I got welcomed by my colleague Susanne, a German who lives in Detroit since 2010. ​Her husband Oli worked for Mercedes Benz and went over as an expat in 2008. Susanne had worked for Bosch for fifteen years before and followed him to start her successful coaching career in Michigan.

It was a great way to decompress. When you are out in nature, there is a high intensity of impressions​ and no protective layer around you. I only notice that when I am inside a house.

I was nervous if they would have a big enough car available and had asked upstairs for support. A year earlier, on the tail end of Covid, this attempt had not worked out which had forced me take the train. However, also this had become an invaluable and wonderful experience for me.

I had not slept very much and felt pretty awful. I just wanted to get out of this place. ​I needed to get across the border into the US and reach Grand Forks where my colleague Barbara had kindly reserved a rental car for me to speed up my trip to Chicago and Detroit.

When I was cycling on the narrow lane, I started to rain and I got almost run over by huge trucks several times and could only save myself by jumping off the road into the curbside each time.