Immigration. Young guy asks how long we want to stay. Half a year. How come? We say we're on parental leave and we want to travel with a trailer around his beautiful country. They're quite expensive - he notices. We don't have high expectations. He says good luck and stamps our passports with a stamp we hoped for (six month minus one day).
Renting a car (Budget). Taught by experience from few different countries, more or less civilized, we expect half an hour of formalities. We're ready to go in less than 10 minutes. The only problem was that to get to the rental place you need to get on the bus which was not that easy with over 220 lbs of luggage, stroller, car seat and two kids. Luckily cousins are waiting for us at the airport. Praise the cousins! KIA Soul accepted the cargo with a light grunt. Miles&More pays for the first two day. After that it gets more painfull...
Hotel (Baymont O'Hare). Checking in I say our last name. Oh, you're from Poland - said shift supervisor in Polish. Name at the nametag sounded familiar. Paul from Tarnow attacked us with optimism. We had a friendly chat (I'm a fan of Legia, they're doing good, I used to see them play in Cracow - said Paul), and than gave us the key. Miles&More is still paying.
Jetleg. Republic after being awake for 24 hours, we reached our destination and fell asleep right away. It was 2 am local time. Maciek woke up two hours later. We pretended we didn't hear him and we just kept sleeping. Surprisingly it worked - the issue of changing the time zone was over. Kalina, 3 months old back than, didn't really notice anything. This time it was not that easy. On the first day Maciek woke up at 3. On the second and third at 4. And there was no way to ignore him. On the other hand he kept falling asleep at 5 pm and there was no way to wake him up. It wasn't until the day, we were supposed to pick up the trailer early in the morning, that Maciek finally slept late. Kalina did notice the time zone change but she was much easier to ignore. Second child...
Shopping. Blind old lady in electric wheelchair. ID required when purchaising alcohol if you look under 40. We thought it was federal requirement, but later in 7Eleven it was under 30 (they still asked us, yuppi!). Department with RV accessories (including special toilet paper) in every Walmart. Our first shopping, on top of toilet paper contains hammer, WD40 and two locks for hitch. The size and the assortment of Walmart is a little bit overwhelming and gives a better idea of what Ulrich Beck had in mind when he wrote about risk society.
Taxes. Added afterwards. There's a price tag and there is a price to pay. It was painful especially when paying for a car rental, we found out that there's not only 20% of state tax but also another 20 of airport tax. Taxes are everywhere. We came in January so it's time to do the taxes for last year. Radio, TV, dressed up guys at the crossroads - everyone knows how to pay less. Taxes in US are an interesting topic, especially in popculture (see for example one of the episodes of 2 Broke Girls).
On the highway and not only around Chicago. Cold and windy but sunny. Hundreds of planes over our heads. All streets with Polish signs only. All streets with Spanish signs only. In our hotel at the reception desk works Ewelina (theres one more person except for her and Paul, but this time not from Poland). At information desk in DMV - Bożena. At the door of Ania’s Polish Deli there;s a sign that says "Se busca ayuda para la cocina".
Grand Cherokee. We bought a car from Stanley. From Stasiek actually. He said 5500, we said 4500, he said ok. When we paid he gave us back a hundred "for good luck". Stanley's car was probably 10th that we've seen over 3 days. Lucky us we had an expert on board. Michal (praise the cousins!) knows cars very well. Stanley's GC wasn't the love from the first sight as the mileage on it was 160 000. We've seen other cars with lower mileage but with prices that made us laugh. Stanley was selling his GC to buy a new Lexus. And we thought they had a crisis in the US...
Franek and Eddie. We bought a trailer from an American guy whose last name was Franek, from little town 40 miles from Chicago. He also gave us a little discount, we paid 3600 insteado of 4000. After all he is also almost Polish, his family comes from Karvina in Czech Republic. Very nice place. For over an hour Franek patiently taught us everything and told us to call him if we have any problems. We had lots of problems but we found a guy at our first camping that helped us out. It was a second trailer that we've seen. It took us some 4 hours, including driving to both places.
How are you? Everywhere we go people are nice. In the hotel, in stores, in restaurants, people come up, chat, asked about the kids, wish us good luck. Just like that. Makes a difference. Some even say we're a perfect family, like some older gentelman in Wendy's: son, daughter, mom and dad, not two moms like you see sometimes nowadays. They should make an ideal model out of us to show in Sevres.
Rental extension. We had no problems with hotel, Ewelina gave us "special price", which after taxes was still over 50 USD (not so bad as for O'Hare area anyway). With a car it was worse: the price we got over the phone was 46 USD, but after taxes and insurance it was over 80 USD per day...
DMV. It took us 4 days to buy both car and a trailer. Registration was the stressful part, but with some help from other cousin (praise the cousins!) it took us less than an hour and 325 USD. All we needed was a passport, envelope with an adress and title for both car and a trailer. If Stanley's car was registered in his name instead of his company it would be even cheaper. Unlike we've heard over the phone when we called from Poland we didn'd need insurance to register. We bought pretty good insurance for car but we did not buy any for the trailer as we couldn't find any insurer that would do this. Maybe we'll do it elswhere.
Bye bye Chicago. We arrived on Saturday evening, Thursday morning we were ready to go. We planned to leave first thing in the morning but we got to Franek at 10. An hour later we started our journey!
Bye bye Chicago. We arrived on Saturday evening, Thursday morning we were ready to go. We planned to leave first thing in the morning but we got to Franek at 10. An hour later we started our journey!
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