View From a Prairie Home

by Hege Hernfindahl, Columnist

When our daughter Ingvild’s husband Patrick died of a sudden heart attack on June 6, 2020, her college roommate, Joslyn flew in from San Francisco right away. And her brother, Erland, came immediately with his family from Brussels. Joslyn became part of our family then, coming to Ingvild’s help when she was struggling as a single parent with three kids who needed to be chauffeured to three different venues. And when Erland died two years later, Joslyn was there to just be with us and offer her love.

Last Christmas, her gift to us was to host us on our trip to San Francisco. Having lived there for most of her life, Joslyn knew the city well and met us at the airport when we came there a few weeks ago. After making sure we were established in our small, but comfortable VRBO, she taught us the public transportation system, making sure we had the correct app for three days of unlimited public transportation for two for $60. Since she had to work during the day, she then gave us an hour-by-hour itinerary complete with information about how to get to the sights we wanted to see. Each night we met in a new and totally unique restaurant.

And we were charmed and amazed by this city built on 50 hills with the many distinct districts which each contained so much history. The uniqueness of San Francisco also lies in its location as a peninsula (7×7 miles) parallel to the mainland with an inlet from the Pacific that is narrow, yet deep enough for big ships. This makes San Francisco the perfect harbor, one of the few gentle harbors among the harsh, steep cliffs of Northern California. The strait leading to the San Francisco Bay is called the Golden Gate because it was visualized (in 1848) as “the Golden Gate to trade with the Orient.”

And the Oriental connection can be seen in Chinatown and Japantown and in the many people of Asian descent that are all over the city. Taking public transportation made us feel less like tourists and we were intrigued by how full the city was of young, energetic people. San Francisco felt and seemed unlike any other city I have ever visited both in the U.S. and Europe. The houses were colorful, most residential districts had rows upon rows of two or three-story townhouses. The streets were crooked and so very steep that a person had to walk leaning forward while going up and leaning backwards while going down. On every corner there seemed to be a café and also a bus stop. In the tourist areas, there were people wearing orange vests with nametags labeled “information” whom you could safely ask for directions. They warned us to not keep valuables in our car, because here, people will smash car windows and grab what’s inside, but we didn’t have a car. We had also been warned about all the homeless people, but even though we took a wrong turn one evening and ended up in an area with people sleeping on the sidewalks, they never bothered us.

Besides driving on buses, streetcars and thus being able to see the not-so-famous parts of the city, we also took a cable car ride up and down the hills and rented bikes and drove around the harbor. Then we biked to the Golden Gate Bridge, across it and down some very steep hills to a charming little town, Sausalito, where we took a ferry back to San Francisco.

If I left my heart in San Francisco, it is because of Joslyn. Not only did she show us the city she loved, but she showed us how to live with gusto and joie de vivre. She made us laugh and even feel moments of joy. During all the hard things we have had to face in the last three years, it is the love and caring of friends like Joslyn that has made us able to survive.