I was in Chicago for the Book Expo, but my experience of it began on Wednesday with Day of Dialogue, a gathering of librarians separate from the Book Expo but held in connection with it. For me, it was just one more reason to love Chicago, even though I guess it would have been lovely anywhere.

I was part of a panel together with some lovely people from Sourcebooks, talking about the process of writing, translating, editing and marketing a book. Sort of a way to illustrate the whole impressive chain that a book travels through before arriving at a library. It was such great fun, but then again, I was talking to a room full of librarians, so how could it not be absolutely amazing?

Afterwards, I met up with a friend of mine who had come to Chicago to visit me. Me, I’m a lazy tourist. I tend to want to pretend I live in a city, so I seldom do any of the traditional tourist-stuff. It seems strange to me to travel somewhere just to surround yourself with tourists. My friend on the other hand is very organized. He came to Chicago with a list of things to see for our one free afternoon there. This list included: a river architectual tour, the Sears tower, a bean, a park and Boystown. “What do you want to see?” he asked me. “I want to have pizza”, I said. Obviously.

And that was basically what we did. We had pizza at Giordanos. Walked to the park with the bean, that did turn out to be great. The bean was surprisingly fun, and the park absolutely beautiful. It was so beautiful that we msised the river tour-thing we had planned for five pm, but when we were just walking around idly trying to think up an alternative, we found another tour boat that was just about to head off. It was probably fate, because the boat was almost empty, the guide an hilariously nerdy girl, and the fog lifted the minute the tour started.

Unfortunately, I can’t remember any of the information she imparted in her fast, nerdy way, but I have never found architecture so much fun or so fascinating.  Part of the reason why Chicago is such a fascinating city, architecturally speaking, is of course that the enitre city burned down. The only thing that was left standing was a water tower close to our hotel on Michigan avenue. Rumour had it that the enitre fire was started by an Irish immigrant woman. Had that been just a rumour, a foot note on a guide tour, that wouldn’t really have mattered, but the rumour was first published by a major newspaper in Chicago right after the fire, and the Irish immigrant woman was named in the article. The city was then rebuild, using the ingenuity and the expertise of architects from all over the country as they flocked to the empty space available in the city.

“So it all ended well, in a way”, said our guide about the fire.

Except for the immigrant woman, of course. She was ostracized for the rest of her life.

The tour took about 70 minutes and I was sorry to get off that boat. Next time I go to Chicago I’ll take it again.After the tour it was quite late on a Tuesday evening at the end of a foggy day, so thanks to some sort of magic, Sears tower was practically empty. Sears tower is not called Sears tower anymore, but our guide assured us no one from Chicago bothered with the new name, so I won’t either. I find it very reassuring that a company can pay a lot of money for the name rights for the tallest building in the Western hemisphere and then be completely ignored.

The tower formerly known as Sears has see through little cubes that you can step out on, so that it seems like you’re standing on air ofter a hundred floors of the ground.

My friend forced me out on it, so naturally I made him go first. Just in case.

But I lived to experience the Book expo another day.