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Sun, 12 Apr 2009 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". [ comments (0) // permanent link ] Sat, 11 Apr 2009after 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. [ comments (0) // permanent link ] Fri, 10 Apr 2009since 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. [ comments (0) // permanent link ] Thu, 09 Apr 2009today 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. [ comments (0) // permanent link ] Wed, 08 Apr 2009while 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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