Georgia and North Carolina on our Minds

 Aloha all,

it has been only two weeks since we left Maui, but we already had such a wide variety of experiences in Atlanta and retracing our steps from last year on the Blue Ridge Parkway: 

Met friends,
Raced cars, 
Saw a King’s home,

Toured a capitol,

Learnt about Jimmy,

Saw whale sharks,

Saw two plays

Picked up Joy,

Camped on lakes,

Played stick and disc golf,

Went underground, 

Found gold, 

Visited a German town,

Were on the top of Georgia, 

Climbed the Devil’s Courthouse, 

Returned to a Happy Place,

Saw a bear,

Hiked Chimney Rock and 

Toured America's Largest Home. 

There, that’s it! Who says I write long blog posts? Two weeks in just about 100 words! Sorry for those of you who actually enjoy a more detailed travelogue, maybe you want to read the descriptions under the pictures below. 

Good to be on the road again,

Chris, Sandra & Joy

We join our friends for the "Porsche Experience".
They just happened to pick up their new car in Atlanta when we flew there to pick up Joy. When you pick up your Porsche here, they don't just hand you the keys; you visit a little museum, they do the big reveal, give you a detailed introduction, you can race around the race track with a professional driver and then they feed you a yummy lunch...luckily in that order. 

Captivating tour of Martin Luther King's birthplace and childhood home in Atlanta.
There's also a museum and a memorial for him. Can't help but wonder what he would think about the progress we have made and haven't made since his death.

The Georgia State Capitol in Atlanta was our 30th.
Very impressive like most of them and we were lucky yet again and got a private tour.
We're looking forward to the remaining 20 state capitol tours!

17 years ago in Okinawa we got to scuba dive with Whale Sharks.
Unfortunately, we don't have any photographic evidence of that experience. But at least we got to take pictures with whale sharks at the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta, with 6.3 million gallons of water the largest Aquarium in the world!

At the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library. I have now visited 11 out of the 13 officially Presidential Libraries. We always plan to get to them first thing in the morning since it takes all day to visit. Jimmy's was no exception. Beautiful setting, very interesting exhibits. No matter what you think of his politics, you got to like Jimmy!

ReJoycing in Atlanta, this time with a catalytic converter!

We love the campgrounds from the
Army Crops of Engineers! 

We got to play disc and stick golf already,

the Road Trip Pickle Ball premier will have to wait. 

We came to Dahlonega for the free overnight parking,
but then we found gold in the liquid and solid form and stayed a day.

Dahlonega was the site of the first gold rush in America,
two decades before California.

We found gold!
We must be the luckiest tourists...
 ...since the ones before us.

Helen, Georgia is the most fake German town we've been to in the US.
But I always say: I prefer fake pretty over real ugly any day.
Plus the food was delicious, the beer was cold and they played some German songs we had not heard in 30 years!

The Pisgah Inn on the Blue Ridge Parkway is one of our Happy Places.
Third time we've been here and it was just as magical as before. We're not really sure why we like it so much here, as Kelly would say: There's really nothing to see but scenery.

.

Joy in front of Mount Pisgah. Jeff called her "sexy" and I can't really disagree;-)

Pooh strolling on the side of the road just outside Asheville.
Our favorite way to see a bear: Close, but safe.

Chimney Rock State Park.
Enough trails and views to keep us busy for a day.

Immersive "Monet & Friends" exhibition at the Biltmore estate.
From the same guys as the Van Gogh exhibit and just as fun.

The Biltmore in Asheville - "America's Largest Home" as they humbly call themselves.
We had not gone there last year because it was too expensive. Now they raised their prices, so we changed our mind. How's that for logical Germans? But between the Monet exhibit, the house tour and the gardens, we spent a full day here and got our money's worth.

That's the main dining hall at the Biltmore. The whole place is just as crazy over the top opulent and just as pretty as any European castle. I'm not really jealous, I think I rather tour than own a home like that. We wouldn’t mind being invited for dinner though...until then, we're happy to tour a few of the smaller homes around the country.

A hui hou, Maui....it's time for another JoyRide!

Aloha all, 

it’s almost time for our next road trip. I think most of you will appreciate that I don’t write a blog post about life on Maui every week. It might get a little repetitive to read “Another fun Tuesday Night with friends”, “Another exciting tennis match” or “How lucky I get to play Ultimate frisbee and golf, even in winter” week after week. But since the blog is called “Best of Both Worlds”, at least I want to mention our time here on Maui. After all: It’s still our favorite place in the world! And maybe some of you want to know what new sport Sandra and I started, for what nationality we applied, how often we went scuba diving, who came to visit, whether I survived my annual ski trip and what we did when we didn’t not work. 

Taken on a short break from work,
no wonder we keep coming back to Maui

After 20+ years, Sandra did not go back to her old job. Might have been too weird to go back to the same place with all new people, so when Ute offered her a job at the Kapalua Ziplines (before we were even back on island), Sandra decided it was time for a fresh start. It’s a very pleasant job, the co-workers are fun and the boss is awesome. The only downside is that if you work at a zip line, you have to zip at least once. As you can see, Sandra hated that part: 

Tough Day at the office

 My little German vacation rental business is just now slowly starting to get going again. So I mostly drove for Uber. I can’t really explain why I enjoy it so much. The whole thing seems like a game to me. Kind of like Pokemon Go, you drive around the island, pick up all kinds of characters and collect points in forms of fares, tips and ratings. I also enjoy the element of surprise: You never know where the next ride goes and who the next passenger might be. Could be a visitor from one of the 50 states we’ve been to, could be a local heading to work or a resident from Lanai heading to the harbor…or it could be a rock star:

In case you don't recognize him without the make up,
it's Tommy Thayer, lead guitarist of KISS

 

I always thought I’ll start pickle ball when I can’t play tennis anymore. Turns out it’s the other way round: I can’t play tennis anymore since I started playing pickle ball. But we didn’t want to be the only two people on the island not playing this trendy new sport. We liked it so much that we’ll buy a second set of paddles for Joy to add pickle ball to our road trip activities. I promptly lost when I switched back to play tennis with my buddy Dave after winning the previous 25 matches. But pickle ball is so much fun, I’ll keep playing, even if it ruins my tennis game. 

Our first Pickle Ball game, now we are hooked

On our way home from Germany last fall, we enjoyed a few days in Colorado for a wedding. Since the rest of the Maui ohana couldn't make it, there was a very fun re-enactment here on Maui.

 Christmas was extra special this year since we had almost all of our Colorado friends here on Maui. For the first time ever, Sandra and I even cut our own Christmas tree to make sure the visitors staying with us had a very Mele Kalikimaka. The festivities included a star gazing cruise, a few rounds of disc golf, a fun night at Jack & Annie’s and a joyful play about Buddy the Elf! 

Our first Christmas tree harvest

Stargazing Christmas Cruise

                                                                        Mele Kalikimaka

Napili disc golf

 We finally got the permission from the German government to become dual citizens. In German it’s called “Antrag auf Beibehaltung der Deutschen Staatsbürgerschaft”…with a name that long, no wonder it took over a year! We had a fun trip to the very cute German consulate on Oahu to pick up our “Beibehaltungsurkunde”. Now we applied for American citizenship, all we have to do is wait 4 to 14 months, stay out of trouble, pay a lot of money and study for the civics test. Luckily, there are still some historical sites and presidential libraries we haven’t been to, so by the end of this next trip, we should be good to go. 

On our way to dual citizenship!

Great excuse to go holoholo in Honolulu

 Somehow we manage to visit several national parks, a few state capitols, several hikes and a handful museums into a month on the road. But we only managed to go scuba diving one single time in the six months we were here. But at least we finally got to go diving with our friends Ovick & Karine for the very first time. And as always, the first thing we say after re-surfacing was: “We should do this more often”…and then we don’t. 

Scuba Diving at Mala Wharf

Always nice to see that little white tip...

 

The blog should really be called “Best of Four Worlds”, because our annual tradition now seems to include Living on Maui for half the year, traveling in Joy for several months, spending a longer period of time with our family in Europe and for me also a now traditional ski trip to Colorado. Since I didn’t start skiing until I was 45, I still have some catching up to do. The advantage of starting so late: I still get a real kick out of even the easiest runs at any ski area. And I'm getting just good enough so that friends who actually know how to ski are willing to ski with me occasionally. 

Hau Oli La Hanau at Ski Copper

Greg, I've a feeling we're not on Maui anymore

Visiting friends are always a good reminder how lucky we are to live in a beautiful place like Maui and a good excuse to play tourist in your own backyard. 

Finally, at least a few Europeans
find their way back to Maui

On Monday, we are heading out and can’t wait to see Joy again. We’ll start in Atlanta, then we plan to head northeast along the Appalachian Mountains, visit friends in New England, then family in Europe, return to Joy to head southwest…all subject to change. If we were to see anything on the road or in Europe that we find interesting, I might write an occasional blog post. And if we don’t find another place we like better than Maui, we’ll be back here in half a year. 

 A hui hou, 

Chris & Sandra

Eureka! We're back in Europa!

 Aloha all,

those of you on Facebook might already know that we enjoyed the extended time with our families and some of the pictures below might look familiar. But since there are plenty of good reasons to stay away from social media, we’d like to give those smart people a chance to catch up with our adventures, too. Compared to America, the pandemic still seemed a little more on people's mind and the rules were followed a little more, but overall it felt almost like a normal visit.

How lucky we are that we got to spend over two months with our families and friends  in Germany after not being able to visit since the beginning of the pandemic. As you might or might not have noticed, I did not write any blog posts while we were out of the country. As much as we enjoyed it, probably boring to repeatedly read “beautiful walk with our family” or “nice to see old friends after such a long time” or “just ate another delicious pretzel” over and over again. But even if only for our own memory, we’d like remember some of the things we enjoyed on this year’s European tour. Don’t worry, it’s not a day by day commentary of every Schnitzel we ate and there will be plenty of colorful pictures:

I am not sure whether you know this, but we did NOT move so far away because we don’t get along with our families. So if we had to pick one best thing from our trip, it would be that we got to spend so much time with our blood ohana.

Photo bombed Family Portrait at the Bodensee

Mommy's home cooked dinners are the best....
...well except for that one place in France,
but more about that later.

Family Time is also Game Time for us. Always has been and hopefully always will be. The games have changed over the years, but the enthusiasm hasn’t. And part of the tradition is for the winner to innocently ask the next morning who won the previous day. 

"Azul" is currently our favorite 

"Colt Express" is a new discovery  

A friendly game of "Skyjo"

My dad and I played 31 games of chess,
at the end the score was 15 1/2 to 15 1/2

My nephew and I also ended up with a friendly tie

Our favorite family retreat is "Les Alpages" in the French Jura region, a small family run Inn with the best food in the world...yes even better than mommy's cooking. My mom will understand, my parents are the ones who found this gem and are probably the most loyal repeat guests there. We already have ridiculous high expectations for every meal, but they are still exceeded every time. There is no menu to choose from, every course is a surprise, but if you are not a picky eater, there is no better place to dine. I bet this is the place where the German phrase "Essen wie Gott in Frankreich" originated. The Jura also happens to be a beautiful and surprisingly uncrowded area of France. We like this place so much that, when we could not find a date where all of the family could go together, we quickly offered to go there twice!

One of the many lakes in the area

Usually the trails are not this crowded...

Just one of the many delicious dishes at Les Alpages

Sandra even got to re-connect
with our French friends,
 who we had not seen
since the last century!

 

Timeless beauty

I love European mushrooms just as much

as American mushrooms

Waterfalls galore!

Group shot with our friendly hosts

When we still had regular year-round jobs, we were never
able to go to Europe in the summer, so I particularly enjoy
being there when it's warm enough to go swimming

Here's to the Good Life!

If you pay really good attention, you can see how our waistline usually expands a little bit during our time in Europe. Of course nothing beats Lionel's food at Les Alapges, or mommy's home cooking. But we enjoyed lots of great food & drinks:

A Spanish Feast with our besties Susi & Ralf

Surprisingly, the best burger we ever had
 is no longer American, but Swiss!

Turns out, we really like German food, too!

Sandra with her awesome aunt Rose making
the best Maultaschen, a schwäbische specialty 

Well, you need something to
wash down all that good food.

We also went to Switzerland for a few days to visit my brother & family. He gave us three options for hikes in the Alps. But only one of them started at a monastery with a brewery, so the choice was pretty simple.

Kloster Fischingen, which is also a brewery

Beautiful hike in the Swiss Alps

Of course there has to be disc golf

Findus is not fat, just fuzzy

The area where I grew up is actually more famous for wine than a beer. My favorite German wines come from the Kaiserstuhl. I took a lovely and educational trip with my parents into the vineyards:

The vineyards of the Kaiserstuhl 

Badischer Wein -
Von der Sonne verwöhnt 

When I grew up, we made a few extra Mark
 by helping with the grape harvest.
We have learnt that nowadays about half of the grapes
are picked by these fancy machines 

Sandra and I have very fond memories of our college days. So Munich will always hold a special place in our hearts, not just because this is where we met. Many of our friends still live there and they have pretty decent beer, too.

My beloved Olympiapark in Munich, still my favorite job ever!

We did not have a camera with us 30 years ago
since neither one of us expected this spontaneous
proposal at the Olympic swimming arena.
So this re-enactment will have to do.

That architecture is just awesome 

We love the Beer Gardens in Munich!

Prost to our host!

Octoberfest was canceled,
but it was still a special time in Munich

This is not how I remember them dressing in college!

Christian Ude was the mayor of Munich when we lived there.
Now he's a comedian. We went to an alternative Octoberfest event
at a small brewery where he tapped the first keg of this year's Festbier.

When our friend's daughter from Indiana could not do her semester abroad in China as planned, she found an alternative in Germany, which just happened to be a few miles from Sandra's hometown. We thoroughly enjoyed spending time with Ali and thus even got to experience the infamous and dramatic 'college drop off', despite not having kids ourselves:

With Ali in her new hometown

Visitors from America always help us
appreciate the old stuff in Germany.

Affenberg in Salem

Baroque Basilica in Birnau. It's a very beautiful place,
if only they labeled the disinfectant and the holy water
in English so that foreign visitors don't mix them up;-)

This zeppelin flew by just as we dropped Ali off
for her semester at Zeppelin University!

Since we've been gone from Germany so long and live so far away, a trip to my hometown always feels a little bit like time traveling. It's fun to see what has changed and what hasn't. I also got to see good old friends, one for the first time in over 30 years! But the nostalgic highlight was watching the full 3 hours unedited video of our double wedding with my brother and both of my "Petras in Law". You wouldn't know it just by watching the video, but our wedding day truly was one of the best days in our lives. It was also educational to watch the video, since we found out that you can't trust human memory. We all remembered things that were simply not true. 

Enjoying a new view of my hometown Breisach
on a walk with my parents. This picture is actually
 taken from France.

With my brother at our high school where we went for 9 years

Some of my fondest teenage memories are from the
 time with my track & field team. we had such a fun
group of friends. However, we all get older, so instead
of competing in triple jumping, hurdles or pole vaulting,
we played a leisurely round of disc golf.

One of my two best childhood friends,
who I had not seen in over 30 years!

My mom in front of my grandparents home,
where she grew up in post-war Freiburg

Another advantage of staying for so long is that we got to be in Germany for several special occasions without really planning it that way:

On Petra's Birthday, we got to bring some Aloha
to Germany with a lei of freshly picked flowers.

Prost!

Happy Birthday Dinner for Petra (the one on the left).

We got a private tour by my mom's high school friend
at the Landesgartenschau, a gardening exhibition in Überlingen

Friends of my parents took us along on a boat cruise
on the Rhine past our hometown 

We got to play our first round of golf in Europe 
with Sandra's cousin in the Black Forest

Birdie Schnaps!

Needless to say, we had a fabulous time on our trip. Now we are on our stopover for two weeks in Colorado to see friends and join a wedding celebration. I bet you can't wait to find out whether we are enjoying ourselves here or not, but you'll just have to wait for the next post. 

It would be sad that this trip is coming to an end next Friday, if it weren’t for the fact that we are heading home to our island paradise and after 6 months, we are feeling that tropical itch.

Aloha from Evergreen,

Chris & Sandra