Everyone who has ever taken the train from San Francisco to Silicon Valley knows that the trip is more comparable to a journey to fantasy-nerdlandia than to your usual train ride. The slightly antiquated train that connects San Jose with San Francisco is filled with young techies and occasional Giants fans. You get the best views on the left side of the train when you pass a small lake shortly after leaving the city and its industrial suburbs. You see birds, palm trees, the East Bay in a nice morning light. After a few miles, big and modern buildings of tech companies start to appear. Then palm trees and nature in between again. The recurring cycle of Californian landscape, suburban gardens, and SAP buildings still causes cognitive dissonance in my mind each time I ride the train. Staring out of the window simply never gets boring; especially on summer mornings, when San Francisco is still wrapped in fog and Silicon Valley already sips coffee in the sun. Fog and sun meet halfway and every time you leave the fog behind you dive into a different world: a sunny California – not with surfers but instead many Teslas and functional jackets.
After 45 minutes you arrive in Palo Alto. Many stories were written about this small town and I don’t want to repeat what others have observed before me: the idyllic atmosphere, the investors who run around on University Avenue in fleece jackets, and the proximity to Stanford which leads to most conversations in coffee shops revolving around software updates, UX, and venture capital. Not to mention the young, and mostly male, aspiring techies who flock from the Caltrain station to their offices, walking in a very peculiar way (perhaps they sit for too long? I’m still investigating…).
People asked me why I stayed in San Francisco after I finished my Master’s degree. Why didn’t I move back to Europe, knowing that getting a visa in the US would be hard? It was definitely not love at first sight with San Francisco; it took several months to acclimate to a high cost of living, a new language, a new culture.
But then my Californian adventure took off with an incredible amount of tech events, surf trips, startup pitches, and meeting restless people who seemingly have not found their place in the world yet. It seemed to me that everyone was looking for like-minded folks. The first time in my life I felt like I came to a place where you can be everything: hippie, surfer, freak, introverted dreamer, ambitious geek, snob, hipster. A weird place with no social standards and no guidelines on how to live your life – except for one: “Keep moving”. Work hard enough and everything is possible. Be creative and invent yourself. True to the motto: “I create my own world”, because no one really cares how your world looks like as long as you build companies and other amazing things.
Is California a place of freedom? Of course. However, you realize that this freedom comes with a price. You constantly overhear people complain about high rents and expensive cocktails in SoMa, which became the most expensive neighborhood in the US recently. The other weird result of being surrounded with so much tech and venture capital is having high IQ concentrated in one location. On the one hand it is very intimidating, but on the other hand it is a very effective motivator for your career and personal development. How can you even be satisfied with your life when you see your friends and tech-aficionados raising millions, giving lectures at universities, going on spiritual backpacking trips and being listed as “25 under 25” at the same time. No pressure.
Other drawbacks and side effects of living in this bubble: after a while you stop noticing the homeless and the smell downtown. You stop thinking about what is happening elsewhere in the world because you are so focused on the Bay Area universe. As a digital addict you wake up and immediately check notifications, likes, and emails. How dare you miss the latest news and investments of Google and Apple. Information distribution happens with an incredible speed, whereas most people here are not even aware of the fact that there are amazing surf breaks in the city, right at your doorstep. You constantly find yourself in a dilemma of choosing between overeager ambitions and the Californian nonchalance. Ah, the beautiful Californian way of life that can be spotted in Dolores Park on weekends. The Dolores Park is a place that embodies San Francisco outside of work: that life is a playground and you are lost in eternal childhood limbo. Why grow up if you can choose from endless innovative cocktails, psychotropic substances, Tinder-swipes and startup-dreams. You’d rather dance half-naked among trees and have glitter on your face! A mecca for commitment-phobes and the very young at heart. A few weeks ago I was stuck in the Caltrain for 3 hours because of a major accident and the lights went off. Instead of expected complaining (a thing we do a lot in Germany) I only heard two phrases that night: “Let’s check Twitter what’s going on here.” and “I wish I brought some beer .” And a lot of giggling in dark seat corners.
While observing this dreamy attitude and refusal of growing up, I wondered many times if I should keep pursuing the values that I grew up with – efficiency, discipline, and, seriousness. Employers love that stuff, right? And it was something that made me survive at university after all. Then I started realizing why my happiness level rises as soon as I step off the train in Palo Alto: German media notoriously calls it “irresponsible generation Y behavior”, I call it being a dreamer again. That means nourishing your inner child and the possibility of building the biggest sandcastles, choosing brave paths through life, exploring new things, and running around half-naked (metaphorically speaking, but hey, there is also Bay to Breakers).
I truly believe that this is what makes this little spot on the map so special: no idea is too crazy and no dream is too unrealistic. It is not the anxiety about the future but the childish optimism that is the driving force behind those fancy startup walls. Look at it this way – if you fail then you still definitely have many adventurous stories to tell to your grandchildren. Each time I stroll around in SoMa or sit half-asleep in the Caltrain, I am sure that I will not run out of dreams that fast.
ali falls in love 