Seen from above, Florida is mostly water, otherwise flat land, like everywhere else. It's warm on the ground, the air envelops us with humidity. “Anyone who offers you a ride should not give you a ride,” say the signs in the airport's kiss-and-ride zone. Only after we've taken the exit do we realize that we're not in our Uber. You always have to ask where the car you're getting into is going, says the driver.
The night is bright. We walk across parking lots. Water flows from gutters, no one without a car, headlights shining on palm trees.
Orlando is big; the university here is the largest in the country. We get a tour. We sit in a golf cart, our driver driving as fast as students running late. Every now and then she has to honk her horn; a student jumps out of the way in front of us and lands in the undergrowth. Further back, young people jump into a pond with a fountain show in the middle.
Sonali and I are recording a podcast. I stumble over my English from time to time, while Sonali is once again perfect and quicker-witted than me. If only I could think faster, I think, but...
That's the great thing here, I think, now as I write this text; that the (US Americans) are all so immediate. So quick, so smart, so engagingly direct, not so passive (aggressive) German. Which, of course, is also because, I think, you have to be able to afford to be tired or give in to it or whatever, I think—and in retrospect and in relation to the present, everything is getting worse, both in terms of how it feels and in reality.
Back in Berlin, I'm working as a news journalist again and I can't believe any of it anymore. Every headline is a blow and a loss of certainty. How are we supposed to live like this? It can't go on much longer. Fight now, fight.
With time, memories don't fade, only certainties. I urgently need to write to my friends in the US. Now that the US officially despises us. But we already knew that, and we were there anyway, and still, the time, the time.
I hope we were able to show you that we are more than Disneyland, our hostess said as we said goodbye. I hope we were able to show that Europe—but I don't know what to say.