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Our amazing Vespa
adventure in one book
Welcome to our journey. In this book, we'll take you on an epic Vespa tour across the USA. Coast to coast and back, plus both coasts! Discover all about the freedom on two wheels, the challenges of long distances, and the unforgettable encounters along the way. We experienced hospitality like never before, breathtaking landscapes, and roads stretching to the horizon. We can confidently say: You've never experienced America like this before. A modern essential guide to the American road trip.
Relive our six-month journey in our book "A Vespa Tour Around The Entire USA". We became the first couple to circumnavigate the vast United States on a single Vespa, traveling between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Our route took us through 39 states, the capital, and two Canadian provinces, with our Vespa 300 GTS covering a total of 16,728 miles.
Join us on an epic adventure
Excerpt from the book
From Florida to Alabama.
Skyline Trail in Virginia.
starting from the tropical paradise of Key West to the vibrant streets of New Orleans. We faced challenges like a tire blowout in Texas but pressed on to witness the majesty of Monument Valley and the Grand Canyon. Following Route 66, we reached Los Angeles, drove the breathtaking Highway One, and explored Yosemite National Park.
Our journey continued through San Francisco, the giant redwood
A word of warning to American readers: What follows is a one-sided, unchecked, and utterly uninformed European perspective on America. You therefore read the following chapters at your own risk!
The text is mostly translated from German by the machine DeepL.
Pull yourself together, Bernd, I think to myself. My butt hurts; I really want to get off my Vespa. We’ve been riding for hours. It’s hot, even hotter under the helmet. But the traffic is getting denser and denser. Getting off is impossible. An endless bridge with thousands of yellow steel struts above me distracts my gaze. Then we take a right-hand turn. Suddenly, my lime-green Vespa emerges in Manhattan, a dark canyon of buildings swallows me up, a sign points to Broadway.
Tears stream down my face. Tears of emotion. I’m in New York, downtown! On my Vespa! I’m riding through the United States of America on my Vespa with German license plates! I flip up the visor of my helmet so the wind can dry my tears and I can see everything. Then I hear loud sobbing behind me. My wife Heidi on the passenger seat. In my emotional turmoil, I almost forgot about her. But suddenly she
forests, and Oregon's Crater Lake. In Yellowstone, we marveled at geysers and roadside bison before heading east to the Black Hills and Mount Rushmore. After soaking in the mist at Niagara Falls, we explored the coast of Maine, the history of Boston, and the high life of New York City.
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speaks up again. “It’s so beautiful here,” says Heidi, her voice choked with tears.“Beautiful” doesn’t quite capture it. “Overwhelming” would be better. Emotions are running high in New York. Not for the first time. We’ve now been traveling 20,000 kilometers in the U.S. The start of a world tour on two wheels. The wheels belong to a Vespa 300 GTS, completely original except for extended passenger footrests. Usually, the Vespa rides through Chemnitz in Saxony. For our U.S. adventure, we had it shipped from Heidelberg to Florida.
The start of the adventure of a lifetime. In the end, it will be 27,000 kilometers or 16,700 miles in six months, from April to September 2025. 39 U.S. states plus the capital, Washington, D.C., plus the Canadian provinces of British Columbia and Ontario. Including an accident, a crash into a waterhole, and a broken drive belt, heat, cold—expected as well as unexpected technical and climatic challenges pushed us to our limits. But more on that later.
with tears.We two adventurers don’t really look like adventurers. Heidi, a trained bookseller from Saxony, 63 years old. And Bernd, a local editor from Schleswig-Holstein, 65, now living in Chemnitz, Saxony.
Superheroes look different. What brought us on this journey and kept us going were curiosity and willpower. Coupled with Nike’s motivational slogan:
JUST DO IT
But really, it was more a case of overconfidence. At the start, we both agonized over the decision: Should we explore the northern or southern United States? We weighed the pros and cons of Chicago and New Orleans for days on end, until Bernd, in a fit of ”megalomania“, exclaimed: “Then let’s just do both. Coast to coast and back, plus up and down.” In short: a complete loop. Or as some Americans later put it: The big loop! How we tackled this loop and pulled it off, what we encountered along the way, and what unique experiences we gathered—we’ll reveal all that to our kind readers in the following chapters.
This, dear Americans, is your country as seen through the very personal eyes of two tourists from Germany. We don’t want to offend anyone with our views, but rather inform Europeans and entertain all readers.
Reader opinion
"See the USA in a unique way, through the author's eyes.
This gives a look at how we Americans are perceived by visitors from another country. The author and his wife share their experiences and views as they visit places all around the USA. Included are many photos from locations described. To make this journey on a Vespa that they shipped over from their home in Germany is amazing and somehow heroic. The descriptions are insightful, making me rethink places I’ve been and consider places I’ve not visited. Would I take my Vespa on such a trek? Maybe now that I know it’s possible.
That's special
The highly personal perspective on the USA is what makes this book so appealing.
It's not a classic travel guide, a documentary, or a political roadmap. It's a bit of all of these.
As an author, I'm an amateur, but I've retained the professional eye of a journalist—a journalist who explores the breadth of a topic, observes closely, and writes as neutrally as possible.
In doing so, I also offer my own critique of the currant media bubble.
Table of contents
0 Introduction
1 Preparation
2 Packing
3 Politics and the media
4 Decor, kitsch, and cars
5 The USA: A service paradise
6 Food and drink
7 How to keep your Vespa in top shape
8 Events and education
9 A one-way trip with Uber
10 On the road with friends
11 One lap: 16,728 mi
12 A river dream
13 Meeting Billy the Kid
14 Four states at once
15 California Dreamin’
16 Wild West - mountains and valleys …
17 Through sacred mountains
18 In German states
19 Canada is just wetter
20 The myth of Maine, green Vermont
21 Revolution + Taylor Swift
22 Nights on Broadway
23 Angels stand still at JFK
24 West Virginia, mountain mama …