On our road trip with some friends from Germany, the last stop was in New York. For me this was another great opportunity to wander around and to capture some moments in this amazing city.

Right next to Chinatown in a neighborhood that I believe is called Bowery, Neumi and I saw a few guys playing basketball. Even though this clearly was recreational, they were playing very good and they had a very professional setup including jerseys, judges and a commentator. We sat down and watched them for at least an hour.

Over the weekend we went to Traverse City to celebrate Aaron’s Bachelor Party. A super nice cabin a few miles outside of the city and right next to the lake that meanders all the way to Lake Michigan was rented.

The river was watched…

…Burgers were flipped…

…Drones were flown…

…Baseballs were hit…

… and we spent an evening in the city to visit the Right Brain Brewery where we tasted their beer and got a private tour by the head brewer who happened to be a member of our group. After that we walked further into traverse city and ate some burgers.

Before the 4th of July, Jessie and I took a few days off and we drove to the “Ju-Peeh” as the cool kids here call it. We went camping in St. Ignace which is a small town right behind the Mackinac Bridge that connects the upper and the lower peninsula.

We camped in a state park which was surprisingly well equipped. For a few bucks per night you get plenty of grass for a tent and a car. Each space also comes with it’s own fireplace and a bench. The showers were perfectly clean and warm.

Yesterday I went to East Lansing with Lindsey and Aaron. We did a kind of belated engagement shooting after they got engaged last year. They wanted to take the photos on their university’s campus where they had met. For me this was a great opportunity to try out portrait photography. That’s something I had not really done before and especially if it’s related to marriage, there is a lot of pressure. It was great, though, to do this with friends who can’t really be mad at you when things go wrong. They both did a great job and got more and more relaxed after the first few shots (and after the beer for lunch). I didn’t really have to tell them much how to pose which was was good because this really seems to be the tough part. I should really study poses more and try to look for the tiny details in them. All in all this was a fun trip and time flew by. I got to know a new small and cute city, another American university and a party location.

Last week I travelled to Germany for a business trip and spent the weekend with friends in Berlin. It was great to be back even though it was strange to be in Germany as a visitor.

I was reminded what a great city Berlin is and noticed the differences compared to living in the Detroit area. Berlin was packed with cyclists and using a functioning public transport system was nice, too.

Last weekend we drove to Traverse City which is located in the northwestern corner of Michigan. The drive there takes you through three hours of nothing. At least, in the end the roads got quite curvy and were fun to drive. Finally no overcautious people and crazy speed limits taking all the fun. Also, we took the Tiguan for a short off-road tour on some unpaved forest paths and saw a live turkey on the way. We staid in a wooden cabin half an hour outside of Traverse City. In the city itself there is nothing going on this time of the year and the weather was’t that good either. We had a fun wine tasting tour, though, where we visited four different vineyards and tasted their wines. Three of them were rather disappointing and definitely too expensive for their quality. The Chateau Grand Traverse was our favorite and we bought a few bottles. It was explained to us that the vineyard is one of the oldest in the region and that it was built with support from Germany.

It’s been a while since my last post but yesterday’s party is definitely worth writing about. Lindsey and Aaron invited us over to watch the Kentucky Derby - an event that I’ve never heard of before. That’s a horse race (actually it’s more than one but only one of them is really famous) about which they say that that’s the most watched two minutes in sports every year.

Everybody was supposed to dress up in typical derby apparel and we placed bets on the horses.

On Friday Franzi, Ben and I drove to Toronto to spend our weekend there. For me that was the first trip to Canada and I had expected more trouble at the border - everything went very smooth in both directions. On the three hours between the border and Toronto it got reeeeally boring. The road was perfectly straight and crossed through endless farmland. Every 50 kilometers there was a Tim Horton’s at the roadside and then nothing again for a long time. We made the mistake to stop at one of these and I drank what I think was the worst coffee of my life. On our way out of the store I had to throw it away because I couldn’t drink it. I guess I should’ve trusted Thorsten’s list of best coffee in the US.

Fowling is a mix of American Football and Bowling that was invented by accident:

In 2001, Chris Hutt and his friends from Detroit, MI built a bowling alley in the RV parking lot at the Indianapolis 500 race track for their traditional tailgate recreation. Their construction efforts failed to withstand the force of the bowling ball crashing into the wooden backstop and resulted in deeming the activity as a safety hazard. The bowling was called off by Hutt and his friends who proceeded to toss around a football for leisure during their tailgate. Meanwhile the bowling lane setup and pins remained in positioned while playing catch with the football. A stray football accidentally struck the pins, knocking them down and the sport of fowling was born at that very instant

Because Thorsten is back in the D for a business trip we went fowling with some colleagues at the Fowling Warehouse.

Johnny had the great idea to watch Monster Jam Detroit. Apparently there is a real league for monster truck racing and Ford Field was packed with spectators. It seemed that some of them even take this “sport” very serious reading magazines and cheering for their favorite driver.

This whole ridiculousness made this a fun event and I enjoyed this a lot more than I expected.