Boston :: USA
Where everyone is Irish.
Places: Boston & Salem.
Coolest thing I did: Superbowl Sunday. The commercials alone were worth it.
Coolest thing I didn´t know: No one was actually burnt at the stake during the Salem Witch trials. Several hangings, one pressing but no burnings. What a cop out.
I was supposed to leave Toronto the day after my work and lease ended but events conspired against me at the very start of my US trip. Thanks to several delays along the way I ended up being stuck in TO for an extra 4 or 5 days, but had a very good time being there and not working. It's hard leaving all those people I've met over the last 12 months, it's been a good time in my life. There's the downside of having to build up a whole new bank of conversation with new people but then there's the upside of all my jokes being new again. On the balance I'm pretty happy to be starting my big trip in the US.
So the background is I have a flight from LA to Dublin on the 16th of March and the time in between is all mine. At almost the last moment I booked myself on a Greyhound from Toronto and Boston (as opposed to New York), not recalling the last time I was on a long bus ride just how dull it can be. Thirteen and a half hours is a long time to spend on a bus through lots of dead tress and abandoned farm houses but it beat the $500 plane ticket option. I have to say that it's not the upper echelons of US society that catch the bus and it was pretty obvious from the get go that there were some weirdos on my bus. At one point the bus driver stopped the bus because this woman was screaming at her to turn the lights on and we had to wait while the police came and picked her up. Add to this I'd only eaten from Dunkin' Donuts, Subway and McDonalds in the last 12 hours and all my preconceptions of the US were being fulfilled. Thank god that ride ended.
The first thing that strikes you about Boston is the city is a mix of very old and ultra new being torn to pieces to make it more livable. The rump of Boston itself (wedged between the Charles River and the harbor) has been riven open with new freeways and had big tunnels poked through it. Apparently it's been going on for about two decades now so no-one seems to notice just what an unfinished state it's in. You kind of get used to the juxtaposition of freeways, parks and buildings as you walk along but it makes it very hard to navigate.
My first day was spent doing the tourist walks and learning just how little I know about American history. Here is the site of the Boston Massacre, here is where the Declaration of Independence was first read out, and so on. I'm trying to catch up quickly, but I'm constantly hearing new names and events and just trying to mash them into some kind of narrative in my head. I think the idea of conservation of historical sites came very late to Boston as there tends to be two story historical buildings wedged between a couple of skyscrapers of at least 20 odd floors. It's not a bad thing, it shows that the city has continued to progress and be a centre of commerce for the US but it does make it very hard to take pictures that just aren't all black.
The strangest thing is the turning of old public buildings into commercial sites to help fund their preservation. The beautiful old stone town hall was replaced by a concrete structure that redefines ugly and the old site has actually been taken over by an upmarket Steak House. I'm not sure if that's admirable or not but at least it's still there.
I've noticed that this is a city of joggers. I've been unable to take a picture without getting either a random jogger or an American flag in it.
It was pointed out to me last night that by mingling with the locals strictly at bars I'm only going to meet the local drunks. While this is true I can't think of another way to do it. The nightlife has been excellent, even if the beer is American. Some of the local pubs brew their own, which has been quite acceptable but if that's not on offer then it's all the generic crap that passes as beer here. The best night out so far was Superbowl Sunday. I didn't realise so many of the places would be holding organised parties so I ended up in a row of pubs on Union Street and found the first one that would let me in. I ended up propping myself on the bar between a couple of blokes from South Boston and a couple of girls from North Boston and much merriment and Guinness resulted. I learned that most people from Boston claim to be Irish but that none of them actually are. I also learned that people have been browbeaten into thinking their accent is ugly that they've just started to accept it. I have to say I find the broad accent far easier on the ears than the ones you get on TV and was quite popular for saying so. I also learned that telling people from South Boston that Guns and Roses are a second rate AC/DC is dangerous. Lucky I don't think anyone understood a word I said.
The US ads for the Superbowl are a contest in who can be funniest. I can't describe most of them but I hope they get played wherever you are as there were some gems.
I spent a day walking around Cambridge and the jewel of the US education system that is Harvard. When you come from a Uni that has such a utilitarian feel as UTS and it's 28 story office block then you can't help but be gobsmacked that people actually study in nice looking places. My head was telling me how elitist the whole place is but my heart was all for all the thinking that must go on there. I also found myself back there at night hearing the philosopher Kwame Appiah talk about his book Cosmopolitanism in the Harvard book store. I felt pretty inspired to do some hard thinking about stuff but didn't manage to do much. Instead I went to the pub for tea and watched basketball.
Just down the street from the beauty of Harvard is the pure geekiness of MIT. I had planned to walk around the buildings much like I did at it's more humanities based cousin but you get lost very quickly and soon I found myself wandering around the basements of the buildings watching people in lab coats weld things, shoot things with lasers and things like that. It was like watching people go for their PhD in Mad Science. I didn't see any very big computers but it was still very cool.
I should also mention my trip out to Salem. I went out there for the witch trial related tourism but found out that it's all a bit of a scam. All they want to tell you about is their proud maritime history. I didn't want to hear about boats, I wanted to hear about (and if possible see) witches being burnt at the stake. While I learned some stuff by reading plates nailed to walls I didn't really see all that much witch-related stuff. It was, however, a nice town, but that didn't really justify the trip out. I did learn that the whole thing was a bit of a cock up. Apparently one of the local preachers became a sort of expert on witches and published THE textbook on witchery in the late 1690s. This inspired two young local girls to have a bit of a joke and pretend to be possessed by the devil. When they were cornered they fingered a local slave (a half black, half Indian woman) who was hung for witchcraft. The girls then decided to see off quite a few more people and the accusations started flying thick and fast as everyone in town got in on the act. It was only when the governors wife was fingered by someone in some sort of plea bargain that the madness stopped (can't be hanging any rich people, after all). I especially liked the fact you could have "spectral testimony" meaning if you were the only one who heard a spirit tell you someone was a witch then no one could dispute you. Funny if it still didn't happen, only now you call people 'terrorist' instead of 'witch'.
So far the only history I've put together is there were these blokes called the Puritans, who didn't like the king of England persecuting their religion so they got on a boat and came to American where they could have the liberty to persecute whomever they liked. Then something happened and there was a war with the French. Then the local high-and-mighties got annoyed at the English for taxing them to pay for this war with the French so they dumped a whole lot of tea into Boston harbor. Then there was a war with the English. Then the US was a country. I'm sure I'm missing some bits but you get the gist.
Oh yeah, one of these local high-and-mighties (Sam Adams) has a beer named after him.
On balance, my first stop in the US has been pretty good to me. Tomorrow I'm on a bus to the city that never sleeps and I'm sure there will be lots more to write there.