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.