Ep. 1.5: My Kind of Town

As I mentioned in the weekly recap, the plan to go to Chicago was something that transitioned very quickly (within less than 24 hours) from an ideation in my head¹, to something that I vocalised as a possibility to the fellow exchange students I had literally met the night before, to something that we actually had accommodation and transport booked for. Is this the ideal way to squeeze maximum enjoyment from a holiday? The answer is an unequivocal no, yet on the other hand, if one is confident in the company he is keeping, and in this case I very much was, a spontaneous construction should be of no concern as it places the quality of the trip squarely at the feet of the traveler and his group themselves, their combined excitement, energy and creativity being the driving force of memorable experiences. Given the diversity of backgrounds present, of national identities and otherwise, I was extremely fortunate in this regard to have the company that I had.

The Saturday

AKA January 14th

Transit

Due to our limited available time in Chicago, it was an imperative to leave as early as we could muster on the Saturday so we could arrive at our destination prior to midday. This was perhaps the most perilous point of the trip, since having decided on taking the bus, we were left with an 8:30 AM and one that didn't leave until late morning. The earlier option it was. Only problem being that I didn't have the greatest amount of faith in the rest of the group to be up and down at the station on the other side of the Wabash². I ended up almost being the biggest liability that morning however. I hadn't had time to pack the night before owing to the basketball game and a late night call to the parents, and I wanted to go for a run before leaving. Along with breakfast, let me tell you it's miracle it came together. And sure enough, we all congregated at the bus stop awaiting our transit to the Windy City.

We were travelling by Greyhound Bus, which to a non-American can most aptly be described as pretty cheap, dirty affairs that enable those without the means to fly to still travel across the country. Its routes quite literally form the roots of America, particularly through the central states where airports are many many hundreds of miles apart. To give insight into the sorts of places it connects, our bus made a stop at Gary, Indiana. Famous for being the birthplace of Michael Jackson, this place today is just about as bare, derelict and lifeless as could be imagined. It is hard to conceive of anyone living there. Other than what looks like a steel mill, little beside remains. Crime here is rife, and properties owned by the federal government can allegedly be had for $1, so hopeless are the prospects here. This, and cities like it, are really what one should talk about when they talk about America. The "real" towns of this country, a far cry from the gaudy excess of Los Angeles, and certainly holding no resemblance to the metropolis we were headed towards. Modulo the drug-infused swings from melancholy to euphoria, the scenes here reminded me of Kerouac's On the Road...

Walk, Walk, Walk, Gently Down the Stream

Eventually the bus pulled into the Chicago station and we unloaded, not having the foggiest where we were. One problematic aspect we encountered was that our AirBnB was not available for check-in until 16:00, so we were left with several hours to kill (and all of our luggage - not much for two days, but still enough to be cumbersomely heavy...) to make use of. Since we also had no formulated plan of what to do, lunch was called for to discuss the things we might wish to see. Shortlists were made, Trip Advisor was searched, and a general plan of attack was sketched out.

Here's where we get to lesson number one.

The plan originally was to spend the few hours before check-in walking along the river and through the parks to get a better geographical grasp of the city, then allocate time on Sunday for a gallery or museum or two. If you find yourself going to Chicago, it is worth every dollar to take out what is called the Chicago City Pass I believe. It costs around USD 130, but it gets you access to something like five of the big tourist attractions around the main district - Willis Tower Skydeck, the Art Institute, the aquarium, planetarium and science museum being but some of the options here. Each alone will set you back between 30-60 dollars, so the math works out very handedly from a financial sense in your favour. Of course not knowing of this pass' existence until we were out of time, we didn't get to go into as many of the sites as we had hoped, merely wandering around them.

With full bellies³, we set off and the sights for that afternoon then proceeded thusly:

A casual stroll along the East side of the river gave for plenty of photo opportunities. Our walk took us coincidentally within stone's throw of Willis Tower with its famous skydeck, and we never got closer than this with the cost of the deck giving us little enthusiasm to partake.

A first stop was made at the Chicago Public Library, a beautiful old building with some wonderful study spaces, the clear winner of course being the Winter Garden on the top floor. Were I to live in Chicago, I have no doubt that I would frequent this spot with tenacity as a place to code or to write or to read or even to sleep.

Next was cruising past the Art Institute enroute to the Millennium Park and the Cloud Gate. The latter was much smaller than I had anticipated, but very pretty and very busy. At this point, we were an hour away from check-in, and coincidentally (according to Google Maps) an hour away from the apartment. So we went there on foot, which proved to be a challenging prospect. Most of us were pretty weary by the end, and asking me constantly (as the navigator) how far away we were.

Here is lesson number two.

Despite the apartment itself being terrific for our purposes, and on such short notice a spectacularly good find, it would have been worth checking exactly how far away from the main attractions the place was. The couple of miles displacement certainly on Saturday took its toll on the group, and meant that our ability to flexibly go back and forth between the two places as needed was essentially zero. Conveniently, the place was near a subway station, and a day-pass on the blue lines (train and bus) can be had in Chicago for $5 - a very good deal!

The Sunday

AKA January 15th

Another day full of a lot of walking, but certainly less than yesterday now that we had acquired day passes for the blue line transport. After some brief, undirected walking about, we eventually decided upon The Art Institute of Chicago as the place we wanted to go and spend some time. Unbeknownst to many I would say, this gallery arguably is the world's finest, in my extremely unknowledgeable artistic opinion rivalling that of the Louvre's, and with a fraction of the crowd. Again, upon arriving we initially baulked at the entry price, but thankfully we met up with another exchange student and his cousin who goes to school in Chicago. Students at the University of Chicago get free admission, so we attempted to pull of the miracle and convince the ticket office to let all 10 of us in for free on his one ID card. Which somehow worked...I'm not going to ask too many questions. All we were told was that it was our lucky day, and too right they were.

The 90 minutes or so we had set aside were entirely not enough to walk the many sides of the gallery and we each left feeling as if we'd done well, but reached perhaps 5% of the total paintings and pieces housed there. But the 5% was pretty phenomenal. The institute has entire rooms devoted to Monets and Manets and Seurats and van Goghs and Warhols each fetching tens to hundreds of millions. it is also home to American Gothic, a painting whose name probably means nothing to you, but a quick Google search and you'll have definitely seen it before.

I found myself next to these masterpieces as someone who had little idea about how one should go about exploring such a gallery, how one should properly and most adequately observe these works. The most impactful thing I workshopped, lacking the ability to analyse the pieces at the level of technique or composition, was to simply stare at the painting long enough until the higher-order mapping of faces and scenes decomposed into simple lines, strokes and textures. Then, quickly shifting back up the ladder to view the piece as a whole and sitting with whatever emotions boiled over proved to leave an effective residue on me for particular works. Suffice to say that the whole proceeding was very evocative and a place I would happily return to and spend a whole day at.

Then, for the most traditional part of the weekend, we dined on deep-dish pizza at a local Italian joint. Though I might squawk at the proximity of the term "pizza" to whatever monstrosity they served up to us, I cannot deny that the taste was quite compelling. If you are in Chicago, it is a must, and if wanting to be done most traditionally, it can only be done at Giordano's.

With only a few hours to spare before the sun set on our time in Chicago, we made plans to head over to Shedd Aquarium, a place we had heard very good things about.

Here is lesson number three.

What we didn't realise was that sights like this sell out weeks in advance, and so we rocked up full of excitement, only to be met with long, snaking queue and signs informing us that the place was sold out. To our dismay, we had left our run a little late and the nearby science museum had closed minutes prior. Whilst we didn't get to go inside of any of the buildings here, this point on the lake is just stunning, with a backdrop of skyscrapers to the West and the immense expanses of LM to the East, stretching out seemingly through the horizon itself. A prompt retreat was made here back to the warmth of our apartment.

The Monday

AKA January 16th AKA Martin Luther King Jr. Day

Conditions finally took a turn for the worse here and with a fairly fatiguing two days behind us, the collective interest in going out and about for one final push before getting back on the bus was minimal. We had, to be sure, booked in for the mid-afternoon departure time, in the hopes of being able to do something productive with the morning before going back to Purdue, but as it turns out we would have been equally well served returning in the morning.

However, little was I to know that the clear highlight of the trip in my eyes was still on the cards.

I had been itching to go for a run whilst in Chicago, as I've found that in other cities it is a remarkably useful way of getting around to a variety of different sights in short order. A rapid sight-seeing tour it was to be then. I set out whilst the others were sleeping in shorts, a t-shirt and a beanie, with a general inclination to loop around the river, along Lake Michigan, then back through to the apartment via the parks we had traversed on Saturday.

I'm not quite sure what got into me that morning, but between the frigid air that left me feeling oh so alive and the tremendous viewings to be had around Chicago, I found myself a few miles from the flat having notched up about 15 kilometres, and in fairly quick time to. Then, like in Inception, the seed of an idea was planted in my mind and very quickly came to be something that I believed in - I'm going to go and do a half-marathon. I had come this far, and I could easily take the scenic route back for those final 6 kilometres. And besides, I'd never done one before, and what better place than this. So it was that I found myself, looping around foreign streets and anxiously monitoring the meterage on my watch as the numbers slowly crept up. Having left the lake district behind, I found myself in the parts of Chicago that one perhaps would not want to be alone at night in, and to make matters worse, it started raining.

It was here, somewhat lost, shivering with wet hair and fingers so numb I could barely bend them, that I wondered why I had ever thought this sensible in the first place. But, with not a few stops here and there to check my location on maps, 21 ticked across on my Garmin and I could finally be at peace with returning. Running back over the river for the final time and hitting our home street was so very exhilarating, and I felt unconquerable for the rest of the morning.

Which didn't consist of much. We had to check-out by 11:00 and so there was time for little more than eating breakfast and packing before we were flung back out with our bags and a few hours to kill. There was originally suggestion of finding a shopping mall to walk around, but what this manifested into was having coffee at a Starbucks and doing some homework.

Sitting in the bus station terminal waiting to head back brought back precisely the same thoughts as had transpired on the trip there on Saturday. In an airport terminal, looking around at fellow travelers gives a sense of people commencing far-reaching, momentous journeys. Here, the matter is far different. People, often with very little possessions to them, leaving from unknown lives and departing even further into the shadows. I cannot help but feeling that some of these people, were you to only ask, could have some of the most fascinating of stories to tell about how they ended up there.

Nighttime Activities

What made this aspect of the trip challenging was that most of the group were under 21, meaning we had to make some salient choices about which bars/pubs/etc. we wanted to frequent on the two nights we had. Dinner on the first night we had out at some Irish pub with the NFL Playoffs on, and it's moments like this where it clicked in my head - "Ah, so this is what it means to be American". By some miracle, after some extended walking around the streets near our apartment, we managed to find a really chill spot to hang for a few hours before the night was up.

The second night was a more homely affair. The two Italians in our group had offered to make pasta and such an offer should never in good spirit be refused. With limited ingredients and cooking supplies, they made a fairly good fist of it. In any case, the pasta was perfectly cooked!

Even with all the walking, the cold weather and the disappointment of missing some major attractions, I came to develop in short order a really strong affinity for the city of Chicago, a strong attachment that I readily expect to pull me back in the near future, if not on this particular chapter in America. I loved how clean the place was (or at least the parts I visited), the city's thriving music, arts and performance scene and the overall aesthetic. It had a sniff of the hustle and bustle of New York (though on this long weekend it was empty), the highly modern skyscrapers and parks to boot, yet it was done in far more tasteful fashion, and without any of the smoky, polluted excess.

A tiring, but wholeheartedly memorable three days, and in my eyes the perfect way to spend these long weekends on exchange. Sure, a longer trip might have been nicer, but even the slightest taste of a city like Chicago left me wonderfully satiated to start back up again with classes at Purdue.

Footnotes