Long story short, we ended up in Wisconsin Dells, literally meaning "Wisconsin ravines," though for some reason I always thought it was "hills". WD is a town not far from Madison, with a population of two thousand heads. Its surrounding area, informally called the Dells by Americans, gets five million tourists a year. My sister used to live there and worked at the largest American water park — Noah's Ark. In general, the Dells has 21 water parks — 3 outdoor and 18 indoor, so the Dells rightfully considers itself the water park capital of the world. It's probably redundant to remind you, but this is yet another maximalist motto, of which I've cited plenty already.
Understandably, the tourists coming in are mostly from the Midwest, which can be clumsily translated as the middle-west.
The region of the US for some reason known as the Midwest, even though it's illogical.
In general, Americans introduce new words into the language quite quickly, and what was recently slang becomes a completely official term that even appears in dictionaries. I welcome this — after all, you have to call new phenomena something, right? The language won't be any worse off, that's how it emerged in the first place, and it's stupid to artificially restrict its development through bureaucratic methods.
There's more to the Dells than just water parks: there are also tons of shops, two lakes (more on those later), all sorts of haunted castles, an awesome illusionist Rick Wilcox, amusement parks with carousels, mini-golf, go-karts, the Ho-Chunk casino, boat and amphibious tours, and so on.
First of all, we checked into a motel, which is easy to rent on the spot, even though it's summer. The motel TV was acting up, and in two ways at once: MPEG blocking (anyone who's watched digital broadcasts knows what I mean) and analog noise. The latter was fixed by fiddling with the antenna plug behind the box. I wonder, would Americans have fixed the defect themselves like me, or would they have rather called the front desk?
In any case, we needed the TV to check the weather forecast. The thing is, a few days before I arrived, the state was hit by torrential downpours that led to the biggest floods in the last 50 years. This is exactly the kind of case where it's easier to show than to tell.
Now you see the house — now you don't
Now you see the tree — now you don't
The owner of the house gave an interview to CNN, where he complained about his bitter fate — he wasn't a multimillionaire and the house made up a significant part of his assets. On the bright side, no one was inside at the moment it washed away, which is good news. Interestingly, CNN showed an account for donations after the interview. Evening news is watched by tens of millions of people, and usually this news-making shark isn't famous for such kindness, so it's logical to suspect a deal — the flood victim's interview in exchange for CNN's money-collection plug. Still, if a person managed to buy a house like that at the inflated housing prices back then, he's rich. If he's rich, he most likely earned the money (80% acquire wealth exactly this way, no matter what my punk and anarchist friend might think). And if he earned it once, he'll earn it a second time. This whole issue wouldn't exist if the house had insurance. But it didn't, for bizarre bureaucratic reasons that are beyond my desire to look into.
As for Lake Delton, where the ill-fated house stood, it's artificial, created way back in 1927 to attract tourists. The lake met a sad fate, which is best explained by a photo.
Lake Delton used to be here.
- What happened to your submarine?
- It sank. ° Putin
-What happened to Lake Delton?
-It leaked out. ° Fox News Wisconsin
By the way, Fox News is a haven for Republicans and neoconservatives, a cesspool soaked through with deceit and hypocrisy, and watching it is a surefire way to lose your mind. They don't shy away from not only spin but also blatant lies and faking photos (there is also a photo with fake missiles, allegedly from Iran).
This is how Fox News quietly doctors photos of its critics, passing it off as a "parody"
By the way, it seems I forgot to mention a widespread practice in all my previous posts. If you buy a cup of soda at an eatery, you can demand a free top-up after the foam settles refill right there, meaning a fresh fill-up of your favorite soda in your cup. It's called a refill, and in some places you can even do it yourself. The secret is simple — the cost of producing soda is a few cents per liter. Especially in restaurants — the thing is, fountain sodas, which I've talked about before, don't dispense a factory-bottled product at all; that would be irrational given the gigantic consumption. They do it simply: a special container holds syrup, which is mixed with water right out of the tap, meaning the local water supply. My boss, who was also in the US recently, is not a fan of this. But to me, US tap water tastes perfectly fine, so I don't see anything particularly flawed about this practice. By the way, to Americans: stop drinking bottled water. It's bad for the environment, plus this water is usually from the tap anyway, just run through a reverse osmosis filter and a remineralizer. Furthermore, tap water in most US regions is good and subject to stricter quality criteria. For more details - https://web.archive.org/web/20080729210930/https://www.thinkoutsidethebottle.org. If you really crave water from an osmotic filter, buy one for yourself, or do what my sister does — she fills her bottle at work, where they have one installed. It still ends up cheaper than paying a dollar or two for a few liters.
Leaked out
As for the lake, ski acrobats used to perform on it and water tours were held there, so its importance to the tourism industry in the Dells is hard to overstate. It leaked out into the Wisconsin River, destroying a chunk of the highway that served as a dam. The governor immediately sprang into action, promising to fix everything as soon as possible — no wonder, since the Dells brings tens of millions in taxes into the treasury from the area's billion-dollar tourism turnover. The funniest thing is that the word they use for "filling the lake back up with water" is refill. I think it's a very amusing analogy with the sodas — the region's residents ran out of water in their lake, and they're demanding a refill from the one they pay, which is the state. The latter doesn't mind, but to do this they have to fix the dam aka the road (which isn't hard) and redirect the river's flow back into the lake (which isn't easy). In any case, they promise to restore the lake to how it was by 2009. Enthusiasts, meanwhile, are cleaning the bottom of the trash that's accumulated aplenty over 90 years. Americans really love all sorts of associations, societies, hobby clubs, and public initiatives. Whether this is a sign of an active civil society and civic stance, or just the desire of overfed bourgeois folks to somehow entertain themselves, I leave for you to decide.
