Freezing in Frisco

December 28th 2016

19:29, somewhere nowhere between LA and San Francisco

Desert, wasteland, and not much in between: We have been driving in a bus on our way to San Francisco for several hours now, passing mountains, some snow, and a couple of oil pumps.
The Chinese Tourists in the bus are fed western capitalism in the form of sugar-laden Burger King smoothies while the moonlit landscape passes by.

After arriving in San Francisco, we end up faced with a problem. A door, to be more precise — AirBnB tells us it should be open, but it isn't. After half an hour of ringing and knocking just before midnight, someone finally opens the door: A Chinese woman staying here as well. There doesn't seem to be anyone else here right now. At least she can tell us the Wi-Fi password and we pick the room that looks most like the pictures on the internet. In one of the desk drawers we even find a key to the damn door next to old postcards and shopping lists.

In the light of day and with more makeup, we aren't so sure with the classification of our Asian flatmate anymore — a suddenly much whiter face might indicate a Korean. Also, the ominous door was open all along, the American lock is just far superior to us and lacks both knob and handle.

12:17

I wake up, Jan is already searching for Korean restaurants in the area on his tablet. The tiny heater still fights its lost fight against the arctic outside temperatures and we have very little motivation to leave the warm bed.

We do finally manage to get out of the door and have some Mexican food for lunch near the bus stop. Next, we drive to Fisherman's Wharf — the tourist trap of San Francisco. The piers here are full of all sorts of shops, restaurants and other attractions. Nothing that really fits our budget though, of course.
Between the crowds passing us, we also find the local seal population enjoying the sun on small wooden islands out in the water.
And while we're talking about the sun — it sets again at 5 already, while we still feel like we just woke up. We find a nice spot on the grounds of an old chocolate factory where Fisherman's Wharf borders North Beach. There's an almost endless queue of people here waiting outside chocolate stores that seem to sell some very special delicacies.
Slowly, the sun disappears completely below the horizon and we walk along a lonely pier, taking us out into the bay. From here we see the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz, and the glowing evening sky.
Next up, we find ourselves in the nearby Chinatown — the oldest and largest one of North America and, in our opinion, also the prettiest on our journey (outside of Asia, of course).
The streets with their countless Chinese businesses, chickens in the windows of restaurants and lots of neon remind us a lot of Hong Kong — if only the buildings were a little taller...
In a narrow, dimly lit alley that feels like it is only rarely disturbed by human presence, we stumble upon the Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Factory — three people are sitting in a room to the side of the street at a tiny, cast-iron conveyor belt and fold fortune cookies. They offer us some un-folded samples and we end up buying a bag of cookies of various flavours.
For dinner, we take a seat in one of the many restaurants, which is almost exclusively frequented by Chinese people — we'll take that as a good sign. As obvious non-Asians, we're brought two forks to our chopsticks, which we defiantly put aside — as if we'd need them.

After dinner and a quick stop at the supermarket, we head back from the bus stop to our apartment and notice that we live on what feels like the highest point of hilly San Francisco — the grocery bags suddenly feel twice as heavy.