Atlantico-Pacifico

Often, we spent just 24 hours at any one place. The rhythm was always the same: arrive at the train station, take a taxi to the hotel, leave bags in the room, catch a bite to eat depending on the time, sleep, write, sightsee, conduct interviews, film, take photographs, pack bags, take a taxi back to the station, depart. Portland, Oregon is the last stop on this lurching traversal of America. And just as well, because one cannot always arrive afresh and be thrilled again by something new. Impressions and experiences mingle and merge over time into a diffuse silhouette of train tracks, skyscrapers, rivers and landscapes, each of which deserves individual and untainted attention. The same goes for all the people who offered information, took time for us, talked to us, showed us kindness and hospitality, wished us well on our way and enriched us with their opinions and experiences. Portland-Portland has turned into a giant canvas of art to which extraordinary, creative people have given their best: Alberto, intrepid cameraman, Gianni, his untiring colleague who worked the nights producing videos, Andrea, expert film director and American citizen, Soledad, charming taskmaster who firmly reined in the exuberance of her creative thoroughbreds, Beppe Severgnini, adored by his fans, respected by diplomats, reviled by his namesake Beppe Grillo, consummate representative of Italian culture to the outside world. Beppe, who can say and do what he wants and yet draws ire from none. Beppe, who charmingly confirms clichés about Italians but transforms them into virtues in the process. Indeed, a unique, unrepeatable experience.
Portland is the ideal final destination if one were to settle down or even spend some time in the city. Like Giovanni, the barkeeper at Hotel Modera who fell in love with a tourist from Portland five years ago, promptly closed down his pub in the heart of Syracuse/Italy and has happily lived here since. The city is smaller than Seattle, located further south so the climate is milder. It is held to be the most liberal city in USA. Nowhere in the world, claim barkeepers, are there so many bars per resident as in Portland, which can boast of two more – proven – records: the world’s largest national park as well as the world’s smallest with all of 452 square inches. The city holds quirky and alternative thinking in great regard; for all its liberalness, Portland is considered a safe and orderly city. I do not have the time to observe it in greater detail. Also to make it easier to say goodbye to “Atlantic-Pacific”, I imagine Portland as the starting point of a future journey along the West Coast in one of the silver Amtrak trains over several thousand miles down to San Francisco and Los Angeles, and then across to Houston and New Orleans, on the trail of David Peter Alan who has been crisscrossing the country all alone for years and knows every single sleeper of the vast American rail network. He longs for nothing more than a woman by his side, but it has to be someone who shares his passion for trains. I cross my fingers for Peter and hope that his tireless quest over countless sleepers, rails and points may finally come to a happy end at some godforsaken station out in the prairie. Waiting there is perhaps the jilted lover of a locomotive driver, perhaps a tired gatekeeper of a railroad crossing or just a lonesome soul who, like him, cannot go to sleep without the rhythm of wheels rolling on uneven rails. Good night Peter!

PS:
I wish the same for Gianni Lovato.
My thanks to all the faithful visitors of this blog for reading my words and appreciating my thoughts.
Thanks also to newfound friends in Portland for the wonderful concluding evening.

It’s time for a recap a day before our journey comes to a close. After traveling nearly 4,000 miles on Amtrak trains, talking to dozens of Americans with the most varied of backgrounds, religions and world views, I get the impression that it is doubtful if Barack Obama will be re-elected. However, a victory for Mitt Romney is not going to make a significant difference to America. The country is far too big, her citizens are much too diverse for even the most powerful man to just get down and turn things around. Among the things that Obama supporters fear is a shift from the current, defensive US foreign policy, something that many Europeans are also apprehensive about. Everyone agrees that the coming months will see a hard-fought election whose outcome will remain uncertain until the end.
Traveling by train was a special experience, not only because one could spend long hours meditating on the sheer expanse of the United Sates preferably in the upper story of the lounge car which offered a fantastic view on both sides of train. One does not have to cover the entire coast to coast stretch by train but some sections are truly recommended e.g. along the Mississippi or across the Rocky Mountains.
Trains not only provide a panoramic view of the landscape but also make it possible to come into close contact with American fellow travelers. They are easily drawn into a conversation, they happily talk about themselves and their country and always come through as positive and future oriented. They are unfailingly polite and are careful to keep things orderly and clean even in the occasionally narrow confines of long-distance trains. The train staff work hard and the restaurant cars give no cause for complaint. Here’s one of the patterns I noticed: the smaller and more remote the places we stopped en route, the sharper our perception of the American society – I’m thinking of the men and women of Rugby, Malta, Spokane, Milwaukee and other places we stopped in. These people are the main protagonists of our three-week adventure. My thanks go to them as they do to my traveling companions Beppe, Alberto, Andrea, Gianni and of course, Soledad. It is thanks to her astute research that I can tell a final story which has enough meat on it for a film, even a happy end.
This is the story of Hanif Collins, who changed his name when he was 17 to “Luck One”, an acronym for “Living Under Communism is Knowing that Oppression is Nearly Everywhere”. Up until then the son of upper middle-class Afro-American parents went to school, learned to play the saxophone, began a career in a youth symphony orchestra – and then he robbed a drug dealer at gunpoint and landed in prison. He spent time first in the youth prison and when he turned 18 he was transferred to the men: killers, robbers, tough guys. He defended himself aggressively and spent one and a half years in solitary. During the time he learned Spanish, read books, thought in beats and rhythms, spoke to himself, invented nuggets of wisdom and experience. Five years later when he was released, Luck One was a rapper. He performed yesterday evening in Neumos, one of Seattle’s numerous music bar venues. He could make it to the international league, says his manager Edward DeSano. Luck One’s Hip Hop is infectious, intelligent, the boy’s got great looks too. And humor. What would he have become if fate had not made him a rapper? Critic of high-end restaurants because you get to eat for free, says Luck One cracking up.
Luck One is now a practicing Muslim and prays five times a day. Ice tea is as far as his drug use goes. He doesn’t think highly of Obama because Obama did not bring about change. But that doesn’t mean that he will vote for Romney. Like many fellow Americans, Luck One thinks elections are “a fake, you know!”
And the way he says it, is again a rhythmic message to his fans. They admire him, for he represents one of those rare cases where a young inmate did not break after long years in prison but matured instead and began a new, successful life on the strength of self-discipline and professional acumen. Portland, where he grew up is for him the most beautiful city in America. Yet another reason for us to end our journey in the city.
I’d like to come back to Seattle to see the debris from the tsunami in Japan which is expected to wash up in the coming months and is already creating headlines in the Seattle Times: “An ocean of concern over tsunamis debris“ – “Plenty of debris expected but not life-threatening”, says the sub-heading ominously. But that’s another story...

Yet another of those coincidences: twice the same address, two different places: Lake Washington Avenue Blvd East 171, Seattle. To the left a row of villas on the waterfront, to the right a small park, a bench beneath a handsome, absolutely straight cedar. The wooden planks of the bench are covered with scratched names and hearts, and always the same four letters: K U R T - a bunch of white lilies on the seat, a few extinguished candles. The bench offers a breathtaking view of the water against the backdrop of snow-capped peaks. This is where Kurt Cobain often sat before he shot himself in his house nearby in April 1994 - or “was shot”, as adherents of the usual conspiracy theories insist. Seattle, a dream for many but visited by few, in the northwestern corner of the USA is a place where creativity thrives, a city which bestows name and fame upon a few, failure and death on others. It was not much different back when the Gold Rush on the Klondike River began and made Seattle into a hub for men and material, amusement. Some hit it rich, others lost whatever they had. Kurt Cobain preferred to be consumed in a fireball rather than suffer slow, miserable death.
Whitney Mongé has none of that all-or-nothing attitude. She’s from Spokane (“Where nothing much really happens“). She is 27, has large, deep brown eyes and an irresistible laugh. One day she leaned out of her window to hear the street musicians perform in front of the first Starbucks coffee shop and said to herself “I can do that too”. She composed a few songs, packed up her guitar, stood in front of Starbucks and made a neat 50 dollars within the hour.
Seattle exudes a very special charm on this wonderful, rain-free day in June. Tourists stand in line in front of the first Starbucks coffee shop which opened its doors in 1971. The street musicians take turns every hour – that way everyone gets to perform and earn some money from donations and CD sales.
Time seems to have stood still in Seattle. Old hippies appear now and then, their hair in long ponytails. Some bear the scars of failed lives in their faces – drugs, withdrawal, even years spent in prison have transformed these one-time upholders of Flower Power ideals into human failures. They try to get by from one day to the next, days full of privation. But Seattle helps them along. The city is considerate, for it draws its sustenance from unconventional people with brilliant ideas who become global success stories: Microsoft, Boeing and Amazon are Seattle’s most important brands. They represent the second Klondike Gold Rush in the brief history of the city.
The cabdriver took us to the wrong address partly due to our fault: we were invited for the evening by the city’s Italian community in Lake Washington Blvd Northeast, virtually the same address as the park where Kurt Cobain’s memorial bench stands, only in Seattle-Bellevue. Diego, whom I got to know at Amazon, has a gorgeous villa on the seaside. The predominantly Italian cuisine is excellent and the guests – again mostly Italian – discuss business and soccer. Fabrizio from Sardinia and Ines from Caserta run an Italian gourmet restaurant in Seattle and are overjoyed to meet the German-Italian visitors. Fabrizio comes up with the memorable line of the evening “If the Italians were to become extinct then the Germans would have to shoot themselves“.
Out in the diaspora in America’s northwest, Fabrizio and I swear, never before has the world seen two nationalities who have tried so hard to become like the other. Never shall such a bond be permitted to break, we pledge, an Italian-American in Seattle, Washington, and a German-Italian from Palermo. What a combination!

To reach the Pacific by train is charmingly unspectacular. No wild cliffs plunging into the frothing ocean, no fleets of busy fishing boats, no lighthouse-topped rocks in raging storm. After the slow descent from rain drenched forests suddenly a clearing, behind it a silvery strip which slowly turns into a mirror and that’s where the unending landmass comes to an end, America comes to a stop at the Pacific. This is not yet the open sea; there are still some islands and peninsulas ahead but the water is salty and one can see the marks left behind by ebb and tide. Then come sailing boats at a pier, a refinery, oil tanks, parking lots, roads, garbage, more and more houses, then a long tunnel from which the silvery train emerges between skyscrapers and slowly comes to a stop. Thousands of miles of virtually empty landscape seem in retrospect like an illusion which vanished into thin air when our train reached it. And behind it unfolds a teeming metropolis with opulent markets, colourful bars and bistros, parking decks, headquarters of banks, global technology giants and retail chains. To me, describing this America made as much sense as describing a photograph of Seattle in the Wikipedia, which everyone can see for themselves with two clicks of the mouse. It was serendipity that led me in the evening to Elliott Bay Book Company, an expansive and welcoming bookstore where Beppe Severgnini was to present his recently published book on Berlusconi to his fans. And that’s where I encountered Vivian Maier as I was ambling between the tall racks - once again, one of those magical events which I simply refuse to call coincidence.
Vivian Maier stands erect, she wears a striped, probably dark grey dress with patch pockets. She has short hair, perhaps medium brown, with a left parting, I’d put her age at mid to end thirties. Of her eyes one sees only the left, for a longish shadow covers exactly half of her face. Again, only her left hand is visible pressing a Rolleiflex with the viewfinder open against her body at navel height. Vivian is probably standing in front of a mirror, for I see her just at the moment when she is taking a self-portrait. I find her again a few pages later, this time actually reflected in a round wall mirror next to a tripod-mounted camera. To her right hangs a laterally inverted clock, it shows ten past five. This is a younger Vivian, a slim figure, looking into the distant horizon, her mouth closed. I search further in the book and suddenly I’m transported to where she stands and can see through her eyes: a boy with an Elvis Presley quiff, arms folded, one hand in a baseball mitt. A small blonde girl with tears in her eyes, putting her hand into her wide-open mouth in between sobs. An old man in overalls, big nose, protruding ears, lower arms criss-crossed with veins, holding a blinding-white cigarette in his left hand. My eyes fall on a vendor dozing in his magazine-plastered kiosk, “Life” scream two copies of the magazine side-by-side below his chin. A woman selling pretzels, an old lady wearing a fur coat and a hairnet who gives me a questioning look in passing. A scrapyard with a discarded pick-up truck. A station on the Loop from where waiting commuters look down at rush-hour traffic. A crippled man asks me for a coin, a beggar cowering on the ground. A man walks by with a newspaper stuck under his arm, of the headline one can see only the word “killer”. These are razor-sharp images of America, as authentic as they were 50 years ago when Vivian began to immortalize her country with her camera.
Vivian was born in 1926 and spent all her life working as a nanny in Chicago’s North Side, barely three strides away from the hotel where we stayed ten days ago. Between 1950 and 1990 she shot over a hundred thousand photographs and did not have a single one of them published because she did not believe she had talent. Her negatives were auctioned when she could no longer pay off her debts in old age. A coincidence (!) brought the box with the treasures to light. A few of her images of America have now been published in a book. “Street Photographer”, reads the text below her self-portrait. I do not put the book back on the rack but take it with me to the cash counter. Vivian died in 2009 but perhaps – just by chance – she may sign it for me one day. After all, her photographs have made her immortal.

Cities like Spokane are not easy on the traveler. The wide downtown streets lined with standard high-rise buildings are deceptive – the city has in fact only 204,000 inhabitants and virtually comes to an end just behind the buildings. There is but a faint trace of the World Expo held here in 1974: a pretty but on the whole unspectacular park around the islet surrounded by the two arms of the Spokane River. It looks almost ridiculous compared with the gigantic scale of the project currently underway in preparation of the Expo in Milan. The only real attraction is the waterfall of the Spokane River as it hurtles through the middle of the city. It’s unclear whether the name is correctly pronounced “Spo-cayne” or “Spo-kahn” – one hears both. In the language of the native Indians the name means “children of the sun”. But the locals seem to have their own notion of the weather, at least going by their attire; shorts, flip-flops and tank tops present a strange contrast to the rain and storm lashing the bare downtown streets with the temperature in the low sixties. People are friendly but unintelligible – they talk fast in a broad accent and swallow so many syllables that one begins to doubt if they’re speaking English in the first place.
Take Glak Glak (30) for example. She’s obviously making an effort to speak clearly for us foreigners but her words pour out in such a rush that listening to her is mildly confusing. Glak Glak, born Tara Dowd, heads the Native Project, a community center with an attached clinic which cares for the native peoples – American Indians for us – of 211 different tribes. Numbering just 8,000, the share of the native peoples in the total population is marginally higher than that of Afro-Americans. Only a third of the native peoples of the region live in reservations located far outside the city, which have proved to be a social and cultural failure. All that’s left are the pathetic remains of the numerous tribes who inhabited America’s northwest 10,000 years before the first European settlers arrived. For a while, the natives and new arrivals lived in peace. Then the Gold Rush began, the native tribes refused to part with their land and soon they were systematically wiped out.
That her brother could never hold back his rage and was just 12 when he landed in prison for the first time, is a consequence of the genocide, says Tara. Above average alcohol abuse and drug addiction rates among Native Americans was the result of a lifestyle forced upon them by white immigrants. Obesity and diabetes were a result of food habits which still do not suit many immigrant Americans, let alone Native Americans who had led a healthy lifestyle and exclusively lived off natural foods. The consequences of injustice had now evolved to become the reason for permanent discrimination. Tara says that her mother, who bears distinct characteristics of her ethnic origins, is shoved aside in supermarkets. Children of “Indians” were treated like goods. Newborns of parents with alcohol problems were forcibly given away for adoption. Her niece faced the same fate but Glak Glak successfully intervened. The nine year old daughter of her brother, now out of prison, and an alcoholic mother lives with Glak Glak. She is now her mother, without any adoption papers, as dictated by the tradition of her tribe. The Inubiaq live in northwest Alaska just below the Arctic Circle. Glak Glak is Tara’s tribal name. She does not know what the name means, she does not know the language of her ancestors and has never been to Alaska because she does not have the money. But one day, she will visit her people with her foster daughter. One day, she is convinced, she will finally come home after generations in diaspora.

The United States of America is a country of variety. Nowhere else will one find such a wide variety of ethnic groups, religious communities, hamburgers and water faucets. The variety in American hamburgers is mainly about size – the bigger they are, the less possible it becomes to eat them. The Boston “Uberburger” is so big that it has to be disassembled into its components, and even these can only be stuffed into normal-sized mouths. As to faucets, they are not only a source of hot and cold water but also of a surprise or two. The most common type will let you adjust water temperature but not water flow. Environment conscious Europeans will find themselves out of their depth – they must stand under a Niagara-like cascade which will prevent any sensible application of shampoo on the scalp. Double-valve faucets will not let you mix hot and cold water – one’s for temperature, the other for the quantity of water. Not an easy puzzle to solve when you’ve just woken up and are still groggy. Yesterday in West Glacier, I struggled to unravel the secrets of a twin faucet. The right as well as the left faucets gave off near boiling water. I dismissed the thought of disinfecting my hands by scalding and washed them in the bathtub instead. The faucet valves in Malta turned in opposite directions in yet another variant to jog the mind. I found no button, handle or valve which I could operate to tease water out of the shower until I discovered that you had to tug at the mouthpiece, whereupon water immediately shot out of the shower – before I had undressed. On Amtrak trains the faucets are operated by depressing a lever or turning a knob upon which the faucet will issue a small trickle which will cease immediately, leaving you standing perplexed with soapy hands.
One may laugh away water faucets as insignificant details on the fringe of a fantastic journey with robust companions whom one has come to appreciate – all the more since Soledad will immediately find an ointment to treat a scald. What is more surprising is that the faucets are as unpredictable as many Americans, the real protagonists of our journey, when we ask them about their political opinions. Here’s a convinced alternative-thinking preacher spouting social justice and rule of law – but wants to vote for Romney. Others gush forth on their political convictions, only to add that they have never voted and will not do so especially this time. Like the water faucets, there are people with blue or red markings (i.e. with Democrat or Republican convictions) but will summarily reject all politicians as parasites interested only in enriching themselves. Many of the frustrated had voted for Obama; these were very normal citizens who hoped for something more than just prosperity four years ago. The global crisis has forced upon them a regimen of thrift for which they now blame the president. His chances to be re-elected appear to be diminishing with every day that our journey approaches its end. Of course, the one has nothing to do with the other.
Today was a day of deep breaths. The Glacier National Park offers as much nature as one could wish for. It has the cleanest air that I have breathed, glaciers, rivers, bears, rain, lakes and amidst all this goodness, Oliver Meister. A native of the Black Forest region in Germany, Oliver lived for a while in Milan then traveled around the world for ten years before he finally took the job as a ranger at the upper entrance of the National Park. This is where he wants to stay because this is the most beautiful spot which he could find. The winters are long and hard, and one needs a great pile of wood and provisions but with enough books, wine and a warm bed, hibernating though winter is absolutely pleasurable, he says. He is much better off than the bears which outnumber humans in these parts. Oliver will probably learn of the outcome of the presidential election only in spring, for he does not have a TV.