Statement of the Day – Chris Corner: Last entry (01/08/13)

Today I received my last grades from UNO and so the experience studying in the US is finally over. Fortunately I got an A/A+ in all my classes so the exchange program will increase my total average grade a lot. Thank you for reading my blog. I hope you enjoyed it. Bye bye.

Statement of the Day – Chris Corner: Flying home for Christmas (12/23 – 12/24/12)

This is it. The last day in the US has come. After a great brunch at the Power Plant Restaurant in Iowa City, Kim gave us a ride to the airport in Cedar Rapids. Fortunately, the employee didn’t care about our overweight luggage and we saved up to $300!

The journey itself was unspectacular. Everything was on time, we found everything we needed. The only bad thing was the malfunctioning entertainment system in our seats during the main flight from Minneapolis to Amsterdam. There were several cool movies available, but we couldn’t watch them.

The waiting area at the Delta Terminal at Minneapolis airport was quite nice. Every seat with table had power outlets for recharging your devices and an iPad for playing games, get information about your flight, surf through the web, or order food and drinks at the nearby restaurants. 

Also funny is the comparison between the flights. Our Delta flight from Cedar Rapids to Minneapolis was with about 1:15 h ”to short” for any service according to the flight team. But on the KLM flight from Amsterdam to Hannover which took just 0:35 h we got a waffle and some juice!

We arrived at 4 pm at our apartment and started unpacking the bags. Home sweet home. 

Traveling through the US - Christmas shopping in Chicago (12/21 – 12/22/12)

After fighting “Draco” arrived around 1pm one day late at Chicago. To avoid the Spaghetti Bowl and the extreme prices for parking downtown we searched for a lot in kind of a weird area (but luckily the car was still there, undamaged, when we came back for our trip back home). Our hotel was directly at the Magnificient Mile so after checking in we started with our christmas shopping. 

One stop was the Aéropostale where I already made some good deals in the past. Fortunatly they had again a sale and 60% off all their clothes. But really, who whould ever buy anything at that store when there is no sale going on? They have one like every 6 weeks or so. And typical American: they give you a smal table to help you with the calculations, what 60% off or more means.

We spend the evening with one of Jan’s collegues from the University in IC who lives in Chicago for several years now. He took us to a really great Greak restaurant (for American measures) and afterwards we had some drinks at a jazz bar where they celebrated the “end of the world” party wih life music. 

On Saturday we explored the imported German Christkindl market and where quite suppried. They had a lot of German stuff there and the “Nurnberger Bratwurst” tasted quite good (the roll was not imported and could need some improvements). The also had “Gluhwein” but $7 for one small glas was definitely too expansive. But the Americans loved it, all the stuff there. (Maybe due to the unknown experience of drinking alcohol in public. The market was sourrounded by a fence and on every entry/xit there were guards who watched for people trying to exit the market with some Gluhwein without a paper bag.)

In the early afternoon we hit Boystown, the first officially recognized gay village in the US. And what was funny about it was that in that neightbourhood everything seemed to be a little more clean, a little more qualitative, and arranged thoughtful. 

But the time passed by really fast and because we still had to pack our luggae for our trip back to Germany we had no choice than leaving Chicago for good in the afternoon. During the 4 hour drive Jan spend the whole time trying to check me in for the flights because the online check-in didn’t work. Instead of waiting in the line on the phone Delta Airlines offered to call back after several minutes (or in our cases mostly 45 minutes). Sounds good, but what really sucked was their so called services with forwarding the customer to other experts…there we had to wait again for many minutes…

After a dinner stop at Olive Garden with some italien food we came home in the night around 11:3opm and spent another 2.5 hours packing our bags. But no matter how hard we tried, we had som eoverwaight on our luggage…

Statement of the Day – Chris Corner: Snowstrom “Draco” (12/20/12)

During these last days in the US I had nothing to do except whatching TV, baking some cookies and cake. (I love this time of a semester, when everything is done.) Jan and I planned to go to Chicago again for 3 days to do some Christmas shopping. Unfortunately the storm “Draco” crossed our plans. The whole 3 days before our trip the news and weather channel warned the Midwest that there will be a lot of snow nd a blizzard from Wednesday to Thursday with several inches of snow. But as usual the forecast changed like every other 2 hours and after we did’t get any snow at all on Wednesday morning, I was already kind of disappointed. 

Megabus canceled our tickets to Chicago because the expected to bad weather conditions. But as there was no snow at all and everything seemed to be alright we decided to go to Chicago with a rental car. In the beginning this plan worked out alright. Ok, there was snow and wind and yes, it was not the best condition to drive, but not as horrible as it was “promised” in the news. 

After a while of driving we took a break at a McDonnalds and there we realized how heavy the wind really was. Walking 6 meters from the car to the entrance was already a challenge and we felt cold immediately. But the point where we got suspicious was, when the employees started to shut down everything and announced that the store will close at 3pm. To stay safe we searched for a hotel close by and funnily there was one just across the parking lot (but the wind and snow was so bad that we did’t saw it). 

Entering the hotel’s parking lot made us realize that we really were in a blizzard: our car got stuck in a hill of snow. The weels diged themselfes in so bad that in the end they didn’t even touch the ground any more because the rest of the car was lifted up by the snow  unterneth it. It took me about halb an hour and a felt whole ton of snow diging until the car was free again. During that time Jan managed to get a room in the hotel. The women at the frontdesk was like “Oh I am so nice to give you shelter in this bad storm for only 79 bugs…” Well on booking.com the same hotel was available for $55 per night! But ok, the main thing was to get a warm and safe place to stay the night. The TV was horrible, the announced indoor pool was closed and the WiFi was broken due to the storm. And after 3 hours of heating the room began to feel warm and comfortable… 

When it stoped snowing we went outside again to get some food. While waiting in our room we found out that we ended up at the World Largest Truck Stop Iowa 80. So we explored the closer environment wih our car, searching for a good place to get some food.

Later in that night we colected some impressions of the storm with the camera, or at least tried it:

 

 

Early in the next morning we moved on to Chicago and the szene looked so innocent compared to the storm some hours before. And we discovered, why it took the heating so long to get the place warm: The isolation was so bad that we had ice on the heating in the morning. On our way we saw so many trucks and cars that were cought by the blizzard. At the exit to I-88 there where 8 cars in the ditch who all seemed to have missed the exit during the storm. Some of them took the turn too early, some other ones to late. At that point we were quite happy that we spend our night in the shabby hotel instead of ending up on the interstate in the storm.