An honest trip-review to the USA

This year, I had the blessing to visit the United States of America for the first time. In this blog-post, I’ll try to concisely write down my first experience of the US.

Day 1

The drive from Atlanta towards North-Carolina

Before landing at Atlanta airport, while flying and looking outside, I was quite surprised that everything seemed so symmetrical. Much like a Sims game, really. It was also quite hot and humid, more similar to parts of Italy. The cars, supermarkets and people are a lot bigger compared to Germany.
A good friend of mine has picked me up from the airport and we drove about 4 hours towards North Carolina to our destination: South-East Linux Fest 2025. Well, rather, we crashed at another good friend’s home who lives closer to North Carolina.
While driving, I’ve also had to get accustomed to the large populace driving awfully, thankfully my friend had enough patience to not get angry at bad drivers and with me complaining about them being slower on the left lane, not pulling up to the right (e.g. left to overtake and keep right).
Continuing the drive, we went by a lot of homes and urban villages, which enforced my Sims-like comparison. Throughout all our coming drives, there’s one thing I’ve noticed Americans (or Southeners, I guess?) love: Mowing their lawn. I’ve seen houses which were beat up, run down and probably just a poor family, however, their lawn, just like any other, was mowed perfectly and cleanly. This added some more context to online memes I thought only were caricaturizing annoying neighbors, well, they were, but they now add an American context.

And maybe because of roads or Americans being quite lazy, I’ve very very very rarely saw someone have their own garden. And it was not due to a space issue! However big their lawn is, everything is perfectly mowed, again. Though, to be fair, I’ve only seen the front of their houses and not the back-side of their house. Perhaps there’s a whole world of gardening in America, which to me wouldn’t explain the bigger size of people, but anyways…
When we arrived at the friend’s place to crash for one night, I was welcomed very warmly. Though I criticized the - to me - strangers in the supermarkets being bigger (and probably thus needing bigger cars), all around all people were a lot more welcome. Compare it to Germany, where people would rarely even greet or look at each other in bigger cities like Munich or Berlin, even in a smaller city in Germany people don’t go further than just greeting “Hallo” or in Bavaria more specifically “Grüß Gott”, while my experience in the South was “Hello, how are you doing?” - “Hi, good how about you?” - “Doing good as well.”… and that’s from strangers! I liked it a lot.
To end the day, we also ate at a Waffle House, however due to my Jetlag I couldn’t finish my meal at all so I couldn’t have my meal-experience on the first day of my trip.

Day 2

We woke up and had our usual morning routines. After a few conversations, we drove on to Charlotte, NC, to the hotel where the South-East Linuxfest was taking place. On the way there I took many photos of the landscape next to the highway, which felt like a whole new other planet where people love their big area of land. Of course, as a German, I noticed that everyone drives as they please on the motorway, as I did the day before. It’s a little chaotic, but my friend drove very well and safe. When we arrived in Charlotte, we picked up our participant cards - which was simply an old and probably defective floppy disk that we were allowed to choose ourselves and apply a sticker with my name on it. In the lobby we met the other participants of SELF-2025 that were members of our HeavenTree webring. On the first day of SELF, I didn’t find any pre-lunch talks interesting, so I initially just stayed in the lobby and chatted with the newcomers. Lunch was scheduled to be at 12 p.m., so we drove to a Mexican restaurant, where I had a quesadilla for the first time, which I really liked. My friends wanted to impress me with American food in a Mexican restaurant, which was a bit funny to me. After dinner we drove on and visited a MicroCenter, where I am admittedly very jealous that something like this exists in the USA but not yet in Germany. We might have comparatively smaller shops that try to imitate something like that, but I suspect it’s not as popular in Germany as it is in the USA. After checking it out, we drove back to the hotel and I listened to a talk about Monero. Afterwards I stayed in the lobby again and talked to my friends about everything except Linux. In the evening I was able to persuade the group to visit a German restaurant. The Schnitzel and the beer there was almost like back home, of course I could tell that the beer was an export beer (Lager), but it was still very good (Weihenstephan). After we had dinner we drove back to the hotel, where we ended the evening, chatted and someone decided to built his PC. Late in the evening me and my friend drove to the AirBNB, we had our evening routine and went to sleep.

Day 3

We all woke up, had our morning routines and after short conversation we drove off to the hotel. On the way I took a photo of the “Sims Apartments” area, which I have seen many times in the US, as well as NO PARKING signs where one wasn’t enough, and another photo of a stationary car on the highway, as I have seen those very often, as well as broken down cars. That day we were mostly in the lobby, chatting, we had lunch at a drive-in that had a photo of Guy Fieri on it, it actually tasted very good and I quite enjoyed the meal. Also, because we wanted to try to solve my mobile data problem, we visited a Walmart and I saw, no, felt what it was like for the first time in a Walmart. It is very similar to comparing it to a Globus or Kaufland. Afterwards I attended a talk about Fundamentals of Modern Cryptography - which I admit I really didn’t understand in theory, so I didn’t come back during the break where he was talking about TLS. Unfortunately it was too much for me, I really needed to be more involved in the topic myself. Anyway, then we were back in the lobby, chatting, playing a little open source games, someone was emulating a Wii and I was helping someone with their electronics project. There were a lot of old hardware that I took a photo of in another room and before dinner me and my friends picked up a computer at a MicroCenter (which I am again, very jealous of). Our dinner was American, again, because I liked the other drive-in so much, so we had the same one again (just in a different place). After dinner we stayed at the hotel again for a while, chatted in the lobby and this time we drove to the AirBNB earlier than usual, where we went to sleep a little bit earlier than the day before.

Day 4

We woke up, had our morning routine, and cleaned out everything that was ours from the AirBNB. We set off back in the direction of our friend’s home to celebrate the Holy Liturgy and communicate at his local Church. Afterwards at the Trapeza, due to Father’s Day, there were games for the fathers organized locally by the community while I chatted a little with the community members and ate something. Unfortunately I forgot to take a photo of the Church there, but it has a very nice, warm community and has a beautiful simple Church which I assume before was just a home.
Afterwards, after we ate something at the Trapeza, we went to the indoor gun range. For the first time I shot real bullets and noticed that I sometimes shot well, but on the whole I often missed (perfectionist here). Afterwards, one of my friend had to go on to meet his parents, so I said goodbye to him personally. That same day we went to Walmart again and I took a photo of their Red Bull cans (which are a lot bigger than the ones in Germany). After we were at Walmart we drove on to Gatlinburg because my friend who drove me everywhere didn’t want to drive 8 hours straight to home and so found a hotel halfway (hence Gatlinburg).

However, the area around Gatlinburg reminds me a lot of the Alps, except that my friend saw a bear with 2/3 tags one or two arm-lengths away from him (i.e. two tags means this bear has already attacked two people, one more time and it is going to be put down by the park rangers). In Gatlinburg we visited a restaurant which was also a small brewery. I tried the light beer and I liked it. At the end of the day we had our evening routines and then went to sleep in our Minecraft beds (see image).

Day 5

Morning routine - after than we chatted a bit with the hotel manager about the bear, who told us this wasn’t the first time a tenant met a bear and infact once a bear took down a door of his hotel because it smelt food. We then drove on to Monteagle, where we first had breakfast on the way with a good whiskey tasting and afterwards had a really good American breakfast. After the breakfast we drove on where we also saw a Buc’ees on the way, a supermarket with 100 gas pumps…. America, after all. I posed up in front of the Buc’ees statue and we drove on. […]

[…] The route through various cities in America was very beautiful, even if I was very upset by the driving skills of other drivers (again, I’m the German in America here). When we arrived at the monastery in Monteagle, we first chatted with the monk there a little, then held the Vigil and prayed together and then chatted again. I learned a lot from the experiences of a monk. On the way back to the car we saw deer and on the drive home an English-built town. We also visited a Piggly-Wiggly, a supermarket… Why is it called Piggly-Wiggly? No idea. In the evening we arrived in Columbia, Tennessee, and went to sleep.

Day 6

Me and my friend woke up, usual morning routine, then he’s shown me his home city, Columbia Tennessee, where I actually saw an alien (very scary). His home town is very nice, unique in a way. Comfy, one might even say. After walking through the city a bit and checking out areas, like an Antiochian Church, […]

[…] we decided to go visit a museum about the civil war between the North and the South. I’ve surprisingly found freemasonry symbols, (to me at least) and my friend agreed that there’s a lot more masons around here. After visiting the museum and checking out the nice attire soldiers used to wear, we headed towards a bouldering gym where we spent some time and I introduced my friend into it.
Before going to a japanese restaurant in the evening, we visited a wonderful orthodox church (see pictures). When I saw the Pantokrator-icon for the first time in that church, all I really wanted to do was fall to my knees because of it’s beauty. Add to that the fact that only us two were in the Church at that time and you can probably imagine how I felt. It didn’t even feel empty (besides the fact that my friend was near me).
After visiting the Church and eating something, me and my friend talked for the rest of the evening, had our evening-routine and went to bed.

Day 7

Return day, I’ve packed my stuff and was driven to the hotel where I’d stay the rest of my day for my flight the following day.

My first impressions of the USA

To be quite honest, when I recall the US-trip I really liked it there. Sure, the food might not be comparable to Germany (though they make really tasty burgers), so do the skills of the drivers (except my friends, they drove calm and collected), but I have noticed that, atleast where I was in the US, they are much nicer and warmer people than some other Germans I’ve met (and I’m not only talking about my friends).
It was rare to me to not get greeted by strangers, which was very nice, felt like home (since I don’t live right in the middle of an urban city like Berlin, Hamburg, Dresden, München or the like).
I also had a stereotypical idea of “everyone outside the EU is stupid” without realizing it until I was in the US and got that idea out of my head. Actually made me wonder a bit as to why I had it in the first place. Obviously American people are educated, but I guess I assumed they weren’t because most entertainment videos on YouTube aren’t… very educational one might say.
Same with another stereotypical thought which broke quickly was that I thought once I’ll land I’ll get shot or something (which is ridiculous and I still wonder why I had this feeling).
Now, would I want to live in the US? To be honest, no. I got too used to European culture where it feels odd to me to drive badly (yes, I cannot let go of that fact), have big cars and see cars on the street I’d usually see in more poor European countries (see gallery). However, I do envy them there, because admittedly, it felt like people are more free there. While I was there, I realized my own “bureaucratic” mind I had, constantly thinking “I can’t do xyz because there’s this weird law that might not allow me to do this or that because Markus von Neuschwanstein der II wrote in his diary in the 1500…” whatever, you get the point.
I’m sure parts of the US have the same issue, but I doubt it’s as prevelant as it is in Germany (where in order to solve problems, we sue people).
I hope to visit the US again some day, the experience I had there has a special place in my mind.
I thank everyone I met there for their warm welcomes and accommodation, especially my friends and the people I met at SELF. Hoping to see you guys again some day (maybe in Germany?).

I also thank you, dear reader, for taking the time to read through my travel blog of the US. I really appreciate it. If you want to check out the rest of my gallery (selected pictures from my trip), you can click right here.