As (unlike Esteffen) I did not have a direct flight from Santiago to Auckland but had to transit via LA, I at least took the advantage of having more than 12 hours free time there to visit this city. The first and most important thing here was that English is definitely NOT necessary since everyone understands Spanish and many people speak it even better. So no need to change everything, just continue talking as always (btw, the first ad I saw was about a concert from Ricardo Arjona) Although I did not expect anything, I must admit that I quite enjoyed the city: it is of course much more modern than every town in South-America, has a nice sunny weather during the winter, many green places and palms and is super bike-friendly – there is an incredible amount of persons from every social class who are using racing bikes or stylish fixed single-speed bikes, the streets have large bike paths, buses transport bicycle on ingenious stands and there is a lot of space for the cyclists in the metros.

Thanks to the fast and wide metro infrastructure I was able to visit almost every interesting part of Los Angeles, also because the different sites are not that big such that you have plenty of time to enjoy the places while walking around. First I went to the most superficial area I have ever seen in my life, namely the Hollywood Boulevard. To be honest, the two blocks next to the metro station are very horrible. A few film museums, lots of tourist-trap tours to the houses of some famous VIPs in the Beverly Hills, and MANY fake Jack Sparrows and Darth Vaders trying to get your money for making fancy moves or letting you take a picture of them. But the funny thing is that if you walk only one block more, you are almost alone (at least all cliché tourists are gone) and are feeling to be in a normal nice avenue, except that there are all the red stars from every known musician or actor on the ground.

Next I went to LA Downtown, with an impressive skyline, banks and the “Staples Center”, home of the “Lakers” NBA basketball team. Then I had the probably the most emotional part of my visit: at the nearby “ScienCenter” in the “Expo Garden”, you can see the “Endeavour” space shuttle, which has been transferred to this museum approximately one year ago after the NASA stopped its space shuttle program. Seeing the film where the vehicle transports “Endeavour” through the streets surrounded by millions of spectators is really crazy and you can get lots of additional information about everything that has to do with space travel (for instance the astronauts’ toilet).

My last stop for this day was at Long Beach, apparently a rich and luxurious coast town with a small harbour full of private yachts. Unfortunately I did not have my swimming trunks with me, so I could only put my hands and feet into the Pacific Ocean, which was surprisingly warm. And afterwards, I finally took again the metro back to the airport, where I am now waiting for my flight to Auckland to take off ….

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At the same time, I (Esteffen) had a very contrasting day program. Before my last night in South America, I finally met Alejandra on Facebook, who I knew from her exchange year in Germany during the World Cup 2006. Alejandra had arrived just that day from an intern-ship and some travelling in Chile’s beautiful South. Spontaneously she invited me to her home town about 3 hours south of Santiago. A bit in a hurry, I packed everything, we met at a metro station, caught the last Bus possible and arrived late at night.

Her huge family was extremely friendly to me and with Alejandra I got along just if only 7 days had passed, not 7 years. She lives on a large farm in a rural area, so I got a very different impression from Chile than in the big city of Santiago or the touristy San Pedro de Atacama. We visited a great museum in Santa Cruz, which is sponsored by one of the world’s richest men and deals with nearly everything. The most popular exhibit is known all over the world: It is the tall capsule with which a few years ago 33 mine workers had been rescued after they were trapped in the depth by an earthquake!

Even though I loved the museum, the greatest thing to me was the hospitality of Alejandra, her family and her friends and it was very good to have the opportunity to get an impression of Chiles every day life outside Santiago. Unfortunately we could only spend together one day, but luckily we had at least this time. And hopefully the next meeting is not again 7 years away, may it be in Germany or in Chile