Chapter 1 – The Flight Across the Ocean

The airplane rattled as if it wanted to shake me loose and drop me back into Europe. I pressed my forehead against the window, and the glass was cold, colder than the air in the cabin, colder than the idea of what I was doing. The Atlantic stretched below like an endless grave, black and bottomless.

I wasn’t flying to New York for the Statue of Liberty, or Times Square, or Broadway. I wasn’t interested in postcards. I was chasing something stranger, something that had gnawed at me for years: gym supplements.

In Europe, shelves were thin, choices narrow. Protein powders, sure, some creatine, maybe a pre-workout if you got lucky. But America—the United States—was whispered about in bodybuilding forums like a forbidden temple. The land of abundance. The home of the best supplements in New York, Los Angeles, everywhere. Rows of protein powder USA brands, tubs stacked to the ceiling, exotic pre-workouts banned back home, all glowing under fluorescent lights.

I closed my eyes and thought of it: aisle after aisle of tubs, the air smelling of chocolate whey and ambition. My mouth watered more for that than for any American burger.

The engines hummed louder, a song of steel and distance, and somewhere over the Atlantic I realized: I wasn’t just a traveler. I was a pilgrim, headed for a cathedral of iron and powder.

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Chapter 2 – First Steps into Manhattan

JFK airport greeted me with noise, chaos, and the heavy stink of jet fuel. I stumbled through customs with red eyes and shaky legs. Outside, yellow taxis lined up like predators waiting to swallow the weak.

The ride into Manhattan was a blur of concrete and steel. Billboards screamed at me with colors too bright for my jet-lagged eyes. I caught glimpses of fast-food temples glowing red and yellow, diners crammed with people at odd hours, and a skyline that looked like jagged teeth against the cloudy sky.

When the taxi dropped me near Times Square, the world exploded in neon. It was midnight, yet the streets swarmed like ants under the glare of screens. I dragged my suitcase into a hotel that smelled of cigarettes and ambition, tossed it onto the bed, and stared at the ceiling.

My body begged for sleep, but my hunger—the other hunger, the one for discovery—was louder. I pulled on a hoodie, shoved my wallet into my pocket, and stepped back into the night.

I wasn’t looking for pizza. I wasn’t looking for Broadway. I was looking for gym supplements in NYC.

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Chapter 3 – The Bright Store

I found it by accident. A glowing storefront on Broadway, lit like a beacon in the dark. Posters of shirtless men with skin slick as oil flexed under words that promised transformation: BUILD. RECOVER. DOMINATE.

Inside, it was another world. Rows upon rows of tubs stacked higher than my head, each screaming with colors and fonts designed to hypnotize. Chocolate whey, vanilla whey, cookies-and-cream protein powder. Creatine monohydrate in tubs the size of paint buckets. Pre-workouts in colors that looked more radioactive than nutritional.

The clerk behind the counter was massive. Shoulders like granite, veins like roadmaps. He grinned when he saw me.

“First time in New York?” he asked.

I nodded. My accent gave me away. “First time in the States.”

“Then welcome to heaven, brother. Over here, we don’t just lift weights—we load rockets.”

He handed me a sample packet of pre-workout. Neon blue powder glimmered under the lights.

“This,” he said, “will make you see God.”

Back in my hotel room, I tore the packet open like contraband. I mixed it with water. The taste was sour-sweet, electric, like drinking lightning. Within minutes my heart drummed against my ribs.

I didn’t see God. But I saw something else: America, raw and unfiltered, in a shaker cup.

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Chapter 4 – The Gym That Never Sleeps

At three in the morning, buzzing from that blue lightning, I stumbled into a 24-hour gym.

It was alive. Men and women pumped iron as if the night didn’t exist. Mirrors reflected a thousand versions of ambition. Rap thundered from speakers the size of refrigerators. Nobody looked at me, nobody cared who I was or where I came from. This was America, and the only language spoken here was effort.

I loaded a barbell, heavier than I had ever dared in Europe. The weight crushed me, nearly broke me. But I pushed, sweat stinging my eyes, the powder still burning in my veins.

When I racked the bar, a man next to me slapped my shoulder. His grin was wide, his teeth white.

“Not bad for a tourist.”

I smiled, chest heaving. “Not just a tourist. A pilgrim.”

He laughed. “Then you came to the right temple.”

This was American gym culture. Not polite, not quiet, but relentless. Iron, sweat, and strangers who became comrades in the grind.

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Chapter 5 – The Shady Backroom

Not all temples were holy.

On the third day, curiosity dragged me into Brooklyn. Down an alley, past graffiti-covered walls, I found a store with no sign. Just a black door, peeling paint.

Inside, it smelled of dust and secrets. Shelves sagged with unmarked tubs and bottles labeled in Cyrillic and Chinese. A single lamp buzzed overhead.

The man behind the counter had a scar across his cheek. His eyes were dark pools.

“You want strong?” he asked in a thick accent.

“Just… protein,” I muttered.

He slid a plain white tub across the counter. No brand. No barcode. Just black tape.

“This better than protein,” he whispered. “This power.”

I didn’t buy it. Something in his stare told me that wasn’t protein powder USA—it was something else, something illegal, something that could chew me up and spit me out.

I stepped back into the daylight, blinking. The neon lights of Manhattan felt almost innocent after that. But I carried the memory of that shadowed store like a weight in my pocket.

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Chapter 6 – The Pilgrimage

By the end of the week, I had visited every supplement shop I could find. Glossy chains with aisles of whey. Indie stores with handwritten signs. Vitamin shops tucked between bodegas and nail salons.

Everywhere I went, I saw abundance. Shelves of the best supplements in New York: pre-workouts, BCAAs, fat burners, creatine blends, tubs painted with promises. Some clerks preached like salesmen, others like priests. Each supplement was another relic of the American faith in transformation.

But it wasn’t just the products. It was the people. The woman deadlifting three plates at three a.m. with no one watching. The teenager buying his first tub of whey with hands shaking from excitement. The middle-aged man asking about joint support supplements, desperate to keep lifting a little longer.

Supplements were fuel. But the fire—that came from them. From us. From the silent brotherhood of chalk, sweat, and repetition.

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Chapter 7 – The Revelation

One night, sitting on the Brooklyn Bridge with the skyline bleeding neon into the black river, it hit me.

I had come for the supplements. For the tubs, the powders, the promises in plastic. I had stuffed my suitcase with protein, creatine, pre-workouts that glowed like nuclear waste.

But the real treasure wasn’t in the suitcase. It was in the gyms that never slept. The people who lifted like their lives depended on it. The culture that believed in effort louder, bigger, and more relentlessly than anywhere I had seen in Europe.

Supplements were tools. The real engine was ambition.

And ambition in New York was louder than the sirens, brighter than Times Square, heavier than the barbell that nearly broke me.

Check also: Top 10 Walk in supplement’s shops in USA

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Chapter 8 – The Return

On my last morning, I zipped my suitcase shut. It bulged with tubs of protein powder USA brands I couldn’t get back home, bottles of creatine, neon packets of pre-workout that would probably be banned in a year.

At the airport, the suitcase felt heavier than iron. Not just from the weight of supplements, but from the story I carried inside me.

When the plane lifted off, New York shrinking below like a toy city, I closed my eyes. I didn’t think of the Statue of Liberty, or Times Square, or Central Park. I thought of the gyms, the stores, the glowing tubs stacked like cathedrals.

And in my veins still pulsed that first sip of American pre-workout—electric, dangerous, alive.

Back in Europe, people asked about Broadway and hot dogs and skyscrapers. I nodded, smiled, told them what they wanted to hear.

But the truth? The real story? It was iron and sweat, powders and pills, ambition and obsession.

Not heaven. Not hell. Something in between.

Something alive.

Something like New York.

Check also: selling American supplements in another country