What do Americans think about Germany today? What makes Americans tick? And how can people on both sides of the Atlantic get to know each other better? Seventeen German and American Fulbright grantees and alumni will answer these and more as a part of “Fulbright On the Road!,” a road trip across the USA from May 11 to 17, 2019. The German-American Fulbright Commission is loading Fulbrighters onto minivans to travel across the USA on three different routes. As Dr. Oliver Schmidt, Executive Director of Fulbright Germany, explains, “this trip focuses on personal encounters on site in the American heartland. Commonalities quickly become clear.”

The road trip participants will talk to Americans in the heartland about their daily lives, their own family histories, and current political and cultural developments on both sides of the Atlantic. Be it a meeting with the mayor and citizens of Germantown outside of Memphis, Tennessee, a conversation with soldiers at the Fort Leonard Wood army base in Missouri, or a German-American country music concert in Austin, Texas, the goal is to get to know each other and exchange ideas on an equal footing as a way of living out transatlantic relations one stretch of highway at a time. The trip will conclude with a two-day public conference entitled “Building Bridges” at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, the center of Senator Fulbright’s activity. Grantees, alumni, and members of the University of Arkansas community will gather to with experts and the general public to discuss how global exchange can build bridges within society and on foreign shores.

You can follow the road trip across the USA online on Fulbright Germany’s website, Instagram and Facebook. The official hashtags are: #FulbrightGermany, #FulbrightRoadtrip, #FulbrightOntheRoad, #BuildingBridges