Photo Credit: www.michigan.org

The top MUST SEE sites in Detroit! If you are here for a quick trip or a couple of days these are our recommendations! Detroit boasts wonderful history, architecture, music, art, a vibrant biking scene and of course some awesome food! Taste your way through the city and experience the culture, places and people that make Detroit so special! There’s never been a better time to visit!

RECAP OF TOP SITES:
Eastern Market
Dequindre Cut
Art Deco Building: Guardian Building
Art Deco Building: The Fisher Building
DIA: Detroit Institute of Arts
Belle Isle
Michigan Central Station
Packard Plant
Heidelberg Project
Slow Roll (Community Bike Ride)
Motown Museum
Ford Museum & Rouge Factory Tour

Time Stamp:

00:33 – Growing up, where the adventure begins
07:27 – Almost burned his home town and what he has learnt from it
24:42 – Met Jenny in Germany during an AIESEC internship but went our separate ways
40:08 – Met Jenny again for a roadtrip in Spain 6 years later
49:58 – Fired 50% of clients, live in Germany & Hong Kong with Jenny
56:52 – The entrepreneurial spirit: Just do it, Search-Test-Learn, Rinse & Repeat
1:02:25 – First Taste of Airbnb
1:04:20 – The First and Last Piña Colada in Phuket
1:06:19 – Why move to the US… and Detroit?
1:13:20 – The First impression of the city. How he learns about the city his way
1:25:04 – Jefferson Chalmers
1:27:09 – Our First House!
1:37:08 – OH SHIT! We have a house!
1:41:08-  First winter with no heat
1:42:53 – Looking Back… Surprise? Regret? Should others move here?

Are you planning a visit or maybe considering a move to Detroit? You should be! Or maybe you just want to see what insanity looks like. Our mission in this podcast is to have fun, keep it real, and make a few friends along the way while uncovering useful and entertaining things in our everyday lives. Expect a wide-range of topics from exploring Detroit to interviews with fascinating people to random conversations on topics we’re passionate about.

If you have ideas for future episodes, know of people we should interview, or have any feedback or question, please let us know. We are excited to hear from you and bring you along this rollercoaster ride of life!

At one point though, I can’t stop asking myself:

• Am I really always engaged in all these hours-long meetings?
• Do I deep down share the same excitement my sales manager seems to have, reaching our year end target?
• Do I learn new things that is relevant to me everyday (bare in mind one can always ‘learn’ something but relevance is the key), feeling energized and cannot wait to go back to work?

I guess the bottomline is this: Work takes up more than 10 of my waking hours a day (easily!), is what I am doing everyday worth my while? Do I love my life?

After much consideration and experimentation, And I traded my “bright-future” job for an ADVENTURE!

Being here in Detroit, I am living in a completely different universe: out of my comfort zone and away from my family & friends; a different world of social dynamics, culture & language; and I often find myself doing things that I’ve never thought of doing before. I’ve never even mowed a lawn before coming to the US and now I am doing renovation work here! There have been days that we needed clean up shit all day long after a sewer malfunction (no kidding!), our walls have literally melted down on us while repairing the plaster, our vacant property was broken into on multiple occasions (luckily not much was taken), and so many nights we have come home past midnight after being so focused on our work that we’ve forgotten to eat all day! Exhausted and hungry, there were moments when I thought – WHAT THE HELL AM I DOING HERE?

Fast forward a few months… 2 weeks ago we were part of a pilot shoot for a potential TV show. From our brief encounter with the tv host and renovation expert, we’ve learned so much more about our house! Our admiration grows every day for those who put their hearts, efforts and resources together to build this beautiful home that we are now the stewards of. And this time, I know we are doing something that’s worthwhile, not only on a personal level but also as part of something much bigger. It gets me really excited to bring a piece of history back to life and through which contributes to the rebirth of our beautiful neighborhood and the once great city of Detroit that is becoming great again.

In between juggling all our projects and renovation work, sometimes it’s easy to forget the bigger picture, seeing the setbacks more than the progress. But while I am writing this at our ‘branch office‘ (aka backyard office under a tree branch) under a beautiful blue sky, reaffirming what we are doing, I can say I am absolutely loving my life and living in the moment.

It has taken a lot of time and hard work to get here, but it all began with a leap of faith.

One of the magical things about Detroit is that you can do so much here with so little.

When we first came here, being our normal selves, we just couldn’t help contemplating different business opportunities. We still do that all the time and open our arms to the new adventures that come but we are also more caught up with the projects we have on hand here.

Around 2 years ago, we found ourselves in front of this pizza place on Jefferson Avenue, right in the middle of our neighborhood, and we were wondering what kind of business someone might be able to start with a storefront and apartments upstairs (where we can live in or rent out). The shop front window had a for sale sign with a phone number and a price of 80,000USD.

Out of curiosity, we called the number and arranged a meeting to view the place. A few hours later, a guy showed up in his working clothes with a semi-beat up truck. He shook our hands and we went inside to see the place. To our surprise, he told us he was the owner of the building and he had originally ran a pizza place at the shop. He explained where things needed to be fixed, how much it would cost, and how the place had been broken into before (like a lot of other places in Detroit).

“So why did you sell the place?” We asked him.
“I used to own this place and a few others, running them as a pizza chain. But now, I’m selling this to use the money to buy another building. You see the skyscraper downtown with the T-Mobile ad on top? That building is mine.” The guy said, in an enthusiastic and unassuming way.

We didn’t end up buying the place and by the way, after he sold his chain whoever ran the business did a horrible job. We went to visit one of the shops, pushed the door open, and under the neon ‘Pizza’ sign was a stone-cold slice of pizza on display in a heavily fortified acrylic case with flies buzzing around and dysfunctional blank-faced customers pathetically waiting for their pizza in silence. The place looked like a cult movie crime scene before the crime. This was the most horrible food place we’ve seen in Detroit.

But that interaction left an impression on me until today. Of course, the price was jaw dropping to a newbie Detroit transplant: The place has a store-front on one of the main streets near an affluent neighborhood and it costs less than 1/5 of the price of the tiniest apartment we could get in Hong Kong. Compared to any major cities, the affordability of Detroit really makes a lot of businesses possible that wouldn’t work in other places! You can start with nothing but a “can-do” spirit and turn your idea into reality.

Another incredible thing about Detroit is how flat the social hierarchy is in many ways. In any other major city, if you call a number to view a commercial building, I would assume you are talking to some sort of agent or employee #101. Here in Detroit, the one who picks up the phone is the successful businessman who owns food chains and skyscrapers. He shows up with his beat-up truck and working clothes, shakes your hand and tells you he is showing you his place for sale! Alex and I jokingly said it was like you call the number and Lee Ka Shing* or Donald Trump shows up! I know it’s an exaggeration here but you get my point.

So here we have another DETROIT SPECIAL and this is another reason why we love this place. No matter how much you have, if you are capable, want to make a change in your life, want to make a difference in the world and make things work, Detroit offers unprecedented opportunities to all who dare to take the adventure of a lifetime!

* For those who don’t know who Lee Ka Shing is, he’s the richest guy in HK who arguably owns at least half of Hong Kong, His foot print is dominating everything in HK from real estate, super market to telecom company.