The Trip I Still Think About Every Week.

California gave me beautiful scenery, relaxed people and memories I still carry. It also showed me things I found much harder to understand.

By Alexander, Germany.

When I think about my trip to America two years ago, I still think about it almost every week.

It was my first time in the United States. We travelled as a family group, with my brother, my sister-in-law, Julia and the children. There were the things you expect from California: huge cities, big cars, long beaches, enormous roads and landscapes that feel completely different from home.

But some of the memories that stayed with me are much smaller.

One of them is a man in Oakhurst.

A Man in Oakhurst.

Oakhurst is close to Yosemite National Park. After Los Angeles, with all the traffic, people and noise, it felt almost like returning to normal life. It was a small place, surrounded by trees, with Yosemite in the background.

The weather was not especially good. It was autumn, the trees were changing colour, and everything felt quieter.

At our hotel there was an older man, perhaps around sixty. I remember him because speaking with him was surprisingly difficult.

He spoke very quickly, with a strong dialect. I asked him for the best route to a restaurant because I had to collect some food, and I could hardly understand his answer.

I actually found that quite funny.

I come from Bavaria, and I know exactly what it is like when somebody speaks a strong regional version of a language. When I speak with people from other parts of Germany, they probably sometimes have the same problem with me.

Normally, when I speak English, I try to speak clearly. This man did not do that. He simply spoke his English.

And I liked him.

He was friendly, the situation was relaxed, and somehow that small conversation became part of my memory of the place. When I think about Oakhurst now, I remember the scenery, the trees, Yosemite in the distance — and this man whose English I could hardly understand.

There was another small moment there that meant something to me. Before driving into the national park, we needed snow chains. We went into a shop, and I saw a large shelf full of CRC products.

At the time, I had already signed my contract with CRC but had not yet started working there.

Seeing those products on a shelf in America felt good. It was one of those small moments that probably means very little to anybody else but stays with you.

The Easy Side of California.

My impression of many of the people we met in California was that they were relaxed and easygoing.

Maybe some of that came from being tourists. When somebody realised we were Germans, it created an easy situation. We were interested in them, they were interested in us, and there was something unusual enough about the meeting to start a conversation.

We also met several police officers because my brother and sister-in-law visited a police station to exchange patches. The officers we met were very relaxed and friendly.

That fitted the California I had imagined before the trip: sun, sea, beaches, surfers, the Beach Boys and a certain easy mentality.

Of course, I only saw the country as a tourist for a little over two weeks. I cannot say that what I saw represents the whole United States.

But the feeling stayed with me.

When somebody asked me whether the grass was greener on the other side, I had to say yes — at least when I look back at that trip.

The scenery, the people, the cars, the streets: almost everything was new to me. That made the journey special.

At the same time, there was another America that I had not expected.

The Part I Could Not Understand.

One of the biggest differences I noticed was poverty.

We also have homeless people in Bavaria, of course. But what I saw in parts of the United States felt different in scale and in how visible it was.

In Los Angeles, we walked past people lying on the pavement. Some appeared to be completely unconscious. At first, I honestly wondered whether some of them were dead.

After a while, something strange happened.

I became used to seeing it.

That may be one of the memories that troubles me most. Something that shocked me on the first day could begin to feel normal after only a week.

I remember our first night particularly clearly. We had arrived late, around ten in the evening, and because of the jet lag my brother and I were awake again at three or four in the morning.

We decided to walk to a supermarket to buy something for breakfast.

There were tents on the street. It was a very windy night, and we could hear people inside them.

For me, coming from Bavaria, where my own life feels secure and ordinary, that was very difficult to understand.

Las Vegas gave me another version of the same contrast. I had seen a documentary about people living in tunnels beneath the city, and I found the idea frightening. Later, near the famous Las Vegas sign, I saw an entrance that made me wonder whether it connected to those tunnels.

Further into the city, I looked down through an opening and saw people below street level.

Above them was Las Vegas.

Lights, hotels, money, casinos, entertainment.

Below them, people were living under the streets.

That contrast was hard to forget.

And Then I Lost €200.

Las Vegas also produced a less serious memory.

My brother and I drove there while the women and children flew. Their flight was delayed, which left the two of us alone in Las Vegas for five or six hours.

We made a simple decision.

“Let’s rock and roll.”

We went into a casino.

One hour later, the rock and roll was finished.

I had lost €200.

I am normally very careful with money, so this does not sound much like me. But Las Vegas was a special moment. I knew exactly what I was doing, Julia knew about it afterwards, and I can still laugh about it.

Perhaps that is why the whole journey stays so strongly in my mind.

It was not one America.

There was the quiet man in Oakhurst whose English I could barely understand. There were relaxed police officers and enormous beaches. There were shelves full of products from the company I was about to join. There were huge cars, huge cities and landscapes I had never seen before.

There were also tents in the wind, people lying on pavements and another life happening beneath the streets of Las Vegas.

I came home with almost entirely good memories of the trip.

But good memories do not mean that everything I saw was easy to understand.

Maybe that is why I still think about it every week.