A week in Illinois

This is going to be a short one, becasue I did no sightseeing during that trip - it was strictly business. Nevertheless, going to (almost) rural Illinois was an interesting experience.

Flight attendant on the flight from Newark to Chicago

First, on the plane, I noticed that one flight attendant looks kind of familiar. I couldn't really figure out where I'd seen him but after a while it just came to me. Who knows the video by the Foo Fighters called "Learn to Fly"? Turned out that one of Dave's alter ego's in that clip gave me the deja vu. In case you don't know what Grohl looked like, at the bottom of this entry there's a snapshot I took from youtube.

Illinois Landscape

The weather in Chicago was really really nice - not as humid as in NYC. The people were nice too! I had to take a 1,5hr westward coach ride to get Rockford - a city with the population of around 200,000. Although good in size, like the whole of America, the city was built without great concerns regarding space. Therefore sometimes it's hard to tell if you're still in the city or not and it is quite easy to actually drive through the center without really noticing it. The landscape consists of a mixture of housing areas (in the picture) and businesses. Going through the commercial areas is very much like Morgan Spurlock says: it's like watching the Flintstones with Wendy's, Taco Bell, McDonald's, Walmart, KFC, Burger King and so on and so on repeatedly rotating in the background.

Tornado Shelter

The people in the Midwest are very nice. They not only notice your presence, but are actually helpful and interested in talking to you. That was a nice change from the "New York State of Mind". When they talk, they have an interesting accent. When they say "understand" they put an "e" and "a" instead of the "a", so it sounds like "understeahnd". I thought that's how they talked in the south. :-) Besides, the businesses also try much harder to satisfy the customer.

They go a lot of extra miles to provide great service. The hotel where I stayed offered free cab service in the area, they offered free food and beverages (beer and wine included!) during 2 happy hours on some days of the week, gym, a swimming pool and huge rooms for the price of a hostel dorm room in NYC. How cool is that?

In general the trip to Loves Park, although busy, was rich in experience. The green landscapes and open spaces were very soothing after the US's most densly inhabited areas (according to Wikipedia) and the openness and hospitality of people is what I will remember the place mostly for.

A week in Illinois

Loves Park, United States