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…