Sin City

A few years too late for me, but I finally made it to Sin City - New Orleans! It's always been a dream of mine to spend a few days in the French Quarter and what can I say, it's a city to my taste. Amsterdam, Hamburg, Bangkok and New Orleans, a series and now finally there for me. Maybe it's better that I live straight edge, it could have been heavy there, I can escalate, as some people know. But let's start again, I haven't written an entry for a while, why? I've been out and about from time to time but too lazy to write, or too tired? Who knows? Gold Coast was nice, but also work and I wanted to save it for another time when it's warmer here again. Yes, really warmer, because it's winter here, so really winter, it gets below 10 degrees at night. It's not the temperature that makes me depressed, the amount of work maybe, but what certainly contributes to my tiredness is that it's only light for a short time. The sun sets at 5 p.m. at 20 degrees, which really irritates me. It really messes up my old biorhythm. So I end up working a lot and eating badly, which means I should go on a diet again, old game, but on the way home is the McDs. So how do I get back to New Orleans? Right, if you work a lot, you work a lot, last week they said you were going to the USA and I didn't think twice and said yes. So leave the team alone, you have to let them do it, at least they tried, but failed, it's always good when the manager is away, then they know what they have in you....and off on the plane. Business class is nice, with stretching out and good food and sleep and so on, excellent on a 14 hour flight, the entertainment program was better. Then I changed planes in San Francisco to Houston, then on to Knoxsville. So I was on the road for 24 hours, took off at 10 am and arrived at 6 pm, crazy. Wait a minute? Why Knoxsville? To pick up a colleague and visit Oak Ridge Laboratories, well at least the museums around it. Right Oak Ridge, uranium enrichment, Oppenheimer, atomic bomb and so on. Exactly the one that was needed to end the war that was already over, at least according to the propaganda on the winning side. It's very interesting and well worth a visit. The rest? Kids, fuck your political correctness, this is the past. The present looks different in Knoxville, the American pulled pork lunch was phenomenal and probably the best meal I had during my time in the US, and I had many good ones, but the hole in the wall was the best, thanks Andrew. Spent the evening in the beer garden, yes a German one, with various colleagues from Andrew. What can I say, almost like home, only the castle walls and the scenery tower disturbed my homesickness. Almost like the Swan Island, greetings to Waiblingen. The German who doesn't drink beer sat in a German beer garden in America and ate what? A sausage, or two, with sauerkraut, what else? A cultural highlight for me, havn't had it dor a long time.

The next day we went via Charlott Carolina, whoooooooooooooooooooooooo Nature Boy, to New Orleans. For me, this meant that I had now circumnavigated the world once, albeit at different times, but once around the world. As soon as we arrived in New Orleans, we went to celebrate, so we went out to eat and what can I say, apart from the fact that I don't drink alcohol, I'm also allergic to fish and seafood. Stupid, but the crocodile doesn't seem to be seafood, it tasted like spices. Then off to Bourbon Street and what can I say, if there's such high-class music playing in the pubs in the afternoon, I'm at home. It was madness to go on a pub crawl at 3 o'clock in the afternoon and wobble from one top-class band to another. Unfortunately, we had to go to a company dinner at 6pm. From then on, there were a few more visits, the following days in Bourbon Street and on the second evening, after another company dinner, I heard the best saxophone and electric guitar duo in the world play. I, against my habit, stayed until the end. What struck me was that the Americans are extremely friendly and not tattooed. Incredible city, extraordinary neighborhood, pearl necklaces-throwing-from-balcony-to-people-pulling-shits-up (it's a tradition, I didn't make it up). I really liked the city, in that sense.