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Oktober 23, 2011

An American Weekend

After three days of wind and rain, on Friday morning Chicago greeted us with sunshine and an empty fridge. Luckily, the Chicago Magazine had just published a list of hundred best places to have breakfast at so we headed off to one of them in West Loop, called Ina`s.
As in every posh place, we had to wait for a table. Ina, the Grand Dame of the house who looks like she has been running the place for the past half a century, personally put our names down and we patiently stood in line. A gentleman behind us told us it was worth the wait - he would regularly take a ten dollar cab ride just to eat here. Oh he was so right - the coffee was just great, the eggs and sausage heavenly and we even squeezed in some pancakes and a Belgian waffle with bananas and chocolate chips. The picture below is taken two hours later, after everyone had finished breakfast, brunch or lunch - what ever they had come for, and Ina could start preparing for afternoon guests.
On Saturday, we had tickets to a football game. Since most of our group had little knowledge of American football, we started with a college match - Northwestern Wildcats versus Penn State University. The game took place in Evanston, a little city just north Chicago that also serves as the campus for the Northwestern University. It seemed as if football was the center of it - even the traffic was regulated around the Ryan Field stadium.
Apparently, the game starts long before the first kickoff. Fans, families, the whole city dressed in purple gathers on parking lots next to the stadium to spend their Saturday before the match barbecuing and mingling. Some have transported the whole household with chairs, sunshades, heavy kitchen machinery and even satellite TVs to watch the game from. This, by the way, without a drop of alcohol.
There was also no beer at sight inside the stadium. This is probably due to the fact that it was a college game and of course, most of the 40 000 visitors are expected to be under 21 years of age. But the show was enough without the additional fuel.
The Wildcats band was the a size of an average symphony orchestra and their patterns and coordination skills truly impressive. It reminded me of Laulupidu, the Estonian singing festival to take place once every four years only that this show here is carried out with the same pathos every weekend of the season.
Clerg, who generally knows everything about anything, explained the rules of the game to me so I could understand what was going on on the field during the three hours that followed. In the end, it was really chilly, and we lost 24 to 34 but it was another very exciting American lesson to all of us.
In search of some drinks to warm us up we then went to Wicker Park. This is the best thing about Chicago - you never just get a beer. Last night, for example, it came with a wonderful jazz concert in one of the hundreds of busy bars and pubs there are. In fact so busy that the streets were jammed even at two thirty in the morning, when we finally took a taxi home.



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