Detroit is crazy. Let me tell you about it.

The last day of our trip, we woke up in Ann Arbor. It was somewhere around 7-10 degrees F. SOOOOO cold.

Naturally, I took a hot shower. And it was beautiful… At first. Just as I was about to rinse the conditioner out of my hair, zzzzzzap. Electricity goes out.

Now, every time the electricity goes out, my first thought is, “CRAP. SOMEONE’S GONNA KILL US”. (And this from the person who doesn’t even watch horror movies..) But for some reason, I felt extra safe in this snowy land. No one in their right mind … or even wrong mind… would be out for a killing in this weather. So I finished my shower in the dark until the hot water ran out. It was super weird.

But then, I realized the worst part. It’s 7 degrees outside… and my hair is very long and very wet. This could be a really bad thing.

Dizi and I postponed our trip to the Detroit Auto Show to a little later in the day and ate Yogurt for breakfast. (I had really been looking forward to some hot tea, but now there was no way to boil the water…)

Thankfully, within 3o minutes, it was back, and I was able to dry my hair, thus preventing hypothermia or icicle hair, and drink some tea before heading out.

It’d started snowing all night and still hadn’t stopped. It was exciting. And cold… But I looked forward to our car ride… See, one of my favorite things about cars is that you can put the heat as hot as you want and it doesn’t run up your electricity bill!

After Dizi de-snowed her car, we headed towards Detroit… about a 45 minute drive. We stopped near Wayne University and had breakfast at a delicious French crepe place. Yum. But I was freezing.

Even around the university, we started to see signs of abandonment…

I’ve seen pictures of all kinds of abandoned buildings in Detroit before. In fact, I once saw a brilliant photo project of the “ghost town” feeling in parts of Detroit. However, a great photographer can take one great picture of one old looking house or one war torn building or one deprived child and make it feel like the whole city is like that. But usually, it’s far from the truth, and that photographer knew where to find that one neighborhood with a lot of abandoned houses or that one bombed out building in the middle of a nice area, or that one slum with dirty looking children next to a bustling middle-class city. Not that all those things aren’t true for themselves… But my point is, it’s easy to manipulate a picture and your feelings and perceptions around that picture. And I assumed this photo project on Detroit would be the same. I assumed I’d see a little graffiti here, a few abandoned buildings there, but I was sure it wouldn’t represent the city as a whole.

Oh how I was wrong.

Granted, there are many different areas in every city… however, even in these happy parts of midtown, and even along the major highways, and even in the middle of downtown, there were tons of crazy big buildings with their windows all broken out and their brick covered in graffiti. SO BIZARRE.

After getting our fill of abandoned warehouse photos, Dizi brought me to see the project she’s been working on… She works for a Landscape Architecture firm in Ann Arbor… She’s recently been working on a project that’s taking an old abandoned, unsafe, partially underground railroad track and turning it into a “greenway” with a bicycle path and walking path and lighting and safety features. It’s several miles long and connects certain major parts of the city together.

Along the way, they have these old bridges… They’re in the process of tearing a lot of them down since they’re old and structurally unsound. BUT, they’re keeping a lot of the pillars and graffiti for art and decoration and unique city aesthetics. So that’s pretty cool…

We walked down to the waterfront and said hello to Canada. Windsor, Canada is just right across the water…

And did I mention that my face has NEVER felt so cold… Not even in Russia… At one point, I even wrapped my scarf around my face a little, and still, even my eyes were freezing.

Last, we headed to the downtown area… There was the North American International Auto Show going on… We had planned to go, but got up too late… so we decided just to take the “People Mover” around the city instead. Yes, it’s really called the “People Mover”. That made me laugh. And it’s basically a monorail that goes around in a circle in the downtown area.

Even in the middle of downtown, there were a good number of abandoned buildings. Not just your run of the mill shacks, but tall, tall buildings… just empty.

Of course, there were plenty of decent buildings as well, but it was just absolutely bizarre to me how much abandonment there was mixed in. Just crazy to me.

We ended our day with a wonderful Mexican Mocha at a great little cafe called Cafe con Leche in Mexicantown. Best mocha I’ve ever had.

All in all, it was a great trip. Cold. But great.