Homestay Tour #1 – Amtrak for 23 hours

Our Amtrak Train: New York – Chicago

On August 8th 2014 it was time to leave wonderful New York City to start the long journey to my final placement. 35 out of the 75 participants took an Amtrak train from New York Penn Station to Chicago Union Station. Since we were such a big group we were allowed to enter the huge metal train first. The only things we knew before our first Amtrak adventure were that there were sockets as well as WIFI and that it also might get a little chilly. So we all brought laptops, phones and some warmer clothes; ready for an 18 hour train ride!
Our first impression: AMAZING! The train was really spacious, we immediately saw the sockets and we could move the seats a lot so that we could sleep really comfortable. It seemed all perfect. We were happy, excited and said that we want to travel with this train through the whole country… well, a few hours later we thought differently for sure!

This was the view just a few miles behind NYC

We had fun for sure!!!

Everyone was in a great mood – in the beginning!

Lena and myself

The WIFI didn’t work which was not ideal but oh well we still had each other to chat and could use our laptops offline: transfering photos, writing our blogs, watching movies and so on.
In Albany, NY we stopped. First we thought for 10 minutes then it became 20 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour, 1 hour and 30 minutes… We had no idea what was going on. In the end we stayed in Albany for over 2 hours and actually it was supposed to be just one short stop. This is what happened throughout the whole trip: the train stopped in the middle of nowhere or ages at a certain stop, plus it was going super slow in general!

This is what we saw for hours and hours and hours: corn fields!

Everyone is always complaining about trains in Germany but now I would recommend everyone to take the American Amtrak first. You would never ever complain again. As it got later we went to the train’s restaurant. It was so expensive and on top of that the food was not good at all. We shared some pasta, which was seriously the worst pasta I’ve ever had in my life. While we had dinner there was no electricity all of a sudden which meant, no light. Dinner in the dark – what an experience!
Also, I don’t want to go into detail about that too much, but the restrooms were disgusting – not even working at all for some hours.
When we tried to sleep it felt like the air condition got even cooler than it already was! Even though we wore shirts, sweaters, jackets and scarfs we were still so cold. We fell to sleep eventually and when I woke up I saw that we were in Cleveland, OH. The train was going slower than ever and with a delay of 6 HOURS (!!!) we made it to Chicago after 23 hours!

Just a very short stay but that’s Chicago

We were starving, we were cold, we were tired but oh so happy to finally leave this Amtrak train!
Our group divided here and some traveled further to their final placements. 24 of us took another Amtrak train to Princeton, IL instead which we almost missed due to our major delay.
The train from Chicago to Princeton only took 1.5 hour which felt like nothing after the last trip. We got really excited to finally meet our first host family. The group divided again and 10 of us rode with a van from Princeton to a small town called Rock Falls, IL. Here my friend Selina and I were staying together with a host family for 3 days.

Anneke