USA Roadtrip: The city of angels

Hello again,

The sun disappeared on the horizon a half an hour ago and there is not much to see in the Dark in the otherwise gorgeous Arizona desert so I decided to write to you again! The previous episode ended with the cliffhanger that we left DC for the sunny Los Angeles with a stopover in Cleveland, OH.

The flight was actually great, after the endless corn and wheat fields of the midwest, the breathtaking bird’s eye view of the grand canyon and the surrounding rock desert is always a pretty sight and we also got offered some audiovisual entertainment, „The vow”. Trying not to spoil anything, Rachel McAdams falls back in love with Chaning Tatum (Ooops...). 

At LAX I noticed that the foil I wrapped around my bag was gone which means that the Toilet Safety Administration (South Park reference) was really interested in my shower gel. Thank god, there wasn’t anything missing, so we immediately took the shuttle to the car rental pickup lot to get our bottoms into our new Dodge Grand Caravan minivan. Surprisingly, it looks almost identical to our earlier Crysler Grand Voyager, maybe there is a minivan standard in the US.

Our first destination was an arbitrary place to eat which turned out to be an Indian express grill. Unfortunately, it was rather a Mexican place disguising as an Indian one and the food was absolutely terrible to the extent that Peter experienced the first throw-up of the trip and not in the good way. I think we’re done with Indian food for the rest of the trip.

The accommodation this time was the Banana Bungalow on Hollywood Boulevard, which was the best accommodation so far, we even got a kitchen and a fridge. Of course, we arrived too late to join the clubbing night organized by the hostel so we chatted a little with some Scottish girls and a guy from New Jersey who turned out to be a writer. He told us that if we ever need inspiration for anything, Hawaii is the place to go to and even told us the way to make an easy living there: work on an organic farm. Well, I’ll keep this in mind just in case. 

We started the next day with a long walk on the Hollywood walk of fame taking pictures with our favorite stars. It’s hard to describe, but It’s a pretty lively place, I really liked the vibe there, felt like a big party. Actors are on the street dressed as Batman, Spiderman, the mad hatter from Alice in Wonderland, storm, troopers, etc.

After walking the street both ways, we hopped into the car and drove all the way to see the misery and poverty of Beverly Hills. First, we looked up the location of the Playboy mansion but unfortunately we could only see the gate and an arriving prospective playmate. She looked really good at math. Since we didn’t wanna spend money on a „Starmap” (i.e. a map that marks the location of celebrities’ houses) we made up fake stories about which mansion belongs to whom.

Rodeo drive was the next stop, but we didn’t even get out of the car there as we were so horrified by the poor people all around, it’s so sad, that some people have to live like this, life is so unfairJ. Instead, we headed straight to Venice beach to meditate a little on how great it would be to work in the office on a rainy weekday.

On the way there and back, the main reason why I wouldn’t live in LA became apparent. The traffic situation is just abysmally horrendous, even four lane highways are stuck hard all the time. The public transportation situation is even worse, there are a few metro lines but they don’t really connect interesting places and the buses get stuck in the same traffic jams as the cars.

In the evening, we watched the sunset from the Griffith observatory which provides a marvelous view of LA and the Hollywood sign, can’t say I was disappointed. The observatory itself used to be an actual one even though it’s impossible to see anything useful now due to the smog and therefore the telescopes are just part of an exhibition now.

We arrived back to the hostel just in time for a free pizza party, where I could utilize my free food skill I polished to perfection over the past two years in the department. It was after this when I met the first arrogant and annoying Australian of my life. He was a rodeo rider with a completely incomprehensible accent and the worst sense of humor I ever seen. Since he refused to tell us his name, we (more precisely Daniel) named him the Australopithecus to reflect his appearance and manners at the same time. 

I also made friends with the Russian receptionist girl whose accent I guessed correctly at the first attempt which I’m very proud of. Working with a Russian advisor and hearing a lot of the other Russian professor’s accents trained me very well apparently!

For the last day in LA, we departed for the first time during the trip. Ákos and Dan took the car to Pasadena to check out Caltech and then suffer a little on the sun of Malibu beach. Peti, Csaba and me hit   Universal Studios instead. For anyone who considers it, it’s absolutely worth the $80 entrance fee. The studio tour at all the shooting sites including the standard NY set, the wild west, the original Bates motel, the plane crash site of the war of the worlds and so many more iconical places that enthralls the living dump out of a movie geek like me. The tour was guided by Jennifer Love Hewitt’s alleged boyfriend. As I don’t really follow celebrity news, I have no clue if he actually was the real deal.

The rest of the studio is like a Disneyland but a lot cooler, the Transformers 4D attraction was the most beautiful IMAX 3D based rollercoaster I’ve ever ridden and the other attractions were just as awesome except maybe the Shrek 4D which was a little boring. By the afternoon, the lines got a lot longer as more and more people showed up (this Monday happened to be the memorial weekend Monday, so even the locals had the chance to storm the park). Fortunately, standing in line wasn’t just a boring waste of time as every attraction had a background story introduced during the wait.

Not all of the thrills were rollercoasters, there were some shows too, e.g. a special effects presentation which was really cool up until the point when they brought in a Jar-Jar Binks style character named Jerry who tried to be funny by falling over, forgetting himself in the set, etc. From me that’s a giant facepalm, apparently, the rest of the audience were actually entertained… I’m not a namist, but from now I’ll consider Jerrys a bad omen.

At the Terminator 2 show (which is the oldest attraction in the park and it's indeed really cool), a similarly annoying character tested our nerves. This time she was the spokesman of Cyberdyne presenting the background story on a very high pitched voice including thousands of

-Oooookkaaay-dooookkkaayyyy? Suuuuuuupppppeeeeer!

Since Ákos and Daniel were still in Malibu, we took the metro back to our hostel. To my greatest surprise, we were never asked for tickets (we bought them from the machine), maybe that’s also a reason why this state is constantly bankrupt. 

After having another evening session with our BFF Jim (Beam), we called an early night and hit the road early morning to the Grand Canyon. But that’s another story for next time.