Home sweet Home

And still - America was awesome as!!!

With these words I want to begin the last post from my little America adventure.
The last week in the States was just great.
On the weekend we had beautiful weather which led to us having heaps of fun. On Sunday I was basically playing Xbox with some friends all day and in the evening I went playing tennis with some others of the group.
Monday was a horrible day. At least the weather was. We first went to the White House, but couldn't get in so we went to the Visitors Center. There we watched a film about the White House and its history and all that kind of stuff. After that we had the possibility to go to a museum, but since I already saw most of them and I was told that this particular museum was basically crap, I decided not to go and went to some mall with my friends instead. Some of them ate at the food court but I was pretty much sick of all the food court crappy sort of food so I went having lunch with Immo at a Mexican Restaurant. This was pretty neat and the food was awesome.
On Tuesday we first visited the Pentagon which was very impressive. They showed us a couple of hallways and the inner plaza. Moreover we had a look on the 9/11 memorial of the Pentagon. As you would expect there were a lot of military people in there either wearing camouflage or dress uniforms. That looked very cool. The only bad thing about the Pentagon was that I wasn't allowed to take photos so I don't have any from that day. Later we went to Georgetown and had lunch there. After lunch we visited the German Embassy in D.C. which is a quite cool looking place. And all people spoke German which was nice as well. At the Embassy they showed us a movie about what they and all other German Embassies around the world do.
In the evening I had dinner with my family at a Japanese restaurant. That was awesome. They cooked the food right in front of you. So all people were basically sitting around a huge barbecue where they cooked the food. After dinner I got picked up by Johannes' host mum, who took us to Immo and Jonas' place where we watched a couple of movies.
Wednesday was a rather quiet day. We met for lunch at a mall and then hung around a little. In the evening there was a farewell party for us Germans with all host families and all the official people.
Thursday was basically the day of departure, but since my family wasn't at home all morning I had Johannes come over to my place and we played some basketball on the Xbox, what was lots of fun.
At three o'clock we arrived at the airport and our flight was going at 5:45pm.
The flight went pretty well, although I didn't get as much sleep as I hoped to. From Frankfurt, were we arrived at about 8am on Friday morning we went to Aachen by train which was a huge pain in the ass.
So at about 12 we arrived back home in Aachen where my mum picked me up.

As a conclusion to my America trip I have to say that it was just lots of fun and I really enjoyed it. The group I was doing stuff with was very cool as well.
The one thing I have to say though is that the title "land of opportunity" (Land der unbegrenzten Möglichkeiten) does not fit to the United States. At least not anymore. Since 9/11 Americans are paranoid a lot. You have those metal detector screenings everywhere. You can't go somewhere without having you checked. To go into the Pentagon they even had to know all my middle names. And of course for teens: Drinking with 21? What idiot invented this rule? It’s working well in Germany.
So after all America is a great country and the Americans I got to know where all very nice and welcoming people. But they seriously have to get over 9/11!

That's pretty much what I'm leaving you with for the moment. I guess I'll write again as soon as something happened worth writing about. So stay tuned :D:D
Catch you later
Yours Daniel

This is basically the same album as the last one but I added a few pictures:

Washington D.C.

Tourist life in D.C.

Hello folks,
It's time for an update on my America trip I guess.
So since we came back from New York City we've basically been busy visiting a lot of sights around D.C. The first day after returning from NYC, I think it was Wednesday the 8th, we had some sort of discussion about global warming and how to deal with it in Arlington and Aachen. That was pretty boring since I was very tired and didn't even listen to the guys talking a lot. After that we went to the Kennedy Center of performing arts and heard a concert of a high school orchestra form somewhere in the States. I don't remember where those guys came from. At night the whole group went to a Comedy Club at the local mall and we watched a comedy show.
The next day we went to the Newseum which is basically a museum about news. It was pretty interesting to have a look on all the stuff that happened around the world in the last decades. So after that we went to Union Station for Lunch.
On Friday, we first visited the Library of Congress, then had lunch and then visited the Capitol. This building is pretty amazing although you can only access very few parts of it. Not even the interesting ones. But Americans are heaps paranoid these days with their fear of terrorism.
On Saturday I changed my host family to my actual host family who came back from vacation. They had actually been in NYC as well. First I thought changing the family really sucks, because I liked my first one a lot and my new one seems a little strange first. I have settled in though pretty well and I get along with them pretty good. The only thing that sucks is the food, because they somehow think that everything you eat must be like very healthy and stuff. Especially in the mornings I sometimes search for ages until I find something proper to eat. They must hide it pretty well because on the weekends when they make breakfast there is always some good stuff there. So later that day, I visited a couple of museums with them. On Sunday we visited a weird colonial age memorial farm where some volunteers live life like in the colonial age. It was interesting though to see how life has been in Virginia a couple of hundred years ago.
On Monday we visited the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, which tells all about the Holocaust. That was fairly interesting but not very new stuff since all of us learned about this part of German and European history in school over and over again. I find it still overwhelming though every time i deal with that issue I just cannot get why this kind of stuff happened those 60 to 70 years ago.
Tuesday was a pretty good day as well. First we visited the Arlington National Cemetery which basically is a graveyard for all very honorable American soldiers who died in service. There are some other very famous people lying there as for instance John F. Kennedy. Being buried in Arlington Cemetery is a huge honor. And although some people of our group find it very stupid to have things like that I really like the idea of honoring those who served their country in the way those people did. And although Americans sometimes exaggerate a little with their patriotism I think a good portion of that is very good to have. But I'll come back to this when I tell about or visit to the several monuments.
So after the Cemetery we went to Potomac Mills Mall which is like a huge outlet store where you can buy all sorts of things pretty cheap. But since I'm not very good at buying cloth without my mum I just got a polo shirt.
Wednesday and Thursday we went to school. Schools in Arlington are one of the best in the state if not the country. They have awesome as sports grounds and the class rooms are very well equipped as well. A lot better than German schools' wildest dreams. As good as the equipment is as bad are the lessons though. People are basically doing nothing in class. I was actually looking up some soccer scores on the Internet with my neighbors’ iPod. And I wasn't the only one doing stuff like that. On Thursday we went to a different school. It's an alternative school where the students can actually decide on a lot of stuff themselves. The lessons where a little better there and the students were actually working but the just had like three lessons a day. So we actually started school at half past ten and left at three. And we had like a one and a half hour break in between.
On Friday was the first very good weather day like ever since we are in the States. We went to see all sorts of memorials. We even had a park ranger guiding us and giving us all sorts of information about all memorials. First we went up the Washington Memorial from where you have an awesome view across the whole city. After that we went to the World war 2 memorial were they acknowledge all fallen servicemen from WW2. Then we visited the Albert Einstein Memorial which was basically a big statue of Albert Einstein. At last we went to the Vietnam Memorial which is a huge Wall where all the names of the fallen soldiers are written on. Our guide, who also served in Vietnam for a couple of months told us that in fact his should have been one of those on the wall, because there was one guy who covered his shift and stepped on a land mine. When telling us he even cried a little and it did really get to me as well. I somehow feel always pretty involved when hearing stories like that. What the happened was really showing how Americans value those who fight for their country (although the Vietnam War was rather stupid). Some man who just happened to hear our guide tell the story went to him and thanked him for his service. I found that to be a very good gesture.
In the evening we had a TV night at some boys’ place. They live a pensioner’s house and that guy has an awesome as TV. It is so huge! Bigger than everything I've ever seen. The diagonal of the picture is larger than the span width of my arms. And the picture is probably about 1,2 m high.
Today was a very hot day. First I watched a soccer game of one of my host brothers and then my host dad took me to D.C. I took a bike with me. I met some of the other people there and we were just hanging around enjoying the awesome weather. After that two other boys who also came by bike showed me a very nice way to get home by riding along the Potomac River. As I got home, I played some Xbox basketball with my host brother and then we had burgers and stuff for dinner.
And as a result of the day: I've got sunburn all over my arms. :-D

So, all in all this one and a half week period was actually pretty cool. We've seen a lot of cool and interesting things but there is still more to come. It's a little sad that we're leaving on Thursday already but I'm looking forward to being home again as well.

So that's about it for the moment. I might get some sleep know since its half past one at night.
I'll write again later maybe at the end of the trip.
Have a good Sunday and a nice week. School starts again in Germany and I'M honestly sad about not having to go.

Dan

Washington D.C.

Gotta love that apple!

Hello everyone,
As I told you, there is going to be a post regarding my trip to the big apple from last Sunday to last Tuesday.
I am not going to tell you everything I did step by step, because that would just take too long and would be very repetitive.
What I can tell you about New York City is that it is probably the most awesome city in this world. At least the most awesome I know. Obviously, no place for families, though (at least not Manhattan) but certainly a great place for everyone enjoying living next to a lot of people and someone who wants to be surprised every day. And this is what I thought NYC to be like: A place capable of surprising you at every minute.
We left DC for New York on Sunday morning and the bus drive took about four hours. What you first see of the big apple is a huge industrial area looking like docks or something like that. But then you see the awesome skyscrapers just ahead and as soon as you go past Hudson River you are directly in Manhattan.
Our hotel was on 58th St between 6th and 7th Ave which is obviously a pretty great location since you can actually walk to time square and that "good" part of 5th Ave.
On our first day in NYC we basically went with the Staten Island Ferry past the Statue of Liberty and after that we walked through Financial District having a look at the Wall St and then visiting Ground Zero where they are going to build a new World Trade Center.
After that the group split up and I went to Chinatown, Little Italy and later to Soho, which is actually a pretty neat suburb. At night we went up on top of the Rockefeller Center which is nearly as high as the Empire State Building but you don't have to queue up as long. So we went up there having an awesome view over the city and on the Empire State. After that we walked to time square having a look at all the great lights and screens there.
At 11 o'clock was curfew time so we had to back at the hotel then. As this sounds pretty early it wasn't to bed I think, because this way we at least go a bit of sleep.
In the morning we had to meet at 9:30 to visit Central Station which was actually pretty nice. After that we went to the world's biggest shopping Center at Macy’s in NYC. This is like way bigger than everything every one of you has ever seen before. It has seven stories and is I think as long as one block.
After that I was going to a very tiny but very cool burger shop near Central Park. The burger place was inside a hotel and it looked as if it was just next to the restrooms or something. The burgers were great anyways.
Later that day we met the whole group again at Washington Square from where we went up 5th Avenue. The bad side of that was that it was raining heaps so some of us got pretty drenched. I didn't thanks to my pretty good Jack Wolf skin jacket! At night it had stopped raining and we took the subway down to Brooklyn and walked across the Brooklyn Bridge from where you have an awesome view on Manhattan.
The next morning we went to Central Park first and then I went to a little bagel place on the lower East Side with Johannes. The place is actually very good. They have like ten different sorts of bagels and 30 something sorts of topping. The place is in a Jewish suburb and they had a certificate that a Rabbi was checking them regarding the fact that their bagels are kosher. We found that pretty funny. Jews in that suburb looked very funny as well since they like wear those big hats and have those massive curls. Later we went to Union Square and then up Broadway and 5th Ave. Furthermore we went to the Abercrombie and Fitch store on 5th Ave which is rather a club that a shop with the staff dancing around smiling all the time. That was funny as well.
So that was basically what we did in NYC.
Generally I can tell that this city is probably the most vivid place I've ever seen. As everyone knows this City never sleeps. But not only is it alive all the time (what I had to find out when I was waking up at three in the morning and it was light outside with people walking on the streets and emergency horns to hear) it is living like super fast. People are very busy and to hesitate is to loose in NYC's traffic. Generally many Americans are driving like retards at least from the German perspective. But in New York it is worse. People are just crazy and pedestrians generally don't give a crap on any rules. Traffic lights are basically decoration so I called out the rule: "If no one drives it's green"(well actually white) meaning that you just go if its clear or close to clear. Oddly enough I never saw an accident. So it's probably the same as what you hear from Athens or cities like that.
The best image I saw relating to the vitality of NYC was when I was on top of the Rockefeller Center seeing the lights of the city just pulsating.
So that's basically what I took from NYC. Impressions of a city seeming like the heart of the world with millions of people always on the run. It’s certainly no place to get old but a place to live at the highest pace possible. It is a mixture of control (e.g. the street system making it very easy to navigate) and chaos as seen in the traffic. A place where every facet of human being meets. There is the financial district just beside Soho where arts are located and there are the suburbs of Chinatown and Little Italy where people of different cultures live right beside each other. Little Italy is actually more Italian than Italy itself.
So yeah that's it for tonight. I hope you enjoy watching my photos. A lot of them especially the one I took at nighttime turned out to be pretty crap but I think I still got some good ones for you.
I hope to talk to you guys later. Tomorrow I am going to visit the Capitol.
Have a good one.
Dan

New York City

Visiting the King: First days in the US

Hello everybody!
I'm just going to write that short post and will upload my latest photos from the first couple of days in America before I go to New York tomorrow. When I find the time I will write a propper blog post but I'm not feeling like it at the moment. So just have a look at the photos. Apart from the really awesome basketball game I saw on Thursday night. Cavs against Wizards - that was pretty cool. Basketball games in the US are like totally different to soccer games. The show part of it is a lot bigger and it is a lot of fun. They had a lot of entertainment like a dunking group and a wizard and t-shirts being shot to the crowd. But the fans weren't as crazy as they are in German soccer games. So they didn't really swaer at the oponent players and that. The other stuff wasn't too amazing though. We visited a pretty famous hotdog place in D.C. and had a pretty good reception party on friday night. Today I went to a really huge shopping mall which was probably twice the size of queens st mall in brisbane for those of you being familiar with that one. The weather is actually pretty good at the moment. We've got blue skies and sun, but that is supposed to change on Monday. The group is setteling more and more as you get to know the other better and I think most of the people are pretty cool actually. So I guess the upcomming weeks will be just heaps of fun.
By the way some people here think that I have a slight Australian accent. I think that's pretty funny.
Well, know I just wrote the post I wasn't in the mood to so, have fun untill the next one and enjoy the photos.

Dan

First Days