United States
Cook County

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    • Day 21

      Chicago - Day 2

      August 31, 2023 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 21 °C

      Today we drove around Chicago suburbs and surrounds, soaking up the mid west vibes. We started in BoysTown (Northalsted) the first officially recognised GayBourhood in the US then explored further north in historic suburbs like Bryn Mawr up towards Milwaukee (Laverne and Shirley). After that, we hit the outlets, drove around and ate Cinnabons like real Americans. Our last stop was Bronzeville, deeply rooted in African-American history, including to visit Louis Armstrong’s house. Last, but not least, we caught a drag show at Lips Theatre (seperate post).Read more

    • Day 33

      Pilsen, le quartier mexicain de Chicago

      October 19, 2022 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 8 °C

      Jour 2, nous nous rendons à Pilsen, un des ancrages historiques des communautés mexicaines de Chicago ! La ville compte 77 quartiers, chacun avec son histoire et son ambiance propre. Pour rejoindre Pilsen, on prend le Loop, le métro aérien de Chicago. On arpente les rues et ses superbes tags avant de déguster un sope et des chilaquiles (je ne connaissais aucun des deux) et c'était super bon ! Nina voulait visiter le musée des arts mexicains et on a bien fait, c'était super intéressant ! Saison oblige, il y avait une expo spéciale sur le Día de los Muertos, le jour des morts, mais aussi des collections permanentes sur l'histoire du Mexique et des migrations vers les États-Unis.
      En rentrant on passe par Boystown, le quartier gay juste à côté de chez nous. Et j'initie Nina au Punto avant de dormir (une défaite pour elle).
      Read more

    • Day 47

      Chicago

      May 31, 2023 in the United States ⋅ ⛅ 31 °C

      Chicago ist etwas anstrengend was den Verkehr angeht, aber auch diese Stadt hat Eindruck hinterlassen. Nette und gastfreundliche Menschen, eine interessante Mopedszene und geiles Essen an jeder Ecke. 🖤Read more

    • Day 42

      New Soldier Field Stadion

      November 8, 2023 in the United States ⋅ ☁️ 11 °C

      Für heute haben wir noch eine Stadion Tour fürs Soldier Field in Chicago gebucht.
      Da keine Metro dort direkt hinfährt, entschließen wir uns mit dem Auto zu fahren. Nachdem wir uns von Betsy verabschiedet haben, zeigt unser Navi 30 min länger wegen Stau. Um 10:00 Uhr sollte die Tour beginnen und um 15 vor 10 waren wir da. Allerdings hat die Parkplatz Suche auch noch gedauert und dann war er mit 30 $ auch nicht gerade billig. Das schlimmste war aber, er war auf der Nordseite des Stadions und die Tor begann an der Südseite. Also einmal um das Stadion, Ann war noch ziemlich fertig von gestern, aber zum Glück waren auch noch andere da, die sich verspätet hatten. So kamen wir etwas verspätet zur Führung.

      Wikipedia:
      „Das Stadion wurde am 9. Oktober 1923 offiziell als Municipal Grant Park Stadium eröffnet. Am 11. November 1925 wurde der Name in Soldier Field geändert, um den gefallenen Soldaten der Vereinigten Staaten ein Denkmal zu setzen. Zu dieser Zeit besaß das Stadion eine Kapazität von 90.000 Plätzen und war an alte griechisch-römische Architekturstile angepasst. Die Tribünen wurden von Säulen im dorischen Stil eingefasst.“

      Im Jahr 2002 wurde das Stadion für 365 Mio. US-Dollar umgebaut. Seitdem hat das Stadion eine Kapazität von 61.500 Zuschauern.

      Das Stadion und die Führung ist ganz anders als im Lambeau Field. Was uns gut gefällt ist, das man die alten Säulen außen hat stehen lassen. Innen merkt man das aber nicht mehr, hier wirkt es eher wie ein UFO, das gerade gelandet ist. Der Blick aus der großen Skyline Loge ist schon atemberaubend. Morgen spielen die Bears gegen die Panthers und so wird gerade alles aufgebaut.

      Insgesamt war es interessant, aber nicht so beeindruckend wie in Green Bay.
      Read more

    • Day 68

      Herunterfahren / Sightseeing Tag 2

      June 14, 2022 in the United States ⋅ ⛅ 18 °C

      6.00 Uhr, schon wieder wach und bereit Neues zu entdecken.
      Zuerst mussten aber Verpackungsmaterial und Velokartons definitiv organisiert werden. Gegen einen geringen Betrag hat sich das Velogeschäft bereit erklärt, uns die Räder sogar zu verpacken.
      Hoffen nun, dass dies auch so klappt wie abgemacht.
      Den Nachmittag verbrachten wir zu Fuss in den Häuserschluchten von Chicago.
      Der Tornado von gestern war auch ein Thema im Fernseher und im Restaurant. Unser Kellner Luis erzählte uns, wie das Restaurant fast geflutet worden wäre. In einigen Stadtteilen wurden ganze Häuserfassaden zerstört. Zum Glück hatten wir es rechtzeitig ins Hotelzimmer geschafft.
      Gegen Abend fuhren wir mit der alten Bahn hinaus zum Hotel. Temperatur gegen 20.00 Uhr immer noch 37 Grad.
      Noch eine kleine Episode am Rande.
      Im Zug neben uns dealte ein Dunkelhäutiger mit Old Spice Duschmittel. Er verkaufte seine ganzen 10 grossen Plastikflaschen für 20 Dollar. Wo er die wohl her hat?
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    • Day 5

      1 downers grove unit down; 1 more to go!

      February 22 in the United States ⋅ 🌙 7 °C

      Having sorted the three units closest to us, we made the journey all the way to the distant land of downers grove, to work on the two much older units over yonder.

      This one was far dustier, yet was still filled with mostly useless crap. However we found lots of nice family photos as displayed below! Also a DVD of my year 2 performance of Aladdin in which I played Aladdin! (The still is a shot of me and my four best friends at the time).
      Also we found a pair of sunglasses (what y'all think?)

      After three drop offs and lots and lots of boxes filled with random paperwork that mums wants to look through just in case we find anything important or some cash, we were done!

      4 units down, just one more to go! At this rate, we are planning on also tackling the one that is mega full next week.

      The part that is probably the most aggravating though is that now, haven't gone through the units, the amount she is paying seems like an even bigger waste of money. She has had these ones since 2013 and pays approx 100 a month. So all in all she has payed 12,000 over the past ten years, to store stuff that we got rid of in a day that was mostly useless crap or completely unused. Such a waste of money and space, and honestly, our energy and time too. But someone had to do, and she does not have the capacity unfortunately.

      Love,
      H & H
      Read more

    • Day 3

      A day of great success

      February 20 in the United States ⋅ ☁️ 6 °C

      Oh lordie today was a good day.

      It started with us finishing the clean out of unit 54 and doing a bit of 64 too and sorting through some things. (We found our mascot!)
      We then dropped it off and got to chatting with one of the volunteers and had a long chat about multiculturalism and a lot of really random topics.

      Anyway we ended up getting home at 2:30pm and had a lovely salad medley made by heather Howie. Furthermore having collected a good few boxes of jewelry in the Airbnb that needed sorting, we decided to take the afternoon off and spend it sorting! Heather did all of this work and she dwindled it down to just one box from 6 separate boxes.

      In the evening I had a call with a potential host! For those that don't know I'm planning a road trip across Canada in which I plan to work on different organic farms as I cross the country with my partner Ellie, and today we had a call with a potential host in BC, right at the base of the Rockies (pictures attached). They seemed lovely and accepted us for the dates we requested, so I was on cloud 9! And to celebrate we drove down to our nearest five guys and gobbled down some well deserved burgers.

      Tomorrow we go back to the grind and keep working on clearing 64 which we will hopefully be done with by Friday.

      Much love,
      H & H
      Read more

    • Day 2

      Day 2

      February 19 in the United States ⋅ 🌙 0 °C

      Okay! So today our plan was to keep working on unit 54, and look at the progress we made! So the second and third pictures are what it looked like in the morning and what it looked like by the end of the day. (The boxes at the back are completely empty!). We brought it down to just 9 boxes left to look through and we have saved those for tomorrow morning and should be done emptying unit 54 by 1pm tomorrow.

      Along the way we found some gems:
      - a picture of me from great grandma Eleanor's dining area, giving my best picture smile
      - another butterfly deco
      - and a pair of sunglasses, modelled by yours truly

      With a full car, we headed back home really satisfied with the amount we had gotten done and had a lovely dinner of brown rice, lentil stew and fried zucchini. We ended the night by watching a couple John Oliver segments and having mint chocolate chip ice cream, which put us soundly to sleep.

      Tomorrow we venture to finish unit 54 and begin sorting through 38 and 64. It all feels possible now and our '10 minute break every hour' tactic helped us manage our stamina and segment our time more efficiently and effectively (thank god she has a Personal Assistant here to help her with her time management am I right people?)

      I can't wait to see how much we can do by Friday when we plan to go to Evanston for the weekend to see Grandpa Hillis, Margaret and Stephanie.

      Much love,
      H & H
      Read more

    • Day 11

      Jeez its been a while.

      February 28 in the United States ⋅ 🌬 7 °C

      Hey squad, sorry for the radio silence, it's been a rough first two days back and I seriously have taken very few pictures for y'all.

      Yesterday (Monday) we cleared out the 2nd downers grove unit, and made a mountain of trash which we kept in the empty 1st one. We tried to put it in grandma Anne's skip by her apartment but we basically filled the entire thing, and decided we should keep some trash for when they empty it on thursday.
      But with the 2nd downers grove unit done, we basically had finished everything we thought we'd get done by the end of the two weeks.

      So with a few more days of work left we, of course, decided to add more to our workload.

      Today we began tackling unit 2033 which is the unit she has had the longest and is the mega full one we thought we wouldn't even get to. And let me tell you, it is mega full.
      Unfortunately it's much less satisfying to go through as most of it is full of old shit, and almost 2/3 of what we have gone through so far is trash, so we are not filling the car with stuff to donate nearly as fast as last week. In fact we have now almost filled a separate unit with a pile of trash bags that we are not sure how we are gonna get rid of.

      The work is getting really fatiguing at this point, but we only have three more days, so we are gonna push through and deal with this shit the best way we know how: by venting to eachother, taking breaks every hour and treating ourselves to delicious lunches.

      Love,
      H & H
      Read more

    • Day 1

      Day 1!

      February 18 in the United States ⋅ 🌙 -3 °C

      The breakdown is there are 8 storage units overall (unincluding one in new jersey):
      2 in downers grove
      6 in Winfield (where our Airbnb is) FYI: of the 6 in Winfield:
      - one we don't have keys to
      - And one is mega full so...
      - we are only gonna interact with 4 of them.

      Our plan is to make the 4 Winfield units into 1 so that we half the overall amount of Winfield units, and if we can do that we will try and empty out the 2 in downers grove. So we would get it down from 9 to 4 units. So far, it seems feasible!

      Today was the first day of cleaning out and aren't we lucky it was a Sunday. It meant only the goodwill was open, so our first stop of the day was the storage units in downers grove where mum knew a lot of it was clothes (easy wins). We emptied out a 1/4 of one of them and then had lunch at the library. We then dropped off our goods at the goodwill, who just took everything, which blew my tiny mind; and moved on to the next storage units. We did a second re-filling of the car, jigged some things around, moved some shelves and called it a day. Then I cooked us a lovely lentil and rice stew and I ended the day with a yoga.

      I hope it's gonna get easier every day, and we are gonna make sure we are maintaining good stamina by taking 10 minute breaks every hour. There's an ocean of stuff that we could just sit and go through, but it's important we keep ourselves rested because the work can get fatiguing (both emotionally and physically).

      As long as we keep our routine of packing the car twice a day with crap, I think we should be able to reach our goals.

      These posts are gonna be a mix of random shit we find, and pictures of storage units (hopefully getting emptier!) and maybe some food and sunsets along the way.

      Love,
      H & H
      Read more

    You might also know this place by the following names:

    Cook County, مقاطعة كوك, Кук, কোক কাউন্টি, Condado de Cook, Cooki maakond, Cook konderria, Comté de Cook, מחוז קוק, Կուկ շրջան, Contea di Cook, クック郡, Cook Comitatus, Cook Kūn, Hrabstwo Cook, کک کاؤنٹی, Округ Кук, کک کاؤنٹی، الینوائے, Quận Cook, Condado han Cook, קוק קאונטי, 庫克縣

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