1. They looove their ketchup. I'm talking capital L-O-V-E. The kind Nat King Cole writes songs about. They don't know there is such thing as other condiments. I asked for barbeque sauce at a restaurant and the guy looked at me like I was speaking Latin (not to mention gave me the worst evil-eye I've ever been given in my life). The kicker here is: I'm from Chicago. I hate Ketchup. I wouldn't dare say that while I was there, though, because I would not be surprised if the people there would be ready to burn me at the stake if I even dared to think about not liking the salty, tomatoey condiment.
2. Their baseball stadium is incredible. I'm telling you, great ball parks are wasted on the poor franchises. They have everything there. You like the sausage races at Miller Park? Get this. They have pierogi races. Yup, giant pierogies with baseball caps race around the stadium. You like seeing a cityscape in the background? Well, again, you definitely won't be disappointed. PNC is adjacent to the city of Pittsburgh, so it's in a nice area but you still get to see all the buildings and bridges in the city, as well as the river. Plus, as we all know, the Pirates suck, so there's always an extra ticket if you want to go to a game at the last minute. Not to mention there is literally no bad seat in the entire stadium.
3. They put fries on their sandwiches. Seriously. We went to the famed Primanti Brothers in downtown Pittsburgh for dinner before we went to a Pirates game. I had a cheesesteak (their best-selling item) and much to my shock received some weird looking french fry and coleslaw sandwich with meat on it. It was so unique that it was actually pretty good. (Not as good as an old fashioned Philly Cheesesteak, though).
4. Western Pennsylvania is extremely hilly. To get into the city from my roommate's house we had to take this thing called an incline down a decently-sized mountain. The story actually goes that back in the 1800s, workers who lived atop the mountain had no way of getting down into the city, so they built an incline to transport them to and from work everyday. Pretty cool, huh? It was a pretty big culture shock, though, since growing up in the Midwest I'm used to extremely flat land and, subsequently being able to see for miles. I mean, I live a good 40 minutes from Chicago and I can see the Sears tower from my house. Let's just say you can't see for very far in Western Pennsylvania, what with all the mountains, cliffs, and hills.
5. Homewood is scary. After a day at Kennywood, my directionally-challenged roommate had some problems getting us back to her house and with one mistake while listening to the directions the tom tom gave us, we ended up in a neighborhood in Homewood. A word of advice... don't do it. In the 5 minutes we were there we witnessed a drug-deal, saw people staring at us through their car windows (note: they were hanging out in their parked cars), and almost backed into a dead-end that we soon after realized was occupied by a pretty sketch person who looked like he was smoking something that we had just witnessed being sold mere minutes before.
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