The first part of my trip is over. I’m back in Germany. It feels strange because I didn’t expect to be back so soon.
Like so many other things in this trip me visiting Germany again so soon was not part of the plan. But I am very happy I did.I had to leave the U.S. because my 90-day visa waiver expired. I hoped to extend it by going to Canada and re-entering the U.S. bus as I learned going to Canada doesn’t count as ‘leaving the U.S.’ in terms of visa issues. Interesting. Instead of cutting my trip short (skipping the West coast) and flying directly to Mexico, I decided to fly back to Germany for a little vacation.
I uploaded the second batch of photos: mostly Toronto, New York and Boston. There were too few photos from Canada to put them into a separate section. Enjoy.
After Toronto I went back to New York. At the border my concerns about my 90-day visa waiver turned out to be justified. I did not get a new visa waiver when I entered the US. Therefore I will have to leave the country within a few weeks. There’s also news from Sony about my laptop. They replaced the screen. But they managed to break the harddisk. Apparently now all my data on it is lost (I got backup of the most important stuff).
So, I made the decision to come back to Germany for a little vacation and relax from all the chaos. I’ll need to reinstall all my software and finally take care of my taxes. I will be flying to Berlin in a few weeks and also spend some time at home. I probably won’t come to Heidelberg though. I’ll let you know when I know the exact travel dates…
As usual (during traveling in general / me traveling in particular) unforeseen things happen. My plans change on a daily basis but then again that’s part of the fun…
First, my almost new laptop broke which is why I am mostly offline for the moment, relying on the occasional free wifi to go online with my trusted Android. Getting the laptop picked up for repair would deserve a blog post on its own… In short, I spent much time on the phone with some nice but clueless kid in a call center somewhere in India. The phone connection wasn’t good and after endless spelling of my not-so-short surname, address, serial number of laptop, model number, date of purchase, phone number, etc… the guy suddenly asked: “You are from Germany. May I ask you a question, sir?” That’s after he asked my a dozen questions, so I was confused. “Do you know a band called Rammstein?”. I reply yes and what follows is another half a dozen questions about their popularity in Germany now and back then, their songs and especially the lyrics (“Du hast…”, “Du hast mich…”, “Du hast mich gefragt…”). Remind you, all this chit chat on a hotline where conversations are randomly recorded and reviewed for quality control purposes. Anyway, the laptop will be gone for a few weeks which feels like cold withdrawal to me…
Second, my U.S. SIM card doesn’t work in Canada. Pretty harmless, especially since I rely a lot more on wifi (that’s easy to find just about anywhere) than texting/phone.
Third, my credit card. When I shipped off the laptop at some FedEx, I forgot my credit card there. I realized that about an hour later. Thankfully, someone gave it to the manager and I got it back. Lucky me. However, since that incident the card is declined wherever I try to use it. No good. Did someone go on a shopping spree with it? Need to call VISA and find out…
Four, might have some bigger impact on my plans. My visa waiver for the US is expiring sooner than expected. I got a three months waiver when I entered the United States. But I was hoping when I leave the country and go to Canada, then come back to the US I would get a new waiver valid for another three months. Apparently not. For certain administrative purposes the US and Canada count as the same. Now I have two options: cut my trip short and move on to Mexico (skipping Chicago, Vancouver, California etc.) or to leave the country by plane for a short ‘vacation of the vacation’ and then come back to resume the journey.
I made it to Montreal, Quebec. My first time in Canada. What can I say? It’s cold and there is plenty of snow. What a surprise… My beloved Adidas sneakers (only pair of shoes besides flip flops) weren’t made for the Canadian winter. My toes are frozen stiff most of the time and my favorite sport here is jumping over the not-so-small puddles of melt water you find everywhere in the streets. Which raises an important question: where the hell do those come from at -10 to -20° C?! Mysterious Canada… The more sensible pedestrians wear gumboots which deprives them of the fun to jump their way through the city. Montreal must be the first place I visit where much of the window display of shoe shops is reserved for the wide variety of fashionable gumboots.
One of those shops I saw in the ‘underground city’ which is a large underground complex, mostly shops and food courts, stretching across many blocks and built in the sixties and seventies. It keeps people warm in winter and cool in summer. Pretty convenient.
Besides shoes, underground shops and that karaoke bar I went to (was too sober to sing) there is another reason to visit Montreal: it is one of the friendliest places I have been to in years. People are incredibly friendly to strangers and go out of their way to help you. It makes you feel very welcome here. None of that grumpiness I often criticize Germany for. But it gets better. Montreal is one of the few truly bilingual places I remember to have visited (then again, my memory is short). I might be traumatized by my visits to Paris but approaching a French speaker with English and him/her switching to English with a super-friendly smile feels … well … completely unnatural and almost suspicious to me. Amazing.
These were my first impressions of Montreal. Didn’t take any photos. Party because it gets dark here early, partly because at this time of the year the city looks pretty drab and gray. I would love to come back in summer. Tomorrow I am moving on to Toronto.
I arrived in Boston two days ago. It’s cold here. Like very cold. But I have been warned… The first day was sunny but today it was snowing quite a bit. I almost don’t dare to travel further north…
Boston seems like a pretty cool city. To be more precise I am staying in Cambridge, right between Harvard and the MIT. Here, I am visiting Evelyn + boyfriend. We studied together biology in Heidelberg and haven’t seen each other in well over 7 years. Evelyn lives with eight other people (plus their more or less sexually active boy- and girlfriends) in a beautiful house which I wished had a better insulation. Sorry to go into more detail here but the complete lack of insulation is something that has always been puzzling me about the US. When I first experienced that in a bitter cold winter in Knoxville, Tennessee (yes, Kathy’s basement aka ‘the bunker’) I thought ‘Oh well, this is Tennessee. It’s pretty warm most of the year, so people don’t want to invest much money in insulation for the few cold weeks in winter.’ But my conclusion was proven wrong. No matter where I go, it’s all the same. Even here in Boston which is known for its cold winters the concept of insulation appears to be unheard of. I was generously provided with an electric heater (with remote control, wow!) But the moment you switch it off the room temperature again races towards the freezing point. My sleeping bag and some blankets keep me warm at night and during the day the plentiful available gin tonic (this is a student house, hello…) does that job.
One of the first things you notice when you get here is that this is a university town. It seems like almost everyone here is either a student or a post doc. When I took the subway after I arrived here, two people next to me were talking about antibodies and viruses. Ha, almost feels like Heidelberg. I like university cities. Also, there are plenty of non-Starbucks cafes. I haven’t seen much of the city yet but I am looking forward to spend some more time here when I get back. But for now I am already leaving. Next stop: Canada!
Today I have become an analog nomad. Therefore, for the next couple of weeks I won’t be able to upload photos and will be offline most of the time (I’ll give more details later). Being offline for extended periods of time is a highly unusual feeling for me. But perhaps it also has some good sides. I might finally start reading the ton of books I am carrying around with me, take more photos and do a little bit more sightseeing instead of spending all day in Starbucks in front of the computer…
I have uploaded a whole bunch of photos from the places I have visited in the U.S. so far. I’ll add more pictures over time… Check them out at the photo section.
Just some general comments about my blog:
In case you haven’t noticed, yet: New blog posts do not always appear at the top. This is because sometimes I take a bit longer to write about some places I visited earlier (I am still looking for the right words to describe Knoxville, TN). So, it may be worth checking if there are any new posts further down the page. I send out a tweet with a link whenever I post something new: http://www.twitter.com/splette.
Some people have complained about not being able to comment. The comment function was a little hidden in the past but should work in general. I have added a little bubble next to the headlines to make it easier to find.
If you have any other suggestions for improvements, let me know!
Recently, one of my faithful blog readers suggested I should add a little sex & crime to my reporting. Here we go. Thursday night I did some major bar-hopping with a friend who is visiting from San Francisco and my couchsurfing host Akimbo in Manhattan. I don’t remember how I managed to spend those $100 on food and drinks in just one night. At some point I decided I was done partying and went home to my couch in Brooklyn. It’s a rather industrial area. While walking from the subway station to my place I caught those youngsters on tape stealing a traffic sign. I am pretty sure this is a criminal act – my work is done here. (Yes, I know I know, this is a little lame for a crime story. Hopefully the sex tape will be more exciting… 🙂 )
PS. I cut the funniest part of the video which was my continuous burping in the background. It was just too embarrassing.
Update: Due to high demand, I changed my mind. Here is the missing sound:
Hey, I'm Thomas but my friends call me Splette. So can you, if you manage to pronounce it. I am a travel-addict, always looking for new challenges and experiences. I recently graduated and since then I'm on my mission to backpack overland from Canada to Tierra del Fuego in a year or two. Hence this website.
