Atlanta

October 2-4, 2009, mark a change for me. On these days I have left the area commonly referred to as Chicagoland for the first time since my arrival. This means that until then I had experienced the United States as a piece of land that extends from Lake Michigan to Naperville (a western suburb of Chicago, where I attended a small meeting in May 2009) from East to West, and from O'Hare airport to Chicago's Chinatown from North to South. Rumor has it that there is more to this country ...
This first trip of mine within the U.S. (I am confused: is that a "domestic" trip, despite my being German?) merges two special occasions. First, my friends Heather and Jon have returned home and settled down in Atlanta. And second, the date we chose for our reunion comprises the German national holiday (October 3), which commemorates the reunification of the German Democratic Republic ("East Germany") and the Federal Republic of Germany ("West Germany") in 1990, after the downfall of the Berlin Wall (and the Iron Curtain) about a year before.
By the way, the date of the Reunifcation Day was actually chosen randomly, because the naturaly choice, the first anniversary of the downfall of the Berlin wall on November 9, 1989, was considered inappropriate. Why? Because by some evil coincidence this day also marks the anniversary of the Reichspogromnacht in 1938, a night of excessive violence against Jewish institutions and shops commissioned by the Nazi government. And nobody wants to see inconvincible neo-nazis abusing the German national holiday for remembering the wrong thing. (Yes, history is that complicated back home!) By the way, the pogroms were originally called Reichskristallnacht, but for reasons of political correctness it is now considered inappropriate to use a term like "crystal" for a night of violence.
I seemed to me a good idea to meet my friends on a day that is historically very important for my home country, which had also hosted them for a good two years. Indeed, it continued our tradition of celebrating this day together, because Heather and Jon were in Germany at the two preceeding installments.
While for some reason the celebrations in Berlin were a bit bigger than in Atlanta, we still had a terrific time together. Ultimately, I can only speak for myself, of course, but I am under the impression that Heather is pleased that she could show me so much of her second home. (By another coincidence, she also went to college in Atlanta.)
When I arrived Friday night, Heather picked me up at the airport, which is actually the busiest in the world, because it is the main hub of Delta Airlines. She made an attempt of showing me the skyline by taking the city highway, which was more than successful: traffic in Atlanta is so bad that there is stop-and-go any time of the day and even night! But we hadn't seen each other for a while, and we are both quite chatty, so it did not matter at all. We did make it home, after getting some (local) beer from a grocery store, whose alcohol licence ended at 11:54pm (sic!) that day. Then we continued to chat until 2am, when we finally decided to hit the sack for a bit.
The next morning I also said hi to Jon, who had to grade homework papers of his students (Jon is now a professor) the night before, and usually doesn't stay up late. While Heather was making pancakes (yum yum!) for the three of us, I got the chance to take a picture of Fermi the cat. It is quite funny that he is named after Enrico Fermi, a physics Nobel laureate, because the energetically highest occupied electron states in an atom are called the Fermi edge in his honor, and really this cat is living on the edge, as you can see from the photo! We then watched Heather play pick-up soccer, before going downtown to see the Atlanta Braves vs. the Washington Nationals. The Braves are the local baseball team, who play at Turner Field, which is named after their former owner, (former) media tycoon Ted Turner, and is also the stadium where the Summer Olympics were held in 1996. Mr. Turner had negotiated a deal with the city of Atlanta, that he would pay the lion part of the Olympic Stadium, if the city paid for the tranformation into a baseball stadium. Indeed, the site does not resemble a former Olympic Stadium at all. - After an exciting baseball game, in which the Braves lost in the eleventh inning (the game was tied after nine and ten), we went out for dinner. Keeping the faith to Mr. Turner, we went to Ted's Montana Grill , where I had bison meat for the first time in my life (yum yum again!), and where I also took that photo of Heather and Jon (center left). And eventually we had a few beer on Germany in a nearby bar. Eventually I became as round as the giant Braves ball outside Turner field (top right photo).
Sunday morning marked an early start for Heather, because she is much more devoted to Catholicism than her name suggests. Meanwhile, I managed at least to have a shower. This time we had a Southern breakfast at a local diner. Lesson learned: southern food is rich and plenty! Definitely my cup of (sweet) tea! Then Jon and I had to say goodbye already, because his professional duties were occupying him again. (This workload is one of the reassons why I will refrain from continuing my career in Academia.) But Heather and I went on with sightseeing: we visited the Georgia Aquarium, the biggest aquarium in the world, where we found Nemo (bottom left photo); and we completed our tour at the World of Coca Cola (bottom right photo - I picked a soccer motif). Then we got back to the car, and Heather dropped me off at the airport. I was back home at midnight, completely exhausted, ready for a weekend break. And yet very, very happy!
As I mentioned at the outset of this post, the trip to Atlanta marked a change for me, but October 3, 1990, marked a much bigger change for Germany. You could say that Germany was rebooted - hence the photo of my shoes (I had to take them off for airport security), which are (almost) in German colors.