I love Hong Kong!

Sitting down at the harbour on my last evening after a week spent in this city I have to admit: I really came to love Hong Kong. I spent 10 minutes in the gallery, and most of the rest of my days here roaming the city - just the way it should be. The scenery is awesome - it's a lot like New York, just bigger, with mountains and lots of Chinese people in the streets ;-)

I especially loved wandering through Mong Kok - according to Wikipedia and Guiness the world's most densely populated area. Whereever I'd turn my head there was something interesting to see - people, shops, signs, all kinds of market streets. I hadn't been to Asia in 5 years, and I realized I really missed the vibrancy and energy. I'll write about different aspects of my week here (Marco's paradise island Lamma, my Hospitality Club hosts Sid and Yat Ming, the gallery) later.

So yeah, I haven't really found time to updated the blog in the last couple of weeks, the traveling was fast and hectic, and even the week spent back home in Germany over Viola's birthday was eventful. I'll hammer out a lot of posts once I finish the trip. From here it's on to Munich tomorrow, then hitchhike to Geneva, from there hitchhike to Paris the next day, then flying to Athens and finally a flight back home to Germany a week from now.

Below a picture of the sight I have in front of my eyes this very moment - Hong Kong skyline at night across the harbour. In a minute I'll catch a ferry over there, and then another one to the island of Lamma where my friend Marco is living. His baby girl Lorelei was born on Monday and he needs help repainting his mold-infested appartment before mom Camilla and Lorelei come home - so that's what I'll do during my last night in Hong Kong and then go straight to the airport from there.

Los Angeles attractions

One of the main reasons to take this crazy trip was the fact that I had never been to Los Angeles and Hong Kong. So I planned the route in a way that would allow me to spend about a week in each city. I never had a big desire to go to LA - it was one of those places you have heard a lot of things about, many of them not that great (traffic, smog, mega city), have a prejudiced image in your head, and you know you'll get there eventually one day.

I'm happy to say that I liked LA a lot more than expected. There are tons of things to do and see, an amazingly diverse city with people from virtually every corner of the planet, and it's also absolutely possible to get around by public transport (at least as a tourist, living there the much longer times to get from A to B add up quickly, so even Peter and Sarah gave in after a few months of biking and bussing and bought a car).

Below are some random impressions of LA.

landing at LAX - houses til the horizon

coming from freezing Germany, walking a street like this is pure happiness

 

Oscar Central - actually a big shopping mall

Union Station - waiting and traveling in style

Venice Beach

Santa Monica pier

obligatory sunset picture

Chinese temple just outside LA

mountains a few minutes drive above LA

Griffith Observatory

LA lights from the observatory

across the street from bus stop on way back to airport - bye LA!

Hospitality Club host in LA: Peter

Before leaving home, I had also spotted Peter's (HC:rotscher) profile in the listing of friendly Hospitality Club members in Los Angeles. I had already written a comment about him, which meant we must have met (but I had forgotten by now). Turns out we did actually meet in Leipzig (he's from there) when we were there in 2003 with our peace bus. And even more, he was one of the very early members who tried Hospitality Club already in 2002 and then sent us a little report about his experience in India which is online to this day on the site.

He replied with a friendly offer to host me just a few minutes after Adam and Eva and so after three days staying with them, he picked me up so I could experience yet another side of LA life in the house he shared with 2 other friends and his girlfriend Sarah. It was only when he picked me up that he told me that he and Sarah had actually also met through HC - he hosted her 5 years ago in Buenos Aires. They are planning to get married in Germany next year, and while staying with him (she was traveling in South America, so only met her on Skype), I received an invitation to my next HC wedding. Yay! :-)

It was fun hanging out with Peter, going out to a club in Hollywood with his very friendly housemates, eating his masterly prepared fish and watching him record a Valentine's day song with my camera. Just later I realized that I didn't take a proper photo of him with that very same camera, so Peter, where's that video?

only pic of Peter I took

One of the nicest things of staying with him was definitely the view from the house over the neighborhood to the skyline of downtown LA. I love places with a view. There was a great couch outside for me to smoke on, and the large window of the living room made for a great location for two workdays updating the blog and researching and booking all flights for stage 2 of this trip.

living room with a view

my favorite smoking spot in LA

LA skyline from the house

So yes, thanks again Peter and friends - enjoy Beijing and looking forward to your wedding and meeting Sarah next year in Germany!

Oscar campaign in Hollywood: "The Artist"

On my second night in LA, Adam invited me to a Hollywood insider event - a free screening of "The Artist" at the Directors Guild private cinema. An awesome chance to jump right into one of the dominant factors of LA culture and learn something about the movie industry there. Let me share.

Before the Academy Awards/Oscars are handed out, there is a real campaign by the contending movies to get as many of the 6000+ votes as possible. Contrary to the Golden Globes (where only around 90, if I remember right, people vote, which get all kinds of goodies for their votes), it's not that easy to bribe the voters. It's forbidden to invite them to screenings or offer them incentives. It is allowed, however, to organize private screenings for the different guilds, essentially the labor unions of directors, actors, and others. In the hope that some of the voters will attend themselves or the people around them will create some buzz and convince them to vote for their movie.

Since Adam is working for the Actors Guild he gets plenty of invitations and tickets, in fact, he used to organize these private screenings in a former job. It just so happened that "The Artist", one of the main favorites for this year was to be shown the day after I arrived. Awesome timing.

I didn't take my camera so a quick pic of the red curtain with the phone.

The movie itself was good - black and white, silent, something different. Since it tells a Hollywood story and the focus is quite exclusively on the acting, it's easy to see why anyone in the industry would love it on first sight. So the Q+A session afterwards, which included some of the crew, the casting director and three actors (Missy Pyle, the actress in the movie-in the movie; Basil Hoffman, the auctioneer; Annie O'Donnell, the woman with the policeman), while interesting, was pretty much a love fest.

Still, it was a very interesting experience getting a look behind the curtains. Let's see if the movie wins in a few weeks.

Cost Summary

Here I'll track all expenses of the trip. My general thoughts are in the post "Money" - I won't be paying for accommodation and hitchhike quite a bit. Food is not on the list, because generally I don't spend much more on it traveling than if I were at home. I also don't include expenses during the 2 weeks sightseeing in Los Angeles and Hong Kong, since that wasn't part of the essential challenge. The basic idea is to show that this challenge was doable for almost anyone in the rich Western world - if you had the time.

- 460,43€ flights Amsterdam-Los Angeles-New York-London
- 10,91€ (14$) entrance fee for 2 years for the amusement park USA (ESTA visa waiver processing fee)
- 2,08€ (2,75$) bus LAX-Adam and Eva
- 2,27€ (3$) bus Peter-LAX
- 2,79€ (5$) bus+PATH Newark-Manhattan-Newark
- 18,38€ (14,99 pounds) flight Stansted-Leipzig
- 36,99€ flight Leipzig-Rome
- 440,54€ flights Rome-Hong Kong-Muenchen
- 84,98€ flights Paris-Athens-Berlin
====
 1059,37€ total
(that's before leaving for stage 2, so some costs for buses in Rome, Hong Kong, Geneva, Paris and Athens will be added later)

Hospitality Club hosts in LA: Adam and Eva

After the decision had been made to take this crazy trip I browsed the listing of Hospitality Club members in Los Angeles. I was happy to spot a few familiar names, most notably Adam (HC:levbarg) and Eva (HC:chungyihuah). They had written to HC in 2007 to tell us about their happiness - Adam had hosted Eva (she's from Taiwan) through HC in 2004, they fell in love and got married in 2007.

happy HC couple

While HC of course was never and is not intended to be a dating site, love does happen, and I'm always very happy to hear about HC couples, weddings and babies - in fact some of my most memorable experiences within the HC community were the times I was invited to HC weddings. When you see such happy couples, all the time spent in front of the computer becomes very real and much more worthwhile.

Adam replied to my message within minutes - yes, they were very happy to host me. And after flying halfway around the world it was a great feeling walking up to his kitchen window in LA (he was cooking) and being greeted like an old friend - one of those feelings that makes hospitality exchange so special for many of us.

breakfast table with Adam's home baked bread

Adam and mail-order veggies

Adam and Eva were wonderful hosts - since Eva had to study hard (btw, tuition in the US is even crazier than I thought, and I had no clue students have to pay an insane 6% interest on their loans), I spent most of my time with Adam. He showed me around LA a lot, we went to a free screening of "The Artist", explored the different ethnic neighborhoods of LA (having Thai, Chinese, American, Mexican and Korean food in the process), drove up into the clouds above LA and I even got him hooked onto geocaching.

Adam and Thai food

Adam and Chinese food

Adam and Mexican food

Adam and Eva, Peter, friends, and Korean food

It was great fun getting to see LA through their eyes - I couldn't have wished for a better way to be welcomed to the city. Thank you, guys!

Leaving Los Angeles for New York, London and Home

The week in Los Angeles was packed with great experiences - wonderful Hospitality Club hosts, exploring the city, it's sights, multi-ethnic neighborhoods and food, and of course, the first Gagosian gallery. I'll have to write about all that later as I had to spend the last day planning stage 2 of the trip - Hong Kong and the 4 remaining galleries at that point (Paris, Geneva, Rome, Athens).

The planning was made even more exciting, because not one, but two good HC friends announced their visits for just the few days I'll be home - Ariel (HC:arielmonaco) from Argentina and Vitaly (HC:realvitaly) from Latvia are showing great timing skills - I'll write about them if they actually make it to Dresden. I did delay my departure from Dresden for a few days for Ariel, so that cut into my flexibility at the end.

Trying to get all the flights and dates in order proved to be a lot more difficult than expected - the March 10 deadline for most galleries closing is looming. I can't afford to miss any flights or get stuck hitchhiking from now on. At one point I was staring at 4100 kilometers of planned hitchhiking, and trying to get this down to a more manageable number was a real challenge in itself. In the end it will be around 1350 km of hitching. Finally settled on a route and booked all flights a few hours ago - 562€ worth of them for stage 2. I now hope I'll never have to use a flight search engine ever again ;-)

The good thing was that I was able to do all this computer work in the awesome living room of my second Hospitality Club host Peter (HC:rotscher, more about him later) - high above the neighborhood with a great backdrop of the LA skyline. I'm a sucker for places with a view:


In an hour I'll hit the road again - buses to LAX airport, a night flight to NYC, arriving at Newark at 6 in the morning tomorrow, Feb 15. Then going to all three galleries in Manhattan during the morning before heading back to the airport for another night flight to London, again arriving at 6 (Heathrow). Yet another 2 galleries there as I cross the city from Heathrow to the other side to go up to Stansted - haven't decided yet whether I'll hitchhike or take a bus so I won't miss the flight home to Germany in the evening (Leipzig, then hitching to Dresden just in time for Viola's birthday).

Gallery #1 - Beverly Hills

After flying halfway around the world I was eager to go to the first gallery and see my first spot prints in real life. It was an hour's walk from Adam and Eva's place, and a truly enjoyable one at 20 degrees, sunshine and with some geocaches along the route. Here are some pics of the gallery from the outside and peeking through the window.




Once inside, I registered for the challenge - my passport was scanned, hat to fill out a little form and then received my "visit 11 and get one free" card that will accompany me the next weeks:

I was just done registering when the most enjoyable part of the gallery visit started - meeting two other fellow "spot chasers". "Tonkatoytruck" walked in - Jason from New York had finished the challenge that moment. His picture was taken by the very friendly Gagosian gallery staff, and then we spent quite a bit of time talking about the trip. He was happy to finally meet someone also doing the challenge (I was the first one he met!), and I was of course happy to get encouragement right at the start. I'll probably get in touch with him again during my day in New York on Wednesday.

"tonkatoytruck" getting his picture taken after crossing the finishing line

A little later, I bumped into "galfromdownunder" - I almost immediately recognized from her blog - she had written about the challenge and then decided a few days ago to actually start doing it after all. We had a very nice chat, she filmed me a bit for her blog and then off she went in pursuit of further spots.

In between talking to my fellow spot travelers I took my time to look at the pictures - I actually kinda like them. I wouldn't pay thousands or millions of dollars to hang one on my wall, but to see a bunch of them in a nice gallery is surprisingly quite enjoyable. So hey, this challenge already achieved something: getting me to check out modern art for real and actually liking it :-) Below some pictures of the pictures.