Mmm, yeah, title is clickbait, I know, but you’ll see why in the end.

So…We left off at the end of our whirlwind national park tour, as we were getting ready for our city tour. On the itinerary: Chicago, Philadelphia, Hartford, and Boston. Bear with me (or not), this might get a little long.

Chicago

Lord almighty was Chicago great. We stayed with friends in a skyscraper in the midst of other skyscrapers (aka “downtown” I guess) on the 32nd floor with a pretty impressive view. Good start. We were less than a 10-minute walk away from a clean, sandy beach complete with a kilometer-long open-water swimming area with shockingly clean water that opens up into the seemingly oceanic Lake Michigan. Multiple mornings, we woke up, went for a swim, grabbed a (perversely expensive) cappuccino, went back to the apartment, drank it on the balcony, then went about our day. Not bad! Most of our days included some form of biking architectural experience, whether skyscrapers or Frank Lloyd Wright houses.

We also unwittingly rode bikes through two of the most dangerous neighborhoods in Chicago, after which we amusingly shared with each other the horror scenarios running through our heads at the time: what if someone points a gun at us and says “bikes, phones, wallets”; or, what if I try to lure them away and Vera takes off? Obviously we made it through (there and back) with no problems, but our hearts were racing.

We caught a Cubs (baseball) game, which I had warned Vera and our German friend Caro would be super boring but a great atmosphere, and that’s exactly how it turned out to be. Was fun.

Philly

Philly felt like a place I as an American should visit, given its significance to US history, with most of the critical historical debates and document drafting/signings (declaration of independence, constitution, etc.) taking place there. Turns out, it’s a pretty cool city with a compact, walkable center and plenty of culture beyond the history. There was an amusing moment when an American tourist was astounded that a pretty boring carpet from the late 1700s had been “so well-preserved” as to be around 300 years later. We loved her enthusiasm and can only imagine how she’d feel in Europe ;)

We caught some live jazz/soul music with a singer who was so into himself that you couldn’t help but be swept away by his enthusiasm, and even caught a Pink concert spontaneously when V learned that she was performing.

Hartford

Here we visited friends, relaxed by their pool, did a little hiking, and otherwise took it easy. What a joy to finally not be in a rush!

Boston

I was long since exhausted by the travel, but by Boston I was toast. If not for Vera, I would have moved my flight up a few days and skipped the city altogether, having already visited a while back. But alas, I had to tough it out. Boston was nice though; we spent a couple of days walking/biking and eating our way through the city, and on our last day we took a short excursion to Salem, the sight of the US’s most famous witch trials and a city which has turned its dark history into a cottage industry of all sorts of witch kitsch.

Side note: there’s an urban legend that tens of thousands of redheads were burned at the stake in 15th century Germany for being witches. As twistedly amusing as it would be considering most of the women in my family are redheads and redheads already take so much flak (e.g., they have no souls, which interestingly may come from 10th-11th century Christians who claimed Vikings like Eric the Red were soulless for their brutal attacks on Christian settlements), there’s simply no historical evidence to support the claim that they were singled out for execution as witches. Indeed, they wouldn’t have been done in by their red hair, instead simply by being women, as 80% or so of all “witches” accused and murdered were women. Other side note: the redhead/witch thing was an entertaining rabbit hole to go down, both with all sorts of redhead myths and empowerment websites as well as wildly conflicting numbers on witch-trial deaths, with EU deaths estimated to range from 35,000 to 500,000. Crazy. For reference, it was “only” 20 in Salem.

Some reflections on the US

America feels like a cult

When you grow up in it, you don’t really notice, but coming back and spending ten weeks there after so long in Europe it really struck me. People talking about the greatness of the nation in random conversation, flags everywhere, support and/or preferential treatment for military advertised for brownie points. I found it a little…alienating. Could also be that I react to it more strongly because it seems recently that the folks that scream the loudest with the least amount of substance are the ones waving the flags.

One of our tour guides went out of his way to tell a story about Ben Franklin’s wife, to give “voice to the historically voiceless”, which we thought was great; however, when asked why he hadn’t mentioned Native Americans even once, guilt crept over his face and he said that he’d been criticized multiple times for even mentioning slavery, so any mention of the colonists’ overwhelmingly abhorrent behavior towards natives would go down even worse. Which is akin to discussing south and central American history while completely disregarding everything that happened before Columbus. Pretty absurd. Anyway. So just like Germans might not necessarily recognize their cultural pessimism until they’ve been immersed in something different like Americans’ naïve optimism, I couldn’t really grasp the full extent of our cultural propaganda until living away from it. Or maybe, it’s just because we spent so much time in Utah, Wyoming, and Montana haha.

Apropos…I love Americans’ naïve optimism

It’s so much better than naïve or even well-founded pessimism, makes people more pleasant to deal with, and probably leads to problems getting solved faster (though not structural problems, acknowledging those goes against our American exceptionalism, see above). Vera regularly got compliments from random people on her outfits. We had entertaining, two-minute conversations with the people we just happened to be in line with. Nearly every interaction is positively charged, and it’s pretty damn nice.

America’s nature is unbeatable

I’ve long said this, but the trip confirmed it: we have some of the most spectacular, best protected natural areas in the world. Our national parks alone would cover nearly 75% of Italy, and all our protected areas combined would cover all of France, Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Belgium and Denmark. Now don’t get me wrong, Europe and the rest of the world also have different, spectacular scenery on offer; just as you can’t say Yosemite is better then the Dolomites or that the Tetons are better than the Alps, nor can you say that the opposite is true. In the US though, the sheer scale is tough to match.

Up next

I’ve now had a week to relax (ish) in Germany, and I’m off for two weeks to really relax at our place in Italy, then a three-day bike tour with buddies in German, then off for more cycling in Taiwan. I’ll most likely write again mid-October, during the Taiwan cycling trip.