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Comment by mark_l_watson | Hacker News Reader

Nice read! My wife and I just moved to Urbana/Champaign Illinois 4 months ago for my new job, and the Midwest really is different (from Arizona and California where we lived before). People are really nice, food is great, very inexpensive place to live, and there is real natural beauty here if you look for it. Anyways, we are delighted with this area.

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Congrats on the move. I grew up in Champaign. I wanted to get out of there by the time I was 18, but now I get back at least once a year and have a new appreciation for the place. Go to Papa Dels pizza if you haven't been. Get the deep dish. It will change your life.

I've been preaching the goodness that is Papa Dels since I was out there for a conference and programming competition at UIUC in the very early 2000s. Happy to see I'm not the only one.

Just be aware, a slice of the deep dish is pretty much a meal by itself.

oh man, i forgot about that place. expensive for a student, so it was a rare treat!

> People are really nice, food is great, very inexpensive place to live, and there is real natural beauty here if you look for it. Anyways, we are delighted with this area.

You probably shouldn't talk like that if you want it to stay that way...

Denver is a warning, not a template.

(I say this with partial sarcasm, obviously you can't fight change to some extent but being conscious of it and careful management to guide it's direction can prevent a lot of problems)

Former UIUC student... just wait till it starts snowing ;).

But in all seriousness: the town(s) do have their charm. And if you're bored, its only a hour drive to Chicago. The affordability was actually what attracted me as a student: I had a rather high standard of living for the money I was living on.

Of all the things I appreciated about the Champaign-Urbana area, the food was not one of them. But do check out the downtown Urbana area, it's a great place!

Whenever we drive nearby, the spouse and I wonder if the people from Normal are really just a bunch of freaks, and they just named the city that as a ruse. Obviously, all the "normal" people must therefore live in Bloomington.

Normal! I grew up in Illinois too [1] and spent a few years in Oblong, population 1700. Its claim to fame was a newspaper headline,

"Oblong man marries Normal woman."

[1] and now live a stone's throw away in Indiana near Purdue U

Check out Allerton Park if you haven't already! The trails are amazing.

A friend got married there. It's a really pretty place. Has a giant mansion on the premises too that he used for the reception.

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