I received an email today from Jan Paul Lindner, one of our European readers. Jan is in the United States till June for work and would like to meet up with some of you! Check out his email below and let’s see if we can get a few people to show Jan around :)
Jan wrote:
Hi gasmonso,
My name is Jan; I’m a semi-regular reader of your blog. Usually I reside in Europe, but currently I’m in Santa Barbara, California and I was wondering if any of your readers are in the vicinity. I came here not only to work (at UCSB) but also to meet Americans and get to know this society. Well, at least the Californian fraction. How about a transatlantic cup of tea with atheist gossip? Would you mind asking for that in a blog entry? Anyone may contact me at 
Thanks and have a good one!
Jan
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I wish reasonable people would come to Charlotte, NC and want to “have tea.” I get so buried in Christianity and God loving people here. Atheism is definitely a minority here, even on a college campus, where critical thinking is supposedly highly valued.
Charlotte is where I call home. There are more free thinkers here than you think, especially with the influx of northerners the area has experienced in the last five years. The stigma against us is stronger here, so we’re less likely to speak out.
I can definitely see the strength of the stigma here. There seems to be more fanaticism involved in the religion. Talking about religion in any sense other than to thank God for something is like taboo. *shrug* It does not help that two of my roommates are devoutly religious. Anyway, good to know someone like you, Sid, is nearby. Makes me feel a little less alone ;)
There seem to be less of said free thinkers in CA than in NC. So far no one tried to contact me. Or there’s such a lot of them that they don’t feel the need to unite and form networks.
Concerning the stigma I found out that it does exist over here as well. My housemates told me that I shouldn’t state being atheist in an application for a room (which I had done in order to avoid living with religious freaks). On the other hand I didn’t receive any offensive comments for wearing a t-shirt with an inverted pentagram the other day. I reckon this would have been worse in other parts of the US.