by Brett Jasper
Being in Chicago so far has been unbelievable! There’s
always something happening if you’re willing to leave the apartment for a while
and maybe get a little lost. In fact, it’s almost overwhelming how much you’re
surrounded by diverse people and culture. This being the case, you have to be
really careful with how much money you spend because it goes quick here, and as
college students, were not the wealthiest group. But I figure experiencing
Chicago to the fullest is at least a cool way to go broke.
I was
lucky enough to start dating someone from the program so I had someone to go on
adventures with. Steph and I spent the first few weeks putting our transit
cards to good use. We got lost a lot at the beginning, thanked heaven that we
have smart phones loaded up with Google maps, and slowly started to understand
how Chicago transit works. From this point on we were free to explore the
entire city.
We got
all the touristy stuff out of the way first. We visited “The Bean” and paid $20
each to go to the top of Willis Tower, despite the fact that it was too cloudy
to see anything. We visited the Shedd Aquarium, the Art Institute, Navy Pier, and
a bunch of other places, and what we realized was that a lot of the “touristy”
stuff isn’t a great idea in January, though we still had fun.
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So
where were we to go from here? We’d seen the popular stuff and the rest of the
city was pretty overwhelming. So what we did, and what might be a good idea for
others, was to pick out one or a few Chicago neighborhoods that seemed
interesting and just got to know that neighborhood better. We became regulars
in a neighborhood called Wicker Park. It’s full of young, mustached, creative-types
who like to put stickers on things. Our favorite place there is a coffee shop
called the WormHole. It’s got kind of a loose sci-fi/80s movie theme happening
and the WiFi is very fast indeed. We also got addicted to a small chain of
donut stores called Glazed and Infused which features just insane donuts such
as the bacon maple long john. These are only for hardcore donut junkies so be
careful.
There are always bands playing in Chicago, too, and most concerts are fairly cheap if you
don’t mind indie music. We waited outside in freezing temperatures for an hour
and a half to see a free Airborne Toxic Event show. If you look hard you can
find cheap and amazing things to do all the time in Chicago and I’m excited
about what the rest of this semester will bring.
