Bye, Cincy

 

 As all good things come to an end, the time has now come for me to say goodbye to Cincinnati, the city that has been my home for the past six months. Even being the travel-addict that I am, saying goodbye to places and people that I have come to love is always hard for me. Therefore, the last few days before leaving a place are also the most stressful— not because I have to prepare for my trip or pack my suitcase, but because there are always still so many things that I just HAVE to do before I leave (with so little time). I leave Cincinnati in five days to fly back to Germany, and I have only worked my way through half of the things on my to-do-before-I-leave list. There are still so many restaurants that I haven't tried, so many museums that I haven't had a chance to see, and so many places to visit in and around Cincinnati that I simply won't be able to get to before I take off. On the other hand, I realize just how many wonderful things I have done in Cincinnati in only six months: I have eaten my way through most of the local chili parlors, I have enjoyed many many nights of great live music, I have been to a baseball game for the first time in my life, I have discovered Frisbee golf as my new favorite sport, I have shot a potato gun, I have tried some original Kentucky bourbon, I have learned how to navigate the streets of Cincinnati (and how to avoid the holes in them), I have come to know quite a bit about the city's German heritage, and most importantly, I have met some wonderful and delightful people that will always have a place in my heart, no matter where I go. However, my Cincinnati experience hasn't always been smooth. There have definitely been some bumps in the road. Especially during my first few months here, I had a hard time adjusting to the Midwest lifestyle of Cincinnati. I hated the oppressive heat outside and the freezing air-conditioned rooms inside; I hated the fact that I had to drive everywhere and couldn't just take a bus or walk as I had done for the past five years; and I hated that everybody always seemed to talk about sports and I was the only one who didn't have a clue. I was desperate: “How am I going to make it through the next six months?!” My friends tried to cheer me up: “Give it some time! Cincinnati is a city that grows on you. You'll see!” In the end, they were right! The longer I stayed and the more of the city's hidden charm I discovered, the better it got. Cincinnati not only grew on me, it won my heart. Now, six months later, I wish I didn't have to leave so soon. A friend I met traveling once said to me: “Don't be upset about all the things you didn't manage to do in a place. See them as an opportunity to return.” In this spirit I can only say: Farewell, Cincinnati. Thank you so much for the wonderful time, and don't worry – I'll be back!

Cincinnati's favorite mascot: Pigs

Just Another Fall Afternoon in the Park ...

I am in love love love with the fall here in Cincinnati. The warm weather, the storms, the smell of crisp air, herbs and firewood, but most of all I love how the leaves are changing colors. These are a few pictures I took today walking around in the park - doesn't it look gorgeous?

Conversations with Strangers

One of the best parts about traveling is that you meet strangers that can become friends for life within minutes. Haven't we all made that experience where you just start talking to somebody and before you know it, you exchange emails, phone numbers and you just KNOW that you have met a travel soul mate?
Well, the other side of the coin is when you meet a stranger that thinks you are his long searched for BFF ... and you don't! There was the slightly weird and somehow very creepy guy I met in Maceió, Brazil; the overly talkative miner in Chile (yes, I know ALL the dirty details about his divorce), the very angry Bolivian lady, the farmer boy who developed a huge crush on my boyfriend and and and. My latest encounter with a strange stranger was in a cafe in Cincinnati:

I was sitting at a table, minding my own business when an older gentleman walks up to me. He stops, hesitates for a second or two, as if to find the courage to say something. He looks at me, hat on his head, trench coat and umbrella in one hand, a canvas bag in the other (a little hint for all my fellow German travelers, if a non-German with a canvas bag, or Jutetasche as we call it, starts talking to you: RUN as fast as you can!), and says with a now very convinced tone in his voice: "You are German!" I am shocked and a little creeped out! People have called me many things from French to Jewish, but nobody just walks up to me and just straight up guesses that I am German. At least he spiked my curiosity: "I am! How did you know?" "Oh, that gentleman over there told me!" That gentleman over there turns out to be my boyfriend's dad, and I have a strong feeling that he found the perfect way to re-direct the older gentleman's attention from him to me. In other words: Now I am stuck with him!
It turns out, he used to live in Berlin (which he loved) and he is a composer. Classical music only, mind you! Once I make the mistake to mention the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and their famous ex-conductor Herbert Karajan, he knows he found somebody he can talk to. "Did you go to see the Cincinnati orchestra play two days ago at Music Hall?" - "Oh, I heard they were playing, but I went to see The Breeders." As he is clearly lost, I add: "I guess you could call them a rock band. They were actually playing right outside Music Hall." (And wouldn't play any encores because of the symphony, I am adding silently and a little angry still in my mind!) He clearly doesn't appreciate the fact that I went to see The Breeders. Jazz, he tells me, is still acceptable, but rock music? And before I know it, the conversation goes back to Germany, its great composers, its wonderful orchestras, and the country's impressive musical tradition. From here, we move on to German philosophers, of course. I know the intellectual drill: German music, German philosophy, German literature. German universities. He hates Heidegger (because he was a Nazi), he doesn't hate Wagner though (even though he sympathized with the Nazi ideology) because his music is just so fantastic. I prefer not to ask about Nietzsche. Instead we talk about Hannah Arendt and German movies and jump straight to German universities. Strangely enough, he doesn't know my alma mater (Tübingen) but he is raving about Göttingen and Heidelberg, which is insulting if you have studied in Tübingen. It's like knowing Harvard but not knowing Yale. But before I can protest we have somehow moved on to anthropology and it turns out this gentleman has studied anthropology at Columbia. I will spare you the rest of the nerdy conversation about Claude Levi-Strauss, Malinowski, Margret Mead and Franz Boas and other anthropology pop stars. At this point, I feel that we have covered all the "I want to be nice and polite to this old-fashioned German fan" themes, but of course, this gentleman just has SO much more he wants to talk about! And by now I can see out of the corner of my eye that my boyfriend and his family are signalling vividly at me that they are REALLY ready to leave. About 20 minutes later, the message has reached my conversation partner, and he says good-bye. Not without listing all the important dates for classical music events in town for the next two months. He concludes his speech by saying: "Well, it was nice meeting you. Cincinnati is a horrible town for classical music though, you should go back to Berlin!" And while he is leaving reluctantly, I get the very strong feeling that he probably hasn't talked to a lot of people in the past 20 years...
I have to admit that this particular conversation with this particular stranger was somewhat interesting (sort of, in a very nerdy way), but it did feel a little bit like taking my final oral exam in anthropology all over again.
Meeting strangers on the road is very common if you travel a lot. However, I was reminded that meeting strangers while traveling can be both, a blessing AND a curse. But it sure never ain't boring!

Goodbye, Summer

I just celebrated my first Labor Day weekend, y'all, and with it the last weekend of the summer! I have to say, whoever came up with this holiday was a genius. Where else do you get a long weekend to celebrate the last warm days before the fall? I know, I know, officially we are celebrating the social and economic achievements of the workers and labor unions in the US, which, don't get me wrong, is a great reason to celebrate too. But honestly, it always seemed a little strange to me that the US and Canada set their own date for Labor Day, while the whole world dedicates May 1^st to the workers. I understand that President Cleveland had his reasons, but come on! We all know that the REAL reason behind this date, is to have one last big summer party. People in Cincinnati understand that perfectly by organizing a huge river-fest on Labor Day weekend. Its big highlight: the fireworks! Of course, I had to go and check it out.

It seemed like at least half the city had the same idea. Obviously, this number is a rough guestimate, but judging by the time it took to get into and (especially!!!) out of the parking lot, I am sure it was somewhere close to a bajillion. I have never seen so many cars in Cincinnati before, not to mention the masses of people pouring out of them towards Riverfest. From the parking lot until finally finding a spot to sit down, pretty much everything I remember is tangled up in a ball of people: people strolling around, people looking for food, people looking for each other, people laughing and people yelling, people with mohawks, people with dreadlocks, people in biker gear, people with ties, and even people all a-zombied up. On the one hand: sensory overload, on the other hand: fascinating! I almost forgot that I had come to see the fireworks. Being a little overwhelmed, I took the first free spot that I saw, spread out my blanket, and waited. And there it came, the countdown. Only one more minute until the fireworks (by the way, maybe somebody can tell me why the fireworks start at 9:05 PM, which seems like the most random time in the world to start anything). A final drum roll and the show began: the sky was burning and the river was on fire. There was glitter, there was gold, there were stars and even a waterfall. For 30 minutes I was dazzled by the most impressive pyro show that I have ever seen. What a wonderful way to say goodbye to summer!

In the end, who cares if Americans celebrate Labor Day on the wrong date? If they can throw such a great party, as far as I am concerned, they can celebrate Labor Day any day they want!

Creatures of Labor Day

Majestic view over Newport, Kentucky

Labor Day Weekend sunset over Cincinnati

Let the fireworks begin!

a waterfall made out of fire

To gamble or not to gamble: The Horseshoe Casino in Cincinnati

It is flashy, it is glamorous, and it is Cincinnati's latest attraction: the Horseshoe Casino.

To be honest, I don't like casinos. I usually try to stay as far away from them as possible. Don't get me wrong— I am a passionate player; cards, roulette, Scrabble … you name it, I play it! As long as there is no money involved, I do great. But this changes as soon as I start to play for money; my luck packs its bags, takes a plane and flies far, far away. Therefore, when I first heard about the Horseshoe Casino in Cincinnati, I was determined to avoid it. However, Saturday night, my curiosity got the better of me. Virtually EVERYBODY had been to Horseshoe and was just raving about it. So, under strictly professional purposes of journalistic research I allowed myself to go. And, given my game karma, I decided to set myself a financial limit. But how much should it be? It had to be bold and daring. In the end, I decided to take only one dollar. This dollar would either make me incredibly rich, or … not. Having made this decision, I walked confidently into Horseshoe— only to find myself in awe and somehow blinded by the (roughly) 1,000 chandeliers blinking and flashing and sparkling at me. It took me a while to get used to the brightness, and when I did, I realized that people were bumping into me. Actually, I was bumping into them as I stumbled around, still trying to figure out where I had landed. There was music coming from every direction and there was so much going on around me that I didn't know where to look first: at the man at the black jack table throwing around 100 dollar bills as if they were dirty wash cloths, at the lady at the roulette game gathering heaps and heaps of chips in front of her, or at the girls from the bachelorette party with horns made out of balloons on their heads. In other words, I was in the middle of a wild party where everybody wanted to have a good time and make money. Money. Right! I almost forgot that I was here to see how far a dollar could get you in Cincinnati. So here we go! Uhm … no, I guess we don't go just yet because I don't understand how any of these games work. It is all red, yellow and blue lights, computer screens and quick-as-race-cars croupiers. Everybody but me seemed to know exactly what they were doing. So I decided to try my luck with something simpler, a slot machine called “Lago di Amore”: Lake of Love. However, this machine showed me no love at all. As a matter of fact, there were no slots and I couldn't figure out where to insert my coins. Another 20 minutes went by until I worked up the courage to ask somebody to explain the machine to me. An older gentleman showed me patiently where I could feed the machine my bills (coins were two centuries ago!) and which buttons I had to press. Now I was ready. This was my chance to make it big in Cincinnati. I put my dollar bill into the machine and pressed a button. Two seconds later my balance was 40 cents. I went to the next machine, pressed the button again. 15 cents. This was bad. If I kept loosing at this rate, I'd spend a month's salary in half an hour. Then I remembered my mission: get in, then get out as fast as I could. It was definitely time to get out!

What an experience! And what did I learn from this experience? I learned that one dollar won't get you very far, I learned that it is fashionable to wear balloons in your hair, and I learned that the Horseshoe Casino in Cincinnati is not for the faint of heart.

A German on the loose in Cincinnati: Eating my first Cheese Coney

There were three things people had told me about Cincinnati:

1. They have the best milk shakes in the country
2. It is the city of the flying pigs
3. People in Cincinnati are crazy about a certain type of food called “chili cheese dogs”
   
   
   
   
   

While number one made perfect sense (Ohio is worldwide famous for its milk cows), number two sounded a little bit disturbing (are there pigs dangling from the buildings in Cincinnati? And more importantly, were these pigs alive at one point???). Now, as far as number three on the list goes, everybody was just raving about the “chili cheese dogs”, so I knew a very special delicacy was in store for me. What I didn't know was that this cheesy dog would teach me four important facts about Cincinnati.

The first Cincy fact I was taught when asking about the “chili cheese dog” (with raised eyebrows and rolling eyes), was that people in Cincinnati NEVER EVER call it a “chili cheese dog”. The proper name is “cheese coney”. “Chili cheese dog” is just a name ignorant outatowners gave it, people that have probably never seen a real cheese coney; in other words: people like me.

Cincy fact number two involves rituals around eating a cheese coney. You cannot just go out and eat a cheese coney on the go, as a fast little snack (as I foolishly assumed). Also, it is very bad manners to just eat a cheese coney by yourself. Eating a cheese coney is a social event. You go with your family, with your friends or at least with your dog or – as it was the case with me – you take your uneducated visitors with you to experience the one and only Cincinnati cheese coney.

So here I am, finally, with a hot and fresh cheese coney in front of me. For the first time in my life I get to admire the real deal: a fresh bun with a firm hot dog in it, covered in delicious smelling chili, with a mountain of cheese on top. In my (naive) German mind however, this combination just doesn't make sense. I understand the hot dog by itself and I understand the chili by itself but why (why???) would you ever combine two types of meat? Because, and this is Cincy fact number three— because more meat is more good! Why make do with just one type of meat when you can have two? Makes sense, right?

Now there is only one thing separating me from my very first bite of cheese coney; the hot sauce that goes on top. I grab the bottle and spread a very generous amount on my coney. My friends look at me, trying to warn me – but please! I have lived in South America for the past three years and from jalapeño to rocoto, I have tried just about every hot pepper there is. This sauce will be nothing for me. So I confidently take my first big bite … and I am in flames! My face is turning crimson and I am sure there is steam coming out of my ears. My taste buds are numb. All I can taste is “hot”. So as much as I would like to tell you what I think of the Cheese Coney, unfortunately I have no idea what it tastes like. Which brings me to the fourth and most important Cincy fact: you should always listen to what people in Cincinnati have to tell to you; they know what they are talking about!