Angelika Today I am opening our travel journal again: This time we drove with the "PERL MAN" (our car's license plate) for two hours on Highway 101 North to Ukiah, to the "Vichy Springs Resort." There, you can find a natural healing spring, where warm, carbonated, and mineral-rich water comes from the depths of the earth. This water is safe to drink and also promises various benefits when you bathe in it. It not only helps with stomach ulcers, gout, rheumatism, and arthritis but also soothes sunburn. Burns and skin injuries heal faster. And for those who do not yet suffer from the various ailments described, the soothing water helps to simply relax and unwind. By the way, the place is called "Vichy Springs" because their water is remarkably similar to the French original--showing America's pragmatic nature.

Angelika And here is another story regarding unconventional healing methods. In America, alternative ideas like homeopathy are only slowly gaining acceptance. Doctors still readily prescribe antibiotics for colds. Medications like aspirin are bought in bulk at the supermarket. However, in San Francisco, methods like acupuncture, acupressure, or holistic medicine are quite common. Immigrants from various cultural backgrounds enrich San Francisco not only culinarily. Furthermore, San Francisco has always been known as a melting pot of alternative movements. For enthusiasts of natural medicine, the "Chinatown" neighborhood offers a true treasure trove, as traditional Chinese medicine can be found there at every turn.

Angelika A unique feature of a completely different kind was what we were looking at recently during one of our weekend hikes in the Mount Tamalpais area. The Mount Tamalpais region is about a 45-minute drive north of San Francisco and offers great hikes in hilly landscapes with beautiful views of the ocean. We had known for some time that there is a mountain hut hidden in the forest there, where you can picnic and drink beer on the terrace. Unfortunately, we had not yet managed to find it. However, since I always read all kinds of travel blogs, I found a description in a hiking guide on how to get to the hut. So, one Sunday, we set off. Now, this might not seem like anything special to you. Therefore, it should be noted that the concept of mountain huts has not yet caught on in America. No one here is hiking in mountainous areas, expecting to find a mountain hut at the end of the trail, to satisfy their hunger and thirst.

Angelika Even today, I am not spared from reporting on the American immigration department, with which we are, as is well known, on familiar terms. The press reported recently, that a flight school in Florida received a letter from the Immigration Office last week, regarding the individuals Mohammed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi: The change of their tourist visas to student visas was approved. Just to refresh your memory: The individuals mentioned are two of the terrorists who flew the planes into the World Trade Center in New York six months ago. The press release, which turned out to be true, led to tumultuous conditions.

Angelika Scene change: Recently, I was once again strolling up 24th Street in our neighborhood and ran into a schoolchildren at every street corner selling cookies or chocolate. I never understood what that was all about. But after our neighbor's kids also knocked on our door to sell their chocolate, I got the idea. Those kids aren't trying to help the chocolate industry; no, they are raising money for their school by marking up bars that cost 60 cents, selling them for $2.00, and donating the difference for a good cause. This is called "fundraising" in America.

Michael When watching TV in the USA, the question arises: cable or satellite dish? After AT&T (which owns the cable) aired TV commercials with funny stories suggesting that satellite dish owners are not very bright, we decided to get cable. With cable, you receive about 60 different channels. However, that's so many that the TV Guide, the weekly television magazine in the USA, is as thick as the phone book of a small German town! In the book Understanding USA , I read that the TV Guide, this completely useless magazine, publishes 12.5 million copies every week and earns $1.17 billion a year from advertising! By the way, "Understanding USA" is a very interesting book. For example, it reveals that Florida is mostly home to people over 60, and in South Texas, hardly anyone goes to college. Or that white men over 50 make up about 10% of the population but account for 33% of all suicides. Or that between 1990 and 1998, the costs for attending college in the USA increased by 54.2%, while during the same period, the prices for televisions fell by 52.2%. Or that 30% of all Black males between 20 and 30 years old in the USA have been in prison at some point. Or that 43 million Americans have no health insurance. Or that New Orleans holds the national record with 37% of its population being overweight. But I digress.

Michael Again and again, our newsletter fans keep asking: "How do these absurd newsletter topics come about? Do you hire crazy people to come up with them?" Today, we want to take a look behind the scenes of the newsletter editorial team: Illustration 1 shows Michael during the newsletter production. Of course, alcohol (a mug of red wine on the table) and loud fun-punk music are involved (I'm holding the album "Drop Your Pants and Jacket" by Blink 182 in my hand). Further inspiration comes from the skyline of San Francisco, visible through the open window. If you enlarge the picture, you can see a bright rectangle in the distance, which is the headlights of thousands of cars driving from Oakland over the Bay Bridge into San Francisco. Who would want to live anywhere else!

Michael In addition to learning the language, we also got to know about some cultural peculiarities in the Japanese course. We were surprised to find out that in Japan it is common to directly ask someone about their blood type. Belonging to A, B, O, or AB is somewhat similar in importance to zodiac signs in the Western world.

Michael And finally, this issue's top product: the CD storage units from Discgear, which Angelika once gave me as a gift. Since I am known to prefer starving over living without music, I tend to accumulate quite a few CDs. I always immediately throw away the small plexiglass boxes (so-called jewel cases) in which CDs are sold these days, as they are the most useless invention since the bendable straw. Had I kept all of them so far, my CD collection would be taller than the Bank of America building in San Francisco. Instead, I use the futuristic-looking boxes made by Discgear, which are only about 30 cm wide and can hold 80 CDs (nowadays, there are even ones that hold 100!). A refreshing alternative to the 300-mark-but-only-hold-60-CDs stands from certain yuppie stores. To retrieve a particular CD, there is a slider at the front of the box that you set to a number between 1 and 80. When you then open the lid, the selected CD pops out, and you can easily pick it with your fingers and place it into the CD player. Also, each CD has a small sticker indicating which box and position it belongs to, in case 20 CDs are lying around the apartment again because you were too lazy to put them back in the box, it's easy to find the slots to stash them were they belong.

Michael I have often written that in the USA, it is very important to pay attention to expenses. It is a kind of a national pastime here to always buy goods where they are cheapest, even if it is sometimes a bit inconvenient. For example, supermarkets here continuously send out advertisements with attached "coupons." If you present the coupon in the store, you get the item at the offered price; if you buy it without a coupon, you pay more. You can't imagine how many people actually cut out the coupons from newspaper issues, present them at the supermarket, and then save a dollar when they buy three packs of the advertised product. This is quite normal in the USA, and no one looks at you strangely if you hand over 20 collected coupons at the checkout. Except, of course, if someone has the bad luck that I'm standing further back in line — I’m the one sighing provocatively and rolling my eyes. The coupons have barcodes, and the checkout computers are so smart that when they scan the coupons, they deduct the correct discount from the total bill, even if you only pull them out of your pocket after all has been scanned and hand them to the cashier, or if you exceed the fine-print rule of “only once per household” — the cashier just feeds them to the computer and it does the rest, nice and quick.