The Trip to Boston

I would have really liked it for this post to be just about 3 sentences long, along the lines of "We set off early from Brooklyn to 42 Street and Port Authority. We arrived with the Greyhound in Boston in the afternoon and made our way to the appartment in Boston. We chilled the remaining day." - The End.

Unfortunately, our day was a little more exciting than we cared for. We had our bus leave NY at 10:00am, so to be safe, we left Bed-Stuy at 7:45am. To get to the Subway, it takes 15 minutes and then another 25-30 minutes with the A train and voilà, we are at the bus station...

Well, what we did not know was that in the train directly before the one we wanted to take, an event happened that triggered the below headline.

Dead man found in subway car

That's right! Please everyone raise their hand who saw that one coming. We did not! So at first all we heard was that the line is blocked off and no trains will go for awhile. So we said, well we have time, it'll be alright.
Then one message was sent through that is a bit confusing. It went a bit like this: "We are currently experiencing delays in our train service due to a sick man at Jay St - Metrotech station."

This confused us, because we really wondered how long it took to clear a sick man from a train car and carry on with the service. Please bear in mind that we were under way with our big luggages in the middle of rush hour, so we really did not fancy moving too quickly, but at some point we were told to circumvent the station. This was at 8:45am. So we had approx. 75 minutes to get to our bus station.
Now for those of you who are interested, I inserted a map of the relevant stations below. We were on the blue line at Utica Avenue (on the right hand side) and Jay St Metro Tech was locked off. Can you find the alternate route to 42 St Port Authority?
That's right instead of a direct link, we need to go 3 stops in the opposite direction to Broadway Junction, switch the grey line L train, go all the way to the end, all 16 stops, to 14 Str, switch back to the blue line and go 3 further stops on the blue line up to our destination... and we had 75 minutes.

Did I mention that everyone took that route. Everyone is every New Yorker from Brooklyn who had to take the Subway to work in Manhattan between 7:45 and 8:45. The subway stations typically do not have escalators, just stairs and we had our 21kg+ suit cases with us.

I knew this trip to the bus station would not be good, but wow this was the opposite of comfortable. At some point at Broadway Junction, we were stuck halfway up the stairs in precarious balance, because a young woman fell in the mob and was trampled. The police stepped in and warded her off from the rest of the crowd. Rough crowd, man.

In the end, after our brief life as sardines in a moving can, we made it to Port Authority with exactly 10 minutes to spare. Just to remind you, we left at 7:45am and arrived at 9:50am... we expected to be there by 8:20 or so! If someone "ever" complains that I am super early at the airport or what not, I will just send a link to this entry by phone.

An interesting tangent to this story is the fact that the corpse found in the subway was, in fact, the 4th body in as many days that was found in a public place in New York.

Dead man found on subway is fourth public corpse in four days

Now, I can promise you that I had nothing to do with this, although these occurrences may coincide with Isi and my stay in New York... :-/



The bus journey with the Greyhound to Boston was thankfully quite event-free and we arrived in Boston on time at 14:20 and made our way to Brookline, a part of the city that is close to both Harvard and MIT.
The area, we stayed in looks lovely, but admittedly, the appartment we stayed in is quite bad. Boston is so expensive that we could not afford anything better than a small, musty smelling basement. Unfortunately, the "kitchenette" that was advertised, consists of a fridge and a microwave. The host tries her best to accomodate, but after a flat like we had it in New York this is a rough step down... maybe it is good in some way, as it will make it easier to leave for Europe again ;)

We finished the day by getting some groceries and doing some laundry for the last 7 days of our trip. Isi will practice in the coming days how to make pasta in a microwave. First test, mac and cheese ;)

Tomorrow, we will visit my old friends Al and Hilary in Salem. Yes, the Salem from the witch hunts.