So.
About a year and half since I read an email from my boss while sitting in the Belgrade hotel lobby, asking me how do I feel about working on projects in US, here I am working on the project in US (btw, my reply was that she knows very well how much of a US whore I am so that’s pretty clear).
The whole thing dragged on for quite a while so I have to admit I didn’t firmly believe something will come out of it. There’ve been a lot of false alarms, broken promises, plans gone bad etc. but in the end it did happen.
So I found myself in Chicago where I’m supposed to stay for couple of weeks after which I should move a bit closer to home, New York, for another 3 weeks. Overall, that’s the longest voluntary stay abroad (not counting 5 weeks in Morocco not long time ago, because it was a result of several return cancellations).
Since nothing good comes easy, I went through some trouble traveling to US. The flight from Zagreb to Frankfurt was at 7 AM, and it’s a well-known fact that that’s much closer to a time of the day when I go to sleep than when I wake up, so taking that into account, I got somewhere between none to very little sleep. I took comfort in the fact that it will make sleeping on the planes even easier than usual (which proved later to be oh so very wrong).
The layover in Frankfurt was comfortable 2 hours which was a nice change from the 4-6 hours spent between flights while flying to/from Morocco/Algeria for the past year or so.
At the check-in in Zagreb I was asked whether I prefer aisle or window seat, so relieved not to be stuck in the middle seat I opted for the window one so that I don’t get disturbed while sleeping by people running to and from bathroom.
My happiness lasted only until boarding flight in Frankfurt when to my horror, I realized I was a victim of, hopefully unintentional cruel joke by the check-in clerk who obviously forgot to mention that the question was related only to the first leg, to Frankfurt, meaning I was stuck in dreaded middle seat.
The whole thing really pissed me off, plus it was too cramped and too hot, all of which resulted with not getting almost any sleep, which is for me under normal circumstances highly unusual, only increasing the agony.
Some nine hours later, I finally found myself in Chicago where, due to the fact that no one mentioned I should fill in not just one but two forms, I lost even more time and nerves while balancing luggage, jacket, forms and a pen. It was quite a challenge not to show “real” me, meaning cranky and rude, simply a person completely unfit to be let onto US soil.
Following all that, I got out of the luggage pickup with a monumental headache which I planned to get rid of with a healthy dose of a painkillers and lots of fresh air. The only problem was that there was a bit too much of the fresh air since, and I learned that only later, we’ve landed in the middle of the snow storm Rocky which combined a lot of snow (duh) and, even for infamously windy Chicago, very strong wind. During a cab ride to hotel, it was interesting observing a snow not falling, but somehow streaming horizontally.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0x_x88MnFaM&feature=youtu.be
Considering the weather it took us less time than I expected to get to the hotel and since it was actually pretty early in a day, around 3 PM, having spent 14 hours on the planes or not, weather being hideous or not, there was no chance not to get out right after dropping luggage off. Indeed, the weather was terrible. The moment it touched the ground snow actually turned into mush so in some places there was a layer of perhaps 10 cm (OK, 4 inches) of it. As a result, pretty soon my sneakers not used to such conditions gave way and from that point on if I were barefoot, my feet would not get any wetter (more wet?)
Not to wander aimlessly, I had a specific goal in mind; nearby Best Buy where I wanted to buy EU-to-US power adapter ($6 as opposed to obscene 15 EUR at the Frankfurt airport). While I was there, as a kind of treat to myself for having endured agony of the flights, I bought new Kindle (e-reader, not the tablet). Having done the shopping, after I stuffed myself with an unhealthy dose of grease in McDonalds and gulped bucket of coffee in Starbucks, I decided I completed Americana experience for the day and headed back to the hotel.
A colleague of mine, Maltese living in Luxembourg (I just love those national/geographical combinations of people I work with), was supposed to fly in from New York that same evening and I desperately wanted to talk to him because he had much more information about the work ahead that I had. However, thanks to his delayed arrival caused by Rocky and me being beyond tired, we were unable to meet.
It’s interesting that Branka and I went to US twice and I’ve never experienced a real jetlag. Simply, the moment we landed we’d kick in the highest gear there is so at the end of a day we really couldn’t tell whether we are exhausted due to jetlag or 15 hour drive we’ve done that day. This time however I experienced jetlag in all its glory.
The whole experience, at least flying westward, is kind of cool because it works completely opposite to my normal behavior: I couldn’t keep my eyes open after 10 PM and I was waking up stupidly early like 5 or 6 AM, much earlier than the alarm would go off. I kept thinking: “Aha, so THAT’S how Branka normally functions”.
So, here I was in Chicago. And tomorrow I was supposed to go to work.
