My two-week absence (and, unfortunately, the server being almost two weeks down) is explained by my trip to America. In general, I went visiting, on vacation. And characteristically, this is my first visit to the United States of North America. Which means you’ll definitely get fresh and unclouded impressions from me.
From the very beginning, literally from the plane, impressions began - good and varied. I’ll note that the flight is 12 hours (to New York) and then another 1.30 (to Chicago). In general, quite a bit of time. And the plane is big, flies high and fast. But still scary. I don’t like planes, although after making two transatlantic flights in 14 days, I somehow got used to them.
Well, it’s a big plane though, this 747. Beast. But takes off very slowly. In my flight simulator it took off much faster, but here it races down the runway with roar and noise, but doesn’t fly. Well, in the end, it took off, but the discrepancy between reality and my virtual experience of lifting a plane cost me nerves, and considerable ones. From in-flight impressions, this is first of all a complete smoking ban. This mockery is called “Clean Sky”. Apparently it means that as we poor souls quit smoking, ecology will immediately fix itself. In general, the theme of violence against smokers, sick people essentially, will be mentioned by me repeatedly. For now I’ll say that for the entire flight, transfer, second flight (about 18 hours total) smoking was categorically forbidden.
The flight surprised with another oddity. During flight all windows must be closed with curtains, and this is relevant both day and night. During landing, on the contrary. And the flight attendants carefully monitor this. No matter how much I thought about the reasons for this mysterious rule, I couldn’t think of anything plausible. Maybe someone knows, so share, don’t let me dry up from curiosity.
Well, we arrived, in NY (during transfer) they passed us through a metal detector and let us go in all 4 directions. And some guy was almost stripped to his underwear, being checked quite thoroughly. The security service is touching - men in years, with a German shepherd and armed with M16. How they’re going to operate with that big rifle in narrow passages. You can’t even go through a door normally with it. Well, they stand seriously, looking at everyone with their eyes.
Well, in the end, we flew to Chicago too. The first oddity that immediately struck me as a driver, wide (even very) lanes, and almost complete absence of European cars. Except for Mercedes and BMWs. But Japanese ones - a dime a dozen. Yes, I expected larger dimensions from American cars, and they turned out to be big but not that big.
In general, we arrived, got there, and started collecting real American impressions…
If you haven’t understood yet what this was - this was an experiment codenamed “back to the past”, a republication of a note from my cozy little blog, almost 10 years aged.
This post was translated from the Russian original with AI assistance and reviewed by a human.