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Report from the US, a nice but somewhat backward country.
[Crossposted to rec.travel.usa-canada and rec.travel.australia+nz
For 'reasons' you don't want to know/hear, this time we ended up in the US - well, actually California, not the real US, but you get my drift. I've been to the US on many business trips and worked in California for about ten weeks. As the rta+n audience is probably painfully aware of, we pestered the Aussies with not just one trip down-under, but seven of them. So I feel - probably totally unjustified - qualified to comment on the US/California from an Oz-traveller's perspective. So enjoy/suffer, or hit 'n(ext)' NOW. I won't comment on the 'immigration' disgrace. After all, it's not fair to judge a country and its people on their government/ 'administration', is it? OTOH, I probably *could* be persuaded to elaborate. In no particular order, mainly in order of occurance. 1. American rental car rates are a steal. We payed only 22 Euro - about 28 US$ - per day for a 'compact' car, including full insurance. Are you kidding me!? For that kind of money, why would you want to buy/own/maintain a car? 2. Contrary to urban legend, American cars actually *do* have a boot/trunk. The lady at Alamo/National tried to convince us that our two small suitcases would not fit in the boot/trunk/whatever and tried to prove that with silly graphics. She offered a quite expensive upgrade to a 'mid-size'. Being quite dead after the long flight from Munich (*Don't* ask!), we fell for it. At light the next morning, we saw that the mid-size didn't only fit our suitcases, but also those of the whole bloody motel. So we went back and got the booked compact. We could choose it ourselves and opted for a sporty two-door Chevy Cobalt. A very nice car, for an American one, that is. Sadly enough my wife didn't appreciate me, temporarily, exchanging her for a 20-year old, otherwise I would've looked even 'hotter' than I already did. 3. American cars have built-in invisible nice-ladies. When we picked up the car it was dark and we could not read the driving instructions to the motel, so I pulled over and (thought I) switched on the interior light. A nice lady said: "Are you in trouble? Can I help you?". I explained what I tried to accomplish. While she could not point me to the right switch, it was a nice but somewhat scary experience. The whole trip, we were *very* careful, not to push the 'nice_lady-button' again. 4. American petrol/gas stations charge what they bloody well like. While American petrol/gas prices are still ridiculously low compared to Oz/Europe, prices vary by upto a *factor* of two within a short distance, sometimes even a few miles or even less. I realize that there's hardly any tax part in the price, so it's mostly 'cost', but the real cost can't vary that much within such a small area. 5. Americans don't quite grasp what the 'G' in GSM stands for. They apparently think it means 'the whole world except us', so they use a different, incompatible frequency. Luckily our son has more mobile phones than underpants, so he gave us - no less than three - 'old' multi-band ones. Problem solved, at least we *thought* so. 6. Americans don't quite grasp that SIMs can be put in *other* phones. Having a multi-band phone, I went to buy a pre-paid SIM. No such thing in the US! You can only buy a SIM *and* phone. Duh! I already *have* a (compatible) phone, *three* of them! 7. Americans don't grasp that mobile phones are actually ... ummm ... *phones*. When I wanted/needed to register the pre-paid AT&T GoPhone mobile phone which I had to buy, AT&T insisted on having me use *another* phone to perform the registration procedure. Duh! What about using the bloody mobile phone itself, like is done in every other country!? 8. Americans don't realize that salt-lakes don't need mobile-phone coverage, but that towns *do*. When we found out that our (main) credit-card was blocked (In the *US*, with a blocked credit-card! The sheer horror!), we also found that there was no mobile-phone coverage in Lone Pine. Later I saw on the coverage maps, that by stunning engineering the network people managed to fully cover the big salt-lake to the south-east of the town, while completely evading the town itself. No mean feat! 9. Americans can't drive. They have the "Keep your lane" *theory*, which has its advantages and disadvantages, but they interpret it in *practice* as "Keep the left lane", which is the worst of all possible solutions, because now some of them find themselves behind a slower car in the right (pun unintented) lane, and have to merge into *faster* traffic, instead of into slower. On single-lane (per direction) roads, it's even worse. They don't know how to (not) overtake. Suddenly they find themselves behind another car, which is driving *less* than umpteen percent over the speed limit. Totally confused, they stay there, bumper to bumper, for several minutes. Then they apparently realize that that is not a particularly civil thing to do and back off. Next they stay *there* for many more minutes, waiting for the opportunity where they can't pass or/and it's not allowed to pass. *Then* they pass. Well, actually they don't. They do something and move to the left. When a front to front collision is imminent, their automatic gearbox apparently decides that the car actually *can* accelerate, and they miss their opponent by an inch, and are on their way to their next attempt to kill eachother. 10. Americans don't have coffee. Of course we were not stupid enough to just ask for "coffee". After all we've been to Oz and know that "coffee" is not for human consumption. So we check if they have 'speciality' coffees. Some of them have the audacity to claim that they have cappuccino, but that has everything *other* than (espresso) coffee and steamed milk in it, and is splattered with all kind of silly syrups which make your eyes pop. All in all, we had only four decent/good coffees, two of which in San Francisco. Rather pathetic. N.B. Of course the Americans also do not have beer, but that fact is so indisputable, I won't have to get into *that* one. 11. Americans don't realize that you don't *have* to 'deep' fry fish. Why do they insist on deep frying perfectly good fish, even in places which are directly on the coast, like Morro Bay and (Fisherman's Warf in) San Francisco? If they don't *like* fish, then why not just not order/eat it!? No sense in ruining it for others. Now some - somewhat - nice comments: 12. Americans know how to merge onto freeways. Because they're wimps, they merge onto freeways quite flawlessly and their opponents on the freeway let them get away with it! What's *wrong* with these people!? Don't they know that if you want to merge onto a freeway, you just switch on your indicator (if you're an idiot) and move to the left, tough sh*t on the other guy(s)! And the other guy(s) do everything in their power, like brake/ accelerate, to prevent them get away with it! *That* is how you/we do these things! 13. The American all-way stop system on road-crossings is nice. It takes a little get used to and is sometimes not very efficient, but it's safe and nice. 14. Americans actually stop for pedestrians. This one also takes getting used to, but also is quite nice and safe. Sometimes you're not even trying or wanting to cross the street and you see stopped cars all around, patiently waiting for you to make up your bloody mind. 15. Americans are mostly nice, friendly people. We mostly met and talked with nice, friendly people. That's of course because we're so bloody nice ourselves. Some noteable examples out of (very) many: The ranger at the Joshua Tree Visitor Centre, oops, Center was so nice and enthousiastic that we changed our plan/route according to his recommendations, and loved every minute of it. A car salesman with a good sense of humo[u]r: In Pahrump (Nevada) we walked from the motel to the 'restaurant'. We passed a car-sales outfit and the salesman said "Oh, people without a car, and they have to *walk*! How sad!". I said he could sell me a car if he would deliver it to my home for a thousand bucks, but he didn't fell for it. Good on him! (Yes, that's actually proper proper English!) To put things in perspective, they were even so nice to give us a reference point in a staff-member from hell in a Best Western motel somewhere. To set the tone, she was 'preceded' by two young, clueless, incompetent and inaudible others. She managed to treat us like dirt / non-existing for problems which the *motel* caused. Well, that's about it I think, at least for the moment. If anyone is interested in our actual trip - i.e. where we went, why, what we saw, etc. - then let me know. If anyone has any doubts, we *loved* our trip and would do something similar again in a flash, so you Seppos aren't all that bad! |
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