Chicago

This weekend, I did my little road trip to Chicago. I started my trip right after my Script Analysis class on Friday heading to Chicago for the international short film festival. I checked the rout on Google Maps and it said it's gonna take like 4 hours to get there. From Bowling Green, Ohio through Indiana to Illinois/Chicago. Well, it took me a little longer than that. First of all driving on a highway in the United States is not quite the same as it is in Austria. Your just allowed to drive 65 mph which is something like 110 Km/h if you speed chances are that a police car is chasing you down the highway giving you a speeding ticket. But the biggest difference is the distances, you drive like miles and miles straight ahead which makes you kind of dizzy 'cause it's boring, there is nothing to do actually and when you have a car in which the air condition doesn't work and it's freaking hot outside you get even more tired. So this lead to the thing that I almost fell asleep like three times opening my eyes in middle of two lanes. That's why I had to take some pit-stops for recharging my energy. The other thing was arriving in chicago on a Friday evening is not that of a good idea because I drove directly into a traffic jam which took me like an hour to get to the hostel I was staying. But, rumor has it that Chicago is the second shittiest city in the United States concerning traffic because whole Chicago is just one huge construction site - and I made it through it without any break down. Haha I'm really proud of me.

The reason why I went to Chicago was the International Short Film Festival which I attended on Friday night watching some nice comedy and scifi/action movies. Honestly, I think they weren't any special at all so I'm really going to consider submitting my short movies to similar festivals. After the screening, which ended 11 pm we had a little guided city tour in the famous Chicago trollies, which was actually pretty nice a city tour at midnight, but unfortunately I was really really tired from driving and the tour lasted like 2 hours passing by one skyscraper after the other I kind of fell asleep after the first hours hehe. But anyhow, the start was great and the had some free pizza and drinks. After that I headed directly back to the hostel trying to get some sleep in order to have enough energy for Saturday. I tried to get some sleep in my room with four french guys and a guy which nationality remained undefined to me on the, well I guess I can really say it on Americas worst mattress. I swear to god that was more anything else than a mattress - that was unbelievable it felt like lying on the ground in the woods or something. But better than nothing.

On Saturday I went up like 10 am, wandering around Downtown which didn't impress me at all. New York City still remains my favorite city so far. On 1:15 pm the screening of the shorts started again and I have been there until like 5pm. I took the train home, taking a nap and a shower and went to the Navy Pier which is some kind of an entertainment area because I wanted to see Transformers on the IMAX screen. When I arrived at 6:30pm the 7pm show was already sold out so I had to wait 3 hours for the next show. I really can tell you that 3 hours can be a very long time waiting on something. First of all I thought well it's not that bad, I ended up riding the fairys weel, the carousel and all the things by myself. All the people looked at my as if I were crazy because just couples and parents with their children were riding and me - all alone. That was a strange feeling, but I somehow started to like it, it was kind of fun the push yourself over the limit concerning embarrassment. Hehe - I finally attended Transfomers at 10pm which kind of overwhelmed me auditive and visual vise so that I had to throw up after the show very badly. Thanks for that Michael (Bay) and Steven (Spielberg)! ;)

The rest of the evening was just unbelievable strange and weird, If you wanna know what happened wait like 2 years and you can watch it as a movie because I really have to write a script based on some of those events. ;)