and understand. There is plenty of room for growth here, that’s for sure.
Next stop: Fresno in The Valley, where we have wonderful friends and where we have been before. Looking forward to the reunion, looking forward to meeting the US gently and familiarly to begin with.
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