The Grain and Grape

Our first trip home to the United States in 21 months since moving to Germany, and wow, was it great! With 2 weeks at home, we hit 4 states, took 4 flights, drove 800 miles, and had countless fun times with family and friends.

We started off in Minneapolis, at the CPSDA annual conference. We’ve been fortunate to have friendships from different areas of the country that we have had for years, and we caught up with a lot of these friends at the conference. A benefit of the conference is learning about updates in sports nutrition, but the real bonus is both catching up with friends and meeting new friends.

Next up was a road trip throughout the Southeast USA to visit family. We love a good road trip, and love seeing America’s wide-open spaces. Everything is bigger here, from refrigerators to highways, and definitely trucks.

Our last stop was Rob’s hometown, and where we first met, Atlanta. We wrapped up our visit home seeing longtime friends who are like family. Every day of our trip home, the weather was pleasantly warm, in the 70’s, and sunny, so much sunshine! We soaked it in, to keep against all the rainy days back in Germany.

We ate foods we’ve been missing, and they were all as good as, or better, than we remembered.

Overall, our fresh impressions of the United States, at least for the areas we visited:

• Everything is so bright, open, and airy
• Friendly people!
• So many people
• So much diversity
• Air conditioning!
• So many cars
• Large trucks!
• Slower driving speeds
• Semis using the middle and left lanes
• Huge elevators and rooms in hotels
• Wide open spaces!

While there never seems to be enough time to see everyone we want to see, we appreciate the time we had to see as many people as we could. Now, back to Germany, and back to work. Our vacation to the USA was energizing, it was good for our hearts and our minds.

We have been fortunate to create and keep friendships through the years from across the USA. Thank you to everyone for making the visit so memorable.

Cheers!

---

This post may contain affiliate links that earn us a commission at no extra cost to you.