Peru & Bolivia

Part 14: Atlanta

<< Part 13: Back in Lima

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August 31st (day 37): Atlanta

My plane from Lima landed in Atlanta at 8am. Since my connecting flight to Brussels would leave almost 10 hours later I had plenty of time to visit Atlanta - I'd bought these plane tickets with exactly that in mind. Ironically, this was my 3rd visit to the USA already and I haven't paid for a single one of them. The first time I was invited to Los Angeles on a business trip, and the second time (three weeks later) I visited Chicago on my way to Mexico.

By 9am I was out of the airport and on the metro train to the city center. I was awake for 24 hours now but after dozing on the plane I felt fine. I had prepared this short visit well: I had printed a little Google Map of downtown Atlanta at home and marked all the places I wanted to see on it, as well as the metro stations, and it served me well. Atlanta has few monuments worth mentioning but it's the HQ of the Coca Cola Company and of CNN, so those were my three main destinations.

World of Coca Cola

I first headed to World of Coca Cola, a sort of corporate museum. Although I'm a Coca Cola Light Lemon addict myself, I mainly visited this place as a sort of joke, but apparently Atlanta really considers it a highlight because the speaker on the metro mentions it at the nearby stop.

In Peru the most popular soft drink is a local beverage called Inca Kola which has nothing in common with Coke (e.g. it looks yellow). I'd bought a T-shirt with the ubiquitous Inca Kola logo and of course wore it for this occasion. I asked the first passer-by to take that picture of me, and by a freak coincidence, this guy turned out to be a Peruvian staying in Atlanta to do an entrance exame at the university. Of course he very much liked the idea for this picture.

The museum itself consisted mostly of pictures showing Coca Cola's marketing throughout the years. Beside that there was a bottling machine at the entrance, and at the end a series of drink machines where you could try the many dozens of sodas the Coca Cola company sells around the world - that was fun.
I bought myself a huge Coca Cola glass from the early days when it was only served in apothecaries (completely different shape) as a souvenir and then left to get to CNN on time. I made a detour to check out the Georgia State Capitol, the parliament building of the state of Georgia of which Atlanta is the capital.

CNN

Two months earlier, before I'd even left Belgium, I already made an online reservation for a tour of the CNN studios at precisely 11:50 on this day - how's that for planning ahead.
The inside of the CNN building is very impressive with the inner court having been turned into a huge atrium. The ground floor is a public area and features the full spectre of American fast food restaurants. It is full of tables where people can have lunch and watch CNN on a cinema-sized screen.
We first got to see some rooms only used for the tour. The first had a cinema screen showing all the images the editor was seeing at this very same moment. Bush was giving a speech about Iraq somewhere and this was being broadcast live on CNN - the big screen in the middle. Around it we see various commentators waiting in front of a camera until it's their turn to speak. It was fun to see how a live broadcast is pieced together and watch those people wait.

In the next room the guide - who was very professional and knew his stuff - demonstrated the green screen principle by holding a green cloth in front of him so only his head remained visible on the weather map (look at the monitor above him).
At this point the guide told me I wasn't allowed to make pictures during the tour. That was very unfortunate because right after this we got a fantastic view on the huge CNN studio from a walkway behind glass, right beneath the high ceiling so we had an overview from above. We saw the anchor who we'd just seen on-screen sitting at a desk on a podium, with three fully remote-controlled cameras wheeling around in front of her, while behind her in the same hall were a hundred desks with computer screens where the whole news team was busily working. The microphones cancelled out their noise, there was no glass wall or anything.

It was an impressive sight, and being a news junkie who's watched CNN for countless hours I really got a kick out of seeing it all in action. I desperately wanted to make a picture, but having just been told it's not allowed and with a guard following us, there was no chance. I found this bad picture on someone's web site though.
We got to see the other studios as well, including the one of CNN International where another live broadcast was going on. All in all this was a fantastic tour and really one of the highlights of this journey.

Downtown

I had lunch in the atrium of the CNN building and then walked around downtown Atlanta for an hour or two, basically heading for the nicest-looking skyscrapers. It rained most of the time though it was very hot - this part of the US is said to have the worst climate.
What I found very remarkable about Atlanta was that there was hardly any traffic. With all those skyscrapers you'd think the streets would be bustling with life, but in fact it was eerily quiet, although it was a working day. Twice I ran into people who had also been on my plane and were also exploring Atlanta while waiting for their next flight.

Sailing home

I was back at the airport at 15:30, a good two hours before my flight. Now this was a few days after the attacks on Atlantic flights were prevented and all the new security measures were installed (no liquids in your hand luggage etc), but I could do a self-service check-in without any waiting and passing security took all of 5 minutes, amazing considering all over the world people were having to queue for hours at airports.

I spent the two hours I had to wait counting how many times I've flown a plane now, among other things. The flight from Atlanta to Brussels was my 46th. I arrived at 9am Belgian time on Friday, 44 hours after waking up in Lima, but by just dozing on the planes I felt fine. To my surprise Belgium looks quite nice from above, never seen it like this before.
The next day (Saturday) I had an interview with one of the two companies who'd contacted me while I was traveling, and on Monday I was already working again, so the end of my half year of free time was rather sudden.

<< Part 13: Back in Lima

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