Arrival of DG

DG, another medstudent in this Chicago scholarship, arrived yesterday. She actually did not accept the place she got with Student Housing since she already had a spot sharing an apartment with three roommates. Organizing this from Germany may seem like a daring thing to do, but when we paid her a visitthis morning (she conveniently lives just two blocks north of my place), it seemed like it paid off nicely. The place was quite big, roommates all students, one medical it seems.

The person whose room DG inherited, who is now technically subletting the apartment to DG, insisted that both she and her newly-wed husband would give us a tour of Hyde Park. They took us in their car and drove us around the nearest shopping areas and the university area, mostly places Trillian and I had already been exploring these past days. Still, it was a nice gesture and they let us make a stop at the currency exchange, where we quickly acquired a 7-day-CTA-pass for DG so we could all go downtown later on.

The other new piece of information that we got from this tour was that we had pretty much seen everything. Of course, not the inside of the university buildings or hospitals but we had now been to pretty much every "place of interest" in Hyde Park. Going further west or south (as Trillian and I had also learned from our own experiences) was pretty much off-limits. East is Lake Michigan and north was downtown Chicago, a place with also not that many more things for us to see anymore. Yes sure, we would have to go up the Sears tower, see Navy Pier and maybe a few museums and we needed to catch some night life around here. But it doesn't seem as daunting a task as to "do" New York City or even a town like Munich "in a week". Either we haven't really found out yet what a tourist is supposed to do around here or there just isn't that much to see.

Again, I'm speaking from a tourist's perspective here. This has nothing to do with what we'll be doing professionally and socially once I start working at the hospital or once we go see the Bulls take a beating by the Pistons on Thursday ..

Anyway, I was babbling away there for a minute. DG's landlady dropped us off at the place called "Potbelly" where I got one of those delicious sandwiches on day two.
DG, not having eaten since the plane ride yesterday, seemed to enjoy that part, only being disappointed by the fact that her "juice" really only contained 25% of "actual juice". Yes, things can be confusing around here.

We then took the number 6 bus back up downtown, where we attended to DG's amply-voiced caffeine needs. Something about helping her normalize her circadian rhythm. Whatever, DG, I know a junkie when I see her ;)
Just kidding .. I think.

A hot chocolate for me, as well as a café mocha, a white chocolate mocha and a double espresso for the ladies later, we felt readyto go into the heart of town.

When we reached the corner of State and Madison, the origin of Chicago's street naming system and purportedly the very center of this lovely city, events started getting out of hand. Out of my hands that is. The ladies' energy suddenly seemed independent of their caffeine levels and they purposefully steered into the stores.

They were in full shopping mode.I did feel out of place and as any guy will know, full shopping mode is a force of nature to be reckoned with.

However, this place,Sears, must have been a disappointment since the ladies found me in the electronics department (which Sears mercifully had, a husband/boyfriend-daycare-center) only about 15 minutes after entering the store saying that it was a bust.

Hooray, shopping-mode suspended!

Now growing increasingly aware of priority number one, food. Since DG wasn't particularly fond of the idea of spending tonight alone at her place again (her roommates wouldn't return from spring break until tomorrow) and Trillian and I didn't have a mattress for her at my place we decided to all crash at DG's new apartment for tonight. We wanted to cook our own meal but we would need supplies for that.

So where would we go but our own good-old ..

About an hour later we emerged happily, with lots of food in plastic bags in our handsand waited for the green line to bring us back south to Hyde Park.

Note that today's weather chose not to let us see the lake from here.


When we arrived at Garfield Station, which is south of downtown and west of Hyde Park, we had to wait for the number 55 bus for quite a while. There was only an average number of people asking us for money or to "help the homeless" that we had to actively ignore but there were a few more groups of people loitering around us, none of them white or even hispanic. While the bus still wasn't there after about half an hour, actually a police car was. Standing across the street, officers apparently staring purposely at us white folks and our half a dozen bags of groceries. Apparently, they waited for us to get into the bus. I for one thought they might as well have picked us up and brought us home if they worried that much. Anyway, the girls said they didn't want to transfer at that station anymore. So that effectively bars the L-train for us down here and we'll have to keep taking the number 6 bus up and down the shore from now on. Bugger.

Anyway, after arriving safely back in Hyde Park, we came by my place to drop off some of the groceries and pick up things for the sleepover and then went to DG's place. From there we went and bought some fresh vegetables, witnessed DG pick up a couple of hundred bucks at an ATM to pay the rent later and then hit a liquor store. Naturally, I tried all the booze they offered for free in there - corona in a can was a bust though. Tasted just like regular Corona - which was terrible, lemon or not. Anyway, I had to take all the liquor on my tab since of course, Trillian didn't have an ID on her. Probably made me look really good to be buying booze with two girls who couldn't or wouldn't prove to be over 21.

Oh well. We then started cutting up all the vegetables and improvising something edible out of them (yes, I did have a part in it that went beyond documenting it!).

After toasting with the stuff we had taken out of the liquor storewe went on to have a quite tasty meal, surprisingly so since it must have been healthy as heck, what with no meat, no grease and probably tons of fiber and vitamins and all.I'll make up for it with a donut or burger or something tomorrow.

Touring the U of C

Need I say more?

Soon someone will graffiti on that thing "... until the arrival of Iccy".

But first things first - this morning I had another look at what was offered bike-wise on craigslist.com. Lowest I found was $60 for a functional-looking bike somewhere all the way in Cicero, lacking fenders of course that would protect my fancy clothes from the every-so-often-present precipitation around here. Most halfway-decent bikes were priced around $100 and up on there so I checked out target.com. Told you, the best store on earth. They had new "cruiser" bikes (including fenders) for $79.99. Granted, including shipping this bike put me out about 110 bucks but I believe judging from the prices on craigslist (someone's bound to be paying for all that stuff?) it should have great re-sell value in two and a half months when I return to Germany.

It should be delivered some time next week.

Then, we went out.

On our way exploring south, the first thing we came across was some art school apparently. I'll let you judge for yourselves.

Next we stumbled across the beautiful Gerald Ratner Athletics Center.
Naturally, it's primarily for students so it'd really help if I could somehow get a U of C student ID. I'm sure that'd also help with a lot of other stuff. We'll see.
The "Nuclear Energy"-sculptureas well as some other pointersled us on the right track.

There it was.So pretty.I felt right at home.
Then we found the place I'm sure Phèdre would love.
Never passing up an opportunity to make good money, there were tons of U of C/Pritzker merchandise available. And I, never passing up an opportunity to be a sucker for that kind of stuff, walked out with some of it in addition to a nice new book on EKGs (it's time I actually started to know what I'm doing) and a terribly ugly hip-length white "coat" (jacket, really).

No matter. We went on to find that the "University market", defined as grocery store on Google Earth was a very small and as always down here very overpriced little shoppe.

Not impressed, we returned home to deposit our gadgets from the university bookstore. We found an e-mail from one of Trillian's friends in Detroit saying that Walmart was actually even cheaper than Target. Intrigued, I looked up the closest Walmart stores on the internet and found one that was about exactly as far away as the Target store, just in the opposite direction.

So Trillian and I took a bus a couple of stations west and then went south all the way on the red line. Even though we ended up being yelled at by just one beggar on the train and only two obviously mentally deranged people held their monologues too close to us for comfort, we decided to turn around and head back while we were waiting for the bus on 95th street.

This was mainly because we felt very out of place not having seen any non-African American faces since 55th street - and the many faces that were there didn't exactly smile at us (at least not in a sane way). So the rich white folks got scared and ran away to the suburbs, joined the NRA, got three guns each and voted republican.

You'll notice that there are no pictures of these events.

So we ended up scurrying back north all the way to Target - did I mention it's the best store on earth? And we went on shopping happily.

On the way back, the humid, foggy weather invited me to take some more pictures outside the Target store and on the platform of the L-train.

Exploring Chicago

Just a few steps out the door this morning I took a picture of Greenwood Avenue.

Looks nice, doesn't it? Almost suburban.

Trillian and I first set out to the bike store on 53rd street by the lake that was closed yesterday. This wasn't much use though, the owner declared he currently had no used bikes for me and new ones started at $300. Too steep a price for two and a half months of transportation. The dealer said he did have a "ladies' bike" that he however hadn't yet gotten a chance to take a look at. He even told us that this was a bike that had been abandoned by its owner, the lock had been broken by the police and that's how he acquired this piece of metal. He said he'd probably be pricing the street find at around $100. Go figure.

We then walked to a currency exchange that formerly was on 55th, now 53rd, that sold CTA multi day passes according to information on the internet. I asked for a 5-day visitor pass (priced at $18) assuming that the place shouldn't sell normal multi day passes (these were sold in fewer selected locations according to the net). It seemed the lady behind the counter didn't have any visitor passes, so she came back with two transit cards in hand claiming that'd "be the same thing". Which was a lie. Transit cards don't give you unlimited rides like the multi-day pass - they're basically a Streifenkarte instead of a Wochenkarte. When we refused that "bargain", she suddenly had multi day passes for one or seven days. So we suddenly got 7 days of unlimited rides for $20. Good enough to take the now familiar #6 Jackson Express bus downtown.

Naturally, I had forgotten the Chicago guide as well as that ridiculously overpriced tourist map at home. The latter wasn't that big a loss - bus lines weren't on it anyway and there were better ones for free waiting in any subway station. But before we got the subway map we jumped off the bus at Van Buren Street Station and just aimlessly walked north down Michigan Avenue.

Before long, we found a piece of Bavaria it seemed.


Under closer scrutiny, the place was actually called the Art Institute of Chicago. I wonder what they do there .. :)

All that thinking made me hungry, what else. People came out of this place

with promisingly-looking bags. Feeling curious as well as adventurous, I set out to solve the mystery of the bags and asked the nice people across the counter for what they call a "burger". About what felt like 15 minutes later my order was up (whatever happened to the "fast" in fast food these days?) and it was an OK burger, nothing special really though. I would have expected more from my first Chicago burger. What a letdown.

Trillian chose Subway, less adventurous, but at least you have a better idea of what you'll be getting.

After some more aimless strolling through the streets, we stumbled upon a full-fledged brass orchestra
in the Richard J. Daley Center that played beautifully.

After listening to them for quite a while, we turned east
and thereby headed for Lake Michigan.







After sitting at the edge of the pier for a while and relaxing in the blatantly gorgeous early afternoon sun with a fresh breeze at a perfectly comfortable temperature even though neither of us had brought a jacket.

We then turned back towards the city.



Next stop was going to be
Macy's.
When Trillian got impossible to restrain vis à vis a seemingly endless collection of clothing, shoes and wedding apparel (yikes!) I had to forcibly remove her from the premises.

Next stop:


The most beautiful store on the entire earth.

I've made a list of what I have bought yesterday and today in terms of "necessary equipment" for the formerly very empty apartment I live in. Here it is.

$ 1.99 4 big plastic glasses
$ 1.32 Dish soap
$ 5.99 Phone
$ 1.99 4 plastic cereal bowls
$ 1.99 4 plastic plates
$ 0.99 Plastic pan turner
$ 2.89 Scrub sponges
$ 1.49 Large plastic salad bowl
$ 3.19 Trash bags
$ 4.99 Flatware set (4 forks, 4 knives, 4 spoons)
$ 4.99 Pillow
$ 7.99 Pan
$ 9.99 Pot
$ 4.99 25' phone line
$ 4.74 3 "bath" towels
$19.99 Bed sheet set (1 pillow case, 1 fitted sheet, 1 flat sheet)
$27.96 2 fleece blankets
$ 0.99 Can opener
$ 1.29 13 Hangers
$ 6.99 Steam iron
$14.99 Iron board
$ 9.99 Toaster
$ 5.59 Toilet paper

That's under $150 total. Given that this has made the formerly uninhabitable apartment a place to live I find the price not so bad and in terms of bang for your buck I'll be curious to see a store that can just offer bedding for two, dishes and tableware for that price, let alone all the stuff listed above.

Before the second shopping spree, first one together, we (or rather I) needed some energy.

After some more power shopping, we left the store with loads of bounty.



The trip back home was rather uneventful despite the countless bags we traveled with, but the scenery was very nice.