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In the end: life is too short to stay sane all the time

Not having a job to return to definitely helped making the transition back to “regular life” easier and beating the jetlag (or possibly made it worse, since the argument “I don’t have much to do tomorrow anyway” made it easy to stay up until 3am and then sleep until 11am).

To be honest, I have actually quite enjoyed my new lifestyle in the last 2 months, so I have seriously considered investing my last savings in lottery tickets hoping to reach the financial independence required to keep travelling carefree around the world. For good measure I have however also started putting together a plan B where a few consulting gigs in the short term will help me bridge the gap until I hit the jackpot.

Nevertheless, I have now been home for over a week, so I think it is about time to draw a final balance of my American adventure in one last post on this blog,  before it just becomes really pathetic to still be talking about my last vacation 🙂 .

When I set off on my journey across America, the main objective was to binge on art and experience a side of America that I never had the occasion or the time to see during my previous business trips. All in all, I am very happy I took the time to make this trip, and while it is always very difficult to pick favourites and make an honest balance, there are certainly a number of things that made the trip memorable.

1) The Art

As I mentioned at the beginning of the trip, I am not an art critic nor much of an expert and I have no interest in expressing a “professional” view on what I see. Quite simply, I enjoy looking at art and I am happy to share the feelings that certain combinations of colours and shape inspire in me.

From this perspective, the trip has been a smashing success, and the visit to places like the Art Institute of Chicago or the National Gallery in Washington certainly belong to the happiest moments of my life.

And while it was certainly amazing to see so many masterpieces of European superstars like Monet, Van Gogh or Picasso, what made the experience really special was getting to learn so much more about American art, which is typically under-represented in the collections of European museums. Ironically, though, as I write I am reminded that the reason I did not actually get to see the famous “American Gothic” painting in Chicago is that it is currently touring Europe with an exhibition called “American Painting in the 1930’s” which just closed in London but will open again in Paris in October.

Hopping from museum to museum in rapid succession was a great way to really get a very thorough introduction to American art, following its progression from mere variations of European originals of the early days to the development of its own voice, true expression of a country that in the same period was finding its place at the helm of the world and a mirror of the way society was developing on that side of the Atlantic.

From that perspective,  the tags that usually indicate the author and title of the paintings also offered another interesting perspective on American history and society. In these times of “Mexican walls” and “selective travel bans”, I found the labels identifying a large majority of the artists as “American, born in Italy” (or Russia, Ukraine, France, Germany, China, Japan…) a particularly relevant reminder of what really made America great in the first place, the ability to make “from many, one”.

Another thing I find particularly fascinating when visiting Art museums is looking at how similar themes are being treated differently depending on the local conditions. For instance, while the near Orient with its harems and Bedouins riding in the desert was exerting its allure on European artists like Delacroix or Ingres, American artists were finding their own exotic themes in the Wild West, depicting canyons, deserts and Native American tribes (often with the same mannerist, stereotypical romanticism of their European counterparts). Similarly, many paintings I have had the chance to see in St. Petersburg and Moscow witness how Russian artists in the late XIX/ early XX century were travelling to Central Asia to find their own share of unspoiled, exotic scenes and landscapes to immortalize on canvas. And the pattern presented itself over and over again in the scenes of life in cafés, factories, cities and fields, often unique and original and yet familiar at the same time.

Finally, besides more “mainstream” masters like Sargent, Warhol or Hopper, this trip also gave me a great chance to discover many interesting African-American artists like Motley and Lawrence, as well as many talented women artists (I still can’t believe the “National Museum of Women in Art” isn’t packed all the time).

If I had to pick just a few favourites that inspired me the most among the many amazing artworks I have seen this month, these would probably be at the top of that list.

2) The train

Ok, while I do really enjoy travelling by train I still have to admit that riding a train in the US for over 2 days is not exactly the most comfortable experience in the world (granted, it still beats an average economy seat on an airplane, but one typically does not spend more than 12 hours in a row in one).

Nevertheless, I would definitely say it was still totally worth it and I am so happy I took the train. Not being much of an outdoors person (although I have had my moments), I typically like to travel comfortably and the train offered a very civilized way to experience some truly incredible places (and I think I am slowly developing a soft spot for the desert 🙂 ).

I also think that the slow pace really gave me a chance to get the best out of this experience. And particularly after driving from DC to Chicago I understand even less the point of the “American roadtrip”: if the scenery around you is great, you will probably want to stick your nose to the window. If it’s boring, why not take a nap or read a book? Going slow in this case is not a bug, it’s a feature… Assuming obviously you choose Amtrak for the trip itself and not because you need to get to a specific destination by a certain time.

As a matter of fact, I loved it so much that while I was still sitting there I was already looking at what routes to take the next time I get a chance to do another trip like this (the Texas Eagle from Chicago to LA via San Antonio or the Sunset Limited from New Orleans to LA are two clear favourites here 🙂 ).

3) The unexpected

When it comes to travelling I am typically a very accurate planner, spending a lot of time plotting routes, finding the best hotels and flights, selecting things to see and do and where to go for food and drinks (a quality that has served me very well in my professional life 🙂 ).

While there is certainly a big chunk of borderline unhealthy FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) involved in this, to be honest I also see the planning as part of the trip, and I certainly enjoy looking at opportunities and options and anticipating what the actual experience will be once I get there.

Nevertheless, I must admit (and maybe draw a few lessons for the future) that some of the most amazing experiences of these trip were either not part of the original plan or complete spur-of-the-moment decisions.

This category includes for instance Pittsburgh and Detroit, which were added as quick, secondary, technical stops to make the drive to Cleveland and then on to Chicago more manageable, and ended up outshining the original destination of this chunk of the trip.

I also definitely include here the many cool gigs I had the chance to see on the road, and while I might have mixed feelings about Portland, its Japanese Gardens have made it solidly into my “Happy Places” list and are one of the reasons why I definitely want to go back and visit again soon.

And as far as impulsive decisions go, the ride on the Seaplane to Victoria, BC was one of the most exhilarating experiences of this trip… Not to mention that then Victoria itself was quite a nice surprise too 🙂 .

The other side of the medal…

So was it all hunky-dory then? Am I now hopelessly in love with America?

Ahem… not quite. While there are certainly many things that make this a great country, there are still a number of issues that bothered me and reinforced my conviction that while I do like to visit I have no desire to ever move here (last famous words? 😀 ).

There were small things, like having to add a tip to every check or the showers with fixed head and a single mixing valve that you need to turn all the way to get hot water.

But most importantly, there were also some pretty big things that really bothered me. One example for all, the large number of homeless people.

While this is certainly a problem we face in Europe as well, the idea that in one of the richest countries in the world people regularly end up on the street because they lost their job or got sick and could not pay their medical bills is just too absurd for me to grasp. What makes it even harder to accept is the fact that, judging from the political debate about things like minimum wage and affordable healthcare, for a sizeable portion of the population this is a perfectly acceptable occurrence and not a problem that the government should try to address.

This is obviously a much bigger and complex issue and it is not with intention to try to make a cheap political point that I bring it up here. It has however been a recurring theme in the cities I have passed and something I felt deserves a mention nevertheless.

In conclusion

When a couple of months ago I told people I was leaving .Cloud, that I did not have another job already lined up and that I was going travelling around the US by train instead, reactions varied from “you’re lying and you just don’t want to tell me you are going to work for X” to “you’re crazy”.

A low mortgage and no kids clearly helped making this decision a lot easier, and I don’t regret it one bit.

Blogging about the trip has also been an excellent way to make sure I did not simply run from one thing to see to the other. Saving time also to stop, sit down and reflect about what I saw and did ultimately helped me enjoy and experience these things at a much deeper level. It has however also been very time-consuming: each post has typically taken at least 2-3 hours of work. Some of the longer, more complex ones (like this very last one) have sucked up hour after hour stretched over several days… Clearly as I go back to a more regular life with actual work to do this pace and effort is no longer sustainable. Yet, I feel there is more “writing” left in me that will eventually have to come out.

This month away on my own has been relaxing and challenging at the same time. It definitely helped me get some perspective, but to say it with The White Stripes, “I still don’ t know what to do with myself” (at least professionally 🙂 ).

And to be honest, this does not bother me much. While I figure out what I want to do when I grow up, there are still plenty of cool projects to work on and adventures to get lost in.

Many of those that called me “crazy” admitted (with words or just with their eyes) in the very next moment that they were a bit jealous too, that they wished they could also just take off. To all of them my sincere wish is that they can find their own little share of “crazy” in their life, whatever that might be.

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Travel is fatal to prejudice

“My brain hurt like a warehouse, it had no room to spare
I had to cram so many things to store everything in there
And all the fat-skinny people, and all the tall-short people
And all the nobody people, and all the somebody people
I never thought I’d need so many people” (David Bowie)

I have a confession to make that might sound strange to some of the people that met me through work: I typically find it hard to strike up a conversation with people I don’t know.  This kind of sucks, because as The Smiths explained so well “Shyness can stop you / From doing all the things in life / You’d like to”.

So while the main, “official” motivation for my trip might have been to visit cities and art museums that had long been on my to-do, spending a month on the road on my own was also a way to challenge myself and get out of my (dis)comfort zone as well.

Luckily, Americans are in general more social than the average European and I feel that as the time on the road passed things became slightly less difficult (or maybe it just gets easier as you go West?). In the end, all the serendipitous encounters, the stories I picked up along the way and the unexpected, random acts of kindness ended up making for some of the best memories from this trip.

Like the 3 friendly guys that started chatting with me at the Radkey concert in Chicago and that quickly made me feel like one of the gang (and kept feeding me beer too 🙂 ).

On the other hand,  I wonder what kind of impression did I make on the girl that was sitting with her friends next to me in a bar in Portland. Did I look particularly sad and lonely as I sat there on my own boringly playing with my phone? Neither she nor her friends spoke to me, so I was quite surprised when the bartender told me – after they had left – that she quietly paid for my Old Fashion too.

In Chicago, I was looking for the closest dry cleaner to get some shirts washed, and Google pointed me to a place 2 blocks away from my hotel. After going around the block twice without finding it, I ended up entering the fancy apartment building and asking the concierge if Google had got it wrong. Turns out, Google was right after all: the building had an in-house dry cleaner which was however also open to external customers. He sent me up to the 9th floor, where the old Greek owner ended up not only doing an excellent (and cheap) job with my shirts, but when I told him I was Italian he also had quite a few good stories to share about his best friend, an Italian immigrant who became a very successful businessman and who had recently passed due to complications after catching a pretty nasty flu.. They had quite a few crazy adventures together in their younger days, often in rough neighbourhoods in old Chicago, occasionally rubbing shoulders with people that may or may not have been mobsters.

While I can’t claim that my ride on the train was as eventful as that of Gene Wilder in “Silver Streak“,  my time on the California Zephyr definitely provided some great material in this department.

Most people ride the California Zephyr for the experience of the trip itself, rather than to simply get to a destination. The humanity that populates the train is so diverse and peculiar, and the combination of being confined in a close space (without showering) for 2 and a half days mixed with the anticipation and the emotion of being all part of an epic journey certainly generates a special sense of camaraderie among the passengers that makes the trip even more enjoyable.

Rich British tourists who have been all over the world share a table with the college graduate on a budget that is travelling West for the first time in his life. A girl who moved from Siberia to Mississippi to study chats with the guy who fell from the roof when he was a child and has been afraid of flying ever since.

I have a great time chatting over lunch with the writer following along on a “mystery trip” to Utah that her best friend has planned, while in the other car Lance, the “redneck from East LA” (as he introduces himself), has cornered yet another of his fellow passengers with his story about the truck he has to pick up in Sacramento because the driver walked out on him. Lance is one of those characters that – unlike me – will talk to anyone anytime, and after a short while he has made friends with pretty much everybody on this train.  The constant chatter can be quite annoying, but when you stop and listen, he does have some pretty amusing stories from his time in the military travelling around the world to his current life on a farm in Wyoming running a freight company.

Wild horses on the hill

He definitely has the Amish guys on their way to pick up their parents in Mexico  under his spell, and they can’t seem to get enough of his stories. He also has the eye of the hunter and easily spots wild horses on the top of the mountain. To me those just look like bushes far away in the distance, but I point the camera in that direction and take a shot anyway… Later on when I look at the picture I zoom in and “I’ll be damned!”, there they are, 4 mustangs on top of that hill.

Another thing that makes the California Zephyr experience memorable is seeing the passion and pride that the staff take in their work and all the effort they put into making sure we enjoy our ride to the maximum. Andre has spent the last 6 years working in the restaurant on this line. He takes me on a private tour of the sleeping cars and it’s great to chat about the differences between trains in the US and in Europe with him. His genuine friendliness is contagious and I love the familiarity with which he yells “Francescoo” every time he passes by my seat in the observation deck, giving me a high five with a big smile on his face.

Sitting up in a corner of the empty observation deck car at night somewhere in the middle of Nebraska I enjoy listening to the conductors sharing their best stories. My favourite is the one about “The Russian”, a man who regularly boards the first available train that passes by (without a ticket). A few days ago he was spotted in Lafayette, Louisiana. Someone else had reported seeing him in Omaha. Before that he had made it all the way to Denver before getting caught and gently asked to get off the train. He sometimes tries to disguise himself or hide, but he has become such a well-known character among the conductors, who think he does it mostly for the kick he gets from “breaking the law”. I can’t help but sensing a hint of affectionate amusement in the way the conductors talk about this modern day freight-hopper, a somewhat welcomed distraction from the monotony of going up and down the Midwestern plains on a train day in and day out.

The vibe on the Coast Starlight is certainly different, a bit weirder and certainly less “social” than on the Zephyr. The only “friendly” type is the “Snoop Doggie Dogg” wannabe, high as a kite and giggling constantly in a very high pitched voice: his friendliness is however mostly reserved for the female passengers on the train, who get to hear over and over again how beautiful they are, and how he’s now getting his life back on track after a few years in jail. He is starting his own business and dreams of a good woman to love. The ladies are not that impressed by all his sweet talk, but he seems harmless enough and I move to the observation deck to see the sunrise over the Cascades.

The table behind me is occupied by a young girl in her 20s who is having a raw onion and ginger root for breakfast. The 60 years old man sleeping next to her turns out to be her husband, as she points out – visibly annoyed by what is obviously a recurring question – to the group of middle-aged women with whom she was previously discussing the benefits of her diet. The ladies for their part are mostly eagerly waiting for the cafe downstairs to open, so that they can start their day in the best way with some cocktails.

I end up sitting between a group of middle-aged men from different parts of the country intent in sharing their respective experiences and opinions on the importance of making one’s kids get a taste of the belt every now and then to keep them from making bad life choices. The most progressive one is strongly against hitting them on the face, as that’s apparently bad for their self-esteem.

At this point, as it is not even 7am and Portland is still 8 hours away I decide that meeting new people is great, but sometimes hiding behind a pair of giant headphones is not such a bad idea after all.

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Waking up in my own bed

I love the deep, dreamless sleep that takes over after the exhaustion and confusion of a long flight. Jetlag is probably just lurking there ready to hit soon, but for now all I have done since I arrived yesterday is sleeping.

My knees hurt and my head feels light and dizzy, which certainly contributes to the surreal sensation of disbelief that hit me as I woke up in my own bed this morning. “Have I really been gone for a month? Or was all that just a dream?”

What from the outset looked like a very long trip (the longest time I have ever been away from home) has flown by so incredibly quickly. I am happy not only to have been crazy enough to hit the road, but even more to have forced myself to keep this online diary.

Trusted travel companions

30 days, 7000 km travelled across America, 5 transit passes and a pair of worn out shoes, 28 posts, 740 pictures, 3 extra kilos mostly around my belly (it could have been worse 🙂 ).

While the travelling itself might be over, there is still so much brewing in my head and a few good stories left to tell, so you can certainly expect a few more posts to pop up here over the coming days.

hanging out with Jothan before my flight

Travelling solo for such a long time can feel lonely and hard at times, so the love and support of the many friends following my steps from all over the world meant a lot to me. I am also extremely grateful for all the good friends that took the time to come out and hang out with me along the road, and it was a great privilege to get to share the last hours of this adventure with my good friend Jothan and his beautiful family.

Sitting on the plane taking me back to Europe,  watching the Columbia river flowing through the Rocky Mountains below felt like a majestic send-off, and an open invitation for more great adventures in the not-so-distant future.

 

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Days 26-28 – Ravens, frogs & salmons in the land of the Musqueam

After my spectacular entrance into Canada, my (sadly way too short) stay in Vancouver brought again the opportunity to see some old friends and to discover something new.

I had not seen my old colleague and friend Karim in a few years, since he left the domain industry and stopped travelling around the world with the rest of the circus.

Catching up with Karim!

Word on the street was that he had opened a cafè on Granville Island, which was easy enough to track down. So on Friday morning I headed down there, ordered a breakfast burrito and patiently started my stakeout. Luckily, I didn’t have to wait long before he showed up. At first he did not notice me, but I quickly snuck up on him and yelled “Surprise!” 🙂

Catching up with Karim was great, and I am happy I also got a chance to meet his lovely family for dinner last night.

With Leona, Robbie and Tony in Yaletown

The stop in Vancouver gave me also the chance to spend some quality eating (sampling some great local fish) with my friends Robbie (who had helped me track down Karim), Leona and Tony, before rounding off the evening with a couple of drinks with Vern (another unplanned meetup courtesy of a well-timed FB check-in 🙂 ).

In terms of sightseeing, my short time in Vancouver has been mostly focused on learning more about the art and culture of the First Nations (which is the name used in Canada to refer to the aboriginal population that originally occupied the area that today includes British Columbia, Washington State and South-East Alaska), something that has fascinated me since my first visit to the Seattle Art Museum a year ago.

The First Nations were all groups with very different languages and traditions, something reflected also in their peculiar artistic styles.  In spite of being subject to a long period of oppression and the attempts of forced assimilation imposed first by the British and then the Canadian Government,  these incredibly rich cultures managed somehow to survive and have been blossoming again in the last few decades.

The Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia is an excellent place to start, with its large collection of totem poles, masks and other artefacts both from older settlements as well as more modern artists like Bill Reid.

My visit here was made even more interesting by the excellent guided tour given by Martin, a volunteer at the museum who moved to Canada from Belfast in the 70s (and still has the occasional hint of an Irish accent 🙂 ).

The tour was a very nice experience and offered a lot of great information on things like the real function of totem poles, which were often placed outside the clan house of the most important village leaders with a function similar to a coat of arms would have had for a European aristocratic family,  and were thus not the objects of worship the first missionaries mistook them for. A big section of the museum is also dedicated to the beautiful ritual masks typical of these areas and their role in supporting the story-telling that is the base of the oral tradition of the aboriginal cultures of these regions.

On the same note, I was very happy to catch (on its last day 🙂 ) an exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery covering the production of an artist called Susan Point. She has developed a very personal style interpreting the traditional motifs and mythological themes of her native Musqueam/Coast Salish aboriginal group, such as the representation of animals like ravens, bears, salmon and frogs and the reference to the number 4 (a magic number associated with the cycles of life, like the seasons or the cardinal points). A recurring element in her production is the round spindle whorl that Coast Salish women traditionally used to weave wool, and that she has reinterpreted also through the use of new, non-traditional materials (such as glass) and more modern patterns.

Another highlight of the Art Gallery was the permanent exhibition covering the works of Emily Carr, one of Canada’s most famous modern artists. Her fascination with the beauty of the coastal forest landscape of the Pacific Northwest reminded me a bit of Georgia O’Keeffe’s obsession with the New Mexican landscape, and just like O’Keeffe she managed to capture the essence of this landscape so vividly and vibrantly in her paintings.

Vancouver has definitely been a great place to visit and a worthy last stop on this journey. From a purely statistical standpoint, I also think it is worth mentioning that this city seems to have the highest percentage of pretty girls of all the places I have visited throughout this month across America 🙂 .

I was just a bit sorry not to have more time also to get out and explore the incredible nature that surrounds it. A quick stroll around Stanley Park and getting a glimpse of the seals swimming so close to the shore right in the middle of the city gave me however a quick taste of how amazing this place can be.

Earlier this week, the Uber driver who was bringing me to the Seaplanes terminal in Seattle (and whose “summer job” is to cook on the fishing boats that sail around Alaska 🙂 ) talked very warmly about the incredible nature of the Pacific Northwest, and I think after my brief experience up here I really feel the urge to come back very soon and head further North into the wild.

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Day 25 – Breaking the rules (again)

So… Remember when I said this was going to be a train trip across America?

While that was certainly the original intention, Amtrak’s stupid timetables have again come in the way like once before, so I had to get creative to make my way from Seattle to Vancouver.

The obvious alternative would have been to take the bus…

Instead I decided to celebrate the last leg of this trip by doing something completely crazy.

I flew.

On a Seaplane.

There are however no seaplanes flying directly from Seattle to Vancouver.

So I went to Victoria (on Vancouver Island) and then connected on to an Helicopter. Makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? 😀

This was my first time on both a seaplane and an helicopter, and thanks also to the amazing weather it made for a day to remember for sure. My only mistake was to sit on the wrong side on both rides (pro tip: if you do the same trip, sit on the left side behind the pilot, the view is better from there 🙂 ).

I must say I enjoyed the ride on the Seaplane best, probably because although this was clearly not Patagonia, we had no storm chasing us and we eventually made it into port safely it still made me think of a book I really loved, Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s “Night flight“.

What added an additional twist of suspense to the the trip was that I had totally missed the fact that Canada now has an ESTA-like system. I applied yesterday morning 2 hours before my flight and kept my fingers crossed… And luckily the confirmation email arrived right as I was checking in for my seaplane ride.

Victoria itself is quite a cute town. Had I planned the trip a bit better I could have probably spent my few hours there going whale-watching, but even strolling around the city and checking out the very impressive exhibit at the Royal British Columbia Museum was very enjoyable. This museum does an incredible job at telling the history of BC, starting from the Native Americans that were here before the Europeans arrived to the first explorations of the area and its colonization and development in the last 200 years.

Fishhook

Another pleasant surprise was the incredible tikka seared Pacific tuna in tomato tamarind masala I had at Fishhook, quite possibly the best meal I have had on this entire trip (so yay once more for the unexpected, unplanned stops of this trip that turned out to be pretty amazing!).

In the evening, once I finally made it to Vancouver (the city), I decided to round off this crazy day at The Shameful Tiki Room.

At first I thought the oddest thing in the room was the couple on a date sitting behind me, with the guy in a full Jack Sparrow costume that immediately made me think of this:

This was however before I started a conversation with the Russian guy who moved here 7 years ago to skip the military service and is now working in an Italian bar (where he is affectionately referred to as “Pippo”), his girlfriend from Sweden who has only been in Vancouver for 3 weeks and their French-Canadian buddy… We definitely outdid Jack Sparrow in terms of being the weirdest group in the bar, and had a lot of fun drinking mystery bowls and shots of Fernet (as far as I remember :D).

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Days 23-24 – A quick stop in Seattle

Seattle is probably one of my favourite cities in the US. The landscape around it is beautiful and the people here seem to have found a great way to mix a relaxed lifestyle with a positive can-do attitude. Not to mention that this is the city that gave birth to some of my favourite bands (IMHO, Seattle Museum of Pop Culture is also way better than the Rock&Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland 😉 ).

As I have already been here last year though, my stop was pretty quick and mostly focused on seeing the friends living in the area before heading up to Canada to spend the last few days of this trip checking out Vancouver.

While a couple of the meetings were planned in advance (like the good fish lunch with a side of Orca spotting with my old colleague and good friend Chris, and the one with James at GoDaddy’s office in Kirkland), I also enjoyed the touch of serendipity that made me cross path with Mariah outside a Starbucks where I sponging off some free wifi, and then later with Jon (who missed me in Washington DC, but somehow managed to catch me in Washington State after all). Jon invited me to hang out in Bellevue with a few other friendly familiar faces from the domain industry, and I had a lovely evening there in spite of all the domain-related talk 😀 .

In between, I also managed to squeeze in a quick visit to the Seattle Art Museum. Sadly, I missed by just one day the exhibition featuring the impressive collection of Paul G. Allen.

The SAM does however still have a very nice permanent collection that make a visit here worthwhile, including quite a few impressive Native American artefacts from the surrounding Pacific Northwest area.

Another of Seattle’s “offspring” with which I have historically had a troubled relationship is Starbucks. While I appreciate their generosity with wifi, I am not a big fan of the hint of “burned carpet” that characterizes their espresso (so I typically just order tea there, which is a lot harder to fuck up 🙂 ).

On my way to town I however stumbled upon their Reserve Roastery and Tasting Room , a gorgeous space which – as it turned out – is clearly the place where they keep the good coffee for themselves. Funny enough, I ended up sitting next to a girl called Heather who works in Starbucks’ social media department, and I had a nice chat with her about coffee culture, touching for instance on the difference in taste between Italy and Sweden, and the positive role played by “hipsters” in spreading good coffee around the world.

In my view one of the big issues with Starbucks is that in order to standardize and offer the same experience and products across the globe they have lost touch with the original goal of “just making good coffee”: often the staff doesn’t really know or care much about quality coffee, as they anyway spend most of their time churning frappuccinos and other weird, barely coffee-based crap. While admitting that that is definitely a challenge for the company, Heather’s also shared her own story to highlight that for those that can see beyond the “simple job at a cafe” and have a genuine interest in the product Starbucks is actually a great place to work: like many other young people she started working in one of Starbucks’ cafes  11 years ago, and had then the opportunity of growing professionally within the company, where she currently manages photography and imagery to share through social media.

While I think I will still steer clear of Starbucks’ espressos, the Roastery was actually and incredibly nice experience (too bad it’s a bit too far to just pop by every now and then…).

 

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An Italian walks into a bar in Portland and strikes up a conversation with the American bartender (in Swedish)…

Tuesday morning, time for yet another train ride and a new city. This time the trip is just over  a couple of hours (edit: they turned into close to 4, thanks to Amtrak’s special sense for time), with a first stop in Tacoma to see my old colleague and friend Chris. In the evening I’ll be arriving in Seattle for a quick visit before heading over the border to Canada and Vancouver.

The last few days in Portland have been very enjoyable, thanks also to some pretty amazing weather. On Saturday night I even had the opportunity to discover yet another very talented musician, Cassandra Jenkins. She has a sweet yet powerful voice that reminded me a bit of Nina Persson from the Cardigans and a great touch on her guitar.  Her own material is really nice, and she also graced us with an amazing cover of Leonard Cohen’s “In My Secret Life”.

The trip to Portland was also particularly interesting as this city is considered sort of the “Hipster Capitol of the World”and  surrounded by a lot of hype, also thanks to the success of the funny sketches of the TV Show “Portlandia” (which however should not be mentioned to the locals, in the same way you don’t mention the “Scottish play” to theatre people or talk about putting ketchup on pasta around Italians 🙂 ).

Under many aspects, Portland reminded me of my own neighbourhood in Malmö, Möllevången (affectionately shortened in ”Möllan”), full of small boutiques and creative people, good craft beers, fresh Hawaiian salads and cold brews, environmentally conscious and socially open, welcoming and inclusive.

In a country like the US built on the principle that the value of a person is directly dependant on one’s ability to fend for oneself and make money, it is not hard to understand how more and more people are feeling the attraction power of Portland’s promise of an alternative, more human lifestyle.

To a certain extent, I have come to see Portland as some sort of an “alter ego” of another great attraction pole of the American West Coast, San Francisco.

Where the Bay Area’s identity is built on its unshakable faith in the power of technology to solve all our problems and its obsession with building more and more ”unicorns” (the nickname used to identify high-growth companies with a market valuation over 1 billion dollars), Portland’s answer is to offer a slower pace and space for self-realization, where people can build small scale activities based on passion and intended to offer sustenance and personal realization rather than to maximize profits and shareholders’ value.

An example I have come across is the Tiny Digs hotel, a quirky, upscale ”trailer park” with themed little huts that felt so ”quintessentially Portland” that I could not not spend a couple of nights here in “The Barn”. Tiny Digs was built by a family that moved from Michigan to Portland specifically to pursue this dream (a similar establishment already existed here, so they knew it would be easier to get the necessary permits).

I have had the pleasure of meeting so many lovely, kind people here in Portland. Like Ben, who climbs trees for a living and dreams of taking his father to see the Sicily of his ancestors, and with whom I shared a table for breakfast the other day. Or like Amy, bartender making amazing drinks at Angel Face, who moved to Portland from Atlanta, Georgia. Amy has a best friend and a godson in Gothenburg and surprised me by pulling out of her hat an almost perfect Swedish spoken in a soft, warm tone of voice and with barely any noticeable accent at all.

While Portland is without doubts a lovely place to live in, the city is quickly becoming a victim of its own success. A constant and massive influx of people moving here from all over the US to enjoy the great surroundings and the relaxed way of life means that nowadays it is hard to find anyone who was born and raised in Portland. Gentrification is clearly accelerating with raising housing prices and living costs, while at the same time the centre of the town sees an increasing number of  homeless people, often suffering from drug addiction and/or mental problems.

The growing ”hipsterism” is filling the city with snobbish wannabes sporting  nose piercing and full arm tattoo that feel more like a uniform than a genuine expression of creativity and individualism, a way to fit in in this ”alternative conformism” in the same way that owning a certain handbag or wearing a certain brand works in many other places. For many critics, this trend is transforming Portland into a sort of “playground for wealthy white kids” with a very skewed perspective on reality. Ironically, the people that seem to be most offended by “Portlandia” are also the ones that are helping turning the fiction into reality.

Better dry than high

Furthermore, where the people in my ”Möllan” can enjoy their relaxed lifestyle knowing that in time of need they can ultimately rely on a functioning social safety net and free public healthcare, Portland seem to have decided that in lack of better options weed is the answer to all problems.

While I personally have no problems with cannabis consumption for recreational purposes, I think that turning it into a “philosophical lifestyle choice” is a bit extreme, and I can’t help but find the hype around it (and the multi-billion dollar business that is growing out of it – pun intended 🙂 ) to be a bit sad. I hope this is just the enthusiasm of the early days of legal marijuana that will soon fade away to leave space for more interesting and relevant issues.

Ultimately, while I certainly enjoyed my time in Portland very much, this is a place that just like San Francisco I end up leaving with mixed feelings. Portland is a great city and I look forward to more occasions to coming back to hang out regularly, but deep down I doubt I’d ever really feel ”at home” here like I do in places like Brussels or Moscow.

Oh, and by the way… In the end I even managed to run into a native right before leaving town: Carl, the Uber driver who took me to the train station 🙂 .

 

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Days 20-22 – Chillin’ in Portland

In exactly 1 week I’ll be sitting on a plane headed back to Europe, and after 3 intense weeks and almost 6400 km travelled across the US I was looking forward to some downtime in Portland to catch my breath, see friends and drink some great beer.

Hanging out with friends

One of the great pleasures of this trip has been to spend time with friends along the way, and Portland certainly delivered in this department too. I am very happy I managed to catch up with my old friend Oliver, whom I had last seen in Lisbon 10 years ago, and hear about all the cool projects he is involved in at the moment.

Another great encounter was with the Cole “brothers”, Tim and Mason (who are not actually related, but share the same last name and hometown and are some of the nicest people I have met in my professional life). While I have been seeing Mason regularly (although sadly always very briefly) at industry events,  Tim does not travel that much anymore so getting to spend time with him was a real treat.

Visiting Portland also gave me the opportunity to catch up with another of the great people that the “domain industry” has brought into my life, Jackie. She is also a very talented artist with a great sensibility, so it was great chatting about my trip with her and share my impressions of the museums I have seen on the way and on the US in general. Jackie was also so kind to bring me along to meet her friends, who were gathering to watch the first episode of the new “Twin Peaks” (in a setup that reminded me of the type of gatherings most typically associated with big sporting events 🙂 ).

Thanks to Jackie I also got to spend some time with Ray, Andrew and their team looking after ICANNWiki and the .design, .wiki and .ink Top-Level Domains (and on whose wifi I am currently sponging off to write this post!).

Art & Nature

Portland’s Art Museum is probably not as impressive as some of the other museums I have visited on the way, but I still enjoyed my time there very much. In particular the exhibition “Constructing Identity” presented several interesting works of African-American artists exploring questions of race and identity.

The Museum has also a small but very interesting section of Native American art, which particularly here in the Pacific Northwest presents some extremely beautiful artifacts.

The highlight of the trip was however the visit to the Japanese Garden, an incredible space that even on a day full of visitors managed to inspire a sense of calm, harmony and peace. Being a person constantly on the move with loads of things to do and see, the magic of the garden was like a gentle but firm hand on my shoulder inviting me to stop for a moment and take some time to sit in a quiet corner in the shade, listening to the water from the nearby pond and just breathing (something I really need to remember to do more often).

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Day 19 – Heading North

Now that I finally got the camera out of the bag, I can post a few shots taken on the Coast Starlight service on my way to Portland. These were taken on Friday early morning on the Cascades as we crossed from Northern California into Oregon.

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The art of riding long-distance trains in the US

It’s interesting how quickly a 17 hours train ride goes when you had a 55-hours long one just a couple of days before 🙂 .

Anyway, the ride on the Coast Starlight from San Francisco (Emeryville) to Portland went quite smoothly, and the view over the forests and lakes of Northern California and Ontario were quite spectacular, with snowy peaks in the distance and quite a lot of different birds flying around in the early hours of the morning (I just realized I don’t have my camera with me… so for the pics you’ll have to wait 🙂 ).

Other than that, the vibe on the Coast Starlight was not as great as on the California Zephyr, probably due to the fact that there were a lot less tourists, and a few more “interesting characters” (but for the people and stories you’ll have to wait for the dedicated post I am working on… There are quite a few “pearls”, I promise!).

In any case, based on my now extensive experience in riding on Amtrak’s lines, I have put together a few quick notes and suggestions I hope will come handy for those considering doing the same trip in the future.

Riding the California Zephyr – a practical guide

If you are only interested in the scenic part and you don’t hate yourself enough to sit on the train for an extra day (and night) looking at farms, then your best option is to travel on the California Zephyr from Denver to Sacramento/San Francisco, or vice-versa.

My coach ticket from Chicago to San Francisco costed USD 170, but prices vary depending on dates and demand.

The seats in coach are pretty roomy with plenty of leg space and they recline quite a lot, so they are reasonably comfortable for a night or two. Just make sure to avoid the first row by the car’s door, as those seats don’t have a footrest, and to bring warm clothes as Amtrak likes its air-con set to “penguin” mode.

While in Europe you would typically get a specific seat assigned to you when you book the ticket, Amtrak only guarantees you will have a seat on the train (i.e. they don’t sell more tickets than they have seats for… so no one gets dragged out in the middle of the night in Omaha 🙂 ), but those are not pre-assigned so you can typically just pick the first available one you find. However, on the Coast Starlight to Portland, the conductor assigned me a specific seat when I boarded, which is kind of annoying particularly if you are travelling alone and you get seated next to a random person while the rest of the car has plenty of empty seats (they say they save them for couples travelling together that board later on, but in my case those all boarded in Portland so I could spread on a double seat the whole night without anyone bothering me 🙂 ).

All of the cars are double-deckers, so when you book your ticket you can choose if you want a seat on the top floor or on the lower level, where also the toilets are located (so I’d pick an upper level seat).

All seats also have a power outlet (but no USB ports. These are  located under the window, which makes them a bit harder to access if you are sitting on the aisle and the window seat is occupied by someone else. The seats don’t have an armrest in between either, so it can be a bit awkward if you end up being seated next to someone you don’t know (or someone really big…). At the same time, if no one is sitting next to you the double-seat is a lot easier to enjoy.

Travelling in style (?)

If you prefer more privacy or have hopes for a more comfortable night sleep, Amtrak does offer a few ”luxury” options, which however look better on the website than in real life.

The conductor gave me a quick tour of the sleeper cars, so I could confirm first hand the disappointment of some of the other passengers at the size and comfort of these options. The 2-bed roomette for instance in reality looks like the berths that sailors on submarines sleep in, with barely any extra space and with not much headroom either, so not a recommended option for those suffering from claustrophobia. The larger ”family” rooms for 4 are not much bigger, but can cost up to a couple of thousand dollars one way.

The major issue if you are travelling alone is however that you cannot just book one bed, you need to reserve the entire room/roomette, which can end up costing quite a lot. The sleeper cars have also a couple of showers (which I heard were pretty ”compact” too), while the coach cars only have regular toilets, although a couple are slightly bigger and include a small ”dressing room”, so you can at least freshen up and change if you want to.

The Coast Starlight also offers a “business class” service. which is only slightly more expensive than coach I did not see it in person, but I think the seats are the same but with added perks like free wifi, a coupon for the cafe and an invitation to a wine tasting (stress on “invitation”… you still need to pay extra for the wine and snacks 🙂 ).

In the end, you are most likely to spend most of your awake time in the car where the observation deck (and the cafe in the lower level) are located. The observation deck has a few chairs and sofas that can be oriented to make it easier to look out through the window. This area can get crowded at times and people are invited to take turns in the chairs, but in my case most of the times there was plenty of seating available for everybody that wanted to be there, and I personally spent most of my time there, moving around between different seats.

The cafe serves drinks, snacks and hot food (microwaved) and it is open most of the time during the day. Prices are not terribly high but selection is limited, so I am happy I had done a bit of shopping before boarding and I could enjoy the fruit, snacks and water I had with me.

A couple of things to keep in mind in this department:

  1. you are not allowed to consume any alcohol not purchased onboard, so it makes little sense to stock up on booze (unless you like living dangerously);
  2. even the longer stops don’t typically last more than 20 minutes, so you won’t have a chance to run and buy something in the stations without seriously risking to be left behind.

During the trip, I would recommend to test at least once the restaurant. The food is OK, but having a proper cooked meal on a train is quite an experience and the prices are not too bad (e.g. USD 25 for the steak). The only catch is that seats are limited, so you need to book in advance, although in my case that was really only enforced for dinner (at lunch, showing up early was enough to at least be put on the wait list and get a seat relatively quickly). The restaurant manager walks around the train taking reservations a couple of hours before the meal, starting with the sleepers and then moving on to coach (he will not take reservations in the observation deck, so you need to be at your assigned seat when he passes by to get one).

The staff will try to fill up all tables, so you’ll end up being randomly seated with other passengers, which offers the opportunity to make some new acquaintances and for some very interesting conversations.

The only issue I encountered with the restaurant is actually quite funny: the restaurant is located above the kitchen, and the two spaces share the same ventilation system. Understandably, the kitchen staff kept putting the air conditioning to the max to cope with the heat of their working station, but that also meant turning the restaurant above into a freezer (so bring a sweater 🙂 ).

All meals are included if you are travelling in a sleeper car, although to be honest even with this ”perk” I still think those options are overpriced.

In general, I enjoyed this experience quite a lot, thanks also to the very friendly and attentive staff, particularly on the California Zephyr. During the most scenic parts of the ride they even had commentary with interesting details and fun facts about the areas we were passing through (all in the typical “American announcer voice” that made the whole thing even more funny).

I think this covers the most important bits, let me know in the comments if you have any additional question!