We come on the Sloop John B
My grandfather and me
Around Nassau town we did roam
Drinking all night
Got into a fight

We didn’t come on a boat. We came on a rental car that we got in Manhattan, drove out of Manhattan, around New York state up to Niagara Falls. We did drink (but not enough) and we did get into a fight.

I feel so broke up
I want to go home

Travelling together is hard. It can be fun. But you should make sure beforehand whether or not you are compatible with your travel buddies. When we set out on our road trip around New England we were pretty excited. The first blow was when we ended up in the worst motel imaginable (see here). The second blow was, well, the second motel. When we were done shivering and scratching ourselves at the thought of last night’s bug infestation, the “check engine”-light on the rental car started flashing. No, we did not ignore it like Penny in Big Bang Theory, we opened the engine bonnet, stared at the engine, stared some more, blinked, stared, cursed and called the rental car company (they told us it was nothing to worry about, probably just a reminder for a routine check-up, well how were we supposed to know that?)… To put it shortly, things weren’t going very smoothly. Not at all.

Let me go home, let me go home
I wanna go home, yeah yeah
Well I feel so broke up I wanna go home

Also, when you are stuck together 24/7 you start noticing (and despising) little things about other people that normally wouldn’t bother you. To be fair, our stop at Niagara Falls was indeed pretty amazing. As long as you have nice moments to make up for all the annoyances, life can still be pretty sweet (even if you are having discussions on who has to sit in the backseat, and for how long).

When we entered Canada via the Rainbow Bridge it really felt like coming back to real life. Well, at least, real food! We had a gloriously sunshiny day in Toronto, where I  met up with an ex-colleague from work who was working in Toronto at the time. Bernhard showed us around a bit and we spent a lovely day in the city and even lovelier evening in the grocery store!

We stocked up on real bread, real vegetables etc. Then we left to get to our next shitty motel. Only problem was street works on the motorway and our stupid GPS “Richard” (or Dick, as I liked to call him from then on) being unable to lead us out of the city on a side road. So we had to find our way ourselves. Quite nerve-wrecking, in a city you’ve never been to, with 12-lane-motorways, all of them sucking.

When we came to Montreal, it started raining. And it wouldn’t stop raining. For the rest. Of. The. Trip. It wasn’t just rain. It was a bloody hurricane! We drove through Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Connecticut, through the loveliest Indian Summer landscapes – all the while being drenched in rain. We rented a cabin in the woods (ha) and it rained. We visited Salem and it rained. We hurried through Boston, shattered smartphone displays there, and it rained. We arrived at Mark Twain’s house in Hartford in the dark and in the pouring rain.

This is the worst trip I’ve ever been on

When I came back to Manhattan (where it still bloody rained!) I had a mini emotional-breakdown that only a night-long Skype-session with one of my best friends and two bars of Milka chocolate I found at Duane Reade could amend.

Two things were sure: I would NEVER stay at a shitty motel again! And: I realized I was pretty much on my own, despite having company.