Chicago, my city

Does it still count as 'un coup de foudre' if you fall in love after two days? That's still pretty fast, no? Because Chicago is getting to my heart swiftly. Despite the - true - prejudice of Chicago being a dangerous city, I'm starting to love it more and more.

During my first days here I haven't had much time yet to really explore the city, but the LSA conference did take me downtown. The skyline is a-ma-zing! It's so overpowering that in one restaurant they've even made a gingerbread version of it. Eat that! (or not)

Talking about food, though, there's a tiny bit of a disappointment in that respect. A few days ago I went out with Ezra, his extremely funny "Chicagoan" friend Kirsten and his slightly goofy (in a good way!) colleagues Raj and Roni. We ended up in a Belgian restaurant where they had a lot of (needless to say - good) Belgian beers and food that was supposed to be Belgian, but didn't taste Belgian (i.e. good) at all. Apparently, Americans put loads of salt on everything! Literally, as you'll be able to read later. Apart from this tiny food disappointment - which might in fact help me keep my New Year's resolution of surviving three months of America without gaining 20 kilos - Chicago is wonderful. On our drive home Kirsten was an excellent tour guide, complete with 'on your left...on your right...' and everything. She showed us the Chicago Bears station for instance, which looks like a spaceship landed on an ancient Greek temple. Yep, the city's got tons of unexpected loony aspects. Another example is "the bean" in Millennium Park. Officially it's called Cloud Gate, but it really is a bean. Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_Gate or wait until I remember to take my camera with me.

We also went to a 'haut chocolate' shop, Vosges (http://www.vosgeschocolate.com/) where they've got the most original combinations with chocolate. Some are delicious, such as the dark chocolate with hot chili pepper and the curry-coconut (of course) one. Other combinations are more 'unexpected', such as the Barcelona salt and almond bar or the one with bacon flavor (!!!). Not exactly my kind of treat, but hey, I'm in America. Nothing can surprise me now.

Despite being a genuine country-girl, I really like all those huge and prettily lit buildings. And on top of that: it turns out that Chicago has this lovely theater scene. Yesterday I got to experience that myself: wow! The play was called "Too much light makes the baby go blind" and it's not an actual play at all. It's 30 plays in 60 minutes! Everyone got a name tag - I was X-mas - and to see how much you had to pay, you had to roll a dice. Just my kind of crazy! Then, every time the actors said curtain, the audience had to shout the number of the play/sketch they wanted to see (we all got a 'menu' with 30 titles, like "These women are communicating their needs to you as clear as day, and boy, you better deliver", or "Unleash The Bucket Insurgency", or "Hot lesbian semi-historical love vignettes starring Barbie and Barbie"). Oh and they have this motto when we sell out we order out, so they ordered a pizza and we could all take a piece at the end. I'm definitely going back there (because they change the plays every week)! Check them out: http://www.neofuturists.org/)

So, these were my first few days in the big city. There's more to come, I'm sure...

Cheers!

Lobke x