McCarthy Midwest tours - MSP part 1

We just spent three weeks in the U.S. My trips back home are harder to write about than trips to  somewhere completely new. Maybe it's too emotional. You guys aren't reading my diary, after all. Or maybe it seems to normal to be blog-worthy (ha, like that has stopped me before). Or maybe I am just too distracted by Target and massive soft drinks to write.

This trip had it all. We were guests and hosts and tourists and homecomers. It was busy and exciting and a lot of fun. The whole reason we came to town was for Luke and Jackie's wedding. They met around a fire on the patio at our house. Now they were getting married in Saint Paul in October. 

The happy couple

Slightly jet lagged but also happy

Minnesota in October is a smell. It's a way that you breathe in the red leaves and the branches that start green and grow to gold and crimson as they reach out. It's dry, crisp sunshine and cool frosty nights. Minnesota in October is how we got married. It's when Brian decided it was time to start raking the lawn and I reasoned that the leaves would only keep coming down so we might as well wait. October was fires on the patio and Halloween parties.

We have fall in Germany too, but it's not quite the same. And there was one year I didn't have any fall. I was 20 and living a semester Chile, it was a year with two springs. Brian picked colorful leaves for me that October, laminated them while student teaching and sent them in the mail. I taped the laminated leaves to my bedroom wall.

Being back in the Twin Cities in the fall felt good. It had been a while and there is a new way to get around town. The Green Line train cruises its long slow trail through both cities, from sedate downtown Saint Paul, past University Avenue's Vietnamese restaurants, Hmong mechanics, Somali groceries and warehouse condos to the U of M's white columns and fresh faces, into downtown Minneapolis past its stadium construction and bar district.

Of course you could travel this route before, in the city bus or your own car. But maybe I am excited for the light rail because it's more... European. There's a funny switch. I spend enough time in Hannover wishing for friendlier strangers and better restaurants. Now I go back to Minnesota longing for faster trains, more bike lanes and fresher bread.

a tangent along those lines:

Whenever we try to check in for flights from the U.S. to Europe, the airport kiosks tell us no. They send us to wait in line at the check-in counter, because it doesn't compute that we are returning to Europe. Our tickets have no return date. We are Americans without tickets back to America and that makes us suspicious.
It also makes our trips to the U.S. not so normal... and worth writing about.