The suburbs and the city

Wednesday, October 9th.

Yesterday morning, Tuesday, the Martins all left for work and school while we stayed home to do some laundry and play catch in the yard for a while. Later on we drove down to the neighboring suburb of Evanston where Dan's mom grew up and where he his grandmother lived until a few years ago. She sold her house when she moved, and rumors had had it that it had been torn down recently. But we were pleasantly surprised to find it still standing. It was empty and up for rent, so since nobody was there we took the liberty of taking a few pictures with the couch around the house. Just as we were putting the couch back in the van Mildred, the neighbor, came back from running errands in town. So we went over to say hi to her and were invited in to visit for a while. When we got ready to leave we pulled out the couch again to get a picture with Mildred outside her house. She got a real kick out of our having our sofa out on her sidewalk. And the sight was strange enough to make the neighbor from across the street come out to hear what we were doing. He found the idea quite amusing as well.

Leaving Evanston we drove back to Wilmette to see Wes, the Martins' son, compete in a Cross Country meet. He did quite well, but still enough energy left over to challenge us to a game of basketball when we got back home. The neigbors' 12-year old son Jeff came over too, so we played a little two-on-two in the alley.

After dinner we played cards for a while to complete our day of living like true Americans.

This morning, Wednesday, we got up early and went to school with Wes, hoping to be able to walk the halls of New Trier High School, where Dan was an exchange student 5 years ago. We went to the Dean's office to sign in as guests, but the secretary would not allow one student to have two guests and furthermore required written permission from the parents. She seemed pretty stern about sticking to those rules, so we gave up that plan and decided that Dan could come back the next day to shadow Wes for the day.

Instead we took the "El", Chicago's elevated train system, into the city. Well, towards the city anyway. We got off at Belmont Ave in the northern part of Chicago and never got further. We had a bite to eat while waiting for all the shops to open. Once they did we headed out to explore all the stores filled with great second-hand vintage clothing and furniture and used cd's and everything else that we love :) We were amused to find shirts similar to the ones we've gathered so far priced significantly higher than what we'd paid for them. And yet we couldn't resist buying a few more to add to our collection. We ate lunch at the Bolat African Café to try something exotic and different for a change. Jens, who'd had a substantial Subway meal for breakfast, had African-style (?) buffalo wings, while Dan had a great meal consisting of coconut flavored rice and spicy chicken cooked with vegetables. There were four well-dressed guests in the restaurant when we came who had a wide selection foods in front of them on the table and were eating it all with their fingers. The waitress spotted us as being first-timers, though, and gave us silverware with our food...

After that great and filling lunch we continued our tour of the area. Just around the corner from Wrigley Field we found a store that sold all kinds of old magazines and comic books and posters. The two old guys that owned it were real characters. When they found out we were from Denmark they started quizzing us on Denmark, Europe and what we thought of America and started telling us all about Chicago's present and former sports teams while digging out old team posters to illustrate their stories. Quite interesting.

At 6 o'clock we took the "El" back to Wilmette, got in the van, drove two blocks down the road and then had the van quit on us. Fun. It's back to running irregularly when we start it up and if we don't let it run in neutral for a while before driving anywhere it does fun stuff like turning itself off in mid-traffic and cute little tricks like that. Just as Dan had found a house where he could borrow a phone, though, Jens got the van back up and running. And we made it safely back home.

That evening the Martins took us out to dinner at Giordano's Pizza and we ended a great day by enjoying some of the best Chicago-style pizza there is.