Reverse culture shock part 1

Our journey to Seattle took 27.5 hours door to door. That is almost twice what it should take, because we were misdirected by Delta to a false gate, and held up by TSA in Minneapolis (which we both had trouble pronouncing). It was the worst travel experience of my life. I remember 13 hours in, we hadn't even made it to Nova Scotia. We saw 5 airports and rode 4 planes. We expect compensation.

It's been 3 years since I've been to America and it's changed more than I imagined.

As always, it's overwhelming to suddenly hear people speaking English all around us loudly and clearly, emphasis on the loud. I can't tune it out. In Minneapolis (funny word) a girl sat in the toilet stall next to me and had an entire conversation while she eliminated, I could hear both sides. 




I thought the State seal was pretty but got in trouble for taking this photo cuz we were in the TSA line.


The Portland --> Seattle part, where for the first time we got the first row, which on Alaskan Air, isn't fancy, but we got nicer food. Best of all was observing the procedure for opening the cockpit door to serve the pilots food - how the two flight attendants blocked it with a food cart and stared at the passengers with steely eyes as long as the door was open. They also had hand signals through the peephole.



This sign had us in hysterics because J did not know the word stowage. He said, "Is that Barry Kripke's way of saying storage?" 

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In America there is technology I'd never experienced, only heard of or seen on TV.

There were Teslas all about, and people talking into their Apple watches.

You talk to your TV: "Turn close captioning off" and off it goes. You  say, "Star Trek" and the list of available live and on-demand series/movies pop up. The TV did not know the weather in Germany, though.

My friend Lisa laughed at me as I watched TV - can you believe it - the show Roseanne is on again with the same actors! As I watched, Lisa asked me, "Why are you watching commercials, just skip them." I wonder what happened to Tivo.

Your kitchen is voice-activated, and you can Google things hands-free.

There is an embarrassing number of Priuses on the road, but the number of rusty, smoking cars strapped together with duct tape has decreased. Now if people would only wash their updated cars..

There's free delivery of groceries by Amazon. How I'd love that! And Uber will bring McDonalds to your door. Uber was in the news and it irked me to hear them call it a worldwide company because it is not legal in Germany.

The self check-out lane is so much fun, we required assistance five times and were enjoying ourselves so much the assistant took our photo. I over-indulged in communicating with employees because they are actually there to help customers. Total strangers will talk to you as you shop, I was basking in the casual friendliness. And it's almost ridiculous how often you'll hear the words "sorry" and "excuse me" when people come too close --- but do not even touch you!



Our first trip to the grocery store, I found a small container of school glue. Since J is a teacher, we were cracking up about the hypothetical situation where a kid pulls that out in class - I imagine even if he shared with the entire class all year, it would be a solid lump before halfway finished.




Sweet helpful self check-out lady took our photo cuz we were imbeciles.

Although we found good deals on Levis, we were shocked at how much food costs. One bell pepper was 1.70$! I paid almost 2$ for 2 onions, the cheap ones. It's not that food is pricey in America, it's that it's extremely cheap (subsidized) in Germany.

The sales tax is now 10% and several times I asked if there was a mistake when told what I owed.





J's Easter MnMs, in the glass swan he kept filled the entire time. We came back to Germany with EIGHT bags of MnMs. One day the swan was empty and we all stood there staring at each other, "Who would eat all J's MnMs?" No one took the blame, and we knew one of us must be lying, until someone remembered that the neighbor kids came over and were unsupervised. Bad kids!




My first taste of root beer in over 3 years. It was amazing.  I drank A&W every single day. Remember that commercial, "This is diet?" *lol*


More to come.....