Back in the US
Written on January 6, 2008
So today I finally came back to the US after I was in Germany now for about 4 weeks due to Visa reasons. The flight was long and boring like always but I am only decently jet lagged.
I was really nervous about getting here because I had to drive my girlfriends car from LAX to our current home about 1.5 hrs away. I had never driven a car in a US city before and am not used to automatic shifting. But it all turned out perfectly. Although there was heavy rain driving was no problem at all and it’s just great to be back. Actually I wasn’t looking forward to being back (nor was I upset about it) but once I was out of LAX and smelled LA’s typical mixture of smog and ocean air again I was so happy to be back. Everything in this country is just so much bigger and wider and somehow makes you feel you can achieve everything you want. A lot stuff here looks really shitty and in bad condition. Everyone knowing how a Californian freeway looks compared to a German Autobahn probably knows what I mean. But driving home passing the Getty and the vast areas of generic shopping areas on a road with 4 lanes made me see these things first time differently. It might all look not as perfect and authentic as things in Germany but that does not matter. In the US things are not made for eternity and they don’t mean to be. Everything here is issue to constant change, progressing with only little respect for how things used to be. I think or better ‘feel’ that this approach and mindset makes the US so strong in modern fields of economy. Some days ago some one told me during an interesting conversation that US venture capitalist are willing to invest into markets not existing yet for which it’s much harder to find investors in Europe. I think that is right with that and this mindset can be seen just by having a look at US or at least Californian cities. Altogether I have been here for more than 3 month now and I realized it just now so it’s probably not that obvious but my todays trip through Woodlands Hills and seeing all the area from the airplane convinced me of this.
So now I absolutely have to watch all the episodes of House recorded on tivo!
