My photoalbum of the Californian travel in 1994
20 years ago I took a trip through California which only lasted 7 days. Not much time to see the country but (it was a guided tour) we saw Los Angeles, Las Vegas, the Yosemite Nationalpark, San Francisco and then down through Monterey, Carmel, Santa Barbara back to L.A
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I'm really proud of how the album came out. For years I had this wonderful album lying around and it was always planned for this, but you know how it is, you gotta find the courage to start! Another reason why I never started was that the original album only had like 20 pages or so and I thought no way I am gonna fit everything in, I would have had to leave too much out and I hate not being complete and thorough. And of course once I got occupied with the internet and Stargate and conventions and fanfictions, all time was sucked from me there for years.
So after mulling it over for a few years (LOL) the solution was quite easy: Just buy more extra inserts! From then on, it was fun. Even though not always easy to decide which journal clipping to use, when they had nice pictures on both sides but you can only keep one, while cutting the other, obviously...
The maps also come from stuff collected in America, free flyers in the hotels I believe. Stuff that is there for tourists. Our travel guide said that we could keep the room key and so I did but then for years was afraid I might get imprisioned if I ever come to the US again LOL
That was really my first Chinese meal, that's why I was so impressed. We did not order individually, they just gave us different dishes in the middle of the table, and then you could take whatever you wanted.
Have you been to the Fairmont? I think I remember a glass elevator at the outside... And when sitting in the restaurant, there was a water bassin in the middle, with a boat, and people on it making music. We sat around that bassin under little straw roofs (but it was all inside the hotel room, so fake) and suddenly it started "raining" in the bassin! America really knows how to impress ;) Especially if you are coming out of your little country behind a wall for the very first time. And all those posh hotels! We paid a fixed price for the trip and so everything was included, even the meals were paid by our travel guide.
I still think it was too early, my friend was organizing all this, I probably would have waited a bit till I was older and more fluent in English.
Even in the last days of the GDR, we already had some Chinese or probably rather Vietnam restaurant where we lived and I always wanted to go but my mother refused to go there. But after coming back from SF I took them to a Chinese restaurant and now they love it and go fairly regularly.
I also bought lots of souvenirs! From the Universal Studios, I have a movie clapboard (of course) and a little Oscar statue fridge magnet, from San Francisco I have a little cable car that makes music even (I left my heart in San Francisco), and I also got several of those Viewmaster slides with nice pictures of the places I visited. That is a great memory actually. I did have similar things as a child but those were fairytales, this was the first time that I saw them with real pictures. Much better than taking your own photographs.
In Las Vegas you could buy the White tigers as plushies and also figures, maybe you saw the picture of the Tenth Doctor feeding them that I recently did?
I also was mostly impressed when in the middle of Yosemite Park, in the tourist shop, the assistant asked me "Wollen Sie 'ne Tüte" (if I want a bag) in German. Especially the way she said "'ne" which is short for "eine". So she spoke even slang ;)
1994 was when we still watched Baywatch so seeing those rescue towers in the sunset at the beach for real was quite a sight!
My voice sounds odd to my own ears in this video but I believe it is always like that, that you sound differently when you listen to yourself from a recording.
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We did not order individually, they just gave us different dishes in the middle of the table, and then you could take whatever you wanted.
This is called "family style", and it's my favorite way to do Chinese food, so long as everyone has mostly compatible tastes :)
I've been to the Fairmont, yes :) When we first moved here, a relative took us there to show us the glass elevators.
That's very cool that there was a fluent(?) German speaker you found in Yosemite! I guess people who want to live in Yosemite come from all walks of life and stay there...
My voice sounds odd to my own ears in this video but I believe it is always like that, that you sound differently when you listen to yourself from a recording.
Yep, that's my experience, too, and I don't really like listening to my recorded voice for this reason.
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Although I must say, as much as I had looked forward to the Siegfried & Roy show, I was a bit disappointed afterwards. You could see that it was routine for them, doing it for 30 years. Their faces were masks, probably from all the lifting ;) It was technically perfect, but lacked a little heart for me.
I don't think she was a native German speaker, it sounded like it was a foreign language for her. But somehow she had heard us talk in German and so adjusted.
I had the same at a train station in London. Of course by now I have no trouble getting around but when I bought a ticket and asked from which platform the train was going, the elderly man was happy to try out his German with me, and it was definitely more than just "Guten Tag" and "Dankeschön". I love such stuff. Made us smile for the rest of the day!
Even in Birmingham, going to a Japanese restaurant, the owner wished us good-bye by saying "Tschüss!"
But the best was in London in an Indian restaurant. We talked English with the waiter and in the middle he said we can also talk German if you prefer that. Turned out he was born in Dusseldorf and spoke German without any accent.
Then again, they even did it when I just ordered Fish & Chips at Tower Bridge. I have no idea how you can pronounce that wrong but apparently I did ;) Maybe the "please" afterwards gave me away LOL
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