Surfin' USA, Part Two: Chi-Town (Aug. 26-29)

It begins! This is the easy part, though: with a long train ride from Chicago to Appleton on August 29th, we were pretty good about keeping a record of our travels up to that point. So now it's just a matter of a little copy-paste and some picture-adding... I'll start with Bert's straightforward Chicago Tagebuch, and then finish off with my own. :) Welcome to the City of Big Shoulders!

26.08.07
Mit etwas Verspaetung gegen 19Uhr sicher in Nikkis Armen gelandet. Schon der Transfer vom Flughafen in die Stadt war ein Erlebnis und hat fast 90min gedauert... Schienenersatzverkehr inklusive, aber alle sind sehr nett und helfen gerne. Ab ins Hotel Allegro, eingecheckt und gleich wieder los, um noch etwas zu Essen und ein Bier zu finden! Auf der Suche kommen wir am Nachrichtenstudio von ABC vorbei und man kann von aussen zuschauen, wie die Livesendung produziert wird: "10pm Nightly News"!


Leider haben die Kneipen schon 22:00Uhr geschlossen und so muessen wir auf einen Kiosk ausweichen. Ich darf nicht mit rein, da mein Reisepass im Hotel ist und wir sonst kein Bier bekommen... Schliesslich sehe ich nicht aus wie ueber 21 Jahre...! Nikki "managed" das aber alles sehr gut und so haben wir noch ein gemuetliches Mitternachtspicknick auf dem Hotelbett mit orginal US-TV. Alle 8 (9) Gliedmassen von uns gestreckt und voellig erschoepft schlafen wir dann ein...

27.08.07
9Uhr klingelt der Wecker, aber wir sind schon wach. Nach einem gemuetlichen Aufstehen ziehen wir gegen 11Uhr los. Der erste Kaffeeshop um die Ecke ist unser und fuer Berti beginnt das Kulturlernprogramm...
Unser Ziel an diesem Vormittag ist das "John Hancock Center", um von dort die Aussicht ueber die Stadt zu haben. Auf dem Weg dorthin laufen wir kreuz und quer durch die Innenstadt. Alles ist aufregend, neu, RIESIG und mit Nikki an meiner Seite doch ganz entspannt und ich kann alles geniessen. Wir machen Stopp in der ersten "deep-dish" Pizzeria von Chicago, aber gegen Nikkis Rat entscheide ich mich gegen die "Pizza Uno" und werde mit einer fettigen Barbecue Pizza ueberrollt und mein Magen fuer den Rest des Tages ausser Gefecht gesetzt. Dafuer ist das Bier sehr sehr gut und wir haben eine schoene Pause.

Weiter geht's durch ein paar Klamottenlaeden zum Ziel! Leider ist das Wetter nicht so klar, also entscheiden wir uns spaeter auf das hoechste Gebauede der Stadt, dem "Sears Tower" -- 527m!!! -- zu gehen (fahren). Und siehe da, das Wetter wird besser. Nach einer sonnigen Wassertaxifahrt auf dem Chicago River erreichen wir den Sears Tower genau richtig zum Sonnenuntergang. Eine atemberaubende Aussicht laesst den ersten Tag ausklingen und wir erreichen unser Hotel gegen 22Uhr und fallen wieder todmuede ins Bett. Schnarch...


29.08.07
Chicago is an awesome city; but the most fun has actually turned out to be watching Bert's reaction to various bizarre cultural details. I keep forgetting that this is his first time -- ever! -- in the States, and so the little things that I just take for granted grab his attention. It's like when Matt came to visit in Germany: he would stop and notice things that I had forgotten were even different (e.g., the fact that sales tax in Germany is already included in the price, and so things cost at the register exactly what the tag says. Imagine seeing something displayed for "20 Euro", and actually -- gasp! -- handing over a neat 20-Euro bill for it! Crazy Europeans).

Anyway, so we kept a fun, ongoing account of the various surprises for my Europäer in Chicago. Such as...

- On the first morning, he called to me from the hotel bathroom to inquire if the toilet was stopped up. I came to investigate, and found him peering down into the porcelain, suspiciously eyeing a couple of tissues I'd thrown in there. "I don't think so," I said, "Those are just nose-blows." Him: "Then why is the whole thing filled with water?"

- When we stopped for some caffeine, I turned around to hand him his 12-oz "small" coffee. "Oh, thanks," he said, "but this must be yours. I ordered the 'small'."

- Later, I came out of a public restroom to find him happily observing a water fountain. "What a great installation!" he proclaimed. "Free water -- we need these in Germany." Hee hee... and I totally agree! And had completely forgotten that there aren't random public water fountains lying around your average German cityscape -- "Too unhygenic!" explained the school secretary (with her customary exasperation). She's probably right; but come on, our immune systems could use a bit of a workout, especially as kids! I sometimes wonder if urban Europeans are in general suspicious of plain water. Which would make sense, seeing as how, for hundreds of years in crowded medieval cities, the beer was a lot safer. Yet even today, asking for water in a restaurant means receiving sparkling bottled mineral water, and sometimes paying more for it than you would for a beer. Just drinking right out of the faucet even strikes some people as weird!

- Speaking of food and drink, our first restaurant experience, Pizzeria Uno, was an almost constant inundation of newness. First, we waited to be seated by a hostess, while Bert did an antsy-dance at having to just stand there, waiting for her to get off the phone, when there was a perfectly good table right there. When she finally led us to our cozy corner, the hostess herself was then so much chattier and more personable than is typical for German restaurants that Bert leaned over and asked, in a whisper, if this was normal. :oP

The waitress then brought us free tap water (which delighted the both of us) plus three yummy American beers on tap: one Sam Adams Summer Ale (mm, pale and citrusy); one Uno's Ale (thick, sweet, and amber-colored); and some local Hefeweizen whose name I unfortunately can't remember. These were all delightful, despite the fact that they did come -- blasphemously! -- in plain glasses that were bereft of any volume markings whatsoever. How could we be certain we were getting the full pint? sniffed my exacting Deutscher. (Germans have marvelous laws for alcohol and alcohol-serving. God help the Pfaelzer who makes your Schorle less than 75% straight wine, or the bartender who comes between a countryman and his last few drops of golden suds.)

The only disappointment was the food. Pizzeria Uno is famous for its deep-dish pizza, but we unfortunately deviated a bit from the famous Uno's style and went with some barbecue-chicken-topped experiment that was, alas, more greasy than it was flavorful. Oh well, at least that's sort of an authentic American fast-food experience! Though the beer and atmosphere were great. After the meal, we figured out a 15% tip, something which Bert got really good at in later restaurant adventures.

In fact, Bert was a pretty fast absorber of all things new. Even when he was tired and just didn't feel like exerting himself all the time, he still insisted on speaking English almost exclusively and on figuring most things out for himself. Except once, when it was late and he owed a cashier some change... he at first squinted at the pile of foreign currency in his palm, raised an exhausted eyebrow, sighed, and held it out to me. "Could you just... pull out the correct amount?" he asked.
"Sure," I said, grinning.
As we walked away, I held up a dime. "Remember how much this one is?"
Another sigh. "Pffft... Five cents?"
"Ten." Brandishing a nickel: "This one here is five."
"Then why is it bigger than the ten-cent piece??"
"To confuse logical foreigners, of course."

- Finally, a couple more observations that were just cute:

1) We had stopped by a Walgreens for batteries, but then decided to come back for them later. When Bert went to remind me of our errand that evening, he mentioned that we should be sure to find "that market" again.
2) They don't have Sears in Germany. So naturally, Bert could never remember the name of the tower: "Are we going to that Cereal Tower today?" "How high is this See's Tower, anyway?"

But enough with the observations. The trip itself has been a blast. Our hotel, "Hotel Allegro," was a pretty lush, art-deco-style place in Chicago's Theater District, just a couple of blocks away from the Loop, Grant Park, and Lake Michigan. Our first day was just as Bert describes it -- except that he was also so jetlagged I had to keep pouring coffee into him to keep him upright on his long legs. Despite this, he was a real trooper, and we spent most of the day just wandering the gridlike streets with our necks craned backward to take in all the towering glass skyscrapers. Tuesday (yesterday), we sat down to breakfast in the "Corner Bakery" and were overwhelmed by the sheer volume of food you could get for ten bucks a person: a huge plate of scrambled eggs, four slices of toast, a bowl of fruit, fried potatoes, cinnamon-raisin french toast, a "medium" (that is, 16 oz) cappuccino, and all the butter, jam, honey, syrup, ketchup, and other condiments you could possibly want. Bert, being the sauce/topping fiend that he is, was in heaven. He kept going back for more jam, just because he could. :) Though we naturally couldn't finish all the food, and took two to-go containers back to our hotel to stick in the fridge for later!

The rest of the day was too hot to spend outside, so we took refuge in the Museum of Science and Industry. This place is awesome. And, unsurprisingly given some of its layout, intentionally modeled after the Deutsches Museum in Munich. Matt, remember the huge room with planes soaring over some ships? Turn the ships into a locomotive, and you've got the "Flight" section of the MSI. This same section also boasts some supercool model trains, zooming through the model dowtown Chicago, past models of landscapes spanning the American west (including the Rockies), and wending its way all the way out to a model of -- Seattle! I like trains. Even miniature ones. I stood watching them like Homer with the drinking bird: "Look at that one! Hee hee, he's traversing the mountain."

Bert's gaze, however, was attracted upward, toward the British Spitfire and German Stuka, two WWII fighter planes suspended from the ceiling in frozen pursuit. The Stuka in particular is hung at a downward angle, so that, standing it front of it, it looks as if you're about to be on the receiving end of some machine-gun nastiness. We stared for a while like two toads about to be gekked, and then Bert automatically raised the camera to his hypnotized face and took a picture.


Oh, but the best exhibit in the entire museum -- and of which they are justifiably proud -- is a fully intact and restored WWII U-Boot: the U505. Apparently, this was the first foreign vessel captured by the U.S. Navy since the War of 1812! It was cornered, shot at, and boarded in 1944 after sinking eight Allied ships; and it's perfect. Here's a note from Wikipedia on the submarine's restoration:

When U-505 was donated to the Museum, she had been thoroughly stripped during the years she sat neglected alongside the dock at the Portsmouth Navy Yard. Admiral Gallery proposed a possible solution. Major Lohr contacted all of the German manufacturers who had supplied the components and parts that went into her, in hopes of restoring her to near-new condition. As the Admiral reported in his autobiography, the Major expected at best responses that boiled down to "Go to hell." However, to his and the Museum's surprise, every company supplied the requested parts without charge. Most included letters that said in effect, "We are sorry that you have our U-boat; but since she's going to be there for many years, we want her to be a credit to German technology." An article by the boat's former curator, Keith Gill, published in Savas, Theodore, editor, Hunt and Kill: U-505 and the U-boat War in the Atlantic, pp. 161-220, offers an in-depth and fascinating behind the scenes account of how U-505 ended up in Chicago.

Anyway, they did such a good job that you can take a tour of the inside of the ship and get a really good feel for what it must have been like below decks. There are even cards, dice, and a copy of the only record album found on board (French, of course). Maybe half a dozen of us were led through by a guide who was absolutely in love with this submarine: he would clasp his hands and half-close his eyes in bliss as he recounted, in astonishing detail, every aspect of the ship's construction, history, capture, and crew. Though of course his storytelling, as we were led through the belly of the beast, was "enhanced" by occasional background noises piped in through unobtrusive speakers: orders being called in German, the sound of depth charges, the music from the record album, or the sounds of equipment bonging and clacking. At one point, he paused at a very suspenseful point in the story, and so did the "soundtrack." It was in this brief moment of tense silence that Bert suddenly blurted, "ALLE RAUS!!!" Everyone jumped. We held our sides and shook with silent laughter -- they all thought it had been part of the recording! At the end of the tour, we stepped, blinking, into the light outside, and people were stopping to thank the tour guide on their way out. "Dankeschön," said Bert, without thinking. "Bitteschön!" declared the guide. :)

That evening, we made our way back downtown again to Navy Pier to discover a joint called "America Dog", reputedly the best Chicago-style hotdogs ever. (They were okay.) Then we made it just in time to the Oriental Theater to catch a production of "Wicked," a musical about the witches of Oz, and how the whole Dorothy-story was just a misunderstanding. The idea was cute, the story not bad, and the sets, acting, and singing terrific; but frankly, well, I just didn't really care for the music that much. It was... kind of trite! The characters were great, but when they started singing some forgettable melody about "friendship," you start checking your watch to see when they'll get on with the story. All in all, though, it was very well made and definitely entertaining. The Oriental Theater, too, is an amazingly ornate, historic venue right in the middle of the city's renowned Theater District, and and I could just imagine women in 1930's finery taking in some exotic production set in Darkest Egypt. Very atmospheric.

My poor jetlagged German, however, took a very expensive nap. ;)