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july 2009
sun	mon	tue	wed	thu	fri	sat
			01	02	03	04
05	06	07	08	09	10	11
12	13	14	15	16	17	18
19	20	21	22	23	24	25
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chicago, day 10

last day for us in america. packing our stuff, driving back from
milwaukee to chicago's airport "o'hare". saying goodbye to erin,
getting on the aeroplane, flying to amsterdam, flying on to mu-
nich, getting our shuttle taxi bus back home. doing the laundry,
and finally sleeping for 17 hours. absolutely nice trip, thanks
to everyone involved.
in the middle of the trip jake asked me for summing up the whole
stay in one word that would include most of my impressions and
describes the whole america trip best. i should tell him on the
last day, which is today. so i spent the last few days thinking
about it whenever i had time for it, and finally chose this word:
"revealing".

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chicago/milwaukee, day 09

after the usual breakfast habits today was the big day for the
baseball fans in milwaukee and those from chicago. the second
baseball match in this season, playing the chicago "cubs" versus
the milwaukee "brewers" in the "miller parks" stadium. the game
started around 18:00, still we have been at the parking lot at
about 14:00 due to some american tradition called "tailgating".
this means that the parking lot gets filled by all the people
that want to see the game later on and then they start to put up
their grill and start to play little games, barbecueing,
drinking, and talking with other people at the tailgate party.
so we bought some meat (brat, burger, saussages, etc), buns for
all the meat, beer, and other usefull stuff for the party.
although on this day we had the best weather during our trip, it
was still a little cold if one did not stand right next to the
grill. nonetheless the people had fun, both cubs and brewers
fans, and really no one kicks up a row (at least i saw no one).
we were amongst the first ones to get to the parking lot, but
once we had parked our cars, the lot quickly got crowded and
within 15 minutes there was party all around us. after a while i
forgot why i actually came here. but fortunately the others
reminded me of the game and so we went to the stadium. there
were about 45000 people in the stadium but it didn't seem to be
fully sold out. entering the stadium and finding our seats was
quite easy, everything was well arranged by the organisers.
although everybody tried their best to explain the game to me i
didn't fully understand it i guess. but it was a nice experience
to see the masses of people cheering their teams. the typical
american way of doing things it was all a massive spectacle,
with fireworks, mascots sliding down a slide, all kind of
contests for the audience, tons of advertisements with cars
driving through the arena, a saussage-race, and of course...
some baseball. most interesting thing is that in the stadium the
fans are not divided by the teams they cheer but rather share
the same seat rows. while in austria this would lead to a
massive violent brawl, here it was quite peaceful. once i saw
someone throwing empty plastic bottles but within a few seconds
security guys were all around and removed the mischief. the cubs
won, just in case you were wondering. leaving the stadium was
also a very relaxing thing. not too crowded, no holdups, just
one little fight that was ended pretty fast by the friends
around the two fighters. again, very impressive - all of it.
later we - as usual - went to a bar and had a few drinks.
anthony, the guy who offered his appartment to us for two nights
sleeping there (thanks to him once more!), knew a bar where they
played 70s songs.

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chicago/milwaukee, day 08

since michael had to do some stuff at the university of
milwaukee that's where we spent most of our day. walked around
on the campus, having a coffee and playing billiard. in the
evening we've been to the frontlake brewery tour where they show
you the brewery and you can try several beers. afterwards we
had fried fish on good friday (seems to be some kind of
tradition here i guess). afterwards we went to some bars and
pubs again. no pics from this day since i left my cam at home.

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chicago/milwaukee, day 07

today we went to a japanese mall since erin knows i like
japanese stuff so much. there was a bookstore included where i
bought another "chi's sweet home" book. i bought one in tokyo
and i really like the way it's drawn. then there was the food
store where they had all those original japanese stuff. this all
was like a travel back in time when i was in tokyo. all those
goods where you don't know what's inside since you can't read
the labels or ingredients lists. i really enjoyed that. they
also had those sushi and maki sets which i loved so much, so i
had one for dinner. in the next shop i bought some chopsticks
with a lucky cat on it for one dollar - very cheap and very
cute. after the mall we drove to milwaukee, which took us about
an hour to get there. we stopped at the lakefront side and
enjoyed a coffee and a walk on the beach. later on we went to
some bars and had a few beers.

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chicago/new york, day 06

while michael had some scrambled eggs in a wrap again, i tried
something totally different: fruits for breakfast. though quite
expensive the fruits were really delicious. i got some kiwi,
oranges, melons, grapes, and pineapples. then we were heading for
central park and walked down 5th avenue. a shopping street with
almost only shops for luxury goods like gucci, cartier, prada,
tiffany and other stuff no men would need. instead i forced
michael to enter a disney store since i wanted to look for some
"bolt"-cat (don't know the cat's name) merchandising articles,
but they had none. instead all the stuff for kids that will turn
them into little princesses or pirates, etc. though this one was
not such a colour-flash as the one i've visited in paris/france.
next stop was an apple store (i guess it's the one that appears
in an simpon's episode). then we arrived at the central park.
quite a very huge park and we only walked about two thirds of
it, passing by several lakes. at the "jacqueline kennedy onassis
reservoir" lake we left all the cute little squirrels, exiting
the park to stand right in front of the "guggenheim museum"
(well known from a scene in the "the international" movie. nice
thing about the museum is that you do not need to pay to walk
through the building on the ground floor. so that's what we did.
after a ride with the underground we arrived at "china town", an
area where you can almost only find signs and shop-banners in
chinese. absolutely wonder- ful (though unfotunately not japa-
nese), since it reminded me so much of japan - strange signs
everywhere and you have no idea what they say or what the shops
are about. close to china town we ended at our last goal for
today, namely "brooklyn bridge".

now, on the sixth day of my stay it's time for some random facts
about americans: there are less fat people than i expected. food
tends to be very fatty and comes in way too big portions. in
restaurants there are almost always sugared soft drinks only.
there's rarely (mineral) water offered too. ice is added to
every drink they serve. starbucks has quite good coffee. there
are american flags everywhere, be it flying or printed some-
where. americans are very friendly. water from the tap always
had a taste of chlorine so far.

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