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| USA
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| Itinerary: | San Francisco - Fort Lauderdale - Orlando - Washington - New York |
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What a feeling to land in the western world after four months in Asia! And not only the western world but also USA's most interesting city, San Francisco. To us it was a place where we finally understood what was going on around us again. We could talk to the locals without problems, and we could eat junk food with a clear conscience. It's American culture, right? Visiting McDonald's in Bangkok or Beijing would of course be a betrayal to a backpacker's unwritten code: You are to experience the culture in the country you are visiting. Here we could eat BigMacs, Whoppers, and Tacos, and drink Coke, Sprite, and Fanta. We could even soak our throats with a Bud or a Millers (which is of course impossible in Europe for any European with the slightest bit of beer dignity).
After some days of walking uphill and downhill in San Francisco (including of course a couple of hours studying the real beauty of the Golden Gate), we flew to Florida to visit what was left of my life as an exchange student six years earlier. Six years is a lot in America. So much in fact, that all that was left was the beach, the school, and the thousands of old people. Not a single member of my host family, nor any of my friends had stayed in the city of Delray. We decided to drive our rental car north to Orlando to visit the Epcot center. Stuffed to the rim by Disney's world and therefore slightly nauseous, we were looking forward to the great firework final of the evening. Five minuts later we ran back to the car wet to the bone, no fireworks tonight.
The Americans call football soccer. We never planned to land in the US only days before the start of the world's largest sports event, World Cup Soccer-94. But since we did, we would never have forgiven ourselves if we had missed it. Florida didn't have much to offer anyway. The first match was at the RFK stadium, Washington DC. We played Mexico.
It is fun to win. And even more fun when your Mexican neighbours in the stands were so very certain of their own invincibility before the game. At half time they were a bit less self confident. The "NOWAY NORWAY" cries had vanished, leaving a nervous silence. The Mexicans were never really threatening, but the Norwegians just couldn't get the ball in the net. Till five minutes before the end, that is. It was five minutes before the end, and we let out all we had of evil joy. Our neighbours could only look at us in depressed disgust. Despite five heart-stopping final minutes, there was nothing they could do. They had lost. We had won. We were on our way...
Game two was at the Giant stadium in New York. Though meeting Mexico in Washington had been like playing away, meeting Italy in New York was even worse. Maximum ten thousand Norwegians. Atleast forty thousand Italians. And we lost. A bad game. No fun. Our initial group was called the group of death before the games started. Three teams where to qualify for the final play-offs. This was the group where anything could happen. Were we going to make it?
In the third and last of the initial games, we played Ireland, still in New York. Ten thousands Norwegians managed to roar so you could hear it in the Giant Stadium that day. Sixty thousand Irish made the stadium tremble. All we needed was a point. We couldn't loose. In the other game of the group, Italy-Mexico, any result was okay, except if Italy let Mexico win with one goal; 2-1, 3-2, 4-3, etc... Even 1-0 would be alright. You have probably guessed what I want to say, and you can probably imagine how it hurts me to write these lines. The Norwegian team did its job, tieing the Irish 0-0, but Italy didn't. They let Mexico win 2-1. So all the teams had one victory, one tie, and one loss. All the teams had scored as many goals as they had received. But Norway had scored less goals than the others. So the ten thousand left Giant stadium with bowed heads, more silent than the blimps flying over our heads, while the sixty thousand were cheering so even the circling army helicopters were not to be heard.
We pretty quickly swallowed our disappointment since we would have to move on anyway. But the World Cup had more fun to offer.
| Brazil
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| Itinerary: | Caracas (Venezuela) - Manaus - Belem - Natal - Recife - Rio de Janeiro - Parati - Rio |
Manaus is an amazingly ordinary city to be in the middle of the jungle. If it wasn't for the 24 hours bus ride through the rainforest to get there, we wouldn't have any jungle feeling (fever) what so ever. For some non-rational reason the street buses was what stroke me as the most bizarre thing of the city. There just aren't supposed to be street buses in the middle of the jungle. What most people coming to Manaus are impressed by is the Opera House. It was built during the great Amazonian rubber boom, inspireing the German movie maker Werner Herzog to make Fitzcarraldo.
On a boat down the Amazon river. Living in a hammock among 200 Brazilians (of both sexes). Sounds exciting. The thing you would do when your filled to the rim with the lust for adventure. Forget it. A boat down the largest, probably most gently floating, river in the world is something you should do when you are tired, when you have been travelling for a long time, and are mostly thinking of what would be the fastest way home. The four days on the boat down the Amazon river from Manaus to Belem was the best charge-the-batteries experience we could get.
Why? The Brazilians. If you put two hundred Norwegians on a boat of that size, a major social catastrophy would occure within 24 hours, and the piranas of the river would probably have a feast. The Brazilians made it for four days without a negative incident of any kind (oh, except this one guy that vommited in an other's hammock, not popular). It's not that the Brazilians are so much nicer than us. They're just more tolerant. They're just more happy.
Coming up: The North West Coast (the World Cup ends)
If you want to know more about Brazil, this is the perfect spot!
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