Orlando Magic

Ninety percent of Americans are crazy about (watching) sports and big games are on all year long. Extremely popular are the NBA (basketball) and the NFL (American football) but there is also hockey, baseball and football as we know it in Europe. We had been told that watching a live sports event in the US is an absolute must so we bought tickets for an NBA game in Orlando. The Orlando Magic team was receiving the Brooklyn Nets in their gigantic Amway Arena with a capacity of 18'000. The couch surfers we were staying with in Orlando (a 70-year old couple btw!) promised us it was going to be a lot of fun but we weren't quite sure what exactly was going to be so much fun so we left their house quite excited. In our excitement we got carried away in the Magic fan store and spent our money on t-shirts and caps, Benoit even had his name printed on the back of his shirt. Because we spent so much, we were gifted with a Magic mascot monkey and a NBA-games dvd, yeah!

We had bought the cheapest tickets so our seats were quite high, which didn't really matter because like that we were able to observe everything and everyone. The game opened with a cute little girl singing for the victims of super storm Sandy; very dramatic, very American. For those who are not into basketball, just like me; the game lasts four times 12 minutes, so 48 minutes but is interrupted constantly by timeouts, fouls and the half-time so you'll end up spending more than two hours in the stadium and most of the fun actually happens during all those breaks. There are the cheerleaders, the kiss cam, the mascot acting crazy,...During half-time, an illusionist entertained the crowd and a dance school performed. The funniest thing was that Benoit got picked from the public to participate in a little contest and he won a smart phone! Because of all these things going on, we didn't care so much that 'our team' lost badly against the Nets. After all, we'd just had one of our best nights out in the US!

Orlando

About the US

(today a lot of text, if you don't want to read it all, there will be more pictures of Florida in the next days!)

Lots of people are asking me: "So how are the United States?" And it's hard to answer because sometimes it hardly looks like one country. California is so different from Texas for example, where everyone walks around in cowboy boots and hats, even the girls. No lie. Louisiana seems to have nothing in common with Florida, where the weather is great and the people are sunny as well. 

But there are some things that can be said for the whole of the country or the parts that we've seen so far.  It might sound like a cliché but everything is big over here. Streets, cars, houses, supermarkets and yes, people too. It's a little funny that most streets are really large but often have no sidewalks. Americans are just not used to walking and take their car for ridiculously short distances. Cheap fuel prices aren't stimulating them to leave their vehicle at home either.

In Europe we have this idea that the US are all about fast-food and also this couldn't be more true. It's very obvious when you're driving around the country like us. In Austin we picked up another car (no more camping though, only couch surfing) and we had to drop it off in Miami two weeks later. I should have kept track of all the hamburger chains we've passed, there are just hundreds of them. Benoit wants to try them all so he can declare which one's best but I am now at the point of getting sick whenever I see or smell another burger.

Americans like very much to advertise things. There are the obvious ads for fast-food but they also make big ads for churches or hospitals for example. I found it really fascinating that you can see this huge billboard alongside the road saying 'Our hospital has the highest success rate in liver transplantation.' That's a bit odd, no? I really don't see the point in that.

Talking about health here is a big issue. Especially with Obama trying to reform the whole system. We were with a couch surfer who told us that her elderly mum had been advised by her doctor to please vote for Romney, haha. But there are some other things that just make your eyes roll. Another couch surfer told us that her father had had a heart attack. He's quite a workaholic so minutes after he was admitted to the hospital he was already back on his blackberry sending emails to his colleagues. There was no way they could know he had suffered a stroke and he made up an excuse for explaining his  one week absence after that. Apparently he was that afraid of losing his job which happens too often when you have medical issues because the company doesn't want to pay your insurance anymore. 

Also women who just gave birth are supposed to be back at work after a month. If not, colleagues start gossiping saying that she's not strong enough and a replacement will be found.

And then there was our Grand Canyon bus driver, I've told you about her earlier. She did a real good job driving and guiding at the same time. At the end of the day, she asked for tips, which is very normal here. But her motivation was so wrong to me. She explained that before becoming a bus driver, she had another job that involved a lot of lifting and carrying heavy stuff. She got problems with her knees and the doctor advised her to look for a different job. So she became bus driver and know she earns less and she still has to feed four kids. The problem is, the woman was just huge! Remember she stopped at McDonalds twice during that trip and it wasn't just to feed us. Didn't the doctor advise her to change her whole lifestyle, including healthier food instead of just changing jobs?

There are some other things we've noticed but can't quite explain. Whenever we go to a supermarket, there are often people behind the cash register that are older than my grand parents. Once we saw a man that must have been at least 80, cleaning the windows of a Burger King. We felt so sorry for the poor guy.

For those who've read until here, I'll tell you a bit about how things went on election day, November 6th. We were driving from New Orleans to Tallahassee, Florida, where we would spend the night at a couch surfer's house and we must have been listening to a Republican radio because they were almost celebrating Romney's victory. Up till that day, we had seen so much campaigning and it wasn't very nice. Especially on television. What you saw were little documentary films during every commercial break trying to prove how big a villain either Obama or Romney is. It was all very frightening and very aggressive. So on election day, we were staying with a lovely woman in Tallahassee who was defenitely a democrat; she's a single mum, has an artistic job (she designs dance costume for an art school), has many gay friends, loves traveling... She told us that she had been feeling anxious all day long and there was no way she could live with Romney as her president. Some of her friends had even threatened to leave America when this would happen. They are all convinced that Obama has the right ideas for the country and that he has been boycotted by the Repbulicans since his very first day. Well, we watched the counting of the votes together with our host and it was so nerve-racking. Especially because the results of the republican areas came in first. But when it was clear Obama had won,we never felt more relieved, our host almost started crying and called her daughter who was sound asleep in Ireland to celebrate the victory. Next day, she went to work wearing the most beautiful t-shirt with Obama's head on it:-)

NOLA

New Orleans, Louisiana has replaced San Francisco as my favorite city in the US!

The place is filled with tourists, every single day of the year, especially the historic French Quarter. We stayed with a couch surfer who lives in Uptown New Orleans, an area with beautiful 19th century properties and some huge plantation-esque mansions. Our host lent us two bicycles and we cycled through quiet lanes, parks and along the Mississippi. In the evening, Frenchman Street is the place to be because that's where you can find amazing jazz music. We've been to a couple of bars and saw some musicians play and honestly, they were all really, really good. And I'm not even a jazz fan. But also in the streets, you'll find some very good musical surprises!

Even though it's been seven years, hurricane Katrina's destruction is still visible in some areas.

Our favorite jazz bar in Frenchman Street: The Spotted Cat

Austin is not Texas!

People from Austin claim to be more liberal, open-minded and fun loving than their fellow Texan citizens. There definitely is something about the city that made us appreciate it very much even though we didn't meet any real Austinites and even though we saw a lot of former governor George W. Bush dvd's and biographies in stores :-) 

It was the week of Halloween (right that's already two weeks ago) and we were pretty excited to witness a real American Halloween night. We bought some candy, hoping kids would come 'trick-or-treating' at our CS hosts' door as they live in a nice suburb with big family homes. Luckily we bought things we like as well because around eight no kid had banged on the door...So we left the house and had a look in the street. We quickly figured out that dressed up kids only knock on your door when the house is creepily decorated. And lots of the neighborhood families had actually invested in that, some went as far as changing their whole place into a horror house. Kids would walk in through the front door, scream their lungs out to whatever they saw inside and run out the back door a couple of minutes later. It was really terrifying and when a woman asked me if I wanted to come inside, I instantly refused. Another thing that startled me a little was that some kids did the whole candy tour by car. Mum or dad just stopped in front of every house with a pumpkin, let their little spiderman or skeleton out to grab their candy and then dropped them off at the neighbors five meter further. Welcome to America. 

Something Austin is known for in the rest of the country is the 'food truck'. No need to go to a restaurant, just walk down the street and you'll find at least one truck within a mile radius. These trucks are selling pizza, roasted chicken, Thai food, vegetarian stuff, cupcakes and so on...There are more than 2'000 of them in Austin, some have their own spot , others just move around all the time. 

Another curiosity in the city is the bat colony that lives under the Congress Avenue Bridge. More than one million bats call this place home between March and November and every day they fly out, all at the same time to catch insects. This happens exactly 15 minutes before sunset and people gather up and under the bridge to watch them. It's really very spectacular even though the smell of one million bats is almost unbearable!

We spent the last night of our stay with Arvin, a lovely Indian couch surfer. (First two nights, we were hosted by two Mexican girls) For some reason, we started to talk about carrying weapons in this country and he was very proud to show us his own collection: a rifle, an automatic machine gun that fires 40 bullets at once and there was another secret gun that he didn't want to show us. I had never seen all of that from so close and it gave me a very uncomfortable feeling. (maybe because we got a demonstration while watching 'Un prophète', a very dark and violent french movie) Upon asking why he had so many guns, he answered that everybody in his neighborhood had them and that no-one would ever try to break into his house but if one day someone would, he'd shoot this person right away. So beware, criminals of Austin, I am pretty sure our host would love to try all his weapons at once!

Students trashing cars for charity...

Part of the bat colony.

With Arvin, our second CS host in Austin. He brought us to a cowboy bar, unfortunately it was the day after Halloween, so no cowboys were in the mood for a beer.

A little video of the bats flying out. Start watching halfway when you'll see most of them otherwise it will be a bit long.

Weekend in Mexico

Couchsurfing during our trip has given us some of the most unforgettable experiences and we absolutely recommend traveling like this because you'll get so much more out of your trip. You not only get to meet with locals, you'll see places no other tourist has ever been or go to restaurants no single guide book has ever mentioned. We became member of CS a couple of months before leaving on this trip and we've hosted some amazing people in our tiny flat in Geneva. That's how we met Andrea and Roberto, a couple from Monterrey, that was traveling through Europe in February. We promised them to return the favor whenever we'd go around the world and meet them in Mexico. Additional reason for going to Monterrey was that Benoit has studied there for nine months and he's been wanting to go back ever since the day he left.

So we booked flight tickets from Vegas to Monterrey even though I was a little skeptical about going there; I've read and heard so many stories about the north of Mexico being dangerous and violent but our friends assured me that things were better these days. 

Now I can tell you that I am absolutely thrilled we booked those tickets because we had the most amazing time! Andrea and Roberto took us round the city and brought us to the best taco places in town. Such a welcome change after weeks of hard to digest food in the States! On Saturday night, we went for a Halloween party in an old 'haunted' house in the city together with 2'000 other Mexicans. Let me rephrase that to old 'haunted' villa with huge garden and crazy dj's. The finale of our weekend was definitely the barbecue we had at Andrea's parents' place where we were hardly able to stand up after all the food and drinks we had. Andrea's mum gave us a little course 'how to make real Mexican tacos' but I'm afraid we didn't make her very proud. Our tacos came out pretty square and scary. Well, it was Halloween after all:-)

On Monday, we went to see Benoit's old apartment and visited his boss at the company where he interned a couple of months. Before we left the area, we had (again) great food at the place Benoit went for lunch every single day he was working there.

So when we left on Tuesday morning, we almost felt sad about going back to the US. We took a bus from Monterrey to Austin, in Texas and US customs gave us such a hard time at the border. Our bus driver threatened to leave us there and only after Benoit made a huge scene they gave us the silly green document we needed and let us skip the immense queue. Even though the Mexican passengers on our bus had to wait one hour because of us, they all started cheering and clapping and they were happy we made it, saying Americans were a*holes and all that. Aaah, I love Mexicans and so want to go back for a longer stay and more of their delicious food!

This factory in the middle of Monterrey is now a museum/restaurant and they've created a beautiful park around it. I was amazed about how they've managed to turn something that ugly into quite an aesthetic monument.

Girl celebrating Quinceanera. The 15th birthday of girls in Mexico is a huge thing because it marks the transition of childhood into womanhood. Many girls look forward to it for years and dress up like they're getting married. Also their friends have to stick to a strict dress code. 

Mariachi, anyone?

Getting ready for our Halloween party in an old, haunted house in Monterrey city! Sorry, no pictures of the party but it was fun!

The biggest flag in Latin America? It's the Mexican one in Monterrey...

How to make tacos? Not as simple as it looks....

There was only one person in the house who really mastered it, a real Mexican Mum:-)

Benoit in 7th heaven with his bbq meat.

Best salsa I've ever tasted!

Decoration for Dia de los Muertos (day of the dead) on the first and second of November when Mexicans remember and celebrate friend and relatives who have died.

I don't remember the name of everything in this plate. Fact is that I had to take half of it home, too much to finish in once...But so good!

Sugar skulls for Dia de los Muertos. 

Let's end the weekend with some gordita's:-)