back in the u.s.a.

A week after returning from the US, I still find myself too tired to do much more than the truly necessary (one load of laundry consisting entirely of jeans and unmentionables, buying just enough food for 3 days, unpacking only the new clothes I want to wear).  But today, hit by a mixture of industriousness and disgust at my own sloth, I am digging deeper.  Well, I was until I managed to actually unpack all my bags.  But looking at the piles of stuff to put away sent me running for the haven of the living room, where one can read cookbooks and watch Der Untergang in peace.  Cakes, muffins, and Hitler?  What more could on want on a sunny Sunday afternoon?

Three weeks of driving around the East Coast aimlessly stopping at any factory outlet and Target in sight has not made me miss work or Germany in the slightest.  However, I do have to admit that for the first time, the German’s insistence that the US is about 30 years behind the rest of the world is starting to strike a chord.  Listening to his shock and disgust when entering the MTA and knowing it is possibly the best public transport system in the country or looking at the monster trucks that everyone outside of Manhattan and Boston are driving.  Discussions of recycling programs and auto regulations that have been in place for decades in Europe.  I had a conversation with this woman who was saying Europeans are still quite jealous of Americans for having the courage to leave the motherland and making such a successful life over here.  I couldn’t decide whether to laugh out loud or to run from this obviously crazy character.