Follow the Explorers with Robert Goetz

About Me

On my travels people always ask me if I am an historian or if I teach history - unbelievable for most of them but I do none of that!

NTA Dance Fundamentals V Certificate

Instead I am working as an R&D engineer for electronics in the medical business. I have mainly focused on DC/DC converters, analog circuitry, EMC design and EMC testing. And to complete the picture of contradictions I dance a lot in my spare time. Mainly Line Dance as dance sport. I am also working on my education as dance teacher for Line Dance under NTA (National Teacher Association) guidelines. I have successfully completed tests for Dance Fundamentals I to V.

WCS GPDIA Intermediate Certificate

WCS Academy Certificate

I have also started West Coast Swing (WCS) as couple dancing several years ago. In the meantime I have successfully passed the exams for GPDIA (Global Professional Dance Instructor Association) Basic and Intermediate Instructor. I also started teaching West Coast Swing. Currently I am the only one holding this certificate around Munich and Allgäu.

Zumba Basic I Certificate

Beside that I have also been a Zumba® Instructor and ZIN™ member from 2014 to 2019. But I have canceled this in 2019 due to lack of time.

“But how has all this traveling started?” is usually the next question. It is weird for most people I met that a guy from Germany knows so much of American history and the country. A lot of people say my travels should be broadcast on Discovery Channel...

The answer to the question is not really easy. Especially when trying to find out the real “roots” for this traveling. I would assume the real basics were laid out by the many books of Karl May. I read all of his 41 books when I was a teenager. For people outside of Germany Karl May is not well known. But he was very famous in Germany! Anyway most of the people don't know that he spent a lot of time in prison. There he wrote most of his adventures based on travel reports from other people. He was an extraordinary writer and wrote about the time of the “Wild West”. His main figures were Old Shatterhand and the Apache Chief Winnetou - whereas Winnetou in his books was quite different from the true Winnetou...

The other big influence have been the Western Movies. Heroes like Johny Wayne, Charles Bronson, Yul Brynner and Clint Eastwood were the stars I grew up with on TV. All this made the base for my wish to once visit the country where all these great stories came from. When I was 15 this wish came true by joining a student exchange program with Sewickley Academy (near Pittsburgh) in Pennsylvania. I stayed with an American family for one month - not knowing that many years later they will be the key success for all my further US travels!

It took a long time until I was able to return to the US again. In the meantime I was watching documentaries like Highway 40 West (The National Pike) and the legendary Route 66. This was probably the foundation for not having certain places to visit but a historic route to follow.

Explorer Robert Goetz on the Mohave Road

It was in 1998 when I was traveling for my company to Madison, Wisconsin. There I had some time to check out a book store. I found a book named “Westward Expansion” which lists and briefly describes all trails from the early explorers like George Washington up to the early nineteen-something. Now the idea was born to follow the explorers. The first traveling in 1999 started following the George Washington Trail, George Rogers Clark Trail and Lewis & Clark Trail. At this time I thought that would be a once in a lifetime thing. But in 2000 I bought this old S10 Blazer and from then on it started to be the thing of my life...

Read more about my journeys in the Trail Overview

BeaverLodge.Biz

Currently I am working on founding my own Dance Hall / Restaurant under the registered trademark BeaverLodge.Biz to give people in Germany the chance to participate on these exciting journeys. But property and house prices in Germany recently exploded. It might take a while until I will be able to offer this service. But at least two consultants already think this business idea is definitely worth a try. Stay tuned...