We moved from Chicago to London nearly eight years ago with my job and have been here since, excepting a two-year stint in Zurich a few years ago. Chicago was where we had our first son and bought our first house, and we remember it very fondly. We still have some family in the area but don't often visit. I miss our neighbors in Lincoln Sqaure, up in Ravenswood. We really did have conversations over the fence, and our dogs had a tunnel to go back and forth at will. There was a coffee shop on the corner that quickly became a neighborhood favorite and the young woman who owned it was always delighted to see us, even if she saw us every day. I went back a few years after moving away, my son five instead of two, but she was still there and recognized him and was as delighted as ever. But maybe the one thing that sums up Chicago, and that I really miss, especially when trying to avoid breathing coal dust and dormant plague in the bowels of the tube lines, is the el line that ran over the alley directly behind our little back yard. We were close to the damen stop on the ravenswood line, so trains were going fairly slowly in and out of the station when passing by. When we were out back with our little guy, more often than not you could count on the driver giving a couple of short blasts on the whistle and waving to him. Plenty of out-of-towners were amazed by this, expecting the city to be a cold and indifferent place, but no one from Chicago that hears me tell this is ever surprised, and that's what I miss about Chicago.
P.S. And also Mexican food! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD can someone who knows how to cook Mexican food PLEASE immigrate themselves into the UK?
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