Down in the South

This post was written by Pontus, but sadly he is unable to log on to his own account, so it needs to be posted using my account. It is still however written by Pontus, to get a different perspective on our trip. This is the english translation of his post which was recently posted in Swedish.

After church service, we said a heartfelt goodbye to our remarkably nice host families and began the 675 km long trip south east toward Atlanta. It  felt like quite a change of cultural scenery, going from a borderstate between the midwest and the south, down to the heart of the south.

Besides lunch from the reliable hamburger restaurant Wendy's, we only  planned one detour, to the natural water slide called "Sliding Rocks". A  known waterfall, approximately 30m in length that ends in a 2½m deep river.  Sadly there had been too much rain lately, the water level had risen quite  a lot,  so we couldn't put on our swimming trunks and slide down the rocks  uncontrollably for hours on end, much like we'd planned. Despite that, the  surroundings were very beautiful and other impressive waterfalls were close  by as well.

The car ride there had taken us off the main road and consisted of  dwindling roads with hairpin turns leading up forestcovered mountains that  gave this blogger a nasty case of carsickness.
The road back was however not an easy journey. The first path suggested by  the GPS was lined with large ROAD CLOSED-signs and we had to find some kind  of alternative route.
Darkness came quick and our usually fired up discussions suddenly became a  bit more stifled. We stopped to fuel up the car on a remote gas station  around 2130, we were feeling tired from the drive, no 3g coverage in our  cellphones and the Master card wouldn't work at the gas pump. I've gathered  most of my knowledge regarding the american south from thrillers like  Deliverance (which happened to be recorded in close proximity to where we  were), Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Duel, something I stupidly brought  up in the car and appearantly my travelpartners were thinking the same  thing. When the payment issue had been sorted (we paid by cash to a  longhaired gangly dude with scarily strange mannerisms), a large chevy  pickup truck with tinted windows parked at the pump across from where we  were fueling and the driver's door opened up slightly, but no one exited  the truck. The lid for the gas tank opened up, but no human being appeared.  Four large swedish men seemed paler and paler, finished the fueling as fast  as possible and eventually managed to drive away. We looked behind us with  worry to see if the pickup truck would take up pursuit.
It was pretty quiet in the car, but the discussion all of a sudden became  quite fired up again, albeit not a nice or reasonable one, when all of a  sudden we discovered that the alternative route we managed to find several  miles away was also decorated with a large ROAD CLOSED-sign. We decided to  turn around, seeking anxiously for a pickup that would block the road for us. We  eventually found a third alternative down from the narrow roads with those  hairpin bends, decorated with trees, toward Atlanta. But then panic struck  in the car. We met yet another ROAD CLOSED-sign. All of a sudden the  conversations went silent a bit and we didn't know what to do. Mostly by  general planlessness we just kept driving on the road that we shouldn't  have kept driving on and we met even more ROAD CLOSED-signs, but after a  while we could breathe a sigh of relief since the signs stopped appearing  and we reached the large road to Atlanta; or rather to Buford, a smaller  suburb 40 minutes from Atlanta.

You see, my old friends Greg and Abigail Morgan lived there in Buford,  friends that I for some lucky chance happen to visit whenever I visit a new  continent (Long story...). We were going to stay with them a couple of  days. We were two and a half hours late (arrived 23:30 instead of 21:00).  We were tired and pretty spent, but received a wonderfully friendly  american welcome by the Morgans and their wonderful dog Tippett. So it was  a lovely feeling to crawl to bed this sunday night.

Yes, I realize that Tippett has his head in an awkward place...but it makes the photo that much more fun!

The next day, we were going to do the main attractions of Atlanta; the CNN -tour, the Georgia Aquarium and the CocaCola Museum. We started off with  the aquarium and it seemed to be a lively museum, with beautiful lights,  informative and funny texts about the animals with friendly glass aquariums  that the animals seemed to enjoy. My favorites however were the two square  decimeter large frog (that impressed me by far compared to the more  colorful species), the impressive whaleshark and the lovely passive  agressive piranhas. Afterwards we attended one of the main highlights of  our trip, Dolphin Tales, built as a gigantic theaterstage, with a large  pool and a stage above. The dolphins were just simply fantastic, jumped  synchronized, bounced high up above the water, helped the caretakers to  glide over the water at an insane pace, all perfectly timed with an  otherwise slightly "clowny" poor mans version of a disney story and  musical. But the dolphins were so fantastic anyway, so it didn't really  matter.

Next stop was the CNN-tour, held in a tall building around the corner in  central Atlanta. We don't have a common connection to this news station,  yet it was fascinating to see how news reports happen in today's  digital  reality. Everything was guided by a sarcastic guide who may have done said  tour one too many times and would rather do flat jokes about Swedes.
The  last stop might be the most famous, the CocaCola museum that was not held  in the tall CocaCola building that we had seen before many times, but  rather a pretty flat building. Maybe the attraction that carried the  highest expectations, but conclusively felt pretty commercial and flaccid.  Maybe we weren't the target audience, it felt pretty kiddie-focused. Very  old CocaCola-commercial, a lot of talk about the beverage and it's  significance for world history, a lot of commercial regarding characters  we've never seen before or music we've never previously heard, if anything  we had different tunes synonymous with CocaCola in our minds. Finally there  was a very nice part of the tour, we were allowed not only an unlimited  amount of CocaCola, but also were offered a large selection from all the  various drinks sold around the world under the CocaCola  brand and  considering the +30°C heat, it was quite a reinvigorating thing.


However, the downside to the last activity showed its ugly head when we  were on our way home. We however managed to solve the situation pretty well  anyway. Jacob was going to be driving us home, exited the parking lot and  then realized that we had ended up in Atlantas famous traffic jams. After  managing to travel 20meters in 30minutes, Jacob and Dan felt a desperate  need to relieve themselves, who just jumped out of the car to head back to  the museum to tend to their bodily needs, and actually let the car running  in the line, forcing me to jump into the driver's seat. When mr Nileskog  and mr Lantz returned, we had moved a couple of meters further and the  emergency was resolved.

So even this day ended especially nice at the Morgans who generously showed  the more beautful sides of The South, where the debate regarding especially  high and low things regarding swedishness, americanism and everything  inbetween went on all night long.