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As we get ready for this year’s tour season, today’s Short Tales by Diane Wagner (2005), Ellen Shubart (2006), Cynthia Bates (2016, and Dan Jares (2017), remind us of the many international visitors we meet on our tours.

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POWER OF THE MODEL
by Diane Wagner, Class of 2006, Exhibit Host
CAC’s visitors are typically enthralled by our city model. They stand as close as possible, peering and pointing as they identify buildings. An out-of-town couple staying in a South Loop hotel was delighted to find “their” Trader Joe’s on Roosevelt Road. A visitor from Boston wondered where she could find the new casino on the model. Having moved recently, I was startled to find my new home on the model!

But one visitor’s curiosity stood out. He gazed, he stared, he gawked, he squinted, he ogled. He got down on one knee, sighting down several streets. He folded his second knee down, stabilizing himself as he snapped photo after photo. Clearly, he was on a mission and eager to tell me about it.

A British national, our visitor was an archeologist working on a village restoration in Iran. He pulled up photos of an ancient site. The nine hundred buildings, mostly in ruins, were being slowly rebuilt. It was like a Middle Eastern Pompeii. The structures were connected by bridges and stairways, making it possible to move all around town without using a single street!

“Eventually, I want to create a model of the village just as you have done here with Chicago,” he commented. Hence the intense scrutiny and the many photos. CAC has once again offered a template for others to use.

SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT
by Ellen Shubart, Class of 2006
Who said people aren’t coming to Chicago? This season I had guests from 53 nations. Yesterday there was a family from “the south of England” who comes here every five years. The father warned me that they wanted to see new buildings because they had been here 5 or 6 years ago. Well I guess Wolf Point, Cassidy on Canal, Reed and St. Regis were enough for them. As they left they told me they “hated cities but loved Chicago.”

AN AMERICAN TRADITION
by Dan Jares, Class of 2017
Several years ago when the bus tour of Frank Lloyd Wright in Oak Park tour was being offered, I was giving the tour along Forest Avenue with a group, most of whom were from Italy. Being a beautiful summer day, a small group of children had set up a Kool Aid/ lemonade stand on the west side of the street. We were on the east side of the street at that point. One of the women in the group saw the children and exclaimed, “I must go over there, and buy a glass. This is so American!” And she did. I have always wondered how she had made that connection to an American tradition – A movie? A book? A cartoon? I’ve always wished I had thought to ask.

THE “STANS”
by Cynthia Bates, Class of 2016
It is always interesting to see the kind of global travelers we encounter on the river cruise. I thought my most exotic passenger up ‘til now was the lady from Taskent, Uzbekistan.

But yesterday I encountered a family of four from Dushanbe, capital of Tajikistan. Here for two weeks, and our river cruise at the top of their list. Despite a bit of drizzle, they stayed on deck in the front row and seemed mesmerized.

Now only three more of these (former Soviet) “stans” to go.

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