This is it...

Hey y'all out there, thanks for following us on this blog. We sign off now, as we have to go to O'Hare airport now. Bye!!!!!!!

W in front of HD

W looks a bit sceptical, doesn't he? He confided the fact that he prefers Italian motorbikes to Harley Davidsons to a museum guide. The guy was not amused...

C on HD

And here I am in the Harley Davidson Museum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on the bike I just bought... No, I didn't.

State number seventeen added

We went to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, today to pay our tribute to the world's greatest motorcycle brand... This means that I have now seventeen US states under my belt. I started the project many years ago, and here I am, only 50-17 (you do the math) states shy of the finishing line...

University of Chicago - two new students...

Two new hopeful students posing on the Campus of the University of Chicago. We both will study German... That's all we can manage...

University of Chicago, site of Chicago Pile 1, the first controlled nuclear chain reaction in history. Click here to learn more.  As my work address is Via Enrico Fermi back in Italy, and as it was Enrico Fermo who ran the project, we simply had to go there to honor the guy. Well, you stupid fascists, another brilliant guy you ran out of your country...

Christkindlmarkt in Chicago!

Christkindlmarkt in Chicago... Yes, they do sell Gluehwein, but in case you forgot, we are in America, and so we were not supposed to drink it outside... Aarrggghhh....

Black Friday in Chicago

Yesterday we did what all Americans do the day after Thanksgiving: Shopping!!! Chicagoans went crazy on Black Friday and flooded the shops and shopping malls. We joined in and added to the stimulus package for Levi's and DKNY...

Homeless on Turkey Day...

Important Travel Tip: Never even think about travelling to the USA on Thanksgiving Day. Everything is closed, even the bars on Beale Street in Memphis, TN. We had already checked out from the hotel in the morning and were left stranded without a place to go. Luckily we found a Chinese restaurant that was open  and we watched two entire football games. At 5 pm bars opened up again and we witnessed another great live music performance. Click here to see the video.

Encounters on the train

We're back to Chicago. We had a couple of beers with some very nice people in the train last night...  They actually had a strong opinion about a certain issue... Click here to watch the video. (Do not watch the video if you are under 21...)

Landshark Stadium

This post is for my daughter R...
Kannst du dich noch erinnern, wie dieses Stadion frueher geheissen hat? Wir waren im April in Miami dort, in der Zwischenzeit heisst es "Landshark Stadium". Ich habe diese Neon-Bierwerbung gestern hier in Memphis gesehen... Antworte mit "Kommentar", wenn du weisst, wie dieses Stadion im Fruehjahr noch geheissen hat!!!

Beale Street - without rain

Beale Street by night, without rain this time. The weather improved significantly since yesterday here in Memphis, but it is cold... We should have brought gloves after all (see my post of 20 November :-)

Thrill is Gone - Memphis version

We went to the legendary (or at least that's what they say) BB King's Blues Club on Beale Street, ate great ribs and listened to a good band. They did another rendition of "The Thrill is Gone"... Click here to listen.

Walking in Memphis... the soundtrack

We asked two musicians to play the song mentioned in a post further down... Walking in Memphis! Click here to view the video.

Memphis Botanic Garden?

No, it ain't. Just weed pushing through a Memphis sidewalk; a block across the building from which Tom Cruise fought the mob in "The Firm".

Sprite Zero

You see how well we behave? No firearm, no deadly weapons, no dangerous ordnance... only Sprite Zero and orange juice!

Mississippi

We walked down the Mississippi river this morning and couldn't help remembering the old joke...

A bus stops and two Italian men get on. They seat themselves and engage in animated conversation. The lady sitting behind them ignores their conversation at first, but her attention is galvanized when she hears one of the men say the following; "Emma come first. Den I come. Two asses, dey come together. I come again. Two asses, dey come together again. I come again and pee twice. Den I come once-a-more." "You foul-mouthed swine" retorted the lady indignantly. "In this country we don't talk about our sex lives in public!" "Hey, coola down lady" said the man. "Imma just tellun my friend howa to spella Mississippi."

Walking in Memphis...

We followed Marc Cohn's footsteps today and did some "Walking in Memphis"... Cher was definitely exaggerating, in our more and more humble opinions... Look at the walker's surroundings 100 metres (oh sorry... that would be yards here) from downtown Memphis. Magnificent desolation, to use Buzz Aldrin's words, describe the traveller's experience... by the way, here's a video of a local band we asked to play "Walking in Memphis" for us..

No Grizzly

FedExForum, home of the Memphis Grizzlies NBA franchise. See the photo for Dr W, newest addition to the roster. Unfortunately he didn't manage to lift the ball, so he was kicked out of the team. What a short career.

No Loitering

Nighttime in Memphis. But only until 3 AM, with loitering not tolerated. No, seriously, I would not want to loiter on Beale Street: What a tourist trap. A guy with roots clearly in the subsaharan part of the world told us jokes for a dollar, unfortunately his English (was it?) was incompatible with ours.

It never rains in Southern California...

... but it does in Southern Tennessee. Lousy weather in Memphis, virtually drives you into the bars on Beale Street. We had a great time in an Irish pub, check out a video here...

Sign in front of Elvis Presley's horse stable at Graceland, Memphis, TN.
I guess the legislator pushing through this law is an avid horse rider. Eh, sorry, that would be an "equine professional"...

Sign in front of all bars on Beale street, Memphis TN. We really feel much safer now...

Dr. Who

When W flashed his credit card at the orange burger joint, the waitress saw he has a doctor title... et voila, here are the girls posing with him... Talk about female predicability...

Changing cars in Memphis, Tennessee

We just did what Arlo Guthrie told us to do, i.e. changed cars in Memphis, Tennessee. From "City of New Orleans" car 5900 to an ancient taxi with an even more ancient taxi driver... Important travel tip: Never check in your luggage with Amtrak. It takes them 30 minutes to deliver the bags back to you at Memphis train station... What adds to the problem is that cab drivers harass you for driving you to Memphis downtown before the bags are delivered and then disappear once that bags are there. Another little piece in our mosaic of flawed procedures in God's own country....

CW2CM is now also in 3D...

Upon popular request, CW2CM is now also available in 3D:

The thing is... you don't see us in 3D, but we are watching you with our 3D  glasses!!!!!!!!!!!

Now we know...

Just in case you didn't know what exactly harassment is... When we saw the ad in a Metro car we first thought it was some kind of coaching for would-be harassers who don't know how it's done correctly :-)...

By the way, isn't a warning against "men cooking" harassment the other way round?

Tea time...

For those of you who think we mention the B word too often in our postings, here's visual proof that we drink other stuff as well. Yes, really.

Video from B.L.U.E.S uploaded to YouTube...

We just uploaded a (very) short video from the B.L.U.E.S club yesterday to YouTube. Click here to watch it...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zihYzpfVMCA

Chicago Style Hot Dog at Wiener's Circle - Chocolate Milkshake included!

Let's go back to yesterday for a moment. When the event at B.L.U.E.S. finished at around 1:00 am we needed some food, urgently. So we walked to the Hot Dog joint "Wiener's Circle" (2622 N Clark St), where we witnessed one short display of "Chocolate Milkshake" (see here for what that is) but were too slow to take pictures... One of the waitresses actually thought we did take pictures and wanted us to delete them from the camera. She was kind of disappointed when she saw that we had none on it.

The place doesn't sell beer, but you are more than welcome to buy some at the 7 Eleven across the street. So I got us two Miller Genuine Drafts (2,09 $ each, what a steal :-) and the guy at the counter there told me that they do a lot of across the street business with the Wiener's Circle patrons...

Which made us wonder what it is with the bigotry here in the USA. On the one hand there is a huge beer billboard right next to Wiener's Circle, and on the other you are told to drink the stuff out of brown paper bags when outdoors. See photo to the right. Mr. W. was anonymized for privacy reasons...

B.L.U.E.S. at 2519 N. Halsted

Spent the evening in North Chicago. Nice area, at least the part we saw, near Red Line Metro stop Fullerton. We went to B.L.U.E.S. on 2519 N. Halsted, where we spent four terrific hours with a local female blues singer (Big Time Sarah, on the left hand side of the picture) and a band called the "BLUES All Stars", entertaining an intimate yet enthusiastic small room packed with +/- 50 blues aficionados...

A friendly couple there paid us two Samual Adams. We never had the chance to thank them. If you read this, thank you!!! And good luck for your wive's Eagles tomorrow!

Short break...

Short break at the hotel before we check out the nightlife recommendations at Rush and Constitution.

Main events today: the Art Institute of Chicago (plus Millenium Park) and Chinatown...

The Art Institute was one of the finest museums I ever visited. Really great collection, great audio guide, really unique experience (and this comes from someone who normally shies away from huge collections). Go there when you have a chance. See the prior two posts for suprising developments in the displays...

Chinatown is nothing special, very straightforward affair, five or so subway stations south of the Loop. ex-Sears tower (now known as Willis tower...) very well visible from the main road... We had a late lunch, much too big helpings.

On the way back to the hotel we ran into the "Magnificent Mile Lights Festival", thousands of people on the street, but we didn't quite get what should be so special about Mickey Mouse waving from on a truck...

Four nighthawks...

... no, wait a minute: FIVE!

American Gothic (and European Baroque)

New exhibit at the Chicago Art Institute:
American Gothic and European Baroque...

The biggest problem in the USA: incompetent employees

What can I say... We bought a mobile phone yesterday at Radio Shack (310 N Michigan Avenue) so that we could twitter via texts; we explained our needs to this shopgirl "Yazmene" and she sold us a text plan we liked. However, she kept entering wrong stuff into her computer when registering the plan for us (she had to restart the procedure THREE time...), and today we found out that nothing worked... Just another symptom of the problem we think is the main reason why this country is going down the drain: Utterly incompetent employees. I guess "Yazmene" sold paint thinner yesterday and will sell vacuum cleaners tomorrow. What a mess. Thank god I didn't pay with credit card. I wonder what she would have done with THAT...

Belittled...

I felt so... belittled when I bought the mobile phone...

Curly Fries...

Curly Fries... the American contribution to Haut Cuisine...

Half Acre!

Bla, bla, what did YOU think. Of course had a great flight from Dusseldorf to the Windy City. Lufthansa does not charge for booze. Great airline.

It's HOT in Chicage. We're sweating!

In the meantime we guess you have checked our twitter stuff... Oh God was that girl ("Jazmine") incompetent at Radio Shack... Now we are 24 hrs without sleep and act accordingly irresponsibly. We had an interesting encounter with a liquor store co-propriator at 70, West Huron ("Copperfield's Market"), sold us stuff called "Half Acre" (local brew). The six pack goes down well here at our COZY hotel room :-)))

We need some shuteye now. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

Are we turning into women?

Oh my God... Is it the age or a case of late-onset gender disorder? In a last minute coordination phone conversation (W leaves from Linz, C from Milan) we actually discussed what to WEAR! Are we turning into girls?!?

In the end we decided to be tough guys and not bring gloves! Good for us! "Windy City", pah.

Europeans invited

We just invited the European part of the growing CW2CM community. Still working on the American part... Just learned that Craigslist requires a US phone number to validate. So, that will have to wait... Does anyone know an AT&T shop at O'Hare airport?!? We need a new GoPhone SIM card :-(

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Trains, planes and automobiles...

All planes and trains booked.
(No automobiles, though... )
Hotels are impatient to welcome us, they say...
Blog is activated.
USA, here we come...