Mobile, pronounced Mobeeeel, located at the Gulf of Mexico in the south of Alabama, is especially known for its port and the shipbuilding industry. Now I am aware of the meaning of the song "Sweet home Alabama" and know that my sweet home will always be here in Mobile. I stayed for a long weekend with Mike in his idyllic house with a garden where I felt like in a dreamlike holiday apartment in the middle of the forest. Most of the time I spent relaxing at Mike's house, in the garden, in the hot tub or playing with his dog Shnooty.
A little about the history of Mobile: The settlement by Europeans began already in the early 18th century by French immigrants. The settlement was one of the first in the south of today's USA. In 1763 the French left the place which was called Fort Condé at that time and Great Britain took over, later Spain and finally the United States claimed the city. Mobile is one of the biggest cities of Alabama, which carries the nicknames Cotton State, Yellowhammer State and Heart of Dixie. The song "Sweet Home Alabama" by Lynyrd Skynyrd is written as an answer to two songs by Neil Young, "Southern Man" and "Alabama", which dealt with themes of racism and slavery in the American South.
My stay in Mobeeeel began at a wine and cheese restaurant with Mike and his friends and ended in a micro-brewery the first evening. Apart from that I tried American-style biscuits (similar to scones in Great Britain) filled with spinach and goat cheese. In America biscuits are a type of bread that's made with flour, baking powder, butter, salt and milk. Furthermore I tried a bacon grits casserole and collard greens as a side dish to pork sandwich.
One day we spent visiting the USS Alabama Battleship Memorial Park which includes the battleship USS Alabama, the submarine USS Drum as well as various bombers and fighter planes and other military equipment. Both the battleship and the submarine served in the Pacific fighting Japan during WWII. The ships were transferred to Mobile in the 1960s and restored to open them to the public as a museum. In 2005 both ships were damaged by the hurricane Katrina. We spent hours in the USS Alabama exploring different levels with all kind of facilities. A young mother and her child were playing hide and seek in the machine room and I scared another German tourist by asking suddenly a question in German for which he was not prepared.
Another day we went for a short city exploration tour to Downtown Mobile in the evening. Most notably striking architecture in Mobile are the towers of the Retirement Systems of Alabama (RSA): The 35-story RSA Battle House Tower (227 m) and the RSA Trustmark Building (129 m). We also visited the most famous hotel of Mobile, the Battle House Hotel, a historic building which was built in 1908 replacing an earlier Battle House that was built in 1852 and burned down in 1905. After that we continued our walk towards the Mobile River where the Convention Center and the Cooper Riverside Park are situated. On the other bank of the river there are shipyards where US Navy ships are built.
At the end of the day we visited a drag show together with another friend of Mike. The term "drag" refers to the wearing of clothing of the opposite sex. The drag show we went to was exclusively a performance where men dressed up as women and almost 100% of the guests were homosexual men. Every performer danced to one song and later in a second round to another one. Meanwhile the guests competed to give the performers dollar bills during the show. After this event was over we went to a nearby bar where we played Shuffleboard. This is a game in which players push weighted pucks down a long and smooth wooden table, finely covered with sand, into a scoring area at the opposite end of the table.
Mike and I also went for a little shopping tour and he spontaneously bought a well-dimensioned, gas-powered grill. It was my job to assemble it so that we could inaugurate it the day before my departure with a small grill party. It took a few hours to assemble all the screws but it probably would have taken much longer if I had read all the safety instructions. Mike invited some friends to come over and we grilled some chicken and a lot of vegetables. I left Mobeeeel the next morning and a friend of Mike's took me to a gigantic Buc-ee's gas station where I continued my journey hitchhiking eastwards.
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