I got a bit burned out writing these notes, which my sister warned me about — she always gets stuck halfway through herself. Well, I do have some stubbornness in me, so one way or another, I'll keep going. For a change of pace — a post with no pictures.
After Medieval Times we went back to Madison, where we were staying at Lena's. Since she's craving my impressions, she'll have to sacrifice some privacy. If anyone is unaware, privacy is a person's private life, a very important thing in the US and even more so in Europe. In the sense that the state and other people should know as little about you as possible. While you might still be able to somehow hide from certain people and companies that you suffer from bedwetting and buy Viagra in massive quantities, the government and megacorporations know literally everything about you. And any black guy working as an operator for minimum wage can see these facts and have a good laugh with his family and friends over your little sins.
So it won't be a big deal if I spill some beans here. Lena lives in an apartment, that is, a rented flat. If anyone hasn't heard the cliché "one-story America" yet, now is the perfect time. The majority of Americans live in one-story or two-story houses, not apartment buildings at all. This is probably only possible because everyone has a car, and gas [used to be] cheap. Lena's building is part of a two-story residential complex, shaped somewhat like the letter U, or maybe an L.
Inside the letter there's a huge green lawn, and right in the center is a shared pool, access to which is included in the rent. An oval swimming vessel (I'm just too lazy to look for a synonym) is really cool if it's long enough to haul ass back and forth doing the crawl. This link was inserted by demand of the hypertext police, who insist that every hypertext must have hyperlinks, otherwise it's not the Web 2.0 internet, but boring old-school media. But you can only read the first paragraph, because it's the only one of them all that's actually interesting.
I didn't go to the complex's pool — when it crossed my mind, I didn't have the chance, and when I had the chance, I forgot about it. But from afar it seemed to me that for long back-and-forth swims, which are required for health and building muscle power, the pool isn't suitable — it's too small. What else is in the complex? Mostly cats. Lena specifically has 4 cats — two belonging to Lena and her husband, and two belonging to my sister; their names are respectively Joey, Sam, Tasha, and Miguel, who was renamed from "Mick" by my sister's boyfriend. The neighbors are keeping up too, to such an extent that letting cats outside is asking for trouble — they always come back scratched up. But if you say "big deal" about cats, listen to what we don't have back home.
The complex has a somewhat gloomy basement equipped with professional "General Electric" washing machines and dryers. If anyone hasn't heard of this company, or thinks it's just some local thing, I hasten to disappoint you. General Electric is a typical megacorporation, it makes very expensive home appliances, but doesn't limit its interests to that — in Latvia, it owns the credit company GE Money.
The machines in this residential complex aren't free, as they are in expensive ones, they cost a dollar. A coin for a wash, a coin for a dry. This is mostly related to electricity, which isn't particularly cheap and which they eat a ton of. But the result is pleasing — if you neatly fold the laundry after drying, it's practically wrinkle-free and you don't have to iron it. Sure, it won't look as beautiful as after ironing, but for most people this setup is a true lifesaver. However, particular fans of dressing up have their own washer, dryer, and iron.
What else would most likely surprise any Latvian is the apartment layout. Practically any American apartment has a very sizable living room, often combined with the kitchen, which is separated from the living room more by a hint than in reality. Obviously, this solution has its pros and cons — but overall it looks spacious and therefore pleasant. This is probably because American culture is geared towards extroverts, and the presence of other people in the room hardly bothers anyone, but rather encourages communication. Actually, that word should be put in the subjunctive mood, because all communication is completely destroyed by the TV, which Americans already watch for an average of 4 hours a day.
This is a terrifying number overall, even though I sit at the computer even more. On the other hand, TV is the most stupid activity possible, followed by reading the internet, then reading fiction books, then writing on the internet, and then reading professional and non-fiction books. Of course, people have a lot of good activities, and I only listed the ones accessible and relevant to nerds, aka geeks. Also, Americans play various fun board games, and card games often come with special non-standard decks; I'll write a bit about that later.
Anyway, let's return from art to household matters. The hood more or less saves you from the smell going from the kitchen to the living room. Also, every American home has a dishwasher, but in Lena's apartment it's a half-size one, meaning it's half the size of a regular behemoth. As for the rooms, all of them except the living room are usually called "bedrooms," and the apartment in a listing is always called just that: "with two bedrooms." The toilet is always combined, which is wild to me. But this problem is solved the American way. Need a separate toilet — get a second bathroom where it'll be, along with another shower. As you recall, Americans solve all problems extensively, or at least they try to.
Americans' fridges are quite large and hum harshly — you can tell right away it's chilling piles of ice and frozen foods in the freezer, as well as a fridge compartment packed to the brim. About what kind of food is in the store, I'll write a bit in the post about Woodman's, but here I'll just say that I ate some low-fat, sugar-free ice cream I found in the freezer. The feeling is very weird — it seems sweet, and the consistency is like ice cream, and all sorts of bells and whistles like nuts are present, but you still feel like you got fucked over. You just can't express it with any other word.
Besides apartments, that is rented flats, there are also Condominiums in the US, in short — condos. It's the same thing, but when you own the flat. Usually, in complexes where apartments are rented out, you can't buy them — because a company is renting them out, not private individuals. In a condo, on the contrary, for obvious reasons you can not only buy a flat, but also rent it. The cost of renting an apartment depends on the neighborhood — whether black people and Latinos live there, how good the schools are, whether it's close to downtown, whether there are all sorts of useful things like supermarkets and whatnot. In Madison, it ranges from 500 dollars a month (a bad neighborhood) and up (if I'm wrong, I'll be corrected).
Naturally, many people live in the suburbs, which are kind of not Madison anymore, but it still takes 10 minutes to drive to the center, because a high-speed freeway runs through the city (which isn't always the case).
Lena had exterior blinds on her windows and a bug screen. Wisconsin is surprisingly rich in wildlife, including insects. And one time my sister went to take out the trash, lifts the lid — and there are EYES. That's their raccoons acting up. Smart as hell — in campgrounds they can even open zippers. And here the dumpsters are fenced off with a wooden fence with a heavy door, but not everyone closes it, so the beast slipped through. I must say that trash cans in America are set up with recycling in mind, that is, processing and reuse. There are two dumpsters — for what can be recycled and for what can't. You can recycle glass, some plastics, cardboard, and aluminum. The fact that they put everything into one container can't help but be confusing. But they say that at the recycling plant the waste is sorted by Mexicans, and Americans, due to laziness and the hassle of manually putting different types of waste into different bins, wouldn't do it anyway.
On the other hand, recycling has also fallen victim to hype, meaning crazy and untrue propaganda. Recycling is often unprofitable not only in a financial sense, but also in an ecological one — after all, to recycle, the trash has to be collected, sorted, cleaned, and processed, which requires quite a few resources — fuel, water, and electricity. And for recycling to be possible, there needs to be a plant near every area where the trash comes from, and it must be able to produce goods that people need, which is far from always possible. Figuring out the true picture isn't easy — the brainwashed "greens" are incapable of analyzing adequately, and competing factions of megacorporations will lie out of economic interest; both groups actively lobby in the senate, and judging by the universal recycling in Madison, the greens have achieved some successes lately.
UPDATE: If you still want to see the photos, my sister gave a link.