When I returned to America I felt kind of out of touch. I wanted to catch up with some of the U.S. Television series that I had missed during my time in Europe. My Father owns the collectors box set of The Sopranos Season 1-5. I had read positive reviews about it and I love The Godfather trilogy. One night curiosity got the best of me and I popped the first DVD into the player.

Eric and I are now completely hooked. We're currently in the middle of Season 2.

So when I found out last week that the ship from Germany had arrived and we would have to pick up our belongings in New Jersey, I was sort of looking forward to the road trip. I'd never visited The Garden state and "The Sopranos" is filmed there. I wanted to hear a real "Jersey Accent" and visit "the home state of Tony Soprano"

Jersey gets a bad rap and is referred to by negative nicknames. (I.e. "The Toilet Bowl State" and "The Cancer Capital") I wanted to see for myself.

We pulled all the back seats out of the mini-van for storage space and hit the road at 10 A.M. on Tuesday.

Once we went over the Verazzano Bridge and passed the last New York exit... we were greeted with our first glimpse of the New Jersey landscape.

We pulled into our exit and drove down the streets of New Jersey. I had brought my camera because I wanted to take some snapshots of the architecture and the local areas. At first glance... I have to admit, it doesn't look so appealing.

However, there is a feeling of history, a worn down industrial quality and realness to it. The roads were broken up, the shingles falling off the houses and the businesses looking like they're from the 1950's

I loved it. As an artist, I wished I lived closer so I could take my canvas out onto the street and paint the homes, the abandoned buildings and the peeling paint revealing the bricks underneath.

That's Eric. He looked around and laughed "when we have kids I'll keep them in check by threatening them with: "If you keep this up.. I'm gonna send you to New Jersey!"

I think we were just in a bad part of town, after all... it's probably called "The Garden State" for a reason.

After going to visit Customs to clear our documents...and then traveling to another office to pay all these additional charges for the x-raying...etc. we went to get a bite to eat in a hole in the wall Italian sandwich shop. The place was only half-painted and the door was hanging off the kitchen entrance, but the food was great.

Next stop was the storage place at the harbor to pick up our belongings.

It was loud, hot, dirty and crowded. There were men everywhere with dirt smudged faces and wife beater t-shirts. They arrived with huge storage trucks and were loading their goods from the platform. I was the only girl there and I felt out of place when they looked me over. I held onto Eric's hand.

We had yet MORE additional fees to pay and then we were instructed to back up our truck into the loading dock.

When they saw us ease into an available spot with our tiny mini-van, some of the workers started laughing. It wasn't even high enough to reach the platform. It stood out like a tiny little sore thumb. Apparently this was a commercial storage area.

The forklift arrived with our two 6 ft tall cartons on pallets containing our belongings. Way too large to fit into our mini-van. The situation looked grim. The man with the forklift accessed our situation and murmured "uh...good luck with that…"

So we tore open the cartons with a knife and started separating everything. We began to place it all carefully into the mini-van, like putting together a complex jig saw puzzle. We managed to barely squeeze it all inside and close the van.

We headed home... with my seat pushed so far up that I was kissing the windshield and my knees were pulled up to my chest. Good times. Eric looks less than thrilled in this shot because this was in front of us....

Bumper to bumper traffic.... the entire drive home.

But.... We have all of our belongings again! Everything that I posted in THIS ENTRY 4 months ago in Germany is now in our garage in New York..... FINALLY

I realized I haven't been to many states in the U.S., Here is a sad map of the places I've visited in my lifetime.

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Not too impressive. I'm so eager to travel to more countries in Europe when I haven't even explored much of my own home country yet