Melting Pot Chicago

I like it that here, you are hardly ever extraordinary. The word foreigner does not exist as Ausländer does in Switzerland, we are not turistid like in Estonia, but visitors - the more the merrier and everyone is most welcome. I think here one meets more people from around the world than, well, anywhere around the world. Baiba, my trainer, is from Latvia - came here eleven years ago for a four month school exchange and stayed. The Shoreham bus driver Christoph is from Bulgaria, and Florence, the lady who sold me my winter jacket, said she would never want to live in Romania again. The jacket, by the way, recommended by Riin, is our new family member and should keep my kidneys warm through the Chicago winter.

Every day, we try to discover a little bit more of our new home. The weather cleared up in the afternoon yesterday, so before starting to cook spaghetti for what seems to turn out to be a weekly pasta dinner at our place, we took a stroll in the Millennium Park right in front of our house.

While being able to shoot wonderful pictures of the center and the Loop...

...Clerg is constantly asked by the fellow visitors to take their picture for them.

For me, the sculpture below looks like a big egg, for Clerg it`s a bean. Turns out, it`s called the Cloud.

At home we were greeted by a wonderful rainbow in our kitchen window.

Soon we were all set for the guests to arrive. It was the Swiss crowd from last week mixed with some South Americans.

We had a very nice evening and the guys said they would come again next Thursday. Then we will add some Japanese, I think.

We are very much looking forward to our visitors Riin, O`Neal, Nänni and Parentis in October and November. As the American Apparel sales assistant said to me today - welcome in our city!

Our Days in Chicago: A Photography Reportage

When Clerg is home, four days a week it is, our mornings start late. First thing one sees is usually a plane carrying an aerial banner (googled that one).

We have noticed that weather forecasts are as wild as the weather itself. Therefore, the weekend of full rain turned out to be of golden sun.

I dared myself on public transportation. The Loop, Chicago`s over a hundred year old railroad, loops, as the name suggests, squeaking and rattling above the city`s business centre.

Coming from Switzerland, the stations are extremely shaky and leave a fragile impression, but have all the more charm and character.

After a half a round on the Loop, we walked through the city towards North. Clerg is in love with all the tall handsome buildings and knows each of them by their names. Below is the Chicago Board of Trade.

And here - the John Hancock Tower.

Clerg`s joy was endless as we discovered some of his favorite ones made of Lego.

We did go into some shops but some of them clearly push on too many senses. Half hearing impaired we came out of this one again.

After a long day of walking and looking at all those wonderful towers and things we took the number-one-hundred-and-fifty-one-bus back to South Water Street and walked home. We are trying out new routes to get to our Shoreham Park where we live. Not all of them work.

PS. Clerg says I should write its windy. It really always is.

Living On the Edge In Chicago

This morning we went on an adventure. We took Teresita along, a co-student of Clergs who lives ten stories above us, and drove outside the safety zone. It was time for suburbs - Ikea, Wal Mart and of a sorts. Now I know where Tallinn got it for its roads (halloo - Tartu maantee!), or supermarkets (Prisma). Only that Tallinn with its 400 000 inhabitants is a hobbit next to Chicago`s two and a half million and respectively, the Wal Mart is a size of an average Estonian town. I am really proud of Clerg for mastering the way on our little plastic carsharing-Toyota and keeping us safe from all those huge cars and trucks passing at unbelievable speed and in unpredictable ways. Then again, Clerg does have a considerable experience from driving in Tallinn.

After returning to the city overloaded with cute Ikea stuff (pictures on the way) and food items (got the yeast, Ruth gäu - Züpfe tomorrow), we walked to the Navy Pier, a long architectural and commercial street of a sorts on the shore of lake Michigan just next to our neighborhood.

The view to the city from there is spectacular.

To the lake, too.

The white dots in the photo above are birds - all kinds, gathering for the night.

As Clerg put it, the wind and the stripes, the arriving storm made quite a dramatic scene.

It all made us hungry, we bought ourselves a sandwich and Clerg got me a small Budweiser in a street restaurant, straight from the waiter, no questions asked, for five bucks under table.

We left Navy Pier when it was already dark. A sign at the exit warned us it was strictly prohibited to take alcoholic beverages out of the area. I put my beer inside Clerg`s Pepsi cup and drank it through the straw. Living on the edge.

PS. A funny story - the other day I was paying for groceries and the lady suddenly asked for my ID. I showed it to her but could not figure out why she would want to see it. She pointed at the small bottle of white wine and I was very pleased. It does not happen to one very often that one is doubted to be twelve years younger. When I showed off with that later at our dinner party, I disappointingly had to learn that here, it happens to everyone every time.

At Home in Chicago

Last night, we hosted our first dinner. For that, I run up and down the Michigan Street to find candles and other important things you need when you are accommodating a party of six adults who have just started their year off work and careers and are obviously enjoying every zip of it. I had this idée fixe about two candle holders on our Ikea table. As seen below, finally got some. They can also serve as protection against Chicago gangs.

Clerg took some other pictures of our apartment (greetings to Mannu), but anything without a view outside is still not enough to be displayed in public.

I am trying to fight the empty walls and halls in the house with minimum cost and maximum outcome, so this morning, our tree arrived! Cute, isn`t she.

Clerg promised to write about university soon. He just put on his best suit and went for the first formal dinner hosted by the dean. I am going to curl up on the sofa and have my first official meeting with our TV and its two hundred channels.

First Chicago Things First: TV, Toilet Paper and a Personal Trainer

First, for those who are waiting - photos of the apartment will appear here when there is something more to take pictures of than just white walls. So far, what is outside our new home will have to do.

For example, this balcony right in front of our living room window serves as a perfect windmill. You can see the speed and direction of the wind first thing in the morning. Great stuff! Other good things the apartment has include several walk-ins, a gas cooker, a washing machine and a dishwasher. The latter, as all other gadgets around here, are very loud. So when you are using it together lets say with the vent, YOU HAVE TO SPEAK IN A VERY LOUD VOICE.

Anyway, Clerg started school yesterday and I had my own date with the windy city. I am not very fond of the idea of being a housewife, I thought I would rather try to be a dream wife, heh. (In German the word game is more elegant from Hausfrau to Traumfrau). However, this job also requires the occasional hunting-gathering so I set off with a shopping list for our four walls. First things first - on my way to find toilet paper and a cutting board among other elementary things I stepped into Bloomingdales Home. There was hardly anyone else there and I got a big smile from a lady setting up Christmas decorations. I am already used to the fact that smiles like this end up in little conversations and since we both seemed to have time on our hands, I ended up explaining where Estonia was. Then she smiled at me again and said Well, welcome to our city - you are going to have a wonderful time here. How nice is that. No one in Zurich ever says something like that after they hear that yet another foreigner has arrived to live there.

I bought circa three items from our list. The thing is, everything here is so oversized that I could simply not carry more home. So one at a time. Today, for example, it was napkins` turn.

This morning I had planned to take the complementary minibus from our house to the closest Macy`s but at the time I was in the park across the street taking the above picture, the bus just drove by, not stopping. Our doorman then apologetically explained, one must stand on the pavement waiting for the bus, not somewhere in the middle of the flower beds. Also gut, by foot, then. The reason I needed to go to town for were special spandex work-out pants that, you will not believe it but yes, my personal trainer required I would wear. Linden, who is married to a Swedish lady and therefore knows Estonia very well, came in today to measure my everything there is to measure on a woman`s body including fat with a metal gripper that reminded of something a farmer might use with his cows. Our house has a fully equipped gym and during the next five weeks, I will get a one-to-one personal service to help me use it and lose all that extra fat. We`ll see.

I also got the TV running and us a new electricity account, which is quite a funny story, but it is already nine o`clock in the evening and I will talk to you again tomorrow. Below some more pics.

Our living room window.

Schön, gäu.

Lakeside.

Clerg`s photo of the cereal shelf for obvious reasons.

Sunday Afternoon in the Windy City

Clerg and I discovered the Sunday afternoon is great for running errants - streets are almost empty and every shop and service is open. We set off in direction to the Loop, the city`s business section, in search for mobile plans. Actually, not much searching needed to be done since Clerg did not only knew what phone and plan he was going for but also exactly which T-Mobile to go to.

It took us almost an hour to settle everything but during this time we made our first acquaintance and got to know the lady behind the counter quite well (at the point where she told us about the evening she is to spend with her husband, but what can you do, huh, with this weather, we planned to go out but now its indoor plans, heh, I thought I`d still need more time to get used to the friendliness).

I got my number first and started playing around with the phone. Sent a text to Clerg that said something like hi baby this is my number call me love you etc. (We still write messages in English). When he had his new phone set up and working we started wondering why the message had not come through. I then called his number but his phone was quietly lying on the counter. A dark voice answered on the other side. Indeed, I had copied on digit wrong. I hung up but the guy kept calling back and I while cutting those calls off I could not help visioning some dark dangerous man running after me now when he knows my number. Or what if his wife sees the message. On the other hand it seemed so ridiculously typically something that would happen to one on their first day in a new city that Clerg and I had a good laugh out of it.

We spotted a cafe called Intelligentia right opposite the mobile phone store. Five or six young men that to Clerg looked like philosophers who had decided to earn an extra dollar by opening a coffee-place slowly served us in a manner that would make the hippest place in London look like a countryside pub. The latte I got was the worst I had ever drunk but the guys with their long curly hair and full beards (every single one of them) where entertaining to watch. Here go special greetings to Riin from Clerg.

On our way back home we saw how some buildings had got their own clouds.

It was a very nice day.

PS. The guy called again and this time, Clerg picked up, told him there had been a mistake in dialing the number. Apparently, the gentleman on the other side had sounded very polite. That was lucky.

Welcome in Chicago: Part Three

We have had a ten hours sleep. Its time to go say hi to the windy city. Our new home town does seem to prove a point here: the weather is cold and rainy. I love it!

Our house at East South Water Street.

The city makes one feel tiny.

Do you see what I mean?:-)

Welcome in Chicago: Part Two

Clerg talks to the cab driver as if he was a local. After all, he has been living a second life on Google maps ever since closing the rental contract. Within an hour, the taxi takes us to our new home. What strikes me most is that it costs something more than twenty dollars. America - the land of dreams.

This is the view that awaits us at home, on the 21st floor of a huge apartement house downtown.

For some reason, there are fireworks on the lake behind our kitchen window. We are brushing our teeth and feeling very welcome. Clerg is already asleep before his head touches the pillow. Some time later I wake up and for a couple of seconds, cannot recall where I am. It makes me very happy to remember we are at home in Chicago.

Welcome in Chicago: Part One

So here we are. Clerg is taking a lot of pictures.

This screen is a true helper during the nine-hour journey. By the time we land in Chicago, I will have made a new record of 43 000 points in Tetris. In yet another hour I am sure I would have passed the fifty thousand mark.

I am a bit uncomfortable when flying over lots of water. As soon as we see dry land under us, I feel much much better.

Clerg said he would cut back on taking pictures. He is only taking the most beautiful ones.

Now let`s hope that we make it through the immigration alright.

Countdown: Zurich Airport

Clerg ordered a Rivella as a gesture of goodbye to Switzerland. On our way here to Terminal E of the Zurich Airport I, you know the little zügli they have, I almost had tears of sentiment when they played the yodeling sound.

Behind me is a cleaning crew on their coffee break. One of the ladies is speaking in very loud Portuguese. A man a couple of tables ahead has a cute hair color. I wonder if it is natural. Really grey, and the guy cannot be more than in his forties.

One and a half hours to takeoff.