Cityscape

We’ve spent the past two days in Chicago. Travelling to Chicago used to mean returning to O’Hare. A flight back to the UK (hopefully direct) and a return to a lifestyle of late night phone calls and tricky planning. That anticipation has still been lingering in the back of my mind each of the last three times we’ve driven here, the approach of the Skyway indicating the approaching departure.

Even whilst considering the approaching flight, I’ve always enjoyed the entry into Chicago. Once the smoke stacks, fumes and less than fragrant emanations of Gary, Indiana, are passed the post-industrial landscape of the eastern fringes of Chicago quickly surround us and I enjoy the return to something I can more easily identify as a City.

I enjoy Grand Rapids. It’s just big enough to keep me entertained, but I still find it difficult to consider it a City. I can describe it as a town happily enough, but in the US such words have different connotations from the UK. A city in the US does not require the size, the cathedral, the charter, that the word connotes in the UK, leading to considerable confusion in my mind.

East Grand Rapids, for example. I’d always presumed it was a suburb. One which shared city governance with Grand Rapids. It was quite some time before I came to the realisation that it was, technically, a separate ‘city’. That sort of linguistic adjustment is becoming part and parcel of life.

But while I’m in Chicago I can forget that. There is no question but that this is a City. And one with plenty to enjoy.