Posts Tagged ‘tourist’

This sunday was kind of a depressing day over here in the US. I don’t need to explain why. And all I think I should say about it is that I, even after 10 years, feel terribly sorry for what happened and feel with the people who lost their loved ones.

Although today was a sad day, Flo and I decided to have some fun. We drove down to Santa Monica, browsed through the shops, bought a Frozen Yogurt and did something really tourist like. For the first time ever we both went for a ride on the famous Ferris Wheel on the Santa Monica Pier. Sitting up in the air, watching over the beautiful coast of Santa Monica, made me realize (once again) how much I appreciate our life over here. How much I love living here and love Los Angeles. And how thankful I am for being able to live my dreams.

I don’t want to bore you all with that stuff once again, but especially today I felt so blessed for everything I got! If you live in LA or will be here soon, take a ride on the Ferris Wheel, take a few moments to think about how beautiful LA and how beautiful life is and be thankful for it! Living your dreams is one thing, truly appreciating them is something we sometimes forget on the way!

Yes, it is finally official: We are flying to San Francisco in May and will activate our Greencards on May 8. Finding the right flight took us about a week, because it is really hard to find affordable flights, which do not stop over in the US. Why we didn’t want to do this? Because you have to activate the Greencard at your first stop in America. On the internet we read that the activation process can take something between a half and three hours. At the most stop overs you only have like two hours in between your flights, so this was way to risky for us. But we found flights and are very happy with the affordable price. And now that the excitement of finding the right plane is over, I become more and more excited of the journey ahead of us every single minute.

Last time we went to the US the officers at the airport were anything but nice to us. We were very excited back then, because we were visiting our future home country for the first time as a married couple, and we were on our honeymoon, but that didn’t impress the officer a bit. I am very afraid of having an uninterested and bored officer like him again when we land in San Francisco, because that would be kind of scary. I so don’t know what will happen at the airport! The only thing I know is that we have to give them our passports, give them the sealed envelopes, which I by the way would so love to open, and bring our lung scans. But what will happen then? Will those guys ask us questions like they did at the consulate? Will they congrat us on being future US residents? Or will they just be pissed, because we’ll cause them more work than other tourists?

Normally I board a flight and fall asleep just after I finished off the last bite of my meal. But this time I guess I will not close my eyes for a second. And not take my eyes off the mysterious envelopes for a second. Because this mysterious papers contain my future, my dreams and hopefully my luck!

I have never been the person who buys a tourist guide before every holiday and decide on which places I want to visit before I actually step into an airplane. I am not a typical tourist at all I guess, because I am not interested in old buildings, museums or most of the typical sight seeing places. When we went to Florida this year all I had in mind was to decide on wether I could imagine myself to live in America or not. I took close looks at furniture, grocerys and cars instead of the Keys or Miami itself.

I decided to behave different on our next trip to the US and actually see parts of California which I really want to visit. Every time I see something on TV or in a magazine that wouldn’t mess with our route, I make a note to myself. For example I will definitely visit Desperate Housewive’s Wisteria Lane in the Universal Studios, Newport Beach which I know from The O.C. or my aunt and uncle in Utah.

This week we again went to the sneak preview in one of Cologne’s biggest theatres and saw the movie Zombieland. It plays in many different parts of America, but there was one place that kind of melt my heart: A leisure park named Pacific Playland. My brother and me are the biggest rollercoaster fans ever and always wanted to do a road trip to the best rollercoasters in the whole US. After the movie I begged my husband to take me to Pacific Playland next year and imagined myself riding the cool rollercoasters I had seen in the movie.

On the next morning I googled the park to see wether it is near the places we will be staying at in California next year or not. But there were no hits for that park. I did a little research and found out that Pacific Playland actually doesn’t exist and that the scenes were shot at an amusement park in Oregon. I was actually kind of sad to not get to visit that place and realized that it perhaps is a better idea to rather stick to tourist guides than to movies. But I guess I am not exactly in the state of starting to live my new life but still kind of dreaming that dream!