I’m about to go to the country of baconnaise, the home of hamburgers, fries and Dr Pepper. The land where you get asked a question and are not expected to really truly fully answer.

Can’t wait to see how Miki, my travel mate, will react to this. Entering shops, placing orders in a restaurant, pretty much everywhere you get greeted by a phrase that might look like this:

“Hello (Sir), how are you doing today?”

When I first went to California, this warm and open greeting seemed kind of alienating to me. You get asked how you were doing today… In the most formal restaurant? That – to me – used to be material I talk to friends and people close to me about. Not waiters. Not staff. Until I realized that this is not supposed to be some intrusive question or anything of the kind. It’s just a way to greet someone and loosen up a bit.

You are not expected to give detailed updates to your waiter on your critical condition concerning your inflamed right pinkie toe. Just shoot back a nice “Fine thank you, and you?” and where ever you are – may it be in a café, restaurant, shop,… everywhere – the person that will be helping you for the day will appreciate it.

What Europeans get wrong very often: You are not expected to give orders to a waiter before you greet him/her accordingly. That would be considered entirely rude. “Hello, how are you?” – “Two scrambled eggs and bacon as an aside!”. You get used to that warmness very quickly and I sometimes miss this kind of dealing with people. Use phrases like “May I have another diet coke, please” instead of “My coke’s empty. REEEFILL!”… You get the idea.

What Europeans get wrong too often: Tipping accordingly.

Can’t wait to give you more updates on our upcoming trip. Just ordered the New York City guide by Lonely Planet since the Encounter version was just too superficial for a 10 days stay. Covering just the basics that I knew about already made it look like there wasn’t too much to do.

As the summer months approached not too long ago, people board planes to get away from it all. We take our family and friends with us on all sorts of trips. Following that logic, we have to bring along the iPhone, of course.

As we will see, a high-technological device like the iPhone can turn out to be quite a handy tool on the road.

First we’ll look at special settings that any reasonable traveler should activate while being abroad. Then we’ll extend our iPhone’s functionality with several apps off the App Store. 

Even though Florida is considered to be thee old people’s home of old people’s homes (according to Sarah Silverman’s The Great Schlep), Miami is still on our imaginative table of options for our East Coast project this summer. We want sun, we want beaches and we don’t mind partying. Our decision is still in progress though. Mostly because we’re still negotiating the budget with financiers who basically consider our cheery spending policy and our enquiry for support as venture capital*. Let’s hope we won’t need a bail-out.

Cousin Lisa just came back from her trip to Sunshine State. Florida that is. I asked for a picture of Miami that I then – I couldn’t help it – CSI-Miamified it in a matter of seconds. See the before picture.

I’m not messing with the Almighty H here. Don’t want to offend the CSI Miami fan base.

CSI-Miamified.

*What’s venture capital you ask? A type of private equity capital typically provided to early-stage, high-potential, growth companies in the interest of generating a return through an eventual realization event such as an IPO or trade sale of the company. Or a trip by college students to the US. Not. (adopted from wikipedia.org)

Update (April 7): Check out the pictures filed in the gallery.

Okay, since my Facebook is sort of screwed up – for some reason – I’m redirecting you to this entry. Hm, spring in Barcelona.

Here we come...

April 1 – April 6 · Barcelona 09.

On board (as of now) · Alex, Anna, Bettina, Clemens, Judith, Maria & Philipp.

We’re flying the Ryanair way. Pray for us to get back safe and sound.

Vienna came in at #18.

Vie We always knew that Vienna (Airport VIE) was quite a great place to live at. And now it’s official with quite a great result for the city in the Askmen 2009’s Top 29 Best Cities to Live ranking. Ranked number 18, Vienna can be proud being compared to several international cities. Check out the ranking at askmen.com/specials/top_29_cities.

1. Chicago
2. Barcelona
3. San Francisco
18. Vienna

So what is it that makes Vienna so special and one of the 29 “most inhabitable cities for the everyday man.” Although Viennese really like to complain (locally known as “sudern”) and moan about the bad weather we get (especially around this time of the year), we need to realize that it’s actually a nice spot situated along the blue Danube where an amazing thing called Schnitzel (Tourists’ pronounciation likely to sound like Snitzzel) and Schweinsbraten (roast pork) is served. Maybe the sudern part had us come in as #18.

Vienna at dusk. -- If you start to take Vienna - take Vienna. -- by Napoleon Bonaparte. He was damn right...

The web and especially your surfing it sort of reflect what’s on your mind, your agenda and generally going on in your life. This might be something you have not been aware of. But somehow, I realized that especially on travel matters, the web takes me to the same kind of pages. Now, a little side note to prove my point: A friend of mine who got pregnant once told me…

“You know what Phil? Ever since I learned I expected a baby, I realized how many other pregnant women are out there. All of a sudden I saw tons of moms pushing buggies. It’s like they weren’t there before”.

You may call that an unsubstantiated postulate, I know, but if you give it a thought, it might as well be true.

As to exhibit A, London has been on my list ever since I started learning English (back in middle school). Always thought they spoke in a funny manner and now that I have deeper insight into the English speaking universe I came to the conclusion that it’s true.

Concerning exhibit B, I’m not yet done with my wobbly attempt to surfing. And finding cool videos like that are more or less direct messages from my subconsciousness that may or may not be psycho-analyzed and interpreted as unfinished business.

What does A and B have in common? Well, they are both videos I found accidentally on the web whilst surfing aimlessly and had me come to the conclusion outlined above. Also both are of awesome quality and just plain great videos. Best enjoyed when following the creators recommendation: “Pump up the volume and enjoy.”

What I unfortunately can’t do is, combine the two in one trip directly. Since rainy London isn’t famous for stunning waves, unless we’re talking about tremendously vast waves caused by crashing financial institutions. Anyways, check them out…

Exhibit A

Exhibit B

With our trip to Barcelona approaching in bigger and bigger steps, all I can think about is how my first experience with Ryanair is going to be. The safety information video can tell you a lot about an airline. See for yourself: