Do you remember Jen and Santos from Mongolia? We did. They and their pictures of Utah were the crucial cause for us to visit their home state. They live in Salt Lake City (SLC) and because the Amtrak train from San Francisco stops there it was the obvious transportation vehicle of choice. With a tiny three hours delay (trains in the US are comparable cheap, the staff is incredible friendly, seats are spacey and comfortable, but they are so SLOW!) we arrived for sunrise in SLC. The first thing you recognize stepping out into this city are the mountains all over the horizon. Located in a valley in the Wasatch Mountains it makes nearly everybody we met here a outdoorsy: hiking, climbing, and skiing. I tried to run up a mountain but gave up due to its steepness and several scratches.
You are surrounded by Mountains. Probably one or the reason why SLC once hosted the winter Olympics. By the way the Utah licence plate that also the greatest snow can be found in this state.
The other for us mainly funny and interesting fact is that a significant portion of Utah’s and thereby also SLC citizens are Mormons (SLC is said to be 50% mormonic. For a view of a real mormonic city you have to go to the close by Provo). Ever heard of that term? I didn’t. Actual it is currently the most growing religion and officially called „Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints“ (LDS) founded in NewYork in the 1820’s. They believe in the book of the angel Mormoni found by Joseph Smith (A well known scammer of it’s time. Coincidence that one of the biggest supermarket branches in Utah is called Smith’s?) It tells the somehow crude story of the origin Mormons that seems hard to believe for a scientist, but hey the bible is as hard to believe for me too.
Most huge public buildings will have a golden Mormoni at their top, play the trumpet. So does the city hall in SLC.
In my opinion the most distinct features of Mormons are their very happy nature, helpfulness, abstinence from alcohol and coffee (?????), absolute obedience, paying 10% of their income to the church and many many children. I guess, if you can live with the last four it’s not the worst religion.
However there are still some fundamentalistic groups that root in the LDS. They still live polygamy after the old revelation of John Smith (who was what we call a philanderer). We saw a few of them that even dress like actors from „Our little Farm“ on our later road trip through Utah. If you want to know more about Mormons in general and Fundamentalist in specifically you can read the book from John Krakauer „Under the banner of heaven“ or look out for some mormon missionaries. If you ever see guys in white, short sleeved shirts with a tie and a name tag in your city they are with a 99% probability
mormon missionaries trying to convert you.
So based on this background the biggest sight in SLC is the temple square home to the huge LDS temple (By the way there are two in Germany too. One in Freiberg – Saxony and one in Frankfurt – Hessen, if you are tempted.). We went there to just have a look around and … well … open our horizon. The missionaries in the visitor center speak literally every language so we chatted a little with a nice girl from Switzerland how she became one of them. In the end she recommended us to go over to the cinema to watch the movie „Meet a Mormon“. As naive as we were, we went over assuming a 20 min show as in a visitor center in a national park. Stupid, stupid, stupid. We were welcomed by two sisters, who advised us to keep a close eye on, how jesus changed the live of of the six mormons and to think about how jesus touches our life. In the end of the movie more sisters will wait for us to talk about our experiences … and than the electric doors slammed shut. There was no escape from nearly two hours of brainwashing. We should have known this …
… but I can tell you, you don’t have to become a mormon to appreciate the values that they try to sell you. Taking care of yourself, your family and society is nothing Mormons invented and I am still a convinced atheist.
In the end we had some really nice days in SLC hanging out in the kitchen with Jen, Santos and their housemates (Thanks to all of you!), soaking in the SPA high up in the mountains, drinking great beer in Park City and preparing for our road trip into red sandstone.
