After we had survived the flight (and in the meantime we learnt to hate the awful airport of Paris - poor de Gaulle must have been a great man but what the airport bearing his name can produce, it is under every possible niveau; avoid going there if you can), we were picked up by Hal Krueger and two other volunteers in his company in San Francisco and they took us to Sacramento. Since the tenor sax did not arrive with us (it was stuck already in Budapest somehow and was delivered to our hotel in Sacramento only two days later), we were a little late in leaving the airport thus the Mátrai brothers (the only members in the band who came to the US for the first time - see 4th picture) had to wait a little to see the typical American streets (and highways) live. It was already night in Hungary but the sun was bright in San Francisco (the time difference is nine hours) and even the Bohém chief, who was in the city for the fifth time, was busy taking pictures of downtown SF from the Bay Bridge (see picture above). After the West Coast Ragtime Festival in Sacramento we again headed to San Francisco to get our renatl cars in order to be able to get around in the following eight days. We rented two nice vans (see pictures 5-9), which we not only fitted in (including luggages, instruments, tuba, borrowed bass and the borrowed drums) but the bored passengers could also view DVD's. The cars ate up 15 liters of gasoline per 100 kilometres (about 6 gallons per 100 miles). The gasprice was about hitting its peak there (2,30 dollars a gallon) - that's about twice as cheap as in Hungary but the average American (driving a 5000 cubic centimetre monster on the 5-lane highway as fast as 55-60 miles per hour) spends way more on gas even by this low gasprice. Why did not they really signed the Kyoto agreement? The US is not a country that really acts in preserving the nature and protecting the enviroment...

Everything was typical American. Just like in the movies. The hotel, the cars, even the weather. Hot, palm trees (picture 2-3), you know, being in California... Prices (Józsi called home for 45 minutes with a 5-dollar calling card) and even the seagull on the top of the car that Józsi drove, was too American for being true - but it was true (see picture 5). But our mood was not really worse in worse weather, either (pictures 7-9), although some of us became really tired at times (picture 6).

On the way there the Bohém boss slept almost the whole flight through thus there was no picture made. Not many were taken on the way back, either, as it was then dark outside for most of the time. Finally in the last leg one of our nice travelmates (also from our home town Kecskemét as it became obvious right after talking to her for a minute) took a picture of the Alps at sundown for us:

Of course, our return flight did not start then but in San Francisco - after we returned the cars, we packed ourselves along with all of our stuff into the electric train coming in every five minute (see picture 1) and went to the airport. The good twelve or how many hours of the transatlantic flight has not been documented but for Tamás not much happened there besides consuming 2 meals, 4 movies and 3 chess parties. We became a little resignated by the few hours of inactivity (picture 2) but then the last flight was relatively convenient in spite of the limited space we had. The instruments had a worse flight (even though they travelled on the same plane); both the tenorsax and the tuba need serious repair. But all our luggages arrived together with us and, to make sure, Zoli kissed the ground after we arrived (picture 9).