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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chicago/new york, day 05

this morning we had some typical american breakfast again.
michael had his scrambled eggs, i had my pancakes. then we went
to manhattan, seeing stuff like hudson river (no plane landing on
this day unfortunately), the huge ground zero construction site,
wall street. we actually walked most of the time so this took us
all day. when returning home we tried a typical hot dog from
those take away thingies as known from all the movies and/or
series. additionally we have been to the "world's largest camera
superstore in the world" called "B&H". so nothing much to write
here, but a day full of nice impressions from the big apple.

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chicago/new york, day 04

today michael and me had to get up really early in the morning
to get to o'hare airport to get our flight to new york city.
so we packed our stuff and drove to the airport. we soon found
our gate and boarded. the the pilot announced that there might
be problems with taking off in chicago and landing in new york
due to deays caused by the weather in chicago and new york. but
with only a small delay we made it to new york and had no
problems landing there. the weather here in new york is warmer
than in chicago and it's also not raining all the time. so we
went to our hotel that is really close to several sights we
visited later like the empire state building (the "king kong"
thingie, remember?) where really only a few people went, so we
did not have to wait long to get to the observatory floor, or
like the time square we found later (actually by accident). new
york itself is different to chicago from what i can tell now.
it's way more busy and there loads more people. but maybe we are
just staying in a busy and crowdy area. we'll find out tomorrow.
so far i enjoyed new york city. it's actually more or less like
you know it from movies and/or series. several WTF-encounters
were made so far, like a ferris wheel in a huge "toys'r'us"
store near time square. especially nice was seeing the statue of
liberty from the airplane, when flying over it and fog around
the empire state building within a few minutes when there was
sunshine a few moments before. very very nice.

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chicago, day 03

day 03 started with a visit to "stella's diner", a restaurant
where we planned to have breakfast in downtown.  inside it was
just like i expected it. americans eating the fattiest and
weirdest things for breakfast like scrambled eggs, bacon,
saussages, french fries, etc, etc. everything for a good and
healthy start of the day. erin, michael, and jake had something
typical american, i had waffles with banan and nuts.  again a
sweet and delicious  breakfast for me. afterwards we escorted
jake to the amtrak railroad station since he is leaving for iowa
to visit his parents. close to the railway station is the "sears
tower", currently chicago's tallest building. then it began to
hail and snow. according to a cab driver this happened the last
time approximately 15 years ago. we decided to have sushi this
evening and so erin showed us the "toro sushi" restaurant. a
very small sushi restaurant which was full when we arrived, so
the waitress offered to call us if there will be a table
available for us. so we went to a nearby bar and had a beer
there. the nice thing about "toro" is that you can bring your
own booze. since we went to a japanese restaurant we decided to
get some sake at a nearby liquor-store. the maki they had there
were a little americanised it seemed to me. they had more
filling looked a little fancier than usually maki looks at a
japanese restaurant and it also tasted very spicy. i had a bento
box with salmon teriyaki and sushi. it was delicious. near the
sushi bar we also found an austrian bakery selling all kind of
sweets and pies like they do in austria. unfortunately the shop
owner was not present at that time, as an employee told us.  we
bought some apfel-, and topfen-strudel, and "michael's weekend
special" (biscuit and chocolade, and some more sweet stuff). we
wanted to keep this for breakfast for the next day, day 04.
after that we went home in the snowfall in april.

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chicago, day 02

today in the morning erin made quiche for us. since i do not eat
quiche in the morning she additionally made me some kind of
apple-pie. sweet and delicious. the weather was fine today
(not too warm, not too cold) and the sun was shining. then we
were walking for a few minutes to get to the "great lake" ("lake
michigan"). next we headed on to the "wrigley's stadium" which
seems to be quite famous. but since i don't know anything about
baseball at all it was just an ordinary stadium to me. then we
went to a bar called "goose island bar" and drank some american
ale beer. same we did at the "sheffield"'s bar. afterwards we
went to a "macey's" store where they had a very impressive
ceiling with all kind of adornments. right next to the store is
"millenium park" with the so called "bean" - a huge sphere with
a reflecting surface, which really looks nice and interesting.
especially with all the skyscrapers reflecting on the surface.
next we went to a mac-store since michael wanted to buy some
iStuff. later we got hungry so we went to "chipotley", some kind
of a burrito fast-food-restaurant. so you choose some basic type
of burrito you like and then add some ingredients of your
choice. quite delicious. then we continued our walk through
chicago and came to the "water tower" a tower that was the only
building remaining after a huge fire broke out in the 19th
century. before returning to erin's apartment we went to another
bar on clark street. americans have all kind of different
flavoured beer of strout and ale. and of course beer from
belgium and germany.

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chicago, day 01

day 01 started at 05:30 (05:30) in linz when jake, michael, and
me met to get on the transfer-shuttle-bus to munich's airport.
our first flight was from munic to amsterdam, which took us
about one and a half hours. in amsterdam we had our security-
interview for going to the united states, like if everything in
our luggag is from us, or if someone gave us things to bring to
america, etc. after two hours spending on amsterdam's airport we
got on the plane to minneapolis. a flight that took us eight and
a half hours. there were some movies for killing time, like "the
day the world stood still" (my rating: "ok"), "slumdog
millionair" (my rating: "nice"), and "suspect x" (my rating:
"winderful"). in minneapolis we had our immigration-stuff done
like leaving our finger-prints, having a photo taken of us,
answering questions like "where do you go?  chicago. where do
you stay? at friends. where do you know them from? from austria.
they're americans? yes. what where they doing in austria.
working. what's your job. system-administration. system-admini-
stration? yes, repairing computers [remark: i wanted to keep it
simple here]. ok, thank you, welcome to america. thank you.".
additioally we had to fill out loads of forms, which we actually
already had filled out online days ago. the lady said there
were problems with this online-stuff so we had to fill out the
paper-form too. additionally they had a cute little dog there
that was sniffing for (most probably) drugs, food, plants, etc -
all agricultural and illegal stuff you're not allowed to bring
to the united states. i later found out that i still had my
apples in my rucksack. so no good job by the dog, but actually i
don't blame him, in fact i'm glad he just ignored my apples,
because by that time the three of us were already pretty
exhausted and tired. but there was still one last flight we had
to take, namely from minneapolis to chicago, which took us
approximately another hour and we finally arrived at 21:00
localtme. in chicago erin was waiting at the airport and we all
drove to her place where we will spend the next few days. there
we drank some strange american beer, and finally went to bed at
01:00 localtime, which would be 07:00 in austria. i was happy
when i got to sleep.

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