UPPER CLASS BEACH

If you have money, it’s nice in almost every country, including America. The sea is blue-isher, the sand finer and the people are more relaxed on Singer Island. The hotel is a bit Art Deco, and much lower than the condo towers next to it. There was a lot of hustle and bustle at the bar in the afternoon, many were not hotel guests but beach club visitors, or had condos next door, where it was too boring, as the nice gentleman next to me reported. He was an exiled Cuban from New Jersey who had driven down by car while his wife, Russian, was just arriving today by plane. He said it had taken him three days to drive down with her because of the smoke breaks. I smiled, since I thought of my mom, late since some years, who took all her smoking breaks in our car, while driving with us kids on the back seat. But that was in the 70s where you even had no seat belt… With his Panama hat, this guy reminded me a bit of Felix Leiter, he was just as cool and I assumed it was good for his marriage with his Russian lady. At that time I did not know, what „Russian” really meant. A violent domination to compensate weak egos, a weak economy built on exploitation of natural resources for personal enrichment, by conserving the poorest standards for all other. I have been to Kaliningrad years before, it just did not look at all like a country that was a winner of a war.

And also I didn’t have the slightest idea, that part of this description, would match to the grounds I was in. Only years later. I even was not very far away from the headquarters of the grifters, in fact it is on the next Island south of Singer.

At this place the vast majority of the guests were clearly part of the wealthier population. Broadly grinning lawyers in shorts and with loud laughter, together with their wives celebrating something at the bar, beach club families, honeymooners and a wedding on the beach, very romantic. I could watch the party from my room on the beach, and of course I also heard the music from the tent until exactly 00:00, when it was over. It was the night of February 23rd to 24th, Europe was already 6 hours ahead and at war. I lay on the bed and watched on CNN how Putin’s troops invaded Ukraine, and then I drank a beer after all.

This day determines our life until today, but no one took much notice the next morning. It was a posh and expensive place so I allowed myself only 2 nights there.

I checked out and continued on the highway towards Miami. It was another sunny day, I drove through West Palm Beach, left Mar A Lago on the left, street life took its normal course and that war at the other side of the pond, was so far away. Valet parking here once and eating a nice ceviche, all easily possible, while in Kyiv people are being bombed to death. And my biggest problem was that my cell phone overheated and stopped working for a short time instead of showing me the way to my favorite car rental near the airport. Our addictive way to rely on those technologies will for sure cause big problems in future, for generation Z and Alpha, who didn’t learn like me to use printed maps. But I had no map either at that moment so I waited until my phone cooled down, and continued to return to Tee’s place. She was not there that day, so „Adios my car”, off in the shuttle bus to the terminal and to the packed plane with American Airlines, Howdy Houston.