HOW TO IMMIGRATE

Incidentally, there was one man who would have liked to have prevented all of this. A misanthrope who must have said goodbye to dreams and empathy and kindness early in his life, probably a tough childhood as the second of four Latino brothers. He was sullenly munching on fries from a well-known fast food chain while checking my passport, and the very fact that he was eating them without mayo or ketchup revealed his lack of taste and other nerves.

 Still, me and my brand new passport were grateful to him for less fat.  I had caught a bad line at immigration , fallen for the fact that he’d just opened it next to me. He didn’t like the fact that I was traveling alone, he said you can’t go on vacation like that. He didn’t want to know what my corona status was, nor was he interested in the documents I had filled out in an exemplary manner. Where I was going and, of course, when I was leaving again. He suspected I was sneaking out to work. To Fort Pierce? Why is that, nobody wants to go there, he wanted to see my ticket back, it’s a good thing he realized that Europeans write the day first and then the month, otherwise he would have suspected a lie. I started to feel sorry for the people behind me in the line and remembered the sign with the warning not to attack or insult a home security officer. While my fingers and thumbs were being scanned, I told him I was a writer, which seemed to calm him down a bit, reviving his dreams for a moment, but at the same time alarming him, because of course he asked what for, and TV shows was somehow the magic word, again like in the movies, since I had my correct ESTA vacation visa, he mumbled good luck and gave me back my passport. And he needn’t worry, I’m actually going back. Compared with the actual procedures of striping naked on social media accounts and documenting all back 5 years to avoid immediate arrest by ICE, this was a no brainer. And knowing I won’t visit before all this crazy shit is over, am glad to have my memories here in my blog.

Because I do consider the US as Land of the free and a great country with inspiring people. But all this is hidden now under grifters grey shadow and truly that makes me sad. I swear I come back one day, but you need to liberate yourself from religious hypocrisy and inhuman treatments of the weakest in the society. 

But at that time the President was Biden, and he would have a lot of work to refurbish that infrastructure I was using to get to my destination. That bumpy Florida Turnpike might be the best way to prevent speeding. At home I would have gone with much higher speed a longer distance in less time. To my Island Rügen at the Baltic Sea, it takes three hours from Berlin, sometimes less when the traffic is low. But I had traveled for 18 hours and still there was like 48 miles to drive. Then a posh cool Jeep overtook me on the right and a Golden Retriever on the back seat held his head out in the wind. I thought, do it like him, don’t think, enjoy. And so I set course on the beach.