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August 29, 2007
Revoir / Wiedersehen
Somewhere in Iowa. The red Pontiac is doing 70 miles an hour, cruise set. Lean back, relax. We're going straight north, 360 degrees, and there is not a single turn to be made and no bend to be followed for another half hour. We, that is just the car and me, for a couple of hours.
It is the first time in twelve years that I've returned to the state
where I went to high school for a while. I'm around people who I
haven't seen in all those years, and people who haven't been around
back then. Things change, of course. Babies are born, children grow
up. People fall ill. Others undergo career change of a lifetime. But
in the end, oh heck, we're still the same people, the same characters.
It's a weird, even creepy, but wonderful feeling to sit next to someone you lived with a long time ago. And over the last two years, so many people have been in touch again. Old school-friends, who found me on social networking sites. Others discover Google and find this blog. Some have moved close by. Some get in touch while they're experiencing the crisis of their lives, and some go into hiding again soon after they pop out from the cloud.
I am in Osage, a town in Iowa. Around us, there's not much but corn and soy fields, pig farms and the occasional beautiful creek under a covered bridge. But the 4,000-soul community is well connected. Unlike most American cities, it has a communal internet supply, along with the usual water and electricity. I also hear that they once got nation-wide attention for their city management. And that the police chief resigned after shooting at kids with a paintball gun when they wanted to wrap his house in toilet paper. Barbecues in the yard and serious fun with a boat on a lake nearby. It's warm and sunny, the perfect summer month.
It was on a social networking site called XING that some of my long-lost German friends found me last year. 15-year old David used to hang out with Anna, who at the time moved away, just some 50 miles up the country. No distance in today's terms, but we lost touch, until recently, when she looked me up and invited me to an informal class reunion with a bunch of people from school at a German Xmas market, with mulled wine and bratwurst. Some are married, most are not, and well, we're not all that different, 15 years later.
Anyone else out there who used to know me? Leave a comment below!
Posted by dr at 12:28 PM | Comments (0)
August 14, 2007
An island in the Tennessee heat: Opryland's biosphere hotel in Nashville
I spent a couple of days in the surreal biosphere called "Gaylord Opryland", a gigantic hotel on the outskirts of Nashville, Tennessee, which seems to be the largest non-gaming hotel complex in the world. Built in times when energy didn't cost much (and built by Americans!), the Opryland has a number of glass domes spanning the buildings that host almost 3,000 guest rooms. Of course the glasshouses are all cooled down, trees and bushes and everything you'd expect in botanic gardens have been planted. You can spend money on a boat ride on the artificial river around "Delta Island", and of course you'll get everything from first-class steak dinners with excellent wine and cheese to American fast food in the restaurants there.
The whole complex is truly post-apocalyptic. Don't leave the hotel - the nuclear war is raging outside, the sun is burning down (it was!) and there is little to see amidst freeways anyways except the newly moved Grand Ole' Opry (Nashville's big music theater) and a mall. Piggybacking on Nashville's legendary music scene, the hotel creates its own entertainment. No need to leave the complex. Downtown Nashville's music bars are a long cab ride away anyways.
Posted by dr at 11:47 PM | Comments (2)