Last week

another picture from last week. to the right you see the orange line station where we always get on the train. quite some snow!! and today it almost felt like spring....

Who's crazier?

above a picture when your thickest wintercoat, a hat (or 2), a scarf and gloves were not necessary. its suddenly real cold!! -15C (9F) this morning, but combined with the wind feeling like -28C (-8F). whatever the latter means... its just cold! finally i can wear all those nice hats and gloves and scarfs... :D

last night we were in a very full orange line. it was so full that i could not hold myself onto something, but since there were so many people, that wasnt really necessary anyways. at some point a guy nearby with headphones on started singing some musical song pretty loud. some eye rolling and giggles were exchanged between other passengers, as he went on and on and on. then he got a call, and everyone got to join in on his conversation as he was talking soo very loud! it was mostly about nothing, and the person he was talking to apparently was waiting at the station we were soon to reach. the guy stepped out of the train and screamed her name several times. really, really loud. at that point another guy suddenly shouted; "enough!! enough! stop it! no more barbara or whatever her name is. no more singing!! there are other people in this train. enough!" now we suddenly had a screaming person on either side of us, and i wasnt sure anymore which one was more crazy. the singing guy sort of ignored the angry guy, and just continued his loud phone conversation with the person who stepped into the train somewhere else. the angry guy did not like that, and while we were approaching our final stop, he ostentatiously (this word sounds better in dutch) took out his phone.... if possible, he was speaking even more loudly than the singing guy, reporting the above... now more people were looking weary at him than the singing guy. after a thorough description of singing guy (which in itself could be a reason for singing guy to become very angry, but he didnt seem to be the angry kind, just weird and oblivious), angry guy went on to report that he was afraid (!!), as he spoke up to singing guy and feared there would be retaliation of some sort. by now, the train had reached its final stop and everyone was rushing out. he remained on the platform, on the phone. quite weird if you are so afraid of the person opposite of you, now coming out too.... but... singing guy just happily walked on, still talking on the phone, while the angry guy...? i dont know... but he surely won the weirdness competition, in my opinion...

Orange line

this is the train i take everyday to get into boston. bostons skyline you can see in the background!

it is a few stations after the one i get on, where they store all the orange trains that are not in use.... you walk above them when you leave this particular station (you can see the reflection of the glass, unfortunately).

its so hot here! usually im ok with it, but at this very moment... beeehhh.. maybe its also my hote computer, and we were using the oven quite a bit this evening (making dinner, baking bread, etc etc). but as usual, i get cold just a few minutes after we turn on the airconditioning....

good night!

Its snowing!!

it started snowing this afternoon. tiny, very very tiny flocks, but many of them. they covered the trees but not the streets.... its still snowing right now, but its mixed with rain, it seems, and still not much on the ground. i do hope it looks like this when we walk to the subway station tomorrow morning... that would be nice! this is once again an old pic from january. i spent quite some time going through old pictures this evening, and not one was to my liking. grrr... so i settled for this one. 

although i have walked this path almost every day now for the past 1.5 years, it was only this time that i really noticed the houses behind the train. suddenly they looked cute, and very american. i guess the snow made them stand out. time for bed now. hope to wake up to a fresh pack of snow....

Park street

last week or so we were sitting at park street, waiting for the train to come, the train in the other direction was just leaving (im thinking really hard where we went or came from, i cant remember, and i think its odd we were waiting for a red line, but we clearly were, as you can see...; our home is on the orange line). in weekends and evenings trains come less frequent, and its not that crowded, so i felt more free to take some pics.

when we were in boston for the very first time, we rented an apartment close to the park street stop. it took a while to figure out this station (in fact we didnt manage to figure it out during that week). you can walk to the orange line, the red line, and upstairs you can catch the green line. but it was not clear to me, at all, how to get from one platform to the other. especially when arriving on the green line "outbound"... complete desorientation. "i see the platform i want to go to now, but HOW do i get there?!" to complicate matters even further, there are 4 different green lines "inbound", and i had no clue how people knew which green line goes where (then i found out they have letters, B, C, D, and E, and there are 2 platforms, B & C stop on one side, behind each other, D & E on the other. but this took me months!!). the designation "inbound"& "outbound" was weird to me too at first, they sort of randomly choose the center of the city, and depending on that, directions are given as in- or outbound (sort of like up- or downtown, i guess, only boston is just so tiny!)

hmmm, i guess this is boring, if you have never been to park street in boston. if you ever go; remember that you are allowed to cross the tracks of the green line at park street. you dont have to wait until a train arrives, going in on one side, and leaving on the other..... :) (when someone told me that, i was just glad not being the only one who thinks this station is very complicated...).

Lousy parking

when walking to the subway one morning we saw this car... parked like that!! i think the photo does not entirely show how ridiculous this was, and how, relatively, steep.... i guess he/she didnt fit in the normal way you are supposed to park you car, and came up with this solution instead. im just wondering if it was sheer frustration and anger, or perhaps also just for the fun of it...?

we once got a ticket for parking in the wrong direction. something that does not matter (anymore) in the netherlands, you can park however you like, so we were not aware that here that can get you a ticket for that. luckily for us, the ticket never made it to "the system" tim found out when he called to pay the fine (what was it? 20 or 40 dollars or so?), so we never paid... we thus were sure this car would either be towed, or at least get a ticket. but when we got back home in the evening, the car was still parked like this...

around our subway station are 788 parking spots, and they are always, always all occupied (during the week, that is). for some you still have to walk a good 5 minutes to the station, and parking costs you 5.50 per day. i just calculated that that is more than 20,000 parking dollars per week (!!), just for this station. wish that would go straight to me.... !

Between giants

i have posted a picture of the old state house before, but i guess never in such a way that you can see how cute and tiny it actually is. the afternoon sun was falling through the tall buildings just to illuminate it, and i thought it was so pretty! (in reality it looked better, of course)

i think i wrote it before, but i will write it again: its not the state house anymore, its now the entrance to the subway, orange line! (upstairs there is a museum). it is not really obvious that it is a T stop (at least not to me), so the very first time we went there it was only because i had seen a picture of it in some travel guide, telling me that it was the "state street" stop. and how delighted i was when indeed there were the turnstiles allowing you entrance to the subway downstairs, well underneath the building...
normally there is quite some traffic on this road, but it was temporarily blocked for the veterans day parade... good for me, otherwise the big cars would have blocked the view! :)

 nowadays its dark before the clock hits 5, buuuuuhhh!! :(

Soap shop

this is at downtown crossing where we got on the orange line tonight after dinner. the soap shop currently has pink led lights around all of their windows. in the netherlands that would mean something else.. or is that only when the lights are red? i find it funny and always have to think of the red light district when i see this shop now... not what the average american would like to be associated with, i guess, when going to this shop!

those soap shops have an overwhelming smell, coming towards you if you are still far away, yegh. i prefer to stay out of this shop. they have millions of different hand sanitizer; different color, scents, size etc. same for soap, room refresher, etc etc etc.... but essentially its all the same; this shop could greatly reduce its size, i would say... :D

Saint Patrick....

... is taking a nap!
so, its saint patrick's day, and wikipedia can tell you everything about that day! perhaps 50% of the people at work wore green (i rediscovered i have green shoes..!) and in the evening i saw what this day really means to bostonians; wearing green shirts/hats/wigs, going to irish pubs (or stand in line to get into one), and drink.... there were so many people on the streets! the weather was surprisingly mild; mane cafes had their windows open and at one place people were even sitting outside!! (although with jackets)

we just got home, and above what i saw in the orange line... (in real the belly was much greener!!), and someone sleeping behind his drycleaned shirts.....

Snow umbrella

ah, for a change; this morning we had some snow again! but not by far as much as was predicted.... a bit disappointing... :) schoolchildren had yet another "snow day" today; the schools were closed because of the snow... if im not mistaken, it was already the 6th snow day of this school year, and since you have to goto school a minimum number of days, another snow day is only possible by making up for that day later in the year.... tomorrow should be fine, but then the snow is supposed to come back on saturday!

tim doesnt like these photos, but i like my pink umbrella; this is on our way to the orange line from our apartment.

TD Garden

the TD Garden is next to North Station, where i now get off the orange line and then take a shuttle to the lab in charlestown. when its crowded at north station, you know something is going on at the TD garden. often there are basketball games, which you can see by the sportshirts everyone is wearing. yesterday there was a concert from justin bieber! thats some teenage boy with a golden throat, apparently (thats the dutch way of saying that someone can sing well; i guess its not an english expression). but i never heard him sing and only know him for his hairdo. you can now goto the hairdresser and ask for "the bieber-cut"; it makes guys having huge amounts of sleek hair that seems to be artificially spread over their head, which makes them having to "flip" it every few seconds, as to keep it out of their faces... (here a video about the famous hair-flip; but internet here is so crappy that i havent seen it myself) anyways, tim said there were huge amounts of young girls going to his concert. would have loved to see that and taking a picture of all those girls lining up in front of this huge sign.. but when i was there, there was practically nobody... 

i found some noteworthy facts about the TD garden; it opened in 1995, has a maximum of 19,580 seats, 13 escalators and 7 elevators. and most importantly; 17 women's restrooms, and as much men's. just so you know....

Subway office

this is at downtown crossing. i like this station a lot, and i think every time i am there, i take at least one picture. usually they turn out crappy, but i keep trying as there really is something to this station. i have been wanting to picture a subway office for a while now, but never dared. now i finally had my chance, as this office was empty, but i could take only one shot as the train was just arriving.

i think there is so much to see! someone scratched the glass, and what about the note "please keep area clean"? also the car calendar i find funny... shouldnt it be one with subwaytrains? all these offices are so sad.. and all have the same ugly, old-fashioned, PINKish telephone, here not so well visible, but in fact the main reason i wanted a picture of such an office... :)

when we just got here, i once wrote to the subway office; tim had bought a monthly pass in the last week of the month.. for 59 dollars, only to find out it was valid only for that week. a stupid mistake, maybe. but... a weekly pass you can buy at any day of the week, and logic told us a monthly pass would work the same way. and if not, surely the machine would warn you? unfortunately the office wrote me back that they were glad i like the MBTA (i thought i would increase my chances of getting a refund by telling them how great they are), but that a monthly pass is for a calendar-month, and explained me extensively what a calendar month is.... buuuhhhh!

Charlie card

oh, we got spoiled by so many days of great weather... i forgot how annoying rain is.. but now i know again. a rainy window view i had from the lab, the subway, the apartment... rain rain rain... the pool is sooo full its almost overflowing! yesterday evening we swam in it, pfew, that was rather cold (it is not heated).
luckily i dont bike to work... :) no, actually i miss that soooo much! i wish i could... so i started biking in the 24hr fitness, because it cant be that i return home and dont know how to bike anymore. but biking on a bike that doesnt move is really soooo boring! instead, i have a charlie card. that card, which costs me only 30 dollars/month (the other 30 dollars are paid by the university) allows me to go anywhere in boston by subway or bus! it is named after a character in a protest song dating back from 1948, "Charlie on the MTA". it was written to protest a fare increase; not only did you have to pay to enter the subway system (10 cents), but also to leave you had to pay an exit fare (5 cents). so, the song is about charlie, who has enough money to enter the subway, but does not have enough to exit and thus rides the T forever. here are the lyrics. and if i wanted to, i can ride the T forever with my charlie card as well :)
i had read about charlie somewhere, and thought i knew a very interesting piece of information not known by many others.. but... having been to many places with my charlie card by now, i saw the story explained already on several stations.

No exit

at state street, orange line (as can be seen above). not that i thought it was an exit in the first place, but now it made me wonder what is behind that wall! there is currently more police at the subway stations since they hypothesize that airports nowadays are so well protected against terrorists, it is likely that terrorists shift their focus to crowded subway stations. so, they every now and then take a bunch of policemen-machoguys and plant them behind a table at the entrance of a subway station. then they pick out people that they think need their bags searched (see previous post). besides, as extensively described in the newspaper this morning, they are testing gases in subway tunnels, as there is not only fear of bad people blowing up trains, but also of biological and chemical attacks, which are "just as lethal and perhaps harder to combat". what they do is releasing inert, odorless gas and particle tracers into the subway system and then they study how fast it spreads and when its gone again. apparently they already did that in decemeber, but since airflow changes based on weather, they want to see whether and how its now different....
well, it started raining yesterday and is supposed not to stop before tomorrow... will they also test it when its hot and dry again?

North station

at north station i change from the orange line to the slow green line. in fact i can also stay in the orange line to Ruggles, but then i have to either catch a bus or walk 20 minutes. the buses here dont keep their schedule very well, and thus i almost always take the green line, however slow.... :) besides, I prefer north station over Ruggles. and usually tim is already there waiting for me..
what i notice here, is that people do not like to sit next to me. whenever there are free seats available, people next to me move away. the first 3 months i thought there was something specifically wrong with me. so then it is good again to have american colleagues... :) apparently many americans have "problem with personal space" and thus keep as much distance from strangers as possible (unless the train is really really full; then they just push themselves in, as everywhere else). pfew. that was good to hear... :) i also asked if i am expected to do the same when sitting next to someone and another free spot becomes available, but they said i am not.. pfew again... (at first i though i should have listened to the advice in my "orientation" handbook, namely "do not use any perfume, as americans are oversensitive to that". ah well, maybe it is me after all... :S

Bike seat

entering the orange line at north station through oak grove, 12 minutes long (according to the website of oak grove village), i wondered why this guy held his bike like this, his front wheel on a seat. it was not that he was stuck or something, because he also just left at oak grove station. maybe he just thought his bike deserved a seat? he didnt think his bike deserved the escalator, instead he carried it up the stairs.
right now it is 11 in the evening, and still almost 30 degrees and very humid. sleeping will be difficult once again....

Oranje oranje!

orange line, american flag, 2 dutch and 1 german (taking the picture) in orange... ready for the soccer match... ! and then we lost... :( ah well... maybe it was because the bright orange bag i am holding in fact is our laundry bag that says "grimy". but it is the most orange thing i possess!!!
too bad weekend is over.

Orange line

this is the first (or last) stop of the orange line, and close to our new apartment! the complex is thus called "oak grove village". the orange line is much much faster than the bus and/or the green line. unfortunately, i still have to take the green after the orange... most likely there is a faster route, but i am a bit lazy to explore, and actually enjoy my pre- and after work reading.
today the netherlands won from brazil! i missed the game yet again, but i saw many people dressed in orange, and 2 girls in tiny orange skirts (bavariameisjes?) and enormous dutch flags. i promised to watch next game... maybe together with all the other dutch here. im actually very curious to see that... but surely i wont wear orange (dont have any orange!).