Michael One of my colleagues is a passionate hobby race car driver who lets loose on official race tracks on the weekends. One day, he suggested that I participate in a so-called safety training, where you learn to skid your car without losing control. The training was conducted by the "Golden Gate Chapter" of the "BMW Club of America" on an old airfield just outside the town of Marina near Monterey. Now, I don't drive a BMW, but a 1998 Acura Integra, but you didn't need a BMW to participate. The fun cost about $200 per person, and I thought Angelika would surely enjoy it too, so I signed us both up. However, Angelika preferred to participate with her car, a 2011 Honda Fit, and I had concerns whether my Integra would pass the inspection since the conditions stated "must not leak oil," so I reluctantly agreed.

Angelika Since our car rally started at 8 a.m. and took place 100 miles south of San Francisco, we stayed overnight in the Californian city of Salinas. If you're a fan of the American author John Steinbeck, you might have heard of Salinas. The author was born there in 1902, and many of his works, such as "The Grapes of Wrath," deal with Salinas and the migrant workers who still work in the fields in and around Salinas today. Salinas has only about 150,000 residents but is also called "the salad bowl of the world" because of its agriculture. There are also relatively many illegal immigrants living in Salinas, although there are no exact numbers because illegal immigrants are not exactly keen on making their immigration status public. However, everyone in California knows that people without papers work in the fields. The lettuce would probably be much more expensive if that weren't the case, or it would simply rot in the fields if the illegal labor were to disappear as Trump and his associates wish.

Angelika After years of persuading Michael, I finally got a new bed a year and a half ago ( Rundbrief 12/2016 ), and I thought to myself, that worked out well, now we also need a new sofa. After all, we've had our old one for almost 20 years, and it was getting a bit worn out, and I didn't like the shape as much anymore. So we tried out various sofas in furniture stores and eventually found the right model again at the Canadian furniture store EQ3. The waiting time for the good piece was a solid 6-8 weeks, as the sofa was built for us in Winnipeg, Canada, and upholstered with the fine leather we had chosen. When the delivery company informed us that our sofa was ready for its grand debut in our living room, we started to scramble a bit, wondering where to put the old one.

Angelika That we have been living in San Francisco for over 20 years is also evident in how the skyline of San Francisco has changed over the years. Our apartment offers a great view of the city, and the skyscrapers have steadily increased over the years, so much so that the popular Transamerica Pyramid is almost swallowed up by the new glass towers. The new so-called Salesforce Tower, which opened in May, dominates everything now. Ironically, the company Salesforce didn't even exist 20 years ago when we moved to San Francisco. And now the latest skyscraper is named after the company that has rented most of the offices in the building, and you guessed it, "Salesforce." The skyscraper, at 1070 feet, is not only the tallest building in San Francisco but also the second tallest west of the Mississippi. It now surpasses the Transamerica Pyramid by 216 feet, which had been the tallest building in San Francisco since 1972.

Michael When a new store opens in San Francisco, for example, one that sells ice cream, you usually can't enter it during the first year of operation due to overcrowding. What I call "Internet lemmings" swarm around such stores like moths, and even if the line goes around the block, the millennial fool will still join the end of it. What's an hour wasted in such a meaningless existence as that of a hipster in San Francisco!

Michael Vacationing on Hawaii every year, doesn't that get boring at some point? For us, not really, because even after about 15 trips, we still haven't explored every corner. Although we have now been to each of the seven publicly accessible islands of the archipelago at least once, and in recent years we've only been hanging out on the main island of Oahu, we still haven't explored everything there.

Michael Normal Americans generally lack any interest in soccer. There's too little action on the field, endless back-and-forth in the midfield, and maybe a measly goal in 90 minutes -— it's just not that exciting. During the World Cup in Russia, we, as Germans living abroad, of course watched a whole series of games, but I have to say that I now find the ball kicking and the fuss surrounding the soccer players somewhat ridiculous.

Michael A single-family home in our neighborhood now easily costs around 2 million dollars. However, what many newly wealthy people don't consider when buying a house is that paying off a loan of this amount over 30 years not only requires about $7,000 net per month, but also incurs a lot of additional costs.