The big USA

After more than one month here in Los Angeles things are finally calming down so that I can find time to blog. So how have things been here so far. I'm going to go back to the first days here in the big USA.


Well to sum up I have to say that this whole travel experience to the US has been a tremendous cultural shock. We entered the country on the 24th of July, almost without problems. First there was New York, the city that never sleeps. It's really a fantastic city.... that is if you look past all the garbage piling up on the sidewalk, and disregard the stupid "no alcoholic beverages in public" regulations, and of course the incredibly extensive ID checking at bars (wow do I really look younger than 21!?!). Some bars didn't even accept passports as an ID!! Anyways, the city is nontheless so big, so cool, so beatiful, so dirty, so impressive, so full of everything that you're quick to forgive the americanos for their stupid alcoholic regulations.

Daniel's family were extremely nice in offering us an great studio appartment on 16th Street in Chelsea in the middle of Manhattan. This tiny little appartment (22 square meters) had a rent of whopping 1500$, I used to pay 350$ for a bigger studio appartment in good old Amager in Copenhagen, but thats not Manhattan. Daniel invited us also to a family reunion on our second day in New York where we ate an all-american breakfast, that is pancakes with sirup, some more sirup and even more sirup and then a little sugar as well. There we met among others Daniels aunt which offered to rent us a small pool house in Beverly Hills where her sister lived. We were thrilled! Later we however found out that this small 5 bedroom poolhouse was a bit too expensive for our modest budget.


We spent five days walking around Manhattan with Daniel and his girlfriend Susanne gazing at the huge skyscrapers towering over our heads. We checked out the view from the 86th floor of the Empire State building, stared at all the colorful huge flashing billboards on Times Square, ate at cool restaurants, (ethiopian, japanese, NY deli, at orthodox kosher places (in Brooklyn)), checked out the UN building, and finally got lost in the huge Metropolitan museum when the heatwave hit (around 40C and humid). There I even found a nice picture of a close relative of mine, the famous half-ICELANDIC and half-danish Bertel Thorvaldsen, but the brother of his icelandic father was a great great great great great grandfather of mine. Here's a picture of the lad.

Susanne wrote a great blog about the trip Iceland and New York, which can be found here if you're interested. We however traveled only together for the first ten days (24. July - 2. August).

Thanks for now..