Blogging
From Abroad

Like many exchange-students here in Morgantown and probably all over the world, I try to see as much of my host-country as possible during my stay. So I spend a considerable amount of time in the internet, searching for cheap opportunities to travel around. About one month ago I found reasonable flight-tickets from Pittsburgh to Chicago, 119 $ roundtrip with United. One hour later I bought four tickets, for my girlfriend, me and two Italian girls who accompanied us.

The trip started very (!) early on Saturday morning. Madison, Eric Jaeschkes girlfriend, gave us a ride to Pittsburgh airport and we arrived in Chicago at 9 AM, local time. The flight back was booked for Monday (yesterday) evening, so we had three entire days to conquer the city.

Just like at our last trip to the west coast, we decided to save the money for accommodation and stay at a couchsurfing host. Couchsurfing is an internet platform where thousands of (mostly young) people all over the world signed up and provide a free place to stay over the night – often a couch, but as well guest rooms, shake-downs or just a cosy inflatable mattress you can sleep on. Interested? Check out www.couchsurfing.com.

Our couchsurfing host Nate – a 36 years old video conference engineer – even picked us up from the airport. How neat, Nate! His apartment was perfectly situated in downtown Chicago, just two blocks away from the Hancock-Tower. So we easily could stride around the city by foot. And I took hundreds of photos during these tours, here are some of them.

Here you see the Hancock-Center on the left, the second tallest building in Chicago, topped by the Sears-Tower. This is only a quarter mile of where we were staying.

Chicago has an awesome beach as it has many miles of shoreline with Lake Michigan. It has to be so cool to play Volleyball or swim in the water with that skyline in your back. These are the two lovely Italian girls by the way, Lorenza and Giulia.

Another skyscraper, right next at the coastline.

Chicago’s Millennium Park is a highlight in this city. Amidst high buildings they managed to create a relaxing area with a perfect lawn covered by a modern steel-tube structure.

“The Bean” is a bean-shaped sculpture with a reflective surface. Amazing!

This bean is a great opportunity to make fun pictures!

Another view of the skyscrapers.

My girlfriend Doris and me on a bridge that’s wiggling like a snake through Millennium Park.

A shot of the Chicago aquarium. We didn’t actually enter it, but the building itself is impressing.

Instead of the aquarium we went to the zoo, which happens to be free. I got lots of nice shots from the animals, but I like that one best.

We were accompanied by Nicholas, a landscape architecture student from Chicago who was as an exchange student in Vienna last year. I know him from there and asked him if he wanted to meet in Chicago. We did and it was great fun.

Right next to the zoo is the conservatory. It consist of three old greenhouses, filled with fabulous exotic plants.

The five of us: Lorenza, Nicholas, me, Doris, Giulia.

At night we were invited at Nicholas’ family for an all-American dinner. Thank you so much, all of you. It was a pleasure to stay at your beautiful house, enjoying this marvellous dinner.

Later this night we went back to the city centre where we met four other WVU exchange students by coincident. Can you imagine? They told us, that we should by any chance visit the lounge in the 96th floor of the Hancock-Centre. In there I had to amazing experiences. First the greatest view of a city ever (just have a look at the picture), second the most expensive beer ever (8.25 $ for a Guiness). But the view really paid for it.

Only a few more images to go ;)
Here we have the Macy’s in Chicago. Especially my girlfriend gets really excited when we enter a department store since we don’t have them in Europe. The atmosphere of Macy’s on State Street is great. Luckily we didn’t want to spend much time in there, so we didn’t spend any money either. But just walking trough was a great experience.

What’s missing? Of course the Sears Tower. Don’t know what to write about it. We didn’t enter it, so all I can show you is this photo of a really tall building.

Who wants to be a Millionaire? Me too! And I could feel like one ? shortly. The Chicago Federal Reserve Bank operates a small money museum dealing with, yes, Buck, Benjamins and Billions of Dollars. This cube actually contains a million Dollar.

And finally another free museum (we managed to keep this trip pretty cheap), the Museum of Contemporary Photography. It featured two exhibitions, one about working families during the great depression. The other dealt with an extremely isolated small town in Texas – Vidor. Both exhibitions were really impressing, since I am a hobby photographer I enjoyed them even more.

During visiting the museum the weather turned really bad – cold, stormy and rain alternating with heavy rain. But we had to leave the city anyway so it didn’t matter. The flight back was pleasant and we were being picked up by our flatmate Eric. Thank you so much both, Madison and Eric, for giving us a ride.

At the bottom line we had an awesome weekend in the windy city. I can honestly recommend it to each and every one – visit it! If you are interested in couchsurfing, just hang on. One of my next posts will deal with this topic in particular.