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 munich 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 luggage 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 millionaire" (my rating: "nice"), and "suspect x" (my rating: "wonderful"). 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-administration? yes, repairing computers [remark: i wanted to keep it simple here]. ok, thank you, welcome to america. thank you.". additionally 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 local time. 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 local time, which would be 07:00 in austria. i was happy when i got to sleep.