Yes, we are traveling back to the U.S., no matter what friends are thinking, despite all what happened, despite Trump. We won't follow his daily Tweets and we will try to ignore him. We love the diversity of the country, we love the people and we love to travel in the U.S., and that's the reason we are back and will always be as long as they let us in. Supposedly, we will hear less of Trump in the U.S. than in Germany, which is right now overly focused on what's going on in the U.S. instead of taking care what's happening in our own country.
In any case, we are glad to get out after many weeks of grind work at the desk and horrible weather. Since we came home from NYC middle of December, it was mostly dull, icky and gray, all of January we had record cold and snow and now it's depressively gray, frosty, but not too cold, again.
In Chicago for the ninth time. Last time was in 2014 for IPW - the large American tourism congress. The first time, in the early 1990ies it was quite the experience: What a fantastic skyline, what a huge lake - rather an ocean! It was quite the "wow!"-effect for us when we arrived by train. Having studied art history, this "catalogue of skyscrapers" from past to present, was (and is) phenomenal. It was cold and windy, of course, during most of our visits, especially during the Lights Festival on Mag Mile some years ago. Wr had beautiful sunshine and frost and, one time, probably in May or June, we had far over 100 deg. F. and even one of our pre-arranged tours was cancelled because of that. Have had it all.
Chicago is perhaps the most typical "American" city of all, a buzzing, hustling, but, also, down-to-earth metropolis of 2,7 mio. people, a former hub of slaughterhouses, a harbor for Afroamericans from the South, a city of Blues & Jazz and Civil Rights,. It is the sort of the frontier between "Wild West" and East Coast civilization, with the Lake Michigan to one side and the prairie to the other.
Yesterday wasn’t necessarily our day. We were awake at 5:45 am and got up to catch an earlier train as originally planned - which was a good idea. There was no light rail from Pasing to MUC Airport because of an accident on the line and trains were not running. So, we took another train to the main railroad station and were told we could use two other light rail lines - which would have taken forever - and, so we decided to pay extra for the Lufthansa airport bus. Pretty slow and packed, but we arrived to the airport at around 9:40 am and check-in and security went fast, so we were at the gate with plenty of time till departure at 12:10 pm. Good thing, that we are always VERY early. Got an upgrade to Economy Plus (emergency seat row) with more leg space as Silver Medaillon members and were rather satisfied, though the entertainment system was from the stone age and meals horrible. Flew a very Northern route over ice covered surface (see pic).
The plane was on time, quick walk through immigration (Global Entry) and luggage claim and by the "L", the elevated train, into town to the fancy Virgin hotel (more on that later). Still had a drink in their fancy bar (see pic below) during "Social Hour" for guests and then went to bed. Looking forward now to checking out the new sights and attractions for the next two days. Have to be quick and run fast...hopefully the weather will make the city "photogenic".
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