Adventure Part Two: Boston
I didn't want to write an entire post on just Boston - but if I'd included my subsequent adventures in New York in this post, it would've been far too long to read.
Boston
From Connecticut, I took trains (on my own – Konrad stayed in Connecticut with Sarah and her family), through New York, to Boston (bloody American public transport). It was a beautiful ride to New York (although it did get less beautiful as the journey went on); we passed many small cute towns (including one called ‘Pleasantville’) that I’d love to explore very slowly over the course of a few decades and very good beer in old clothes, and might, some day. The journey up to Boston was dark, so never mind that.
I went to Boston to meet my oldest little sister, Saoirse, who is my biological mum’s eldest daughter. However, because I didn’t have her phone number (not that I knew this: it turns out I had two of her friends’), this didn’t happen on my first day there; because she got suddenly and very sick, it didn’t happen on the third day; and it didn’t happen on the fourth day because I had to go back to New York that day (which I discovered that morning, happily dozing in bed, completely by chance, because I messed up the dates (I made the train with five minutes to spare)). However, it did happen for a few hours of the second day, and, having not seen my sister in two years, I was happy for this. It won’t be as long again, hopefully.
I really liked Boston. Its architecture is, not beautiful, but very in tune with the atmosphere of the city. I walked all over it; about fifteen miles’ walking a day, I think, tasting local beers, looking for good coffee shops and generally getting the sense of the place (the beer is great, and there do exist good coffee shops, even if they take a bit of finding). I walked up to Cambridge one day. On the way there, I stopped in at a fascinating bookshop on Massachusetts Avenue which sold, along with mainstream-left quasi-academic stuff like Chomsky and Michael Pollan, radical books about secret histories and suchlike (apparently aliens gave the Greeks some of their technologies. H’m). While I was browsing, someone burst in the door and told the guy working behind the counter (which was just by the door) that “that new vegetarian restaurant is giving away free food!” The guy couldn’t go, because he was working till late, but I asked and found out where the place was, and went.
It turned out that the restaurant was more of a café, although there were tables for meals. And it was not only vegetarian, but organic, carbon-neutral, Fair Trade, and probably gave any food approaching its sell-by date to the local homeless. There was free food because there was a private party going on, celebrating its grand opening. So I wasn’t allowed in, technically, but there was no bouncer, and it looked like such a lovely place that I felt my presence wouldn’t be objected to. So I went in, ordered some food, and started up some conversations. One girl there (called S.K.) was really interesting – she works in the restaurant’s other branch, in a town nearby – and is studying environmental management or something similar. However, she’s only doing this part-time, because she’s also working in this restaurant, and also running her own one-woman eco-friendly cleaning company. As far as I could make out, she’s doing all this with the goal of single-handedly saving the world. About which I thought, “And here’s me doing philosophy.” I think that there are very good arguments defending my spending my life doing something that’s not really making the world a much better place, but nonetheless, when I see someone really striving to make the world a better (/less bad) place, like her, I feel pretty useless.
I met a few other cool people in Boston – a German roommate in the hostel where I was staying, who’s a nurse and who’ll be a doctor when his turn comes; a Jewish girl in a coffee shop who argued well for Israel’s virtue; a trombonist in this same coffee shop who recommended me study music in Boston University (S.K. was also a trombonist – I think I met three trombonists in one day there, by complete coincidence); a barista who clearly loved his job and explained to me at great length how drip-coffee is made. I also snuck into Boston University’s music department and played piano for an hour or so every night, walked through the Charles River Reservation looking at the (MILLIONS OF) squirrels and thick flocks of tiny foraging birds, and wandered around Harvard.
I left Boston by train, back to New York, on the morning of my fourth day there.
Boston
From Connecticut, I took trains (on my own – Konrad stayed in Connecticut with Sarah and her family), through New York, to Boston (bloody American public transport). It was a beautiful ride to New York (although it did get less beautiful as the journey went on); we passed many small cute towns (including one called ‘Pleasantville’) that I’d love to explore very slowly over the course of a few decades and very good beer in old clothes, and might, some day. The journey up to Boston was dark, so never mind that.
I went to Boston to meet my oldest little sister, Saoirse, who is my biological mum’s eldest daughter. However, because I didn’t have her phone number (not that I knew this: it turns out I had two of her friends’), this didn’t happen on my first day there; because she got suddenly and very sick, it didn’t happen on the third day; and it didn’t happen on the fourth day because I had to go back to New York that day (which I discovered that morning, happily dozing in bed, completely by chance, because I messed up the dates (I made the train with five minutes to spare)). However, it did happen for a few hours of the second day, and, having not seen my sister in two years, I was happy for this. It won’t be as long again, hopefully.
I really liked Boston. Its architecture is, not beautiful, but very in tune with the atmosphere of the city. I walked all over it; about fifteen miles’ walking a day, I think, tasting local beers, looking for good coffee shops and generally getting the sense of the place (the beer is great, and there do exist good coffee shops, even if they take a bit of finding). I walked up to Cambridge one day. On the way there, I stopped in at a fascinating bookshop on Massachusetts Avenue which sold, along with mainstream-left quasi-academic stuff like Chomsky and Michael Pollan, radical books about secret histories and suchlike (apparently aliens gave the Greeks some of their technologies. H’m). While I was browsing, someone burst in the door and told the guy working behind the counter (which was just by the door) that “that new vegetarian restaurant is giving away free food!” The guy couldn’t go, because he was working till late, but I asked and found out where the place was, and went.
It turned out that the restaurant was more of a café, although there were tables for meals. And it was not only vegetarian, but organic, carbon-neutral, Fair Trade, and probably gave any food approaching its sell-by date to the local homeless. There was free food because there was a private party going on, celebrating its grand opening. So I wasn’t allowed in, technically, but there was no bouncer, and it looked like such a lovely place that I felt my presence wouldn’t be objected to. So I went in, ordered some food, and started up some conversations. One girl there (called S.K.) was really interesting – she works in the restaurant’s other branch, in a town nearby – and is studying environmental management or something similar. However, she’s only doing this part-time, because she’s also working in this restaurant, and also running her own one-woman eco-friendly cleaning company. As far as I could make out, she’s doing all this with the goal of single-handedly saving the world. About which I thought, “And here’s me doing philosophy.” I think that there are very good arguments defending my spending my life doing something that’s not really making the world a much better place, but nonetheless, when I see someone really striving to make the world a better (/less bad) place, like her, I feel pretty useless.
I met a few other cool people in Boston – a German roommate in the hostel where I was staying, who’s a nurse and who’ll be a doctor when his turn comes; a Jewish girl in a coffee shop who argued well for Israel’s virtue; a trombonist in this same coffee shop who recommended me study music in Boston University (S.K. was also a trombonist – I think I met three trombonists in one day there, by complete coincidence); a barista who clearly loved his job and explained to me at great length how drip-coffee is made. I also snuck into Boston University’s music department and played piano for an hour or so every night, walked through the Charles River Reservation looking at the (MILLIONS OF) squirrels and thick flocks of tiny foraging birds, and wandered around Harvard.
I left Boston by train, back to New York, on the morning of my fourth day there.