Last week-end, we have been invited by Connor to join the DePaul Atlantis crew to his cabin in Minnesota, in the small town of Lindstrom. Even though it is very far from Macomb, Linnea, Per, Stephan and I decided that it would be worth driving the 472 miles that separate both towns. Actually, the hardest thing was not to drive there but to rent a car! Our initial plan was to leave on Thursday evening with a rental car, and to drive back on Sunday so that we would have two entire days to spend there, but when we went to the rental agency, surprise: in Illinois, you need a major credit card to rent a car. EVERYBODY in the U.S. has got at least one credit card, which I think is terrible, but except for Per, none of us ever had one. Unfortunately, Per got his credit card stolen when he was exploring California. Anyway, the outcome was that we could not rent the car on Thursday as expected... we all felt so depressed because we got all excited about this week end! The train would have costed 200 dollars and takes 10hours so we decided it wasn't worth considering. Finally, we got some help from Chris Ramsey (thank you so much!) who called the agency, and we managed to rent a car on Friday morning! We were all so excited!
The road was fun, this was a sunny day so we enjoyed the landscapes of Illinois. A little too much apparently as we missed the exit to Moline and drove an extra hour past Galinsburg! We then got back on track and drove through the flat, truck-dominated state of Iowa. This was the first time I was driving in the U.S., and I must admit it feels safer than in France! ahah! At least as far as drivers are concerned, because infraestructures did not seem very reliable. The rest of the road was smooth had a little preview of StPaul when we reached Minnesota.
Connor's cabin is located in Lindstrom, a few dozens miles north of Minneapolis/St Paul. This town and the region in general is so funny, because it is litterally Swedish terroritory! Names of town sound swedish, the landscape looks like Sweden, and most of the people have swedish ancestries! It was really strange as I felt like back a few months ago when I was still in Sweden, and the reminiscence of many good moments came back to mind. It happened to fortunate, as Per was pulled over for speeding, but did not pay a dime because the police officer was Swedish and was so glade to meet a real Swede! In general, people seemed so nice in Minnesota. When we were skiing, many people asked us where we came from, and one of us said "Welcome to Minnesota"!
The activities of the week end basically consisted of a bonfire by the lake on Friday night, skiing on Saturday (I tried snowboarding for the first time of my life and I wasn't quite successful) and then having dinner all together, followed by a night-long party! That was definitely a very good time! The road back to Macomb was a little more complicated as expected, as we got lost in the middle of Iowa and ended up a few miles from Wisconsin!! But at around midnight on Sunday we got back :) Even though we drove a lot to stay only a day, that was an awesome week-end, we discovered the lovely state of Minneapolis, and this was a good breathe :)
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