Michael Recently, I had to attend the Perl Conference in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania for work. Grumbling, I boarded the plane on Sunday afternoon, which didn't even fly directly to Pittsburgh, but only to Cleveland, Ohio, 60 miles away. From there, a propeller plane (!) took me to Pittsburgh. What century do we live in, anyway?
No matter, after I rented a car at the airport and drove to the hotel, I discovered in my room that the TSA had opened my suitcase for inspection purposes, searched it, and then sealed it with a sticker and a plastic clip. For the Perl conference, I had packed a small toy rocket launcher, whose software I was presenting in a lecture, and the man at the airport's X-ray machine probably had found that a bit suspicious and had pressed the alarm button. Or maybe it was just a coincidence, but in any case, I was standing in the hotel room with a sealed suitcase and couldn't open it. The TSA's plastic clip was about as tough as a ski lift ticket, so it was impossible to remove by hand. Of course, I didn't have a pocket knife with me, because that's prohibited on airplanes. So I went down to the reception, where they handed me a pair of scissors, with which I finally cut open the suitcase lock. Phew. Next time, think a little, TSA, okay!
Pittsburgh is a former steel industry metropolis that, of course, no longer exists in that form. According to a sign at the airport, Pittsburgh is now home to many multi-billion dollar companies, but the downtown area is dead after 9 PM. You can see white Americans quickly darting from their cars into hermetically sealed restaurants, while on the street, only black youths hang around, incredulously staring at people like your humble narrator who walk around fearlessly. It's a strange scene. Yet, the weather in the summer is really pleasant, not too hot, because the city is located right on the Ohio River, and you could comfortably sit in a street cafe until midnight.
South of the Ohio River, there is even a so-called Hofbrauhaus, which the intrepid newsletter reporter naturally had to try out. They brew their own beer there, and the wheat beer I tasted was actually very good. The Jägerschnitzel I ordered turned out to be a breaded (!) schnitzel with mushrooms, which was served on (!) potato salad, although I would have rather called it fried potatoes. But I must say, it tasted excellent.
For musical entertainment, a one-man band was playin on stage, an older gentleman in lederhosen and with a bushy beard, who performed proven hits like "Rosamunde" and "Schützenliesel" on his Yamaha keyboard, including vocals. Ha!
The next day, I wanted to buy a beer at the supermarket to take back to my hotel room, but I was informed that you can't buy beer in supermarkets in the state of Pennsylvania. Well, well, I was familiar with that from the Mormon state of Utah or even Alaska, where you have to buy alcoholic beverages in so-called liquor stores. When I then stopped at a small convenience store that looked like a liquor store and also didn't find any beer in the refrigerated section, I became suspicious and asked the man at the checkout for advice. He was a foreigner who looked like he might be from the Yemen/Syria area. He laughed and said it wasn't that simple here ("We are different here, haha!") and that I would have to go into a bar and order "beer to go."
Kindly, he also gave me directions to the next bar. I found it, entered, and asked the server for beer to go, and was directed to a glass refrigerator placed next to the bar. When I tried to open its door to get the desired beer, it turned out to be locked. However, the barmaid immediately instructed the barman to fetch the key and retrieve my sixpack of beer from the fridge. The beer was packed in an opaque plastic bag, I paid, went to the car, and drove home. Sometimes you just have to wonder ...