After surviving The Great Hassle at Bardanadaike Airport in Colombo, it was finally time to make the great jump to the New World. 24 hours in transit in addition to the day spend awake and all that waiting at the airport. I just knew I needed to get some sleep on the flights or I’d end up wasting the couple first days just sitting once at the hostel. And where would that be, you ask – San Diego would be my answer to you.

The three fight combination started promising as on the gate the official just told me something along the line “problem. class.” and wrote a new seat number on my ticket. So there I sat in the waiting room, worrying what the hell did she mean by that – had I been promoted to some upper class or had I been put on some waiting list. In the end it turned out that this change had been in my favour and I ended up in the business class compartments, with the fully reclining seat, hot towels, accessories bag, three course meals and all… But I couldn’t help but to feel like I was in a totally wrong place and was all the time worried that I looked like a total idiot (which I probably did because of all the worrying.) That was the most excruciating 5 hours I have ever experienced in a plane to be honest – and all this when it should have been the best flying experience I have had thus far. I mean you could have even had complimentary 20 old single malt scotch if you were into such thing, but nope, I failed to take advantage of any of those things… Never the less, I made it to Hong Kong alive (even though hours spend sleeping until this point were round zero.)

Te transit in Hong Kong was uneventful to say the least, and the flight to LAX was just plain long. Especially as I sat on the window seat and my two neighbours were sleeping most of the time, so stretching my legs or visiting the toilet were challenging. Never the less, nothing extraordinary there either. I did manage to get some sleep though, so I was not a complete drooling idiot at my next check point.

Los Angeles International Airport on the other hand was a completely different thing, and I ended up thanking my luck that i had such a long window for the changing the plane. First and foremost, the whole “ESTA / Visa Waiver program” seemed to be just bullshit, as 90-95% of people entering with ESTA seemed to be put into further inspection anyways – If I would have applied for a visa beforehand and proven all the necessary details then, I doubt that I would have to queue first 20 minutes to the automates, and then another 45 minutes to the immigration counter. Let alone that there were no clear instructions what to do when the automated immigration check fails… And as I already knew to suspect, I ended up dealing with the one and only official in duty that was acting up just like the stereotypical drill sergeant from your run off the mill war movie. Just as I got to the desk, this fella stands up, lets out a loud shout and proceeds to lecture this poor asian dude for using his phone in the queue (which he did against the clear instructions, I admit). Never the less, that was not a good first impression of the officials in that country – but on the other hand it did correspond to the image I had of em before. And the guy did continue to be such a sourpuss even when it came to dealing with me, no greetings and no goodbyes, even though I did both of those things. And as unemployed I ofc had to provide all sorts of documents of my financial status and guarantee several times that I have no desire to work in their almighty country. Sheesh… At the least the customs dude was a jolly and carefree chap, and the customs form was just a formality accompanied by 2-3 questions (ofc I told in detail that I might have some tea and a few cookies with me, I have seen those series about the super strict customs procedures in Aussieland!) and that was it. Even TSA with its archaic machines and methods (I mean, you have to queue after the body scan, and before it, and to passport control, and to ticket control and, and… All at the same check-point.) was just a nuisance after the immigration dude. Even being forced to carry around my big backpack for absolutely no reason was just a minor trouble after all that I had been through. After eating Mah Furst Murican Pizza (tm pending) at some overpriced joint and getting some dough from the ATM, I was finally ready to move to the right terminal for the departure – with no more than the usual time to spend waiting.

The flight to San Diego was really short, and gladly so as I was just about to signal the kids of a Brazilian water polo team that one more kick would mean that they’ll be walking the rest of the trip. I was also rather glad that there were no more immigration or customs formalities to be tackled.

On the first glance San Diego seemed like a big city disguised as a small city. The Gaslamp District and the adjacent business district seemed to be the size of a medium sized Finnish towns center, but not  any bigger. The buildings part from couple streets in the business center were low 2-3 story buildings and the streets were wide enough to fit ten over sized wheel chairs (in other words, they were as wide as half a hand egg field). And that goes with every. fucking. street. there… Everything seemed to be build with those metal beasts in mind… And boy were there many of em, just like in the average depiction of hill billies. And it took like 10 minutes of walking to get away from the center and to the hoods, where houses turned into couple stories high, badly upkept brick and concrete blocks, the kinds of you’d imagine seeing in some slum story.  And every place in that town was dotted with lush, grey fields for the metal monsters to graze on. I also think the fact that they are allowed to move freely on the streets has some side effects as every place smelled like urine, and they seemed to be defecating these unkept, barely moving blobs of hair and cloth to every street corner.

But there was something good about the place as well: There were dozens of pubs, restaurants and the like in each block – and speaking of the blocks, the way the numbering works in the grid system in ‘Murica actually makes a lot sense. E.g. 1100 block of street x contains only houses numbered 1100-1199, and even if the 1100 block would not contain 100 houses, the next numbers on the next block start from 1200. But that ofc works only with a stricktly build and managed grid layout, not with a more organic layout, that we are used to back in Finland. But back to the pubs, one major reason why I did actually make a stop in San Diego was the reason it is known as the craft beer capital of the US. And this did indeed seem to be the case, even your average night club of hod dog joint seemed to offer at the least 20 different taps, mainly filled with local craft beers in addition to the couple big brewery dish waters. After being lazy on a couple evenings I didn’t quite reach my goal of 35-40 different beers tasted, but I think that 27 is not too shabby achievement either. I was actually quite surprised to find out that the craft beer scene did not rotate only around IPA, but there were many, many more beer styles to choose from (not as many as in Europe ofc, but…). The separate craft beers were generally a tad bit expensive, ranging from 7 to 10 dollars a pint, especially as a pint of soap water costs anywhere between 1 and 3 green ones. But then on the other hand, in most beer joints you could always opt for a taster flight of four beers for the price of a single pint.

Even though in the end I didn’t reach even nearly all the goals I had set for my visit, I did enjoy most parts of it, even though based on this visit, the great ‘Murica didn’t seem that great at all, and it sure is going to take a lot more than one orange wig to fix everything that is amiss in the States…