Michael That leaves time for going out again on the weekends! We still don't have a car, but our friend Peter, who lives five blocks away and owns a Voyager minivan, is currently in Germany. The thing is, you can't just leave a car parked on the street in San Francisco for a few weeks: every street is cleaned on a different weekday, at a time indicated by a street sign. If a car is parked on this particular side of the street during cleaning time, the street sweeper simply goes around it--that's not the problem--but unfortunately, it's always accompanied by a ticket officer who mercilessly issues $25 fines! So, at the moment, we have the honor of constantly moving Peter's car, and--as a practical side effect--a means of transportation. Last weekend, we went to the beach at Half Moon Bay, and this weekend to Point Reyes, which was very nice! Unfortunately, Peter's car has a flaw: when stuck in traffic, it starts to emit blue smoke from the exhaust. You should know that Americans place great importance on low emissions, and they have had catalytic converters as standard since before the word was even known in Germany. Smelly cars are dealt with swiftly: anyone who sees one can call a free 1-800 number to "report" the car--the owner then receives a form from the DMV, where they must check whether A) they were not at the specified location at the specified time, so it's obviously a mistake, or B) the car has already been repaired. If you drive through poor neighborhoods like the "Mission" around the corner from us, no one cares, as every car smokes, but if you're in "Tiburon," "Sausalito," or "Palo Alto," where all the suburban snobs live, you get "reports" constantly--Peter alone has already received three. It's becoming noticeable to keep checking option A! That's why, over the weekend, we desperately tried to avoid any traffic jams and drove an extra hundred kilometers just to prevent the car from smoking. Yes, we're now also considering getting our own car!

Michael Recently, I also found out how one gets fired at AOL: My cubicle neighbor Jimmi got a visit from the HR manager at noon, and eventually, he had to pack his things into a box under supervision and take off! Boom! Fired within the hour! Not because of any particular incident, just a small restructuring in the department, and the position was redundant! I was very surprised because I had only heard such stories secondhand. For example, from the American company TRW we used to collaborate with in Germany, where a meeting was called on a Friday afternoon, attended by a number of security personnel who escorted the employees of an entire department to their workstations, had them pack their things, and then led them out of the building. Life is tough! Now, Jimmi at AOL wasn't exactly a star performer -- but believe me, I've seen much bigger slackers in German companies! That's just how it is in America -- hire and fire, but on the other hand, you can get a new job within a few days. But no worries -- Michael, the super-hacker, is currently involved in the company's most important project, soon to be on the internet!

Michael As Angelika already pointed out, I also took a class, after Angelika has been going in and out of Berkeley University as if she were at home there. The course is called "Wines from California and Europe." On Tuesdays from seven to ten in the evening, the teacher first shares interesting facts about winemaking, such as where the individual wine regions are located, until it finally gets down to business and the students taste five different wines. This is done following a strict procedure: first, we determine the color ("straw-gold" or "straw-yellow"?), then the "nose" (white wines usually smell either of tropical fruit or flowers, red wines of black currants, and in both cases, there can be "wood" in the "nose," which means you perceive the barrel wood as an oak wood scent), and finally the components of taste, the body (weight), acid level, texture, and who knows what else. Recently, as part of the "fruity wines of Europe," a German Mosel wine was featured, and when asked about the "nose," a cheeky American exclaimed, "Horrible, liverwurst!" That made everyone laugh a lot. By the way, the most expensive wine that has been featured so far, a French "Sauternes," a delicious dessert wine, cost a whopping 42 dollars, which is 76 marks per bottle! Fortunately, the samples are included in the course fee.

Michael In the meantime, I only work three days a week at the office: Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I get to work from home; "telecommuting" is the big buzzword, which could best be translated as "commuting by phone." This saves me a 30-kilometer commute from San Francisco to San Mateo and is being used by more and more Americans who work on the phone or computer all day anyway. Since we have a second phone line (which costs only $15 a month) and local calls are free here, I can play around on the company's computer via the internet all day and develop my source code. One day, at midnight, the date on www.aol.com was incorrect, so I logged into the super-secure internal network from home and uploaded a corrected webpage. Considering that this page is viewed by more than 10 million people, I was a bit nervous, but you get used to everything. If there's a meeting at the company that I want (or have) to attend, I dial into a conference call via the other line and can chat with several people at once, who are either also at home or working in the office. If you actually sit in a meeting at the company, it's not unusual for voices of people who are not on-site to come from a speaker in the conference table. At home, it all looks like this: I leisurely get up at nine in the morning and initially sit at the computer unwashed -- much to Angelika's delight -- in my old jogging pants. Once the initial part of my daily work is done and everything is running smoothly, I eventually take a leisurely shower and have breakfast. At lunchtime, I get a burrito from the Mexican place on Tuesdays and a salami sandwich and sushi from the supermarket on Thursdays. I casually stroll up 24th Street in shorts, greeting the shop owners who know us well. In the afternoons, I like to take a bath in between ... my dream would be to participate in a meeting from the bathtub someday, but unfortunately, we don't have a cordless phone yet ...

Michael Recently, AOL had its semi-annual "Performance Review," the evaluation that determines whether you get a raise or not. I had to write down what I had done and achieved in the company over the past six months, in a truly American way, of course, meaning no false modesty! Then my boss, Tom, had to review the whole thing, add his comments, and evaluate my performance. I then had to respond to it, and the whole thing went up one hierarchical level to Gregg, Tom's boss (in the company, everyone calls each other by their first name, and even if Steve Case, the boss of AOL, were to drop by, it would simply be "Steve"). I did quite well, but the funny thing about their comments was that the only negative point they mentioned was that I was often a bit blunt and sarcastic in my emails, which is not customary here in America. If something doesn't work, you don't say, "Why the hell isn't this working?" but rather, "Great! Just one little thing: It would be suuu-per if it worked too!" By now, I've become much more moderate; an important American principle is to always highlight the positive aspect of a situation and mention the negative in passing, so as not to discourage people! This is also why schools are sparing with bad grades, and even those who only manage to get a high school diploma already get a graduation cap. Americans would never say, "I can't do it," they would try it in any case, and I do think that's a significant part of the economic success here in Silicon Valley. Especially in the software industry, things sometimes seem endlessly difficult when you tackle them. Oh dear! That's what the guy at Siemens would say and abandon the project, but the developer here happily dives in and casually tries all sorts of things--and eventually, it works out. Not right away, but after all, delivery dates can be postponed.

An important American principle that people in Germany should not hesitate to consider is that holidays falling on a weekend are not simply lost, no, no! When Germans are once again annoyed that May 1st falls on a Sunday, Americans can only laugh about it -- if the American national holiday, July 4th, falls on a Saturday, then Friday is a day off. Hooray! Holidays are, of course, primarily used for shopping -- when else do you really have time? The stores are, of course, open all day and lure people in with super bargain offers -- and they send out flyers leading up to the date until the mailbox is overflowing.

Michael To ceremoniously end the book stress, Angelika had planned two trips for us: First, driving to Napa Valley in a rental car, where we visited some wine producers that were still unknown to us during the day (there aren't many left, as we already know most of them) and checked into a small, cozy hotel with an open fireplace in the room. In the evening, we went to "Terra," one of the best restaurants on this planet: a kind of Californian cuisine with an Asian twist. The salmon marinated in sake (Japanese rice wine) was so good that I almost fell off my chair, and the dessert, strawberries in Sauvignon Blanc, was certainly one of the top three dishes of my life. We added a bottle of wine from the excellent Hess Collection, and although the credit card winced in pain, the evening was truly an experience.

On the second reward trip, we went to the Los Angeles area: not by car, but by the Amtrak train "Starlight Express," which runs from Seattle to San Diego along the west coast of the USA and therefore also passes by Big Sur, south of San Francisco.