Philadelphia & Washington DC

Due to too much fun this post is a little late. After seeing the amish people in Lancaster (who apparently are incredibly rich, thanks to their flourishing furniture business) we head towards Philadelphia where we were welcomed, again by the crazy Singaporean/Chinese/Ethiopean guy Leong. Leong decided to take us out for dinner to Popeye’s (a fast food chain). Here’s the dinner story:

The restaurant is closed but the girl (Lakisha) inside agrees on serving us if we walk to the drive-in. We walk to the drive-in and make our order

Lakisha: ”so what can I get you?”

Me: ”Umm…”

Lakisha: ”Don’t worry I’ll charge you like whatever, we’re about to close”

… I end up ordering 8 pieces of chicken and some sides with it….

Me: How much is that?”

Lakisha: ”Say…$5,39”

We later look in the take-away bag and find that it actually contains a lot more than we ordered. Enough food to feed an army, and all for the silly price of $5! Since we didnt have a place to eat we bought drinks from McDonalds hoping they would let us eat the food from Popeye’s inside their restaurant. Well, they didn’t. We end up having our feast on an empty parking lot together with stray cats and Philly’s skyscraper’s lighting up our ”dinner table”. Thank you Leong.

Popeye's @ Philadelphia

 

 

Washington DC. A city which is portrayed with a high skyline in several movies. The truth: no building is higher than Capitol Hill, meaning zero skyscrapers in the city. During the day the city is quiet, empty and to be honest, boring. Wide streets combined with huge patriotic monuments  and statues makes it resemble cities of the old soviet.

However, when night falls over the city one of the few things that are lit up are those very same monuments and statues. The city shows a completely different side as the soldiers from the Korean war and Iwo Jima monument together with Abraham Lincoln wake up to touch the soul of the nocturnal visitor.

Mr. Lincoln at night time

So if you ever go to DC, visit the monuments during night time and make sure not to confuse Capitol Hill with the White House (like we did). Big thanks to Rolle & Anne-mie and Tara & Nataly for showing us around.

Capitol Hill

White House

-M-

Culture Shock  Volume #2:

-       Legally turning right on a red light

-       Wal-Mart’s selection of bacon

The variety of bacon in Wal-Mart

The variety of political parties in the country

 

Neworlns

 

Nashville let us down bad, so we figured we had to try again, with another famous music city.  We decided to find some locals to show us around, using couchsurfing.com, a website where you can find people to host you. Some even let you stay in their house!

Popular in the axe murderer/rapist demographic

Because there are three of us finding a host proved impossible, but we got a girl to promise to show us around town and booked. Oh, by the way we arrived to the party capital of the south on a Friday, so we had kind of high hopes about the weekend.

We started out walking down Bourbon street, and it was just as gimmicky as Nashville, but with even more drunk people, kind-of-okay jazz covers and strip clubs.

Never forget stupid t-shirts

Everything might have turned really bad (Nashville bad), if Natasha hadn’t taken us under her wings. She showed us great brass bands, crazy bounce-parties, tasty po-boys (and also disgusting ones) and generally just made our few days in the city (apparently pronounced Neworlns).

We found that the area we lived in was kind of a hipster neighborhood, translates into a lot of small weird shows. My personal favorites were a gogol bordello style band called Russian Mafia, and a band night with bands mixing country music and punk rock.

The most important thing we learned in New Orleans: if you’re concerned with the smell of your car, and like to stay clear of fleas, never give a hobo a ride. Even (or especially) if he’s sleeping on the road. A shoutout to Joel the hobo!

And an even bigger one to Natasha! What a great host!

 

-björn

The culture that wasn’t

After a relaxing stay in Knoxville, TN, we headed for Nashville with high expectations raised by the reputation for country music the city has.

Walking along the strip we tried to find us some food, both for the body and the mind (that sounds really cliche, but so were all the bars, so we’re even). It was a lot harder than you’d imagine on a street drenched in small restaurants, all sporting live music. Either the food looked disgusting and overpriced, or the music was tacky and bad. Or both. Mostly both.

Stetson, flannel shirt and boots? How original!

The place we finally chose after getting tired of walking around had burgers and not much else. Just like every other place on the strip. The musician had a nice voice (or actually, can you tell with country music?), but he completely phoned in the show.

I’m a guy that absolutely adores live music, but this show, and the others we saw on the strip were plain soulless. It was obvious that the musicians didn’t want to be there, at least not playing crappy covers of songs everybody’s already tired of. Everybody except drunk tourists dressed in novelty t-shirts.

So true, wise t-shirt, so true

The highlight of our evening was the coyote ugly bar. It was recommended to us. “Just like the movie”, they said. “It’s the original crazy-party”, they said.

Pictured: Un-original crazy party

It was fat people sitting on the side while other fat people drank $20 watered down body shots from each other, while the totally uncharismatic hostess tried to work the non-existing crowd. Everybody seemed uncomfortable with the setting. Everybody, except for me. I loved the creepy vibe (but in a cool ironic way, mind you)! Can’t see how the place stays in business, though.

All in all, next time I make this trip, I’ll gladly skip Nashville.

The only picture we have of us in this crappy city

-bjorn

Heidelberg St. Detroit

Driving through Detroit it seemed obvious that the city is in some financial trouble. Apparently there are no grocery stores in downtown Detroit, but every street had an abandoned house or factory; one waiter advised us to “drive fast and with the doors locked”. Detroit is what is called a “shrinking city”, and has been for some time now. The decline of the American car industry has caused widespread unemployment, forcing many to move away leaving abandoned houses and scores of homeless with nowhere to go.

Apparently this is someone's house

In 1986 the neighborhood around Heidelberg Street was one of the worst in Detroit – a place where people were afraid to walk even in daytime. Artist Tyree Guyton decided to do something about it. By turning the houses into artworks, his objective was to make the neighborhood more hospitable – a place the inhabitants could feel proud of. Perhaps surprisingly, this also succeeded in making it safer. The city has attempted to demolish the Heidelberg project houses a number of times, but today they stand as an example of how beautiful public spaces can make a difference.

Views on Heidelberg St.

Today the project’s been expanded with works by other artists, including glass artist Lisa Marie Rodriguez and Tim Burke who lives in one of his own brightly painted houses. There were quite a few hipster kids walking about, taking pictures. As we exited Christine and got our own cameras out, two guys in a pickup truck pulled up and asked – with obvious pride – what we thought of the neighborhood. However, most of the locals preferred to watch us from their porches with something resembling apprehension.

Heidelberg Street was a bright spot in the otherwise gloomy city of Detroit. Seeing those explosions of color completely changes the mood of the otherwise dilapidated streets. But it’s not all rainbows and sunshine. The playful and cheery visuals are accompanied by stark political commentary, and in that context the cheerfulness often veers over to the creepy. One cardboard cutout of a politician holds a sign saying, “Who would Jesus kill?” Another work states frankly “the war on drugs continues to be a war on the poor”. I imagine – as an outsider of course – that it feels empowering to have these things confirmed where you live.

Despite all my positive impressions, I felt relieved to leave before sunset. But with some nice Motown blaring from the car speakers, Detroit looked like a beautiful city.

Chicago

We arrived in Chicago late at night, and because of the 4th of July festivals the hotels were full. Luckily, thanks to our local contact, Megan (couchsurfing.org) we found a place to sleep. Chicago is actually a really nice city. It has architecture looking like Gotham City, a huge beach where you can be seen jogging with your shirt off and six-pack showing (providing you have one) and a Zoo in Lincoln Park.

Beach and skyline. No six packs. Sorry.

The park was nice all around, but the Zoo made it even better. One of the major perks was that it was free. I know I’m sounding like a (choose your favorite ethnic stereotype about cheap people, e.g. Scotsmen or Jews) but I’ll explain.

Or people from Laihia. Fuck people from Laihia.

Usually when you go to zoos and museums sporting entrance fees you’re really concerned with seeing EVERYTHING! Just because you paid for it. But a free zoo is different. If your kid starts acting up at a free zoo you can just go home and come back the next day.

We started randomly talking to a local couple on the street, and they decided to show us around the great ape section. The people here are so friendly!  The only downside with it being free was that we didn’t think to take pictures. Oh, and about the funding for the zoo; one-third comes from the city, one-third from private donations and one-third from commerce in the park. A pretty sweet deal!

Our local guides in the ape house

On the 4^th of July Megan invited us to a backyard bbq with her friends. The atmosphere was nice, with burgers and hot dogs, cupcakes and a trip to the most important local work of art.

For those of you who didn't guess the obvious correct answer, it was a shit fountain

The Chicago natives had planned to put on a stupid American act for us, complete with flag clothing and asking where in the states Finland is. Kind of unfortunately they didn’t, instead they were intelligent, nice and friendly. What a disappointment!

They did have red white n' blue cupcakes

Which we attacked fiercly

Before leaving we also tried out the Chicago style deep dish pizza. Filled with cheese and sausage it was a tough contender for best pizza of the trip. Still, New York won this by a unanimous 3-0 by our set of judges.

Pizza, nomnomnom

 

-bjorn

Carbon Country Crisis

After the hectic city life in New York we wanted to get away from all the people. And what better way to do that than to try to find the town that inspired the Silent Hill games and movie. So we headed of to Centralia, PA, a couple of hours away from NYC. The story about Silent Hi… uhm, Centralia is that it was once a thriving community.

In all fairness, confusing the two is not that hard...

It had a coal mine, and the town was built around that. In the sixties the coal in the mine caught on fire, and the mountain started spitting out dangerous smoke, and the roads cracked. Some moved away, a few stayed. The population dropped from over 1000 to 10.  The houses were claimed eminent domain but some refused to move.

Can't see why anybody would like to leave this place. The toxic smoke just fills your heart with joy. Or disease. Either way.

We came in to Centralia late Thursday night, but we couldn’t find the exact spot before dark so we stayed a night in a motel in Frackville. We also had dinner there, and it was fun how much of a cliche horror movie our waitress Diane sounded like.

Later, we defeat the devil

Centralia was such a nice town. But there’s almost no-one left there now…

It’s pretty safe to go up there, I haven’t heard about anyone falling through, or getting burned or anything.

This sweet old lady scared the shit out of us

So the next day we set our sights on finding Centralia, and after a while we did. There was weird-smelling smoke coming out of the ground, and after a bit of hassle we also found an abandoned piece of motorway.

The best kind of motorway, the kind you can sit inside

It was apparent that the former four-lane motorway now was a place teenagers go drink and tag the highway. It’s kind of depressing that a once well of town was abandoned.

In totally unrelated news, next town: Detroit.

Spoiler alert! The city is kind of a shithole

-bjorn

For more pictures of  Centralia, see the gallery

New York

After an 8 hour flight we reached JFK airport only to hear that no cabs were driving because of a pride parade on manhattan (Gaaayy).  We managed to get a cab anyway and found our artsy hostel on manhattans lower east side.

We quickly learned that New York is the city where you are always wrong and often very stupid. Here’s a couple of examples:

In our hostel when looking for a city map:

Me: “Excuse me, do you have a map of the city?”

Manager : “No, if I had, I would have put it there!” (points at the counter in front of me and looks at me like I’m retarded)

In Radio Shack store, when we were looking for a GPS:

Me: “Excuse me, could you help us? What are the differences between all these GPS’s…?”

Clerk: “Well if you just read the small text right there!” (Looks at us like we’re a bunch of imbeciles)

On the subway station, when purchasing a reloadable metro card:

Björn: “Excuse me, does the metro card in itself cost anything?”

Schmucky train lady: “Well, if you wanna ride the train you have to pay!” (Looks at Björn like he is the biggest douche in the universe)

These examples don’t even do justice to the situations as it’s so often how you say it, not what you say, that counts.

Having said that, the rest of our experiences in Big Apple were amazing.:

Gubben i lådan…

Crazy Chinese man

Judah Friedlander @ Comedy Cellar

Monkey man blocking the traffic (Wait for the video)

Fancypants hipster store

Not-so-fancypants not-so-hipster store

NYC style pizza

NYC Crime Report podcast taping @ The Creek & The Cave

THIS IS AMATEUR NIGHT!

Dollars, homeless people, rooftop bars, strip-clubs, stand-up comedy, amateur-theater show, bagels, pizza and hot dogs. As a conclusion, the 4 days spend in New York, couldn’t have offered a better start for our 45-day-long road trip.

-M-

Culture shock volume #1:

- Tipping , even though the service was lousy

- Saying “how are you”, even though you couldn’t care less about the answer

Welcome to our blog!

Welcome to our blog!

 

Finally we have time to update our blog! First a bit of information about the blog itself. We’ll update when we feel like we have something interesting to say. PICTURES and the TWITTER FEED (located on the right hand side) will hopefully be updated just about every time we find WiFi. We’ll also be posting VIDEOS, which can be seen on the right hand side. RSS users, notice the button on the bottom of the page. We’ve also got two MAPS, one with the planned route, and one with the route we’ve driven so far. If you have any questions or suggestions, just post it in the comments section. We also have a TO-DO list, where we happily consider every suggestion posted. The best and the worst suggestion will get a reward of undisclosed kind. We’ll also add a poll to the blogposts, get your voice heard! Vote or die!