Chicago Through A Special Lens

Clerg has been running wild in Chicago with a special rented lens on his camera. The results speak for themselves. I am glad the lens was with us only for a week and I am busy working at my desk, so I was almost not jealous at it at all... The images below should be a nice welcome to Anti and Jessy arriving on Saturday - can`t wait to share this love in our life with them. Chicago is beautiful.

How Pig`s Trotters and Pea Soup is Chicagoan

Don`t get me wrong, pig`s trotters and pea soup is not American, it`s pure Estonian, but today in Treasure Island in the Chicago Old Town, the most European Supermarket in America, I found fresh, cleaned green peas! And then I found smoked pig`s trotters! Clerg did look at them with a very scared look but I was so, so happy. I think the last time I had eaten a trotter was when my grandmother made them together with the pig`s ears. Yummy. And now I can make my own traditional Estonian Vastlapäev or Shrove Tuesday or Fasching menu: Pea Soup with Pig`s Trotters and Vastlakuklid, sweet lenten buns with whipped cream. I was happy that Clerg enjoyed the dinner, too, although he still would not touch the meat. Höissa vastlad!

I love that for the first time in my life, I feel really comfortable cooking. It has become sort of a hobby for both of us, especially with our weekly dinner parties at our place. We participated in a Thai cooking class last week and have purchased some nice extra sharp Japanese chef knives that Clerg is very fond of, and I am not afraid of any recipe any more. (Ruth, I have made Dampfnudle twice already, guet gäu).

I love that this year in Chicago I can do so many things the first time in my life. Before coming here I said I would love to learn how to cook well and finish my thesis and run a half marathon. Well, after a couple of Vastlakukkel here one simply must go for a run.

Roses are red...

I am such a sucker for all those holidays they have in the US. Back at home its either just fake or simply embarrassing most of the time but here - it is so much over the top it has become true and genuine! It is the home of pretentious glitter, Hallmark, asymmetrical rose bouquets and I love it all. So this morning we celebrated the all-red Valentine`s day with a fat american breakfast at Pauline`s in Andersonville. Here is to you all as I learnt in my English class circa twenty five years ago, when red was just a color of a certain flag:

Roses are red,

Violets are blue,

Sugar is sweet

And so are you.

Hop, Skip and a Week

Uhh, we have been incredibly sociable. When adults get a year off their every-day duties and can spend instead of earning their keep, they turn back in development and behave like students again. After the Swiss party we had a spontaneous post Swiss party on Saturday evening in one of the Chicagoan famous steak houses. I cannot remember when I last ate juicy pieces of basically raw meat but they do know how to do them so we rolled back to bed just to wake up on Super Bowl Sunday and get ready again to an organized viewing of what seems to be the second biggest national holiday after Christmas in the country. A professor of the Law School had invited around 80 students to his humble 14-room Hyde Park apartment and although I had had my reservations about watching hours of football, Madonna and a cute waiter serving expensive Chardonnay made it all worth it.

Then our weekly dinner was on Wednesday, this time with the South American and Mexican friends, salmon lasagna and numerous bottles of red wine, and yesterday was Michael`s surprise birthday party in the students pub on the campus. Funny story - Doris wanted to have a shot of bourbon for her stomach ache and the barkeeper requested a doctor`s prescription for that. Apparently, hard liqueur can only be handed out on campus as a mixed drink.

In between those parties we managed to squeeze in another lunch in the Chicago Art Institute and this time, we concentrated on Modern American Art from 1900 onwards.

Below is a very cute sample of the American art during depression by Doris Lee, you know, going back to the family values and sorts.

Of course, there was Mr Hopper with his too famous Nighthawks...

and Grant Wood`s American Gothic that we all know from the Desperate Housewives

as well as Marc Chagall and the America Windows.

Clerg even accompanied me to a special exhibition of American textiles and although they smelled a bit, I found them absolutely beautiful.

Today it started to snow again, and we decided to skip the dinner and Art Walk in Pilsen Galleries that this international student group had organized and stayed at home instead. How sociable can one be, after all.

Swiss Party Animals

Clerg`s LLM class tradition calls for national group parties. The Japanese set the bar high when they cooked a full twenty-something variations meal for 80 people to start the season in September and it was clear that not all other groups would manage to reach that level. The Swiss night was held yesterday in a place on the university campus that looked like a dance hall for Wilhelm Tell and his contemporaries. And as a combination of great team spirit, competitive cooking skills and a rather lousy preceding party two weeks earlier we seem to have possibly past the Japanese! Even though in terms of cuisine it is challenging to stand next to other nations (lets face it, most Swiss food just looks beige) but our buffet of Älplermagrone, Härdöpfu- and Rüeblisalat, Buurehamme and eight Züpfe-breads complemented with a real fondue-bar and about ten different cakes and a cheese plate in the end, did look impressive.

We cooked and baked for two days.

But it was worth it.

Real Swiss men Chrigu and Michu.

Chrigu with the only Swiss girl Doris.

To stay true to the correct representation of the Swiss population (30% foreigners) the other kitchen staff included Nicole (GER) and me (EST)

After the predators had cleaned the cake counter, party animals came out of the Swiss and our international friends making the subsequent Stimmung really the icing of the cake.

Date Night with an Italian

Last Thursday was date night. Clerg put on his nice tie and took me to see the Chicago Symphony Orchestra with its First Italian - the famous Riccardo Muti. The evening started off with a world premiere of Space Odyssey by a Belarus composer Smirnov (sounded cute, like old versions of Tom & Jerry, or as the gentleman on my left put it, a space movie from the fifties) and continued with a rather emotional 3rd Symphony by Schubert.

We were by far the youngest in the audience on the sixth floor Gallery of the Symphony Center, the elderly couple on Clergs left both fell asleep and snored loudly throughout the Allegretto and even before Muti could put away his baton for the intermission, several older gentlemen climbed up the stairs to get to the bathroom first.

The second half, Carl Orff`s Carmina Burana, was especially overwhelming for me because I still knew some words from performing it three years ago in Solothurn, Switzerland! It was of course performed by the full 100 member orchestra and both the 200-singer Symphony Chorus and the Chicago Children`s Choir. Altogether a great evening followed by the Museum Day on Friday. Chicago residents get into all museums for free until mid February so we decided to follow up on the eighteenth century European music with European arts until nineteenth century. Here are some examples to give an idea of the mood of Schubert`s contemporaries. Then we went back to the twenty first century life, grocery shopping.

That image and in general, the insides of the Chicago Art Institute reminds one of The Thomas Crown Affair with Brosnan and Russo. Although the museum is a home for several great works by both Manet and Monet, the movie was not shot here. I checked Wikipedia.

Dashing Through the Snow

The weather in Chicago is like the Republican primaries - every time something different. There are very cold days with temperatures till minus 18 Celsius, and then mild foggy and rainy days, and then there is the icy wind, and on Friday, even the Swiss press was talking about a snow storm in downtown Chicago. All flights were indeed canceled in O`Hare but I have a feeling it was more because they did not manage to plough the snow off the landing strips rather than because of a storm. It was snowing all day, yes, but a storm is something else for us.

On Saturday it happened to be a mix of everything we had had the whole week: snow, fog, rain and ice in a slushy minus seven. Normally, we would not even think of leaving the apartment but the time had come to run my 10 km race, the Chicago Polar Dash in Grant Park and Lakefront, my home trails. It was everything one would expect of a run on a day like this and it was awesome. During the 1.05.51 (Yai!) Clerg was running around too, with his camera.

Clerg just came in and said it was plus four outside. And Newt Gingrich won South Carolina.

And now there is a thunder storm with lightning (I promise, I am not making it up).