Frankly, we don’t have the appetite for rambling on about Chicago. But we also have this uneasy feeling about leaving it undone. So here is a quick one…

After the bizarre feeling we had in Huckleberry Finn, we rushed into the streets of Chicago in a positive state of mind. Even the silhouette of the city says: “Come my darlings. I want your money. And you’ll get its worth.” We did what it said.

Until here, we had a series of culture shocks. In New York, we were impressed with the Bohemian, intellectual life style. Then we fell right into touristic New Orleans where there was jazz music in every corner. After that, we found our fortunes in the so-called provincial Delta. People call them peasants because they don’t know the meaning of bon vivant. Everybody had a good taste of living in there. They didn’t like working. They weren’t racing against time. It was different from everywhere else, in every sense

Then in touristic Memphis we remembered how it felt in a big city. It was the place where the blues musicians also had learned about being in a big city for the first time. It hasn’t changed much since the twenties Actually, Muddy Waters’s brother had told us something like that.

Finally, we came in to an even bigger city when we arrived in St. Louis after Memphis. And we met the USA that we were told about: Everything is big and boring. No one walks in the streets. They leave their work with their big cars, then eat and drink. Then they go home, grab their remote, and drink beer.

If I lived this kind of life for a week, I think I would start considering euthanasia.

After apologizing once again to the people of St. Louis, (you know how even a video clip can cause Turkish bath attendants to protest, or simple comment make janitors riot… I think things don’t work that way in here. If I had written these comments about Afyon, I can’t even imagine how they would react. I know what I’m talking about :)) now I’m back to telling more about Chicago.

After we ran into the city, we hit the streets. We walked until our feet rejected to walk anymore. We made each other walk and walk and walk. We spent hours this way. Then we wandered around in some bars, injected ourselves some energetic blues, and went to sleep.

The next day was delightful again. We did so many things that, we couldn’t feel sorry for the things we may have missed. For instance, we couldn’t make it to Foghat concert. Something I will remember for the rest of my life. I had felt this way once when I had missed the Sonic Youth concert in İstanbul.

Then we hit the streets once more. This time with rakı in our hands… However, having been warned many times about not drinking out on the streets, we didn’t carry things too far. We crossed a bridge, though not gorgeous as the Brooklyn Bridge, and drank one glass each, in the middle of skyscrapers. After fuelling ourselves, we went on walking. Totally unaware of where we were heading, we came in to a giant park, named the Grant Park. While we walked towards the crowd, we noticed people were on picnic. They had their wines and beers in their hands, drinking. We took our positions immediately, and prepared our meal – consisting of ‘fist snacks’. We are used to that

Here is the recipe of fist snack for the ones who don’t know about it: You drink rakı, then you clean your mouth with the back of your fist. That’s all. You can try it at home.

And we found out that there was a classical music festival at the Grant Park. I don’t think it was held in hour honour, for it was the 75^th festival. And it was free.

An enormous sound system, daring pieces, magnificent interpretations… Everybody is drinking, everybody is polite, and everybody is on picnic… That was the point when we cancelled our plan of going to Foghat concert.

It was amazing afterwards, too. I don’t know much about classical music. I have some favourite composers and pieces. Rachmaninoff’s Concerto No. 3 is among my top five… And when the orchestra started playing that, the idea of Foghat was far away

After some time, we were attacked by the rain. Everyone took out their umbrellas. And we were caught unguarded. When we realized it was possible for us to be in the headlines of next day’s papers if we got any wetter, we walked back. The concert was about to end, anyway.

Intended to go on having fun, we entered the bar, Sweet Home Blue Chicago. Instead of our cool brothers in Mississippi, there was this clownish air on the stage mixed up a little with holiday village animations, but the musicians were still cool. After appreciating our new brothers/sisters, we went back to our happy home at a reasonable hour – about three o’clock – to avoid getting overdosed.

On Saturday, we felt a little depressed because the journey was coming to an end. In the bookstore, a little more depression was added on to this because we exaggerated the book shopping. We walked around by the lake, and considering the exhaustion of the night before, we went to our beds at around midnight.

We woke up early on our last day – really early… Exactly at 6:30. After seeing the places we hadn’t seen before with the help of Atılgan, our tour by the lake caused some sadness: They had had fun without us it seemed. And I’m talking about lots of fun. We could see it from the things they had left behind. I don’t think people should have this much fun right next to the city, at the beaches of the lake.

We spent hours there. We watched people swimming, fishing, running, cycling. We chatted for a while.

Then we spent the rest of the day by the lake, at a sort of a carnival space or a funfair that we don’t remember the name of.

Sorry, now we have to leave for the plane. We couldn’t measure our time correctly so we can’t upload the photos now. Wait until tomorrow