The Locations of the Book: Chicago

Lake Michigan is where Erik’s journey across the United States begins. In the story, he and his friend Frank have landed in Chicago. More unwillingly, they end up on the “California Zephyr,” the train that is supposed to take them west. Like Erik and Frank in the book, Chicago fascinated me. I’ve been there three times, twice traveling there on Amtrak from New York. The first trip was via the Hudson River Valley and Albany, the second via Pittsburgh. Both times I also continued by train: once west towards San Francisco and once northeast, to Detroit. But the third visit was followed by a plane, directly from New York.

Big City with a Small-Town Feel

Chicago always seems to me like the little brother of New York. With just under 2.7 million inhabitants, the city is the third-largest metropolis in the USA. But with its skyline, especially the striking skyscraper “Sears Tower” (which is now called “Willis Tower”) it rivals Manhattan. One can feel comfortable in this very urban city and walk downtown and especially the promenade at Lake Michigan. Chicago is also called a “big city with a small-town feel,” but by European standards, of course, there is no small-town feel there, Chicago is just too big for that.

Among the top sights are the Art Institute of Chicago, Millennium Park, the Magnificent Mile, the River Walk for strolling downtown, and, of course, the Skydeck in the Willis Tower. Although I find the observation deck at the John Hancock Center even a bit more impressive. But I don’t want to “tick off” any sights here, Erik doesn’t like that at all in the book. He’s not the “tourist from Chicago” either.

High-Rise Hotel and Retro-Motel

Oh, and I remember having spent quite funny evenings in some bars on “Elm Street” between Michigan Avenue and the “Golden Mile”. Two accommodations have stuck in my mind: I once stayed at a sports club that offered guest rooms. These were on the top floors of a really tall skyscraper. I think it must have been on the 50th floor. Way down below me was Lasalle Street Station, which now serves only regional transit. The second accommodation was a kind of “retro motel” called “The Heart of Chicago”, located in a suburb, but easily reached by subway. The rooms were decorated in a fantastic 60s retro look, and you could feel very comfortable there.

Chicago in the title of the German Edition

The title of the German edition of my book is “Der Passagier aus Chicago”. Well, the English title is Rocky Mountain Railroad Odyssey, which fits North America a little better. But there’s a simple reason for the “Chicago” title: almost all long-distance trains heading west in the U.S. leave Chicago, regardless of whether you’re traveling south, central, or north. The city is the central rail hub for passenger traffic in the US. So in this case, the protagonist Erik is the “passenger from Chicago”.

This is picked up several times in the book: for example, the conductor on the Canadian train asks him if he is the “passenger from Chicago”, which is the equivalent of a Midwestern U.S. traveler, even though Erik travels from Minneapolis in this scene. His girlfriend, Amelia, later asks him where he started his long train journey across the U.S. “In Chicago”, Erik replies. Amelia says, “Then you’re the Chicago passenger for me now.” Because Chicago is such a great city in the Midwest, the German edition now bears this title.