Las Vegas: Like a teenage girl at a Backstreet Boys concert...

I think you can have experienced Las Vegas numerous times, but you'll still stand in front of all the glitter and glamour like a little boy in front of Christmas tree: Everything blinks and screams, there's music everywhere and the ding-ding-ding of the slot machines, the streets are filled with partying people, mostly drunk, all senses are set to overload. Especially your "sweat-sense": As it is July, the temperature when I arrive at 7 p.m. is a smoking 107° Fahrenheit - around 42° Celsius, with an air that's as dry as sauna.
All in all Las Vegas seems like America is flipping the bird at the almighty recession, saying "Haha, screw you, it's not that bad, we can still party, drink and gamble like hell!" However, at night you notice somehting that tells a different story: When everything else is all blazing lights, there's a few dark spots on the Strip, construction sites where nobody seems to be working, nothing seems to be going on, sites where recession has apparently hit after all.
I spent the first few days in Vegas with Brenton and Eli, two guys from Australia that I had met on my trip to Yosemite and the following pub crawl. In Vegas we shared a suite in the "Monte Carlo" casino right in the heart of Las Vegas Boulevard, an amazing luxury after six months of hostels, dorms and camping.
And who would have thought that an Austrian would feel right at home in the middle of Las Vegas of all places?! Because in Vegas they have the Hofbräuhaus: A German brewery that serves typical Bavarian and Austrian food and drinks, and the place where Brenton wanted to celebrate his birthday. Kind of weird to have your typical beer and typical food thousands of miles away from, but at the same time sooooooo good. Unfortunately our little celebration got a bit out of hand, and after several beers, schnaps and a final cocktail at the Circus,Circus not even the hearty German food could save us: At already 5 p.m. all three of us were pissed out of our minds and half passed out on our hotel beds.
The advanced hangover was also the reason for me to be late for the first time ever for a concert. Because that night I was going to the first of quite a number of great concerts that would define my further route. On the menu that night: 80s-Classic-Rock at its best, with funk-rock-gods Extreme and glam-metal-rockers Ratt as the musical protagonists. Sort of the same genre, but two completely different groups and therefore two totally different concerts in one night. Extreme start the night with a kick-ass-show, energy like dynamite on the stage, with the energy of singer Gary Cherone alone you could have blown up half of Vegas. All four of them are great musicians, especially guitarist Nuno Bettencourt, and put on an accordingly great show musically, with medleys, covers, etc., it's basically one hour of brilliant entertainment. Second part of the night: Ratt. To make it short: 80s-Glam-metal of the most boring kind, five people on the stage that combined don't have the energy and musicality of one of the Extreme guys, just playing one song after the other like the record.
My time in Vegas after Eli and Brenton had left was probably the most uncharacteristic (but still fun) Vegas stay you could have: Staying with a mormon family with three small kids (3 months, 8 months and two years old). And even though it was fun having the kiddies around I'm still of the opinion "Kids are great as long as you can hand them back to their mom if necessary!" ;-) How did I get to stay in a situation like that? Cami a.k.a "The Mom" ;-) had studied with me at Utah State University five years ago. Just a cute mormon freshman back then, she's now married with house and kid and dog and everything. And even though that sort of stay wasn't exactly what you would think of when thinking "Las Vegas", it was still very interesting and fun. After hostels, bamboo huts, night ferrys, camping vans and night trains now meet Matthias the adventurous world traveler, sleeping on the guest mattress between diapers, teddy bears and the baby crib. One more experience "on the way"...
Like in LA and San Fracisco I had also previously been to Vegas, so the plan was mainly going to cool concerts (got one more to come), seeing the stuff I hadn't yet and apart from that just chilling and hanging out. One thing I hadn't seen so far was the downtown area of Las Vegas. Mostly kind of doggy compared to the glamorous southern end of the Strip, but with one cool highlight: Freemont Street, where the whole street has roof consisting of the world's biggest plasma TV screen. The second point on my Still-To-Do-In-Vegas-List was the Stratosphere, a casino in the shape of a 1'000 ft high tower. And what do you do on the top of such a tower if you're bored of just looking down on the glittering world of lights below you? Apparently in Vegas the answer is: Go on a roller coaster ride! That's why Stratosphere features the world's highest roller coasters. Yes, plural, there's even more than one: There's "Big Shot", that shoots you to the top of the antenna-like tip of the tower and down again in what feel like three lives but is probably just three tenths of a second; there's "X-Scream", a ride that shoots you over the edge of the platform and lets you fall a couple of feet each time; and finally there's "Insanity - The Ride" (Nomen est omen!): An arm holds a circle of seats over the edge of the platform, then the whole thing starts turning while the seats start moving backwards. By the time the ride has reached "cruising speed" you're pretty much hanging face down in a seat 1'000 ft above the ground - fucking awesome!!! :-))
The final highlight of my week-and-a-bit in Vegas was concert No. 2: I was literally rocking from A to Z that night because the bill in the MGM Grand Garden Arena read ZZ Top and as main act Aerosmith. I hardly knew ZZ Top, but I'll definitely never forget their kick-ass performance. By the time they were finished with their one-hour part of the show, the place was on fire, everybody was on their feet dancing, clapping and singing along, it was just great. Usually a tough act to follow, but not for legends like Aerosmith who grabbed the audience by the balls and didn't let go for the next two hours. Pretty amazing, considering the average age on stage was probably closer to 60 than to 20.
I don't wanna waste your time with the more overly detailed enthusiasm of a fan, just one more story because it was just too good to be true: "We wanna recognise somebody special in the audience tonight, sombeody who's celebrating his birthday tonight... SLASH, COME HERE, YOU MOTHERFUCKER!!!!!", said singer Steven Tyler and here comes former Guns'n Roses/Velvet Revolver guitar hero Slash and rocks with Aerosmith during their song "Mama Kin". That was a scenario I had usually given my left arm for, and accordingly I spent the next couple of minutes in a state of mind that was probably pretty close to that of a teenage girl at a Backstreet Boys-concert. And still there's even some good ones among the 32 pictures I managed to take during these few minutes. I guess that's just Vegas at its best: You're at a concert of one of your favourite bands and suddenly one of you absolute guitar heroes jumps on stage an joins the show. Viva Las Vegas, baby!
After this entertainment-stop the journey continues to the east coast to Washington D.C., Philadelphia and Boston.

Yosemite national park/San Francisco: Karaoke in the garden of Eden

After some days of big town life in Los Angeles and partying at Hermosa Beach my next stop falls into the "Great adventures of nature"-category: Yosemite National Park, the US' oldest national park. Hoping to meet some nice new people I explored it with an organized camping trip instead of just going by myself. Not exactly backpacker-style, I admit, but a lot less strenuous and definitely worth the money.
As it's a camping trip the sleeping part happens in the bus, the tent (for those who brought one) or just outside on a mattress, for those who want to look at the stars while freezing to death. Why freezing to death? Well, the park lies between 2'000 and 12'000 feet, and at that height, even in summer, it's fucking freezing at night, pardon my french ;-)
We start out in San Francisco late at night and therefore arrive at the park the next morning, in a garden of Eden, a little paradise on earth, a... OK, let's cut the crap, before it becomes even more corny. Let's just say it was really beautiful :-) And it definitely reminds the Austrian world traveler that he actually has a equally beautiful landscape at home right in front of his doorstep.
All in all the trip was four great days with great people in the amazing landscape of the Yosemite Park and the Eastern Sierra Nevada. Even though I noticed once more that camping's not really my thing, even less with more than 30 people in the camping bus... Finish and highlight of the trip was the final karaoke night in a small town saloon somewhere on the way back to San Francisco. To cut a long story short: The drinks were cheap and heavily mixed (Best and cheapest Vodka-Red-Bull I've ever had!), the song selection for the karaoke was surprisingly decent, and while one part of the group rocked the stage (with highlights like "YMCA" and "Paradise City") the rest was busy as fans and groupies on the dance floor.


Driven by the Irish part of the group we even continued the partying the next night doing a pub crawl with pretty much the same people in San Francisco. Those girls could drink and party, amazing. To say it with their own words: "We're trying to keep it down, but we can't help it, we're Irish!"
Apart from that first night my stay in San Fran was pretty relaxed. I had already done all the usual tourist stuff during my last two visits, so now I could focus on the really important stuff: Just hanging out ;-) Just looking around the old hippie part of town, wasting time in a nice little cafe or a park, checking out the local "Guitar Center", browsing through record stores for hours (Amoeba Records ROCKS!!), etc. Also I met up with a friend that Lukas and me had first met in Thailand and we all shared the same night ferry to Koh Phangan, definitely a bonding experience. She invited me to stay with her and her boyfriend Jimmy, we discussed travel experiences and future travel plans during several nights of beer and wine and they showed me awesome places around San Francisco off the beaten path.


After a short stop in Hollywood and Venice Beach to visit the local Hard Rock Café I'm now heading into the desert: Las Vegas is calling!

Los Angeles/Hermosa Beach: Independence Day 2009: America - FUCK YEAH!

"Los Angeles is not a city, but just a conglomerate of suburbs." I got this description of LA from a Malaysian roommate at the hostel and I have to say I definitely agree with him (even though he snored like a madman at night). And I actually found out the hard way what it means to get from on of these suburbs (Hollywood) to another (Hermosa Beach). Asking the reception guy at the hostel for the best way to Hermosa Beach, I got the very simple answer "Get yourself a rental car. With public transit you'll need like three hours." Of course, I couldn't get a rental car, so with an all knowing European smile on my lips I walked to the next metro station. Those car-loving Americans, what do they know of public transportation, HA.... So, start in Hollywood: 4.10 p.m., a short walk to the metro station, take the red line to XY, change to the green line, change at XY for the blue line, get off at XY, change to the bus, and boom, you're there, no big deal. However, the clock didn'T agree with me: Arrival at the hostel - 7.15 p.m. Welcome to LA, you redneck!! ;-)
But why did I come here in the first place? Well, Lindsey and Melody, two California natives whom I had met in Thailand, had highly recommended this place for a classic American Independence Day celebration. And it turned out to be a piece of advice as good as gold: The beach was literally at the doorstep of the hostel, the latter filled with party-people from all over the world, bars as far as the eye could see, he whole bar and beach area already decorated in red, white and blue, perfect conditions for a kick-ass Fourth of July.
The actual Independence Day was a whole-day explosion in red, white and blue: Ballons, lights, flags, T-Shirts, painted faces, necklaces, swim shorts, sunglasses, beer cans, bikinis (at least the ones that had enough material to actually make out colours), even some dogs were decorated in the american colours, not to mention the guy in the full-body Stars-and-Stripes suit that I unfortunately couldn't get on camera. Everything was red, white and blue, everything was about stars and stripes. And all the red-white-blue I could muster was a scarf from Cambodia, a country the US 30 years ago had bombed back to the stone ages, what a nice little piece of irony. I spent most of the day lazing around on the beach with a funny bunch of english guys, which I thought had also a bit of irony to it: I was celebrating Independence Day with the people that America back then had wanted to become independent of and that had now returned as beer-drinking, joint-smoking mid-twenty tourists.
As some American friends had already predicted the Fourth of July seems to be mostly a big family thing with BBQ, Bier and not-seen-you-in-ages family members coming together again. And I was lucky enough to also enjoy that part of the tradition, even though of course not with my own family: Some American guys we had went out with the night before had invited me and some guys from the hostel to come join their family BBQ the next day. And so we spent a really nice and fun afternoon with BBQ, beer (or me, as the decadent European, with a bottle of red wine), making music (music seemed to be quite central in their family and there were at least three guitars around - brilliant!) and with beer pong, apparently THE All-American drinking game. Some of you may know it, for the rest: You basically have two teams which both set up a couple of cups of beer on their end of a ping-pong table. Then they take shots at the beer cups of the opposing team and when they manage to throw the ball in one of the cups that cup has to be downed. Quite fun to watch, but in order to also actually get drunk, I stuck to just watching and drinking my red wine. Downing half a cup of American beer every ten minutes really doesn't get you anywhere in terms of getting the party going ;-)
After a week now in America, I noticed that also language abilities were finally catching up with the geography of the journey. And so my English switched from the probably quite pathetic Wannabe-British/Australian/New Zealand-English to the best Yo-Fuck-Duuuuude-Waaazzzzzuuuuuup American English I can offer. "Cheers mate" becomes "Thanks dude", "Tha's brilliant" turns into "Duuude, that's fuckin' awesome", etc. And of course a little fuck, shit and some other occasional swearing extremely help the authenticity of your "Foreigner-English" ;-)

Los Angeles/Hollywood: Stars, a stomach test and a secret highlight

"Michael Jackson, King of Pop, 1958 - 2009". These few words were the center of my stay in Hollywood, they were apparently all that mattered during that time: In-memoriam-MJ-T-Shirts everywhere in all kinds of colours and designs in every window of every shop; Michael Jackson's music coming from every shop, car, bar, restaurant, ghettoblaster, MJ everywhere, here "Billie Jean", there "Beat it", etc. (Which got me thinking: What happens when Celine Dion dies? "My heart will go on" everywhere?!?! Lord help us...); every other meter down the street there's street vendors selling T-Shirts, pins, posters, paintings, just everything that people will pay money for as long as it features Michael Jackson's head, hand or name. And of course his star on the walk of fame is the center of attention, a first memorial (I'm sure an offical one will follow soon) where people pilgrimage to. It is surrounded by barriers so that üoice can controll the masses of people coming there, laying down flower bouquets, selfpainted pictures and posters, ballons, candles, etc. And literally hundreds of people come there to take pictures of the whole scenario and/or to pay their last respect to one of the greatest musicians and entertainers there ever was. Funny enough, even the star of a lesser known Michael Jackson, some other artist with the same name, gets his share of flowers and candles, but also a sheet of paper saying: "You're mourning the wrong star, that would make you a moron! The real one is in front of Mann's Chinese Theater! Do you think the real Michael Jackson would have such a bad location?! - Shawn Younai"
As we're talking about the Walk of Fame all the time, just a few quick facts about it so you can show off at the next dinner party where the topic might come up: The stars of the Walk of Fame can be found along Hollywood Boulevard and the intersecting Vine Street. The epicenter of it all, Hollywood & Vine, is therefore marked on all four corners of the intersection with special stars, conmemorating the crew of Apollo 11 and their achievements as first men on the moon. To get a star, you have to be in the entertainment industry for at least five years, you have to be nominated and you finally also have to pay 25'000 dollars. What a nice way to fill up the communal bank account ;-) There are five categories in which you can be nominated: Movies/TV/Radio/Comedy/Music. You can therefore get more than one star, however, Gene Autry, an american entertainer from the mid 20th century, is so ar the only entertainer that has managed to get a star in all categories. Also, right now it isn't even necessary to be a proper person, a living human being, to get your star on the Walk of Fame: People, Groups, animals, cartoon characters, companies, they all can get their own star. So far Donald Duck's got one, Lassie, the Beatles, Queen (the rock group, not the old woman), Winnie the Poh, Godzilla, the LAPD Hollywood and, haha, even the Walk of Fame itself has a star. And just one last anecdote: All these stars grace the walkways of Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street. All of them but one: Muhammed Ali has his star on a wall inside the foyer of the Kodak Theater because he wouldn't have anybody step on his name. In case you're interested in more about the Walk of Fame, check out http://www.seeing-stars.com/Immortalized/WalkOfFame.shtml.
Unfortunately there won't be any stories about the Universal Studios of Disneyland here. I've seen those before and have neither the time nor the money and actually not even the desire to go their again. However, there is one more theme park in LA I hadn't done before, that I got to cross of my list this time: Six Flags' Magic Mountain, a park consisting entirely of water rides and rollercoasters, each of which could be the highlight of their own theme park. And I can proudly say: I did them all, every single rollercoaster in that park has been conquered by me :-)
Here are but a few samples from that stomach-wrenching day: The "Monster Coaster", as the Flyer called it, "Goliath" starts out with its highlight, a 240 feet free fall with about 80mph in a tunnel that at the time of the fall seems to have about the diameter of a golfball; "Riddler's Revenge" (named after that one bad guy from Batman) is the world's fastest and highest standing roller coaster that flies through a net of turns and twists and loops with what seems like only inches away from tress, the ground and other "obstacles"; In "Tatsu" you literally fly through the track: After getting in and fastening the seat belt the seats are tilted backwards so that you are still sitting, but facing the floor and in that position you race through the track; "Superman - The Escape" shoots you in six seconds from zero to 100 mph, up a ramp and, when the momentum runs out, down again at a similarly wild speed; In my personal favourite "Deja Vu" you have the tracks above you, instead of below you, so when you are pulled up backwards in the beginning, you're starring down a good 90 feet before being shot through the loops and twists and turns of the track until you reach a vertical ramp which they lift you up before shooting you through the whole thing again, but this time backwards; And finally "X2", the ultimate rollercoaster from hell: high drops, loops that seem to have no end, narrow twists, all at full-throttle speed and all, like the flyer had promised, in five dimensions: Because while your whole waggon is going through these obstacles, your individual seat is turning horizontally as well around its centre or sometimes it just starts shaking like mad. Another tough test that my stomach passed with flying colours. On the other hand, it wasn't harder than a lot of the southeast asian and fidjian cuisine ;-)
As the highlight and end of my Hollywood trip I have to mention a sort of insider tipp for rock and guitar fans: 1921 Sunset Boulevard, the Rockwalk! All superstars of rock, guitaristes, and other musicians, literally left their mark here in form of their hand prints: Eddie van Halen, Jimmy Page, Steve Vai, Guns'n Roses, AC/DC, James Brown, Frank Zappa, etc. And those that weren't alive anymore when it openend in 1985, like Randy Rhoads, Marvin Gaye, Elvis or John Lennon, they are remembered on the wall with bronze busts. On top of that, a lot of legendary guitars, photos and stage costumes are on display right behind the handprints. But, best of all, the local "Guitar Center" behind the Rockwalk: Whole towers made out of guitar amps and FX devices, the walls covered in electric guitar, western guitars, spanish guitars, just everything hot and loud with six strings ;-) And in the middle of this temple of guitars I found a special room with the ferraris of guitars, a six-string heaven: Custom Les Pauls, PRS', a doubleneck Gibson SG, various signature-models, etc. Each of them has about the same price tag as a small car, but hey, a crappy used Chevy or a spanking brandnew Gibson Les Paul Custom Supreme Cherry Sunburst? Easiest decision of my life ;-)