Champaign

After Chicago, our plan was to go to the small town of Springfield, Illinois. We were advised not to. Instead, we should go to Champaign, where there is actually stuff to do. That we did. And this place is just great! This is a college town. Fifty per cent or so, out of a population of around 100000 people, are students. The town is a big campus, or the campus is a small town. There are young, fun-loving, good-looking people all around. The bars are packed on a Tuesday night. The beers are a dollar each. Except for the studying, it’s like being a college student all over.

Canada horror

Lately, our couchsurfing experiences have not been the best. Or maybe it’s just Canada. Having lots and lots of time, and little planning, it seemed no less than reasonable to take a trip to Montreal. Upon arrival it turned out that our hostess found it to be the weirdest thing she had ever experienced. Why on earth would anybody want to come to Montreal? She discussed the matter thoroughly with her 20 year old son, who pointed out the obvious: either these guys are gay, or they are just in to porn extravaganza. As it turns out, Montreal is the Tijuana of the North. After the mandatory drag show, we finally somehow managed to talk ourselves out of going to some strip joints. As soon as we could, we headed on for Toronto.

Waiting for us in Toronto was an e-mail from our new couchsurfing hostess, asking us to wait another day before coming to her place. Apparently, she had an important day in court. Whether she worked as a lawyer, or she was accused of something, we never found out. We never even met her. She just disappeared from the face of the earth. Hope she’s ok. Instead, we embarged on the journey from hell.

Have you ever wondered what’s in Buffalo? I can tell you there is absolutely nothing in Buffalo. After having looked for lodging for some two hours, we finally found a motel. The only problem, though, was that it was being torn down. So we decided on the good-old 4 am out-in-the-street morning gymnastics, after which we stepped on it and went as far as the road would take us before it made sense to check in to a motel for the next night. 7.30, a cheerful Motel 6 clerk checked us in 30 miles east of Cleveland. In this little undiscovered haven, we had the nicest three or four days you could imagine. Here, we pimped our ride with a Hello Kitty steering wheel cover, which made the next part of our journey happy and gay. We had to leave, because for once, we actually had a deadline. Nobody was surprised that we had tickets to Christina Aguilera in Chicago.

You might also want to check out Anton’s blog. He’s even got a little map there, showing how we’re travelling. And some pictures. Here’s the link: http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog/hmmma/us_road_trip_07/tpod.html

Technotravel

Travelling is tiring. We’re exhausted. It’s funny how vacation somehow can be more exhausting than everyday work. I guess it is because of lack of routines, it’s all new impressions. We live out of our suitcases, so we’re never as relaxed as you are when you get home, change, turn on the TV and open that carton of take-away pizza. And even though it seems like not much work, it takes some energy to plan the basics; where to go, what to eat, where to sleep. Anyhow – it’s lots of fun.

We left our Manhattan couchsurfing (www.couchsurfing.com) hosts Steve and Bill (who by the way were just the most generous, relaxed and fun imaginable), and went to get the car we bought. It’s a little smaller than we thought, and it’s green instead of black. But Ernst, the German car salesman, says it’s the same car as the picture. We decided to believe Ernst. Free as birds, we headed north for Maine – the state of lighthouses and lobsters.

We had no trouble finding 214 Bog Hill Road, where Jack and Marcia, old friends of me and my family, lives. Partly, I guess, because of the brand new GPS we bought somewhere in New Hampshire. Why did we not even think of getting one of those? Preloaded with US maps, it was ours for the facile price of $260. This is becoming such a technotrip. The front seat of our car doesn’t look very different from the cockpit of a space shuttle. We’ve got 2 laptops, 2 cell phones, an external harddrive, an mp3 player with an FM transmitter, a GPS, and an whole bunch of adapters and chords to hook this all up to the little lighter thingy of the car. It feels silly, in a way. Here we’re out to explore the world, and we have all this machinery sort of doing it for us, along with making it seemingly pointless to have left home at all. But as the old-fashioned way certainly has its charm, inventions bring new possibilities.

At Jack and Marcia’s, little has changed. The house is the same, the cows are the same (well, I guess they have replaced the cows with newer cows since I was here 15 years ago), and Jack and Marcia are the same. Still amazingly hospitable, funny and friendly.

Taking a vacation from out vacation, we’re now up in northern Maine, near the Canadian border, snowboarding. It’s a first for Anton, who sits beside me in agony. I myself am pretty tired too. So much for relaxation.

Where it all begins

New York. Not as colourful as I imagined, and not as crowded (except around tourist Mecka Times Square, where it’s both). So I couldn’t help but crack a smile when I saw a yellow cab slowly driving by a manhole with white steam pouring out. What is it with tourism and confirming preconceived clichés? I had some time to kill, so I thought what the heck and actually rolled with it when being picked up by one of those Scientology guys. Watched their little well-produced but really oh so stupid film, followed by a “survey”, which of course aimed at getting me to sign up for all kinds of stuff and devote the rest of my life to practicing their religion. But as it turned out, the survey dude was really harmless, and we ended up having a nice discussion about all kinds of stuff. Well, nice at least for me. He probably felt a little stupid. Not that I was all that smart, but when making parallels to the science of psychology (of which I really know little) he was totally lost. Which was weird to me.

Today we followed some Jews. They were so many, on the subway, so we thought let’s follow them and see what happens. Nothing happened. They just never wanted to get off. Finally we ended up somewhere in Brooklyn, far far away from Manhattan. We walked a couple of blocks and back, and then subway again to the now familiar realms of Manhattan. There’s no place like home.