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:: TRAVEL USA::
:: HA - DEN ::
DEN - SF ::
SF - LA ::
GC & LV ::
LA - NOL ::
NOL - CHI ::
CHI - HA ::
25.02.02
At 9 am the train is approaching Chicago Union station. It's much colder outside
than the day before (maybe because of the few miles more north;-).
The hostel
is not far away from the station, just a quarter of an hour by food. So I brought my
backpack there and at 10 am I was already walking through downtown, looking
at all these different kind of architecture of all the skyscrapers. I found a lot of
fast food restaurants in the town, more than I saw in any town before. The distance
between two shops of the same company is only separated be 2-3 blocks. So
I see more than 10 shops of each company!
At the navy pier it becomes finally really cold, because there is a heavy wind. But
I'm too lazy to walk back to the hostel to take a second jacket. Luckily the museums
at the museum campus offer free entrace on that monday, so I used the opportunity
to warm up again.
First I visited the aquarium and I was even coming right in time to
get a free guided tour through the 4 seasons of the amazonas. On the other side of
the place it the field museum, a really huge museum for natural science with dinosauriers,
egypt mummies, animals from all over the world and so on. Funny was for me the
Mc Donalds research lab: Behind a glass window few scientist were preparing some
fossiles. Sponsored by Mc Donalds and so you also could find another Mc Donalds
restaurant in the museum.
After few hours in the museums I feel comfortably warm again to go outside, finding
the way to chinatown. But also this one was very small in comparision to that one
in San Francisco, so again I was a little bit dissappointed. On my way back to
downtown the first snow flakes were falling, so probably it was hardly zero degrees.
At 5 pm I'm back in front of the union station and now I'm seeing how many people
are working over day in the skyscrapers. There is no ending of the people running
to the union station in order to get a train home. On the streets there is also a small
chaos minimized due to the fact, that at each corner there is a police woman (better
prepared than me against the cold weather) trying to regulate the traffic. Somehow
funny to me, because there is a traffic light at each crossing, but probably the
people are not able to take care to stop before waiting in the middle of the intersection
for the next green light...
One hour later the town was evacuated by people, I was completly alone and it
was somehow strange to walk through the streets. Only few people were passing.
One of them was a girl from taiwain, looking for the hostel I stayed in. On the way
back we recognize, that we almost did the same: We were both travelling alone with
Amtrak across USA and we both were shortly before in california.
26.02.02
Check out time was 11 am at the hostel, so I used the time before, strolling the last
time through an american city. Over night it had been snown and it's really cold.
I even took the gloves out of my backpack, but then I forget them in my room.
I'd like to see the michigan lake again, because I heard, that Chicago should have
some beaches. And I really find one, but the weather was not the right to take a
bath.
Then I took my back from the hostel and take the metro to the airport. I felt the last
time the american friendlyness, when I wanted to buy my train ticket I was asking at
a small counter in the station and the woman pointed in the direction of the ticket
machine and told me to buy one there. I was first irritated, how could she just
point on the machine instead helping me. But I was wrong, while I was looking for
my money she left her warm counter and came to the machine to show me what
to press (I had to be very intelligent, because there were not too many knobs to press
and I almost did it alone;-). But then passing the barrier she had to help me, because I
didn't understood, that I have to take the ticket out of the slit again before passing;-)
After checking in, I did a small tour around the airport. A small train is connecting all
terminals and a big parking area with each other. After a short ride I know, that there are
a lot of cars at O'Hare and it's really huge.
On my flight back I was more luckly, I really get a seat a the window (this time it was A, so
I could be sure about;-) In my row, there was only another man and you could feel,
that he was german. After he sat down he just said "Hello" and "hopefully the seat
between us will stay free" and then he open the newspaper and didn't say anything
anymore.
At the end of my trip I was almost adapted to the american time zones, even I pass
three of them. But therefore I was not able to sleep during the flight, because we were
landing in Frankfurt at midnight central time and 6 am german time.
27.02.02
My last part of the travel was the flight from Frankfurt back to Dortmund at 7 am.
This time the man next to me start to speak from the very beginning. He was from
Texas and just arrived with the same plane like me in Frankfurt. Like all americans
he was using the short time of the flight to talk to the fellow passengers. He was
telling me, what I missed all in US (like Texas;-) and I gave him some tips for his
stay in germany.
The weather was very roughly, so the plane was shaken a little bit. Therefore the
stewardess was appologizing, because she couldn't over us any drinks. Right in
time I was landing in Dortmund. Unfortnually my trip is over, but it will not be the
last one...
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