Roadtrippin’

I left Miami with a heavy heart. I had a really good time but I had to move on.

Everybody that traveled the US knows it’s not that easy to travel here. After looking up the Internet for God complicated ways to go from Miami, FL to Greensboro, NC, I decided to fuck this shit and just rent a car. It’s only $ 9,99 a day. Together with insurance and gas I paid a total of maybe $ 300 for the rental car for the week. I mean yes it is indeed more expensive than going there by bus or train but I got the chance to see the amazing land side of the USA…

Best car so far – Nissan Altima

I left Miami on Monday around 3 pm and was driving for like 8 hours until I decided it’s time to go to bed somewhere. I thought that you have to pay for the interstates here in the US so the first day I drove only like normal streets. And after these 8 hours I only made it to Tampa. That’s like nothing. I knew there was one hostel in Tampa but they didn’t had any beds left so I had to move on. The thing is here in the US there are only a few hostels to stay in and they are only in really big cities. What’s left are motels and this, according to Cameron, is where you meet crazy people.
The first night I decided to sleep in the car. Not sure if that’s allowed or not but after some driving around a small town near Tampa I found a distant, quiet place dark enough to sleep a bit. I was quite surprised that I managed to sleep 8 full hours.

The next morning I ran out of water and I had no food with me anyhow so I needed to get some resources. First thing I did was going into a Walmart. You see all the pictures of weird looking people buying their groceries in a cheetah dress or something and I wanted to see those people with my own eyes. I guess I went to the only Walmart in the country where the people dress adequately as there were none. That was a disappointment. So I just bought some water and chips which were my nutrition for the upcoming four days.

The second day was like the first one, driving and driving and driving until I got tired. Well, I did reach Alabama. Alabama is exactly like you imagine the South of the US. Everybody’s driving a pick-up truck, they have a weird accent which you don’t understand, people have that farmer tan and they all look like they have intense relationships with their families but the landside is very picturesque. Needless to say that I was listening to Sweet Home Alabama several times.

A little bit of background: Mr White’s favorite college football team is from the Auburn University which is quite obvious when you see all the stickers in his flat. As a farewell present he gave me a hat of that university which was nice as I now got a hat.

There I was driving through Alabama looking up the route on how to get to Tennessee when I saw it. The famous town of Auburn. After that lovely, well-considered gift from Mr. White I had to go there. That’s a really nice university. I have to do some commercial for them right now: if I had the chance to study in America I would definitely go the University of Auburn. I don’t know what I would study but I’d be one of those party students who never achieves his degree. Anyhow I was walking around the campus and were talking to two girls who told me about some things what to do and told me to see the stadium which is pretty impressive. They showed me the way how to get there when a random guy was walking by asking “Where do you want to go to?” So I said to the stadium and he was like “I’m going to the same direction, I can show you the way.”
We were walking there, he showed me around the campus and told me about the college life here. After that he drove me around the fraternity houses which are fucking incredible. I play The Sims a lot and you got all the features on how to build your house with those pillars in front and I always thought why the hell should you build such stuff. Now that I was in the US I know that this is apparently the shit. When you got pillars on your house you’re like fancy as fuck. Not quite my style but to each his own.
He told me about the rituals they had to do to become a member of the fraternity which are pretty crazy. They, for example, had to raise a goat for a week, spending 24/7 time with it, feeding it, giving it a name and at the end of the week they had to kill it. I’m not sure though if he was kidding with me or not but I kinda can imagine this shit to happen around here.
In the end he dropped me off in front of a microtel which was supposed to be cheap but it was still $ 60. I managed to book it online where it was only $ 50 dollars plus taxes. I hate that everything here is excluding taxes. That’s so annoying. I guess that’s how the world works.

Take a look on the bright side: the receptionist, Maria, was extremely hot. Had a boyfriend though. But I still had fun in the shower after two days of driving. You know just washing off all the dirt and sweat. This was not sexually meant I guess you guys know that.

Third day started great. I slept extremely well, decided to get breakfast at the so-called Waffle House. It was across the street and I was damn hungry. The guys there were really nice and made my day something special. So far Americans have been really nice. I don’t get why nobody likes them.
Her I was again, another time trapped in the car for a looooong time.

I forgot where I spent the third night. Actually I wanted to sleep again in the car and safe some money but around 5 pm or 6 pm maybe I got so tired. I wanted to take a nap so badly but it was still bright outside and I didn’t want to park somewhere and sleep for a while. I drove to the next town, looking for the cheapest motel and slept there. Actually it had a beautiful view from the backside, there was a pond, some ducks and geese and a lonely fisherman. The room, however, smelled too much like smoke. It was supposed to be a non-smoking room but you can’t have everything.

The fourth day I woke up very early. So early that I could actually eat the breakfast in those motels which is served between 6 am and 9 am. I mean what the fuck? What normal person is already awake at that time?? I had waffles with maple syrup and they were just horrible. Ugh. I almost puked immediately. How can you eat this stuff??

Never mind, I went off and drove through the Appalachian Mountains which I had heard of but never actually known where they are. Now I do know.
In the Appalachian Mountains there is a very curvy road called the “Tail of the Dragon”, I guess it’s paradise for motorcyclists. It goes up and down and left and right and up and down again. It’s like a roller coaster only without loops. I feels like that however. One guy described it like this “When you drive there you can see the back of your car” and this is amazingly accurate. If they had filmed Fast and Furious 3 in the US this is where they had to go to. North Carolina Drift.

In the middle of the mountains is the city of Cherokee. I bet you know that this is also the name of an Indian tribe, which is why I went there to see some real Indians. It was not that exciting as the entrance to the actual village was $ 20 just to see some bunch of half-naked people working. If I want to see that I just go to a construction site in Germany.
Furthermore, there is a small way up the hill from where you can sneak through the trees and see the village, not very good though, but it’s something.

After all that crazy America stuff it was time for my last night before meeting Cameron’s parents in North Carolina.
Once again I looked for the cheapest motel nearby and so far I was pretty lucky with the weird people. But as all comes in three the third night was crazy. First of all the motel was packed and the parking lot full of cars. I went up to my room and there were already weird people standing outside. I was a little bit scared. I walked passed that one room where the door was open. On the bed was a big pile of something skin-likely I couldn’t recognize. It looked like some sort of human but I did not see exactly what it was. I think it’s better like that. I rushed to my room, immediately closed the door behind me, took a deep breath and had to cough. Compared to this motel my last one smelled like a gorgeous unicorn. Here, however, it smelled like someone killed something and left it behind the heater to engrave the smell in the walls. Eww.
I managed to survive without getting asthma – sucks to your ass’mar – which was quite surprising.
When I wanted to sleep, though, there was a big-ass bug in my room. People who know me know that I’m not able to sleep with such a thing around me. So I went hunting. It was as big as my car dammit and I when I finally managed to kill it, it took three times, there was blood all over the place. Finally it looked like it smelled. The weird thing is that this creature had green blood. Good night Thomas.

Actually it was a small bug maybe as big as my thumb nail and the blood was just a small dot on the wall. But still that thing scared the shit out of me.
I left as soon as I woke up to continue my way to Camie’s house.

While driving there another city’s name caught my eye: Thomasville. To be honest, I saw Thomasville already in Georgia but as Georgia has very weird laws (not that it would be like that all over the US) I’m not allowed to drive there with my German driver’s licence. I could’ve gotten myself an international one but I wasn’t smart enough. That’s the reason why I had to take such a detour to get from Florida to North Carolina.
After taking like 1.000.000 pictures with the Thomasville city sign I granted myself a nice breakfast at Taco Bell in Thomasville. I kept the receipt of course.

5 long days later I found myself at the airport giving back my rental car. I parked it in the Hertz parking lot, gathering all the stuff that was flying around the last few days and recognized that guy standing next to me. He was waiting for me to get out. But it was kind of hard for me to say goodbye to this amazing car. I mean I only had to refill the tank like 3 times maybe. That’s like nothing. Road trips in the US are way more fun than in Europe.

One day I will do another one. Visit all the other places that one should see at least once in his life. But now it’s time to hang with my “guest-family” in my temporary home for the next few days.