Back on Earth

September 2, 21:05 On a Globe

Yes. I survived ICSI, and afterwards I went walking on the Berkely Campus, which really is an interesting one. It was the first Friday of the semester, and the whole campus was buzzing with life. People talking everywhere, hugging hi, seeing each other for the first time since before the summer. I ate some something from a Lebanese fastfood place, and felt very at home with some meat between my teeth at The Bear's Lair a little bit later. Pretty wild place, even at 5 in the afternoon.

I also managed to be thrown very effectively out of the Evans building, in an attempt to sneak into an office and read my e-mail. My student ID was non-existent, and I didn't want to fight the tall, black guardian.

The whole group was joined for dinner at some Indian restaurant. Someone had managed to pick the worst and most expensive place to eat in the whole Berkeley. *sigh* Just outside the campus. We were served something liquid grey/brown stuff, and some kind of bread which didn't really taste anything. Great. And the one spilling most onto the tablecloth definitely was the waiter. We paid 8 dollars for the food each. Horrible. (And when we came back to Norway, we found out that the restaurant also had charged 8 dollars for each person present from our Visa account. I guess we'll have to sue.)

On our way back, some of us stopped at a medium-sized Wal-mart, where I didn't really find too much interesting stuff, but bought an American football and a few CD's made of chewing gum nevertheless.

Having showered and eaten a few CD's at the motel, the next stop was a small, nice place called Cheers. Most nights seemed to be Rock'n Rodeo, but this evening it was Hard Rock time. So. We jumped around until everyone were annoyed, threw some darts and left. Good time.

Today I woke up just in time to have a shower, watch Poltergeist on the TV and get out of the room by 12. On our way to delivering the rental car we stopped at The Good Guys, an ok hifi/computer shoppe, but I managed not to buy any small electronic, digital gadgets. Checked in at The Globe youth hostel which is nice enough, even though the Internet connection doesn't work. *sigh* I probably have a zillion important unread e-mails by now.

To get rid of some agressivity, I went with the others for a couple of games of Q-Zar, a rather nifty laser game. I must have been very agressive, as I became Top Gun in the first game, and Arena Dominator in the second game. Whatever that means. To get an impression of the S.F. hills, I walked with Trond over the hills back to the hostel. Fairly steep streets, but we of course have some steeper ones back home. #:D)

We spent some time on Mission and Market street, trying to find a pair of classy sunglasses from RayBan for Trond. We walked back and forth between them and collected good offers. In the end I was threatened to stay in the shop as a hostage, while Trond had to go to the bank to withdraw money for the glasses. I think perhaps we had annoyed the shopkeepers a little bit, haggling the price down to a third of what we started with. And we didn't really want to buy anything anyways. But I escaped. Safe and sound in San Francisco. Hm. Nice title for a movie. Or a postcard home. Except postcards don't have titles. Humm. I'll write some now anyways. It is a very nice atmosphere in the common area in the hostel now. I think the following days will be very good.

September 3, 20:25 Surrounded by Danes

Spent last evening downstairs in the common area. I played pool once, as the rule was that the winner continues to play, and the line to play with the always winning Danish blonde tag team pool playing females was rather long. So I ended up with chatting with Signe, who is going to travel back north the way I came from, pretty much the same way I do, without too many plans. So, time flew by, and I went to bed at 1:30. When I fell asleep the room was empty, but I woke up to a sixtet of snoring Germans around me. Rather scary, actually.

So, I quickly got up and use all the warm water in the shower, before anyone figured out what was happening. While I had breakfast I was very well entertained by a huge Dane who wanted to watch American Football, while the old man working there wanted to watch cartoons while he was cleaning bedsheets. Tremendous fun. No casualties.

I couldn't find anyone else awake until noon, and then I gathered two friends, Trond and Øyvind, and we agreed on going to the beach and take a long walk along the coastline towards Golden Gate Bridge. We stopped on our way to the bus at Brainwash, a combined Internet Cafe & Laundromat place. We spent quite a few quarters on a chatline computer there, while we waited for Øyvind's clothes to wash and dry. Noone believed us when we told the people on SFNet that we were Norwegians. And we didn't believe them when they told us the beach we were going to was a nude beach for homosexual people. We all were wrong...

One bus number 5 later we were at Ocean Beach, where the water still was freezing. We ambled north to a viewpoint where we sneaked into a museum for mechanical stuff, where most of the mechanical stuff actually was machines you could insert money into to see a short movie that was adult by 1920 standards. From there we walked through Lincoln Park and suddenly found ourselves in Sea Cliff, which seemed to be San Francisco's answer to Beverly Hills. Very nice, very large houses with very nasty-looking watchdogs. Then we walked through Presidio Park, where we realized that the people on the SF chatline weren't kidding. There were a lot of men. In pairs. And they didn't really wear too many clothes. The funny thing was that we stumbled upon a traditional buddhistic wedding in the middle of the beach. *shrug*

We ran further north, and all of a sudden we were surrounded by thick fog. Øyvind was wearing shorts and a thin t-shirt, Trond a large jacket and jeans. The one most in need of more clothes borrowed my sweater, and we were ready to conquer the Golden Gate. Which is red, actually. Oh, and here's a hot travel tip for you: The cables used to keep the bridge up consist of 27.527 wires. Do keep that number in your mind if you go there, as the very charming tourist guide offers kisses to the people who can guess the correct number of wires.

Before we froze to death we took bus 28 to Geary street, changed to 38 and jumped off it at a Kentucky Fried Chicken place, and continued with the 38 back to Market street. Walked along Mission street and saw the Yerba Buena Gardens, which is actually very nice. I think a lot of people misses this sight, so do try walking Mission instead of Market at least once if you go to San Francisco. There's even a waterfall there. Back at the hostel I am now with a group of Danes again. I'm trying to understand their babbling. Might come in handy someday. Some from my group are trying to outdrink the Danes, with no luck whatsoever.

September 4, 01:20 Soon to go to bed

*Yawn*. Tired. I'm still sitting in the lounge. I lost all contact with the Danes 2 or 3 bottles of beer ago, but I still enjoy watching them, as an anthropological study. MTV is running noisily in the background, while people sleep on the couch while others are playing pool while some dutch guys hungrily watch her, two girls with metal sticking out of the most incredible places of their faces are hunting for jobs in the newspaper and a guy is going to the toilet, obviously not to use it for what it is meant for.

My most interesting discovery of the evening is that my room no longer is infested with snoring German men, but totally filled up with sweet, young British girls, asking intelligent questions as "What is Norway like?" and the like. They are just as funny as they are arrogant. But I don't mind, as long as I have to share a cramped room with them. And they are all very polite, saying "please" all the time.

The huge Dane that wanted to see American football this morning appears to be a criminal, who the Danish didn't really know how to handle, so they sent him to the US, so that the problem could disappear for a while. In Denmark, at least. He has "just" done things like car thefts and burglary, and doesn't consider himself a criminal. The other Danes disagree, so perhaps Danes have some moral anyways? They all swear a lot, though. Uhm. I think I'll call it a day.

September 4, 21:45 Living in the Lounge

I woke up early and went up to the sunroof to put a finishing touch on my tan before going back to Europe, and to write a few postcards. After a while Signe came up, and we talked a bit about travelling and life in general. Eventually we turned hungry, and for lunch we went to China Town and walked from store to store buying small meals, fruit and pastry with unspellable names. Very cozy.

After this we went to Union Square and just lay on the grass enjoying the sun and chatting. After a tour de Macy's, we walked back to the hostel, not knowing how lucky we were, not being hungry anymore.

My most interesting discovery of the afternoon was at the barbeque on the roof. Eat as much as you like for four dollars. After a while of grilling and beering, I think everyone was just as puzzled as I was when it suddenly started to fall drops from above. I was very happy that I hadn't eaten anything when I discovered the source of the drops. The cook was standing on the edge of the roof and uhm... relieving himself quite intensely. The air pressure brought the drops straight up and down onto the food and the people up there.

So... I went for a shower. And became very clean. Well, as clean as you can get in a shower were six British women have put their bottles of everything everywhere in the bathroom, at least. I smelt really funny afterwards. Tish tish, never mind.

September 6, 15:38 11.300 meters above Newcastle upon Tyne

Body time: 06:38. I've slept all the time since I boarded the plane, so I don't think the jet-lag will be too bad eventually. Oh well. When I woke up last morning, almost all the other Norwegians had left the hostel, and the only one I knew left was Signe, who I spent the day with in Golden Gate Park. *Mmmm* Quite possibly the best public park anywhere. Started at the viewpoint over the Cliff House, walked along the beach to the well-kept windmill in the park, and from there it was a non-stop attack of wonderful things to see. The buffaloes, the horses, the arboretum with trees from everywhere. Strawberry Hill, surrounded by clear, GREEN water, which is coloured in a pool on top of the hill, so that the waterfall actually is a green one. A little bit yucky. The Chinese pavillion, the flower conservatory, Japanese Tea Garden, the Shakespeare Garden with all the flowers and trees mentioned in Shakespeare's writings, a 9 hole golf course and Uncle John's Tree. Whoa. I could've written a lot about these things, but I think you should go there yourself instead. It's worth at least two days of discovering. I had a great time, it was the perfect end of my two months in the US. In great company.

We still had a few hours before I had to go to the airport, so we walked back. The walk took us through Haight Street and Ashbury Street, which are the very lively remains of the hippie culture of San Francisco. What I'll remember best from San Francisco will be the very beautiful woman, wearing a startling pink/violet kimono-style dress, carrying a tiiiiny parasol. There were a lot of remarkable people in these streets, where the average hairlength was well below the shoulders, but she was the most striking one.

I said goodbye to people and got onto bus 7B going to the airport from 7th & Mission street. 1 dollar. It's your best value transport to the airport from San Francisco. The 7B will accept people with a lot of luggage, as opposed to the other 7's.

I checked in with no problems, and had a quiet shrink 'n chips dinner at a Thaifood place, and soon I was on the plane, on my way out of my American dream. They put me next to a crazy Italian who spoke no English, but kept telling me jokes until I fell asleep, I think. I've grabbed all the airsickness bags I have found, which makes the people sitting around me rather worried, it seems. Good bags, with instructions in 3 languages. We had Japanese beef for dinner, and bacon and egg with water melon and cantaloupe for breakfast. The rest of the trip I've slept. Good flight. 21 minutes until Amsterdam.