A great, prosperous Nation

December 26th 2016

First Impressions

On our journey through immigration, we get fingerprinted, our pictures taken, and asked a lot of questions. From under a massive American flag, we are welcomed by the portrait of President Barack Obama (not for long, unfortunately...), something we would have expected more in Pyongyang than in Los Angeles. At the airport, we try Uber for the first time and pay about $18 for a nice ride with a talkative driver — a taxi would have cost us more than $100 for exactly the same thing.
As we arrive, tired to the bone, we must realize that our room is not yet ready, so we have to scrap the much longed for nap and power through the day. We pass the time with some sightseeing. We notice: The neighbourhood we live in is pretty run-down and, according to our host, mostly inhabited by working-class immigrants. Due to the many homeless people and poverty, one doesn't really feel safe around the clock here - unlike in rural China.

Especially while walking through the suburbs, it's hard to imagine what the extreme patriotism of Americans is supposed to be based on — a "shining city on a hill" is something else entirely.

The New Americana

A fast food joint on a busy road. Flickering fluorescent lights on the walls, scratchy Spanish music from the ceiling speakers, complimentary soft drinks in colours that would be forbidden in Germany — the USA, just how you'd imagine it to be.
We're just waiting for our laundry to be done and headed over to the small fast food place named Hercules around the corner for Breakfast / Lunch — after that, we head into downtown LA.

The chasm between suburb and downtown is pretty huge — there's a lot less homeless people around, and signs here only read one language. We walk past the incredible architecture of the Walt Disney Concert Hall and visit the MOCA (Museum of Contemporary Art, Jan is hyped up already) next door.
Afterwards we take a short walk to little Tokyo, a small, pseudo-Japanese styled square that houses various Asian restaurants and shops.
Apart from that, we find another branch of the MOCA in a converted factory building (more art!), currently showing Doug Aitken's "Electric Earth" — amazing exhibition!
For dinner, we head on into Chinatown and finally back home in the suburbs.

Walk of Lame?

When we wake up the next day in our children's bunk bed, we are freezing — the weather is unusually cold for the region and the concept of insulation has apparently not yet spread to the suburbs of LA. Maybe that'll contribute to our Christmas spirit, though — today is the 24th of December, after all.
Today we cover some obligatory tourist-stuff: We drive to Hollywood, the Walk of Fame, specifically. As expected, the walk consists of way too many people who want something from me and a few stars on the ground. Truly spectacular.
Besides the stars of Donald Trump, Steven Spielberg, and the other big names in the American entertainment industry, we could also have a look at some more or less famous movie theatres.
After four different rappers offered us their mixtapes, we turn around and head to Griffith Park — the huge park in which you can find, among other things, the Hollywood sign. Instead of the sign, however, we steer towards the Griffith Observatory — an observatory on a hill with a nice view of the park and the city.
Somewhere along the road we find a Chinese / Korean Restaurant where we have our Christmas Dinner — Chinese noodles and rice with chicken.
During our 20 minute Uber Pool drive back, we get to listen in on the candid discussion between our driver (born in Ghana, grown up in Milan, Italy) and another passenger, who came to LA as a child from Mexico. Somehow, the conversation manages to completely summarize my English classes from the past two years: There's talk about the American Dream, multiculturalism, globalization, gang crime and much, much more. Both of them are incredibly grateful for the chances this country gave them — free schools, to be precise. A really interesting new perspective for us, as we usually associate the US more with the student loan crisis compared to our (almost) free European Unis.

The drive confirms everything I learned from playing GTA: The words "like", "shit", "man", and "motherfucker" turn up more often than I could count in a single sentence.

Take me to Church

Christmas morning. The kids in our house are up since about 7 am, working their way through a huge mountain of gifts under the tree. Two days ago, one of our Uber drivers (Wolfgang, from Austria originally) told us in glowing tones about his church in Pasadena and suggested that we might stop by on Christmas morning to see how church could be like in the US.
Said and done.
The church with its very multicultural attendance looks more like a concert hall to us — with a live band on stage playing Christian songs that could be broadcast on Life FM in New Zealand as the service is about to begin.
The atmosphere is good, there is a quick advertisement for the church's own coffee blend ("Jesus and coffee go well together"), then the sermon starts, partially accentuated by piano music or short video clips from Facebook.
After the pastor is done telling the story of how he once had to hold on to a Christmas tree through a car window and prayed for the strength not to let go (Spoiler: The story ends with him running to catch the tree rolling down the street), events get more bizarre by the minute: He explains that the holy spirit whispered a name to him today — Madison. Is there a Madison here? No? Are you sure?
Ah, his dog is also called Madison, maybe god meant her (seriously!). Oh, look, up there on the gallery, there's a Madison here after all! A three-year old girl who is promptly diagnosed with a future as a prophet of god. The family that enjoys divine financial blessings from now on should always have pen and paper nearby to write down the prophecies of Madison, who is now named alongside Elijah and Jacob.

Next, the generosity of a football quarterback who gave his team flat-screen TVs is compared to the generosity of God — "How many of you know that the gift our father gave us does not even compare?" — and Steve Jobs' biography is skilfully combined with a subtle stab against abortion. Complete with a "Think different" slide featuring Jobs on the projector, of course.

The entire sermon is incredibly interesting from a rhetoric point of view — riddled with rhetorical questions à la "How many of you know that you have a biological father and a heavenly father?" and "Aren't you glad we aren't slaves any longer?", mixed up with an oratory sleight of hand here and there and a dazzling amount of repetitions.

To put it shortly: This entire thing is truly bizarre and we can't take it seriously as a church service. People here see god and Jesus as very concrete — the holy spirit whispers words and its presence is felt strongly in some moments. We might not get the Christmas mass we hoped for, but the "mass" we got ended up being incredibly interesting in other ways. Who wants to understand what we are talking about can take a look at the recordings published by the church online.

The "sermon" seemed to us more like some sort of stand-up comedy for religious people — but to be taken seriously in a weird way. This again shows us something essentially American: Everything has to be entertainment. No matter if election campaigns or church services, there has to be live music and lots of drama. Because there are no official church organizations here, the boundaries to sects are often fluid, which became very clear to us here.

Alone in LA

After this spiritual experience, we walk through deserted "Old" Pasadena for a while — of course, there is no one on the street on Christmas morning and most shops are closed for the day. Luckily we find a Japanese place that serves us some hot ramen even on December 25th.
Afterwards, we head to the California Institute of Technology (Fun fact: The Big Bang Theory is set here), whose campus turns out to be not all that interesting.
We take one of the rare rail connections to the other end of the city to Santa Monica, where we watch the sunset above the completely overrun Santa Monica Pier.
Even though Nils categorically refused to set foot on the pier because of the huge crowds, I was able to convince him not to pass up on this important sight.