Letter 1 - written on December 17, 2003
A new Beginning

Hi Guys,

This is a letter to a lot of people in old Germany who want to know how I am doing. I will try to answer all your questions in this one letter so everyone can hopefully draw something interesting from this. I am thinking I will also continue keeping you posted in this manner. Of course if anyone has a private question I will also answer them individually. I do not like mass mailing, but given on how much I have to do over here and how many people have written me in the past weeks it would just be too much to keep everyone posted individually. If anyone doesn’t want to get my mails just drop me a line and I will remove you from the list. The same applies if someone changes his/her address or if I have forgotten someone; just drop me a line.

Introduction for those that do not know yet: I’ in L.A. now. And I want to become an actor (I’m a walkin’, talkin’ cliché). There is nothing wrong with tech support, but I do not believe it could ever again be as good as the times we had at Systematics. I also believe I have experienced everything you can in this job. I know my way of reckoning might not stand everybody’s reality check, but my greatest fear was that I might be forever caught up in daily routine. So I tried something unusual. I have had this dream for quite a while, but I had always dispensed it as being unrealistic and out of reach. I never had had the guts or the resources to pull it off either. But then I found myself with my severance pay and without a job and without anything better to do. So here I am.

How it all began: Shortly before leaving Systematis a realization caught me: It must be the meaning of life when lying on your deathbed to be able to rightly say “I have lived“. If you take into account all the consequences that this revelation brings with it you will find there is hardly a more foolhardy way to lead your life, because you tend to take stupid risks fort the sole reason of being able to tell a story afterwards. If you agree to this to be foolhardy you may now shake your head and then close this letter. Everyone else may continue reading.

I had three months to sort out my old life and prepare for the new one. And although I worked hard all this time I was not able to finish everything (sorry Savio, Fossy and all the others. I will try to make up for it, if I can). Then I packed my bags and left – for Australia. Australia??? Why Australia? LA lies in California, right? Yes it does. But this trip already had been planned before I knew that my days at Systematics were coming to an end, before I knew that I would be starting a whole new life. At this point in time I shall only say this much about Australia: Great. Vast. Beautiful. Beautiful people (all the ugly ones are tourists). Wonderful, genuinely friendly people. The stores close at 6:00pm the pubs at 9:00pm (okay, some pubs in big cities are open longer). They drink more Guinness than Foster’s. THE Australian beer is called Toohey’s (or something similar). Sydney is almost more beautiful than Hamburg ;-). They even have Doner Kebab.

Arriving in LA: I arrive from my vacation at LAX International Airport. My luggage consists a bag, a suitcase, the phone numbers of a few acting schools and a GermanVisa card. I am supposed to call a friend of my brother’s. Supposedly he lives in San Francisco, but knows someone in LA who might house me until I have found a place of my own. Nobody picks up. Finally I call the acting school that I hoped to enroll in and basically say "hi, here I am" (I’m still at the airport). They point me to the nearest Howard Johnson. So this where I go to spend my first days in LA. I rent a really old Toyota Tercel and start looking for the single most important thing an American needs: A car of my own. Finding a car in my price range is somewhat more difficult than expected and I have to change my plans. No. 1 on my list is now to find some kind of semi-permanent place residence (I never was able to get hold of my brother’s friend’s friend). My first call to a potential landlord is quite indicative of what really counts in the USA:
Potential Landlord: Hello?
Andy: I heard you had a room to let....
Cautious Potential Landlord: You work?
Andy: Not yet, I have only arrived in the US two days ago.
Potential Bureaucrat: I am sorry, but I will leave the risk of having a tennant in your credit category to someone else. <click>

Still finding a place to stay is not that much of an obstacle, although it is only about 55 square feet behind a curtain in the storeroom/kitchen ( I call it a kitchen, because that is where my landlord keeps his microwave and two hotplates. I basically live under the bed which is mounted under the ceiling about 2m above the ground. In the meantime I have even set up a desk here and a modest kind of coziness is starting to spread. My Landlord is a nice guy, he is a "self-employed artist, DJ, web designer, etc". He is very friendly and he also is having TROUBLE WITH HIS COMPUTER! I feel right at home.

Talking money: I finally have a place to stay, so I'm back on the lookout for a car. I find a promising little trade-in at a dealer, but he wants things from me, which I don't have: An American bank account, a telephone bill as proof of residency and a California driver's license. Wonderful. So I track down a Bank of America to open an account. To open one, it turns out I need to deposit $125. Obviously I do not have that much on me, so I mosey over to the ATM to get it. Close, but.... no cigar. It seems that this credit card has an International credit limit that is much lower than the European limit. Nobody at my bank in Hamburg had ever pointed that out to me. Fortunately I am able to retrieve $80 and with my cash on hand I have just enough to open the account. A few night calls and some hassle about convincing my German bank that I am really myself, copying my ID and bank card I can finally send off a fax with a request to wire some dough to my new account. So right now I am waiting for it to arrive. Luckily I am again able to withdraw small amounts via my credit card, so I will not get into trouble. But this has slowed me down considerably. By now I have exchanged my rental car for a bicycle, I have my own phone/internet connection, have reinstalled my landlord's computer, have acquired a California driver's license, and I am starting to learn a bit of Spanish (this is essential if you want to order tacos at my neighbor's street stand). And the acting school I wanted to go to has accepted me! I have even had my first casting (just for a student film, but for starters I am happy)!

All in all I am doing quite well, hope you are, too

Andy