2012/08/17: San Joaquin Valley

We’re sitting in a train from Emeryville (near San Francisco) to Bakersfield. It is Saturday morning. I can check the results of this afternoon’s soccer games on my netbook (Frankfurt – Munich 0:1). Weird. What is more weird? Wireless internet (for free) in a regional train or 9 hours of time shift?
Our conductor has served the navy for some years. But he was too young for Korea, so he never won a war. Later he’s been working for the New York City Fire Department, also at 9/11. His remarkable voice shouts the names of the next stations as if he had to sell them on a fish market. Having explained his career to other passengers, they shook his hand and thanked him for having served his country. Imagine this situation in Germany: a train conductor tells you, that he has been in Kosovo or Afghanistan for some years; therefore you shake his hand and thank him for having served his country. Unthinkable.
The train runs along San Joaquin Valley. Wine, asparagus, tomatoes, strawberries, olives – almost everything grows in this fertile valley, thanks to irrigation projects during the 1940s. Many people in the train speak Spanish, there are probably many Hispanic immigrants working on the fields. Seems to be hot outside, the sun is shining above the palms. In Bakersfield we will feel it; so far we only experience Amtrak’s air conditioning…