About the blog

This blog is ment to be a diary of the america trip of

Antonia Becker
Christoph Bimmermann
Yves Buettner and
Maja Lehmann.


We won the competition "Jugend gruendet", a German entrepreneur contest. We took part with our enterprise called "PiezoPowerProducts".

The time of publishment of the posts is the time the event took part.

Finilization

Now we are back in Germany after a far too short trip.
We all now need a little bit of time to relax ...

After we reached San Fransisco, the last evening was a calm one. We had again dinner at "The buck's". At the next morning we flew from San Fransisco to Newark.

The weather in Newark was VERY rainy due to this we didn't go to the city. We only saw the hotel and airport.

Also the flight from Newark to Düsseldorf was an uneventful journey. We arrived very early on monday. At home we were welcomed from our family, before they went to work / school.

All in all California was very cool, the people, the cities the nature and of course the weather.
Really impressive were the visits of the enterprises!

We want to visit California AGAIN!
But this will stay a dream, because our studies begin at the end of october. Maybee this studies give us the possibility to visit the US more often.

Yosemite National Park

From Las Vegas we went in the direction of San Fransisco.
On this trip of nearly 1000km we made a excursion through Yosemite Nationalpark.

We passed a last time a national park. And it was really nice, maybe because it was very early (we crossed it before breakfast).

colorful, more colorful - Las Vegas!

reserved, rational, minimal, modest, infrequent, necessary, spare, plain, subtle and reasonable

All this are words that absolutly doesn't fit in a sentence with „Las Vegas“.

overstimulation, wasteful, pompous, overstated, insane, incredible, superlativ and exorbitant will better fit ;-)

An we in the middle

We moved into our (not even expensive) rooms at the "luxor".

afterwards we went the strip up and down by car, to discover the surrounding. You see everything, because you are more in a traffic yam than driving.

After driving the strip up and down (two times 9km - 2h of driving (or standing)) we went to the hotel to celebrate.

Maja reveled her 20th. anniversary. Happy birthday!

At 1 o'clock we went on the strip and were surprised! It was nearly empty on the roads! The fountains of the "Bellagio“ shut down, the roller coaster from „New York, New York“ also down ... and the rest ... not really alive! We didn't expected Las Vegas like this even in off season and in the middle of the week.

Nevertheless Las Vegas was an experience. Due to the fact, that we were not allowed to drink alcoholics or gamble it was also cheap.

Grand Canyon hike

At 22.9. we started a mega-hike.
We slept in Williams, Arizona, and started in the morning in direction of Grand Canyon.

Our target for the day:
The grand canyon down and up again. More than 13km, although we dicided to go the short trip (South Kaibab Trail down & up).



A view to the rim after 5min of hiking:


So fast we were down, impressive!(really 5min). And later all this up again ... oO.









We didn't get discouraged and enjoyed the view during our hike.






Furthermore we were really fast on our way up!
2,5h down and only 3 up, we calculated twice the time!





finnaly up again we enjoyed the sunset at the rim.

Joshua Tree Nationalpark

After our visit of the VW designstudio we said good bye to Nils and Laura, we continued our trip

with our rental car (Ford Edge).

We drove to Williams to stay overnight, the plan for the next day Grand Canyon down & up!

On our way to Williams we made a smale exkursion (2 hours) through the Joshua Tree Nationalpark.

really impressive!!!

We try to show all our impressions with the help of pictures, but they are not that impressive!

VW designstudio California

... or the official end.

The crowning final of our trip was the VW Designstudio today.

VW only receives a view visiters here, and we are part of the selection!

Because VW is main-sponsor of the competition, all „Jugend Gründet“ winners have the possibiliy to visit this location!

After we handed all our electronik devices at the receptiondesk and singned the Einverständniserklätung unterzeichnet hatten, dass wir keine der VW Innovationen nach außen tragen, wurden wir sehr freundlich von Jae S. Min und Christoph Brockschmidt in die Arbeit der VW Designer in Kalifornien eingeführt.

Soviel sei gesagt: Wir durften einige Concept-Cars sehen, sowie den Ort an dem diese entworfen werden.

Die wirklich heißen Prototypen blieben aber hinter Schloss und Riege.

Jea beschrieb es mit: „We could show them to you. But than we had to kill you.”

Also blieben wir lieber unwissend…

Wir durften lediglich ein Gruppenfoto vor einem Entwurf für den LA Design Contest machen, bei dem VW jedes Jahr routinemäßig einen der vorderen Plätze belegt:

Tages"plan": Miami Beach und Santa Monica Beach

Hört sich nach viel Beach an die überschrift, oder?
Wars auch!

Wir müssen zugeben, dass wir heute nicht getan haben außer...

...rumliegen...




...schwimmen gehen...




...und andere Leute einbuddeln.



Das anstrengendste war noch der Gang zur Dusche.



Am Abend waren wir dann noch ein wenig in der Innenstadt von Santa Monica Shoppen



und genossen zum krönenden Abschluss einen herrlichen Sonnenuntergang.




Was für ein Tag!

Hollywood Hills

Nach dem Madam Tousseauds hatten wir ein kleines Hüngerchen.

Im Supermarkt schnell mit was essbarem eingedeckt ging es ab auf die Hollywood Hills, um bei brüllender Hitze und blendender Aussucht das obligatorische Foto zu machen.

Na dabei: Guten Appetit!

Übrigens: Die Buchstaben des Schriftzug sind jeweils 15 Meter hoch und insgesamt 135 Meter breit

Hollywood - "Walk of Fame" und "Madam Tousseauds"

Hollywood selbst ist – wie uns vorher schon gesagt wurde – nicht so pompös wie sein Ruf vermuten lässt.

Der Walk of Fame ist die einzig wirkliche Attraktion. Jeder konnte hier seinen Wunsch-Star finden und ein Foto mit dem Star vom Wunschs-Star bekommen.

So können wir von uns behaupten ein Foto mit Bruce Willis, Nicole Kidmen, Steven Spielberg und Charlize Theron zu haben.

Lebensgroße Stars zum Anfassen hat Hollywood aber doch!

Im Madam Tousseauds in Hollywood hatte wirklich jeder Star eine Minute Zeit für uns.

Die Damen zog es natürlich zu Brad…

… die Herren eher zu Angelina

Und Michael lebt natürlich doch!

Als Backgroundtänzer sind wir sofort dabei.

Dann mussten wir noch jemanden kurz politisch unter die Arme helfen…

…und ein paar Interviews geben.

Dann wurden wir auch schon freundlich nach draußen gebeten.

Beverly Hills

Auf dem Hinweg zum Madam Tousseauds haben wir einen Abstecher über Beverly Hills gemacht.

Die bescheidenen und bewusst kleingehalten Häuser, sowie die sparsamen und praktisch ausgelegten Fahrzeuge ließen auf ein leicht erhöhtes Durchschnittseinkommen schließen.

Leider ist uns kein echter Star über den Weg gelaufen, aber bestimmt direkt im Auto an uns vorbeigefahren. Rein spekulativ waren wir also beliebig nah an unserem Wunschstar dran!

Have you ever huddeled against a snake? Not?

Have you ever huddeled against a snake? Not?
We did!
First we were very surprised when a women suddenly put a snake on our neck, but finally we were lucky that we didn't denied.







It was a mix of pain, thrill and pleasure ...
and Maja had won a new Friend:






Although Yves had not the snake he liked (it was short and fat and not long and sexy),but we really had fun and enjoyed it a lot.






Now snake comparison:

Lauras snake. Very agil, and energetic!:



Antonias snake. The wickedest snake of all :



and Yves seconds snake (a sexy snake. The first was silly!) :