Despite Team Ramen picking Hong Kong and Singapore for our post-graduation travels, 95% for the dim sum and other asian cuisine, we also figured focusing on post-British-colonial-megaurban-Asia might uncover some interesting cultural mishmashyness.

So here we have it, episode 1, our elevator. Here’s the photo (from right outside our apartment), and let’s deconstruct below!

So the strange thing going on here (and props to Boyce for noticing this first) is that the numbers in Chinese and English DO NOT MATCH. It says “13th floor” in English, but the numerals in Chinese are for the number “14″. Um. Kind of strange that those do not say the same thing, right??

Except then we realized that we are “really” on floor 14, because looking at the buttons inside the elevator, there’s a G floor (where we enter/exit) and the next one up is 1, British-style. Apparently in Chinese it’s the same way we do it in America, where the ground floor is 1 and the next one up is 2?

So the answer to the question of “What floor we live on” would be:

14 – in Chinese
13 – in British
14 – in American, confusingly (for us) not listed on the signage, because this is a former BRITISH colony, yo. (So is America, but I’m pretty sure the Brits left before they could imperialize their elevator systems on us). Of course, in American we would also have to be on the 14th floor because there IS NO 13th STORY, DUH!! Did no one here read Sideways Stories from Wayside School?

While procrastinating on your senior thesis, buy plane tickets for 2 weeks to Philly.  Tell Facebook immediately.

Make a countdown-till-you’re-in-Philly clock webpage, using your CS skillz for silly and not evil.

When the time comes, pack 7 outfits: 5 for daytime, 2 for partying only, and your workout clothes.  Bring your makeup.

Have 2 groups of friends in Philly each with their own house in two different neighborhoods, and spend ~50% of nights at each house, in order to a) maximally confuse everyone as to your location and b) not wear out your welcome.

Head to New York with your Best Fucking Friend and one more friend, and walk around the financial district, realizing the friend you’re crashing with is an analyst on Wall Street and thus the 1%.  Make jokes about how you will occupy his apartment tomorrow.

Notice lots of NYC stereotypes on the subway. [Pictured: businessman, sleeping asian lady.]

Sit on a bench and eat nuts from a street cart.  Be creeped out by the squirrel who wants to get in on it.

Go out to dinner at Union Square with an old friend and her girlfriend.  Meet up with a college friend who didn’t believe you were in NYC until you texted over some photographic evidence:  

Barhop your way around the East Village.  Talk to some strangers who turn out to be very strange. Take a cab.

In the morning, eat dosa from a street cart.  Check into it on FourSquare.

Walk through Central Park.  Climb a tree in a miniskirt.

Sit on the steps of the Met but don’t go inside — you can always do that all the future times you’ll be in NYC.

Actually occupy your friend’s apartment and sit in the dark talking all afternoon.  Watch TV.

Go out at 10 PM.  Get okonomiyaki at Otafuku because they’re sold out of takoyaki.  Get free okonomiyaki because the dude who ordered earlier never picked up his food.  Try to get into a bar on a Saturday night, but fail because it’s too crowded.

6 Follow Me by Designer Drugs Official

Go to Webster Hall to dance, and realize everyone there is 17 with fake IDs.  Get danced on by a guy who won’t go away.  Dance with a 50 year old man until it gets creepy instead of ironic.  Fall in love with DJ Jess and his adorable antics and entourage of cute stripping manic pixie dream girls.  Go upstairs to the 3rd dancefloor and sweat to Designer Drugs.

Leave the club.  Go get Ukranian food at 4 AM and take joy in the fact that it’s as crowded in a restaurant in the East Village at 4 AM as it would be at 7 PM anywhere else in the world.  Wonder if the couple next to you is on a date at 4 AM because they wake up this early or are still awake this late.  Have some perogis and cabbage soup.

Toy with the idea of staying up all night and watch the sun rise on the Brooklyn bridge, but give up, subway home and sleep instead.

Wake up and go to BRUNCH at an overpriced but delicious place in midtownish. Tweet about brunch.  Walk to Penn Station and bus back to Philly.

Meet up with friend group #2 in Philly.  Catch up on the first chunk of a year’s worth of gossip.  Hold a real gun for the first time.  Watch your friends play video games. Finally shower and change.  Head to the first of four parties that night, with EVERYONE.

Have ridiculous conversations. “Bread snob!?!?!!  It’s not even good bread!”

Exchange scandalous stories in a group of people you know extremely well and those you’ve just met.  Meet all the relevant new friends and girlfriends from the past year.

Hide in a room and try on tutus.

Head to the second party, then the third, then the fourth, which is where everyone wants to stay. Remember all the people you partied with a year and a half ago and have not talked to since.  Talk about programming.  

Watch a girl throw up on your friend’s shoes.  Talk about Japan.  Freak out that people are smoking cigarettes inside and putting them out on a wood floor. Don’t burn down the house, though.

Find out one of your new friends is in a band you have listened to before:
The War On Drugs, Come To The City by dance yrself clean 1983

The next day, don’t change out of your skirts and 3 inch heels and walk 2.5 miles to get dim sum.  Go shopping at Anthro and buy some fleece-lined leggings because both your shopping buddies say they are amazing.  Buy some $10 sneakers at Payless because you didn’t pack anything besides heels and your feet are sore.

Eat Korean, Thai, Chinese, Indian anywhere and everywhere in Center City.

Don’t respond to emails for a week and a half.

Walk between the two houses you’re staying in and realize it takes 45 minutes – learn the bus routes between them.  Sometimes spend too much money on taxis.

Watch 2 seasons of Misfits, mostly in your pajamas, and make eggs and toast and lots of tea.  Become addicted to chocolate chip meringues that your friend’s roommate made.

Camp out in front of the space heater.

Watch Breaking Bad alone in a dark and quiet house and get extremely creeped out. Catch up to your friends and lie in bed watching Breaking Bad together this time. During the credits, shout out the chemical name of each atomic symbol that appears on the screen.

Get lots of sleep because you have no bedtime and no job.

Get five people together for ice cream at Philly Flavors, and then help a new friend move a bed six blocks.  Walk with two people carrying the box-spring in front and three carrying the mattress behind.  Wonder how this is the funniest thing that’s happened yet.  Lust after a cool map in the room where the bed came from. Borrow a car and spend 20 minutes conjecturing about how to turn the lights on.  Go get cheese fries afterwards at Sketch and have the worst food hangover the next day.  Eat a cookie in the car and start a rumor that your friend stole it.

Take the bus once in your pajamas.

Take the bus once wearing pipe cleaners as glasses.

Talk to your friends about Sweden and what Zuck is like IRL, but attempt to stop yourself before they get too bored.  Learn the names of two new Berlin DJs. Listen to people’s stories from work and be fascinated because they aren’t in your field, so how this all works is news to you.

Enjoy watching the current stories unfold over the 2 weeks you spend there.

Have a hard time explaining where you are from to new people. Possible options:
- NOT Philly
- Chicago
- San Francisco, soonish
- 2-hrs-south-of-Chicago-but-just-having-graduated-traveling-for-a-bit-and-soon-to-be-san-francisco

Go running by the Schuylkill River and run up the stairs to the Art Museum because Rocky did it so you have to.

Get your hair cut, restoring it to its fully natural color for the first time in a decade. Model yourself after a minor character from Misfits.

Be excited that the weekend is here again.

Hang out at friends of friends’ apartments in West Philly.  Go to a house party in West Philly. Become surprised when someone you’ve just met asks you to produce five facts about yourself, and add that to your repertoire of slightly annoying icebreakers that can be delivered in a way involving minimal OR maximal cheesiness.

Go to a pirate drag party in Center City, dressed as a very androgynous Peter Pan.  Dance at Raven and Voyeur.  Don’t go to Voyeur before 2 AM on a Saturday. If you do, stop by for pizza next door.

Read 1000 Thought Catalog articles and obsess over Ryan O’Conn.  Make a Shit Ryan O’Connell Says video.  

Freak out when Ryan O’Connell tweets back at you that he likes your video.  Scream a lot.  Don’t care that no one else at the party knows who Ryan O’Connell is.

Hear stories about the parties you didn’t go to.  Realize that there are too many decisions to make on weekends when everyone is doing different things.  Wish you could be in 20 places at once.  Talk to a really boring wingman at the club, who reminds you of Marshall Eriksen from How I Met Your Mother.  Kind of wish you were still in Sweden where dudes don’t hit on girls in clubs.

Miss the days when more of your friends were students and didn’t have jobs and they could do stupid things all day every day with you.

Occasionally empty the dishwasher.

Use the following words: perf, trude, TWINSIES, “as per us…ual” and struggle with the spelling of that.

Eat way too much pizza.

Go on a capital-A Adventure on a Sunday afternoon.  Use alliteration.  Sneak onto some abandoned railroad tracks and take photos.  Walk around abandoned industrial areas.  Drive through North Philly and look at Temple buildings and don’t drive into sketchy alleys. Find “A Street” and drive down it.

Hop on an early morning bus with your friend to NYC again for roughly 24 hours because you feel like it.  Gossip and spend a day in a Swedish cafe and make a playlist and look for apartments in San Francisco.  

A Place To Bury Strangers “In Your Heart” (Cereal Spiller Remix) by Cereal Spiller

Village it up at night and realize NYC is crazy because not only are things crowded at 4 AM they are also crowded on Monday nights. Try on some $300 headphones and listen to a song you’ve never heard before. Realize hearing city noises in the morning is essential for your happiness.

Miss your bus and stand in the rain trying to catch another one to Philly. When you arrive, find the Korean Taco Truck.

Get your boots complimented on by a boy much younger than you while buying wine.

Do a photo shoot with random props.  Sit at home and talk to people as they come home from work.  Talk about your enemies from middle school and look them up on Facebook. Celebrate when they look like losers and rage when they look like mild successes.

Hug everyone and get weirdly emotional about saying goodbye even though you’ve only been here two weeks. Have traumatic flashbacks to leaving Sweden and CA this summer. Be genuinely surprised when more than one person mentions that they may one day come visit in San Francisco, because you’ve never lived anywhere before where people might want to visit.

Feel like you could continue living here as a bum indefinitely.

Eat some nutella before bed.

Remember to pack the dress you left here a year ago in your suitcase this time.

The concept:
- Put 2000 exchange students from around Scandinavia on a boat
- Get them really really drunk, whilst boat sails by night from Stockholm to Tallinn, Estonia
- Dump 2000 hungover exchange students in Tallinn for 8 hours
- Bring them back on the boat before they regain consciousness and get into too much former-soviet trouble
- Get them really drunk, again, as boat sails by night back to Stockholm

There are a couple of different party cruises available to Lund exchange students — I chose Sea Battle because it seemed like the biggest one, and also because I figured I wouldn’t ever make it to Tallinn otherwise.

I’m On a Boat

Here was our boat:

Here is where I slept, on the boat, with 3 other Lund exchange students:

The boat has something like 4 bars and 2 clubs and stuff is just open all night. The decor was so over-the-top trying to look “clubby” that it just felt ridiculous. Club before the storm of dancing exchange students:

This is an accurate representation of what was going on on the boat, from about 1 hour after boarding, until 6 AM.

Seriously, we had free food & drinks at 8 PM, and it was sort of unbelievable how drunken and loud people were before dinner even STARTED. It would have been super obnoxious if I didn’t have a close friend with whom I could roll my eyes. It was sort of like being in the nautical version of the party scene in every high school/college movie ever.

So fun times, but there was one GIANT problem with the boat: no cell phone reception, plus 2000 people, plus enormous boat, means once you lose your friends, they’re GONE. You just have to hope you run into them again. I lost my friend Alex and didn’t find him from midnight the first night until like 9 PM the second night. Really, I don’t understand how people functioned in society before cell phones… you could just, LOSE PEOPLE! If you forgot to make a meeting time/place for next time, you might just NEVER SEE THEM AGAIN! Oh man, I am so dependent on technology.

Tallinn
Woke up, looked outside, saw ICE:

I left the boat alone, because after partying with 2000 people really the last thing I wanted to do was hang out with the same people. Plus, I love exploring new cities solo and doing whatever I want. I had a bunch of tips from my friend Tack who is a Tallinn local now. Other than meeting up with him for lunch (which was delicious — other people on the boat were complaining about the food in Estonia… clearly they were going to the wrong places), I did a bunch of things by Tack’s suggestion. Here they are in picture form, and written down for posterity:

1. Sadama Market – it’s full of stuff! And exposed me to my first Estonian conversations, where I smiled and nodded a lot. Lots of Russian dolls everywhere at Sadama. So in general, that whole “you’re not in Kansas/Sweden anymore” feeling.

2. Climb to the top of Oleviste Kirik – this was my touristy thing of the day. Oleviste Kirik is the church that’s the tallest visible thing when you look at Tallinn from far away (such as in this picture):

Climbing it was awesome. However, you do get kind of dizzy walking up a staircase like this for 20 minutes:

But totally worth it because you are rewarded with this view:

Tallinn is so adorable! (Well, at least Old Town, the part I got to see).

3. Raekoja Plats – peoplewatching and listening to the different languages tourists are speaking.

4. Vabaduse väljak (freedom square) for more peoplewatching and meeting up with Tack for lunch. Nearby, I found a good wall where I could get my Jordan Catalano on.

5. Wandering a bunch of little streets, hunting for cafes in which to use wifi.

6. Climbing Toompea hill and finding more good views.

And that was all I really had time for in Tallinn! But it was lovely, not very cold, and amazingly pleasant to walk around solo for a day. I also bought a pirate hat. Can’t do better than that.

Back on the Boat

Night 2 on the boat was was more chill than night 1. People hung out in their cabins instead of dancing wildly at the clubs.

The only bad part of the trip, however, was the bus ride back from Stockholm to Lund. It’s a 7 hour bus ride, and if that isn’t painful enough, there were 4 guys right in front of me who drank the ENTIRE ride back. They went through three bottles of vodka and probably 20 beers… witnessing 7 hours of unshowered guys drinking alcohol and singing/shouting the entire time too. One of the most disgusting experiences of my life!

As always, more pictures of Tallin on Flickr!

5 days is a rather long time to tour one city, so I’ll skip the storytelling (about how it was awesome to meet up with friends from UIUC, Lund, etc.), and just go with a list of things that were cool and might help you plan your own trip to Amsterdam.

Good Things to Do

1. Canal Tours

On day one, we took the City Canal Cruise which leaves from Leidseplein and takes you all around the city through the major canals, and even out to the harbor. It was great except that the recording for the tour was broken, so we didn’t actually learn what most things were that we were passing. However, most of the sights we saw on the tour became landmarks we used later to help us navigate.

Where the bout tours started

I’m on a boat

Harbor!

2. Openbare Bibliotheek (The Library)

By FAR my favorite place in Amsterdam. Olga recommended it to me and I only wish I went earlier — free internets, nice interior design, food, and a great view of the city. I went 3 times in 4 days. Plus, the library is just a short walk from the Centraal Station, so NO ONE HAS AN EXCUSE NOT TO GO. It’s open kinda late, too!

Lots of construction approaching the library from the station side

inside

Nice setup

STUDY-POD

Bathroom costs 20 euro-cents but it’s worth EVERY EURO-PENNY.

Library elevator hyperjump.

3. The Red Light District

When recommending places to go in Amsterdam, people tend to be weird about *sort of* recommending this place but not ACTUALLY… (maybe they’re worried that if they say to go here, I will think they hired a hooker?) Anyway, I would like to unambiguously say YES, do go there — it is fascinating!

BUT, be warned, that there are not only prostitutes there, but LOTS OF SWANS.

For some reason it didn’t occur to me that there would be actual red lights all around… The main street, with the canal running through, and the tiny, red side streets, was quite pretty. Definitely go there on a Friday or Saturday night, so the district is in full force. Every street (especially the smaller side-streets) has prostitutes standing in windows (as expected). However, there were a few unexpected things:

- If you make a lot of eye contact or walk really close to the windows, the girls start to tap the glass at you. A little eerie.

- On the other hand, about half of the window hookers look incredibly bored and are on their cell phones, texting, or reading facebook, or trading stocks, whatever it is that you do when you’re a hooker in between customers

- Many of them were actually quite attractive

- A lot of the side-streets were narrow enough that it was hard for two people to pass on either side of each other without careful coordination – which is especially challenging if you are busy gawking at the prostitutes less than two feet away.

- Swans.

4. Live Music at Dam Square

There was almost always live music going on here, and it was pretty good! Also a good place to just hang out, people watch, eat food, etc. (I always love finding those places in big cities).

5. Heineken Museum

It was kinda cool — the reason this isn’t higher on my list is that what made it cool was the nice interior design of the brewery/museum, which was greatly surpassed by the awesomeness of the Bibliotheek. So, you can definitely skip the beer thing by just going to the library.

They had some cool chairs though.

6. The Best Tree in Vondelpark

We found the best one. I can’t really tell you where it is, but it’s sorta far into the park. You’ll find it. Good for watching bike tours go by, but watch out, the kids can get pretty territorial and you have to really defend your spot in the tree.

This spot’s MINE

This kid had the sweetest ride

7. Shopping on Kalverstraat

One of the big pedestrian shopping streets in Amsterdam. There are a bajillion shoe stores (LOVE), and I found exactly the boots I have been looking for all winter but haven’t found in Sweden, at a store called Manfield.

I also got a dress somewhere that had cute, cheap clothes, and the LONGEST QUEUE for the dressing room EVER. Every single girl except for me was there with a boyfriend and she would come out of the changing room, model, ask if it made her arms look fat, contemplate for minutes, and then move on to the next item.

WAY worse than the infamous queues at the Anne Frank Museum.

8. ROBYN @ MELKWEG!!!

This would be first on my list of course, but unfortunately Robyn is not ALWAYS in Amsterdam, so it doesn’t really work as an Amsterdam tourism tip.

Just as predicted, Robyn was a friggin’ awesome live performer. She clearly loved her music and performing just as much as we loved watching her — no diva vibe from her! She danced around (yes, on her own), and we danced along right with her.

My travel buddy Philip has a magic power: weaving through a crowd like no other (Swedish queueing skillz in full force), so we quickly made it to the very front.

Everyone behind us — suckers!

<3

“Hang With Me” was the clear winning song, but everything else was wonderful as well. So perfect.

At the end of the show, we found out that everyone else at the front of the crowd was also Swedish (I’m serious about this queueing thing), because we were all shouting “EN GÅNG TILL!!!” which is what you shout to get an encore… in SWEDISH. The girl next to me and her friends turned out to all be from Luleå, and we met a couple from Stockholm as well. After the concert, we were suddenly a gang of 12 Swedes (and one American, of course) and we went galavanting around Amsterdam for hours together. THANKS ROBYN! Best last night in Amsterdam ever.

Food

- Thaise Snackbar Bird – Really really good thai food. We ate here twice in the 5 days we were in Amsterdam. It’s tiny though, so you always end up sitting next to strangers. Sometimes, very very high strangers.

- Fries sold in paper cones on the streets – the mayo looks gross but it was actually quite good. Everyone seems to be walking around with a cone of fries, it’s hard not to want one yourself.

- Stroopwafel McFlurries – I really only go to McDonalds to experience local McDelicacies, but this is by far the best item I have ever found at McDonalds. Stroopwafels themselves are one of the best things in the world — I have been enjoying them for years and I had no idea they were Dutch! This is how you eat a stroopwafel.

There was no other restaurant that compared in any way to Thai Snackbar, but if you want other recommendations, check out Spotted by Locals Amsterdam – they know what they’re talking about.

Bars and Nightlife

Bulldog Hostel – After we found our crowd of Swedes at Robyn, we ended up hanging out at the hostel bar here until like 4 am – there was no bartender for miles around, but no one seemed to care that we were there.

Cafe Mokum – in Leidseplein, a long but narrow bar with a platform at the back and a lot of dancing. And man, were people dancing. Unfortunately, it closed at 2 AM on Sunday night (how dare they?) so we had to move down the street to…

Bubbels — which was definitely the Amsterdam equivalent of Joe’s, complete with the annoying DJs who turn the music down so you can yell along with the song. Additionally, the bartenders had these bells they would ring randomly. Incredibly obnoxious. This club, however, was the first place in Amsterdam I found where people couldn’t speak English. LOTS of Dutch yelling.

Male attention in Amsterdam… PLENTY to go around. In Sweden, getting a guy at a bar to even give you the time of day requires a powerful magic love incantation — not so in Amsterdam (or at least in this club). Don’t make eye contact for more than 1 second with anyone unless you are INTERESTED. And if you’re a guy, the drink-buying competition is fierce — Philip reports seeing guys buying beers at the bar, turning around, and shoving them at literally THE FIRST GIRL they see, before anyone else can get to her. Actually, the guys at this club made the jerks at Joe’s seem totally tame. Whoa.

The dancing situation in Amsterdam was halfway between Barcelona and Sweden. No grinding of course, no circles of people (like in Sweden), but people were actually dancing (unlike in Barcelona) — just not in any particular formation. The timeframe of going out was also halfway between Sweden and Barcelona — people seemed to go out at 12ish and clubs would close at 4.

Stuff that was Meh

Really the only thing we did in Amsterdam that was skippable was the Anne Frank House. It was sorta cool, but wayyy too touristy and corporate. I felt like just reading the book made so much more of an impression on me than visiting the museum ever could. My two cents.

For many more pictures…

Of Amsterdam and even my mini-adventure to Roosendaal, see my Flickr.

I was traveling with one friend, and we stayed at Sant Jordi Alberg which was apparently the 6th best hostel in the world in 2009, which sets the bar pretty high. Indeed, it was quite nice, and small enough that you could meet people without feeling anonymous. Every night the hostelers go out and party together, and usually you don’t have to pay cover at the clubs if you go with the hostel group. More on clubs later.

Barcelona Attractions
We had 3 full days to explore, which was to see all the main things there are to see. Some were good, some were not so good.

1. El Gòtic, the Gothic Quarter, was nice. Lots of street musicians, narrow streets, lots of people walking around. Also, this was the only place in all of Barcelona that we found horchata, for some reason. Lack of horchata (especially when it was on the menu and then they claimed they didn’t have it) was a major source of angst this weekend.

2. Park Güell, the Gaudi Park, was actually a bit underwhelming, but it’s at the top of a hill on the very edge of the city, so you do get some good views from there:

I think after living in Kobe, I just get really excited about any mountain-city-ocean situation.

3. Magic Fountain of Montjuïc was probably the most epic thing in all of Barcelona. It is also surrounded by another row of epic fountains and a huge museum with beams of light behind it. This place is the best.

Row of fountains

And the actual fountain, in video form (coordinated with music):

4. The Sagrada Familia was cool, especially the inside (the outside is bizarre looking but not nearly as stunning as the inside):

Sadly, the towers were closed to visitors the day we went.

5. Las Ramblas, the big shopping street, was stupid. It was completely filled with slow-moving tourists and street vendors trying to rip them off. There wasn’t even anything cool to buy, either. Definitely can skip.

The Barcelona Metro
The metro was incredibly and unexpectedly good. Here’s what made it great:
- it’s well designed / easy to use
- the trains come very frequently (every 4-5 minutes maximum)
- the clocks on the platforms tell you when the next train is coming TO THE SECOND… not minute, but SECOND. I’ve never seen that before
- it’s clean
- in many of the stations there are little shops selling cheap yet really useful things. I bought a white circle scarf (see above photo) and a purse in two of these stops. My scarf is just like the ones everyone in Sweden has, and yet it was much easier to find one in a random Barcelona metro stop than in Sweden. Go figure. It felt really weird buying winter accessories when it was still warm there, but since it’s Barcelona, 20 degrees meant everyone was freezing and wearing winter coats and boots, etc. Hahaha.

Spanish Party Time
It was amazing how fast we assimilated to Spanish Party Time — everything in Spain starts and ends very late, and everything in Sweden starts and (sometimes) ends in Lund much earlier. The first night we were in Barcelona, we asked Duda, one of the staff at the hostel (with a really great name) what time to be around for that evening’s activities. He told us 11 PM as the meeting time, aka pre-party start time. So our daily routine was always something like:

explore the city during the day/evening
8:30~10 PMish – get dinner
11:00 PM – be at the hostel, get ready to go out
11:30 PM – leave hostel for first bar
2:00 AM – leave first bar to go to club
5:30 AM – leave club
and then sleep in until 12:30 or 1:30 PM

So we were first stepping foot in a club right when the clubs in Lund are closing. Jeez. This also meant I had significant “jet lag” coming back to Sweden, despite the fact that Barcelona and Sweden are in the same time zone. Oops.

People Don’t Dance in Barcelona Clubs
I was extremely surprised by this. I expected everywhere to be a massive rave all the time. Instead, what I got were a series of ENORMOUS clubs (all at least 4x the size of the largest club I’d ever been to before this) where there are one or more huge huge huge dancefloors that are incredibly crowded, but instead of dancing, everyone is just kind of standing and drinking and talking (yelling) at their friends. I don’t quite get the point of being in a club in that case…?

The queues for these clubs are also enormous — like 200+ people at a time, but it takes just 10 minutes or so to get into the club. SO fast! In the queue to Razzmatazz on Saturday night around 3:15 AM, one of the biggest clubs in Barcelona, we actually ran into our friend from Lund. We knew he was coming to Barcelona that weekend too, but it was quite odd that we ran into him in a queue at the same time and same club, and furthermore that I actually spotted him in that line. Crazy!

Spanish in Barcelona
I didn’t know any before this trip, and I still don’t really know any (and I definitely didn’t know Catalan!) You can really get by on just a couple of words. Everyone did seem to know English (especially in restaurants, etc.) but unlike in Sweden, where they just switch to English as soon as they figure out you’re foreign, they actually use Spanish with everyone here. If you need missing vocab though, saying it in English usually did the trick.

What you CANNOT do is ask them to speak in English. Everyone will say no to that and some people will take offense.

So Many Americans
For some reason, every single person in our hostel other than a Japanese brother/sister pair, was American, mostly students studying abroad elsewhere in Spain or in France. I forgot that I hadn’t been in a group of more than 3 Americans at a time in a month and a half, so it was strange to suddenly be meeting people from Minnesota instead of Munich.

There were lots of foreigners at the clubs too, and several times someone would come up to me attempting to make conversation, but then panicked at the last minute, as if they had just realized that they didn’t know any Spanish. Surprise! I don’t know Spanish either. I also managed to find a Japanese guy who appeared not to speak either Spanish or English. See how useful it is to just-so-happen to speak Japanese?

However, I did notice that Swedish is starting to interfere with my Japanese too — I would think in Japanese and sometimes Swedish words (that I use very commonly) would come into my head. So either this means I’m making progress on Swedish, or I’m just getting confused.

Other Upcoming Travels
I’ve soaked enough sunlight up in Barcelona to tide me over until real spring happens in Sweden (I’m still optimistic that it will, in fact, happen). So now, my travels will be motivated not by weather but by live music: Amsterdam for Robyn, Berlin for I Blame Coco, and Copenhagen once more just for kicks, should round out March. April and May are relatively wide open, and I hope to get some more serious Scandinavian adventures going on then.

The full set of Barcelona pictures here!

Why Opt Out?
In case you haven’t been keeping up, here’s the deal. The TSA is using X-ray Backscatter and Millimeter Wave Screening Machines at major airports. There are many reasons people are against these machines, including not being into:
- getting cancer
- being seen naked
- new rules being sprung on travelers without explanation
- the fact that Michael Chertoff, who pushed the security policy that put these scanners in place, is personally profiting from it

So your only other option (the one that they never tell you about at the airport) is to opt out. You do this by saying “I opt out” in exactly those words when the TSA agent tells you to step up to the x-ray or millimeter wave machine (which look, for the record, like they’re right out of an evil sci-fi dystopian futuristic movie… it’s all very Minority-Report-esque).

My TSA Groping Experience
So I was flying from ORD->SJC on Friday. This was the first time I flew directly out of an airport with the Backscatter/MM-Wave machines (they aren’t at the smaller airport, so presumably the terrorists who want to circumvent these EXTRA-secure new machines can just fly out of podunk-USA and then catch a connecting flight at destruction destination of choice).

Anyway, I noticed the security lines were longer and slower than usual. The TSA agents were directing some people into the X-ray machines, and some to the good old-fashioned metal detector. When it was my turn in line, a female TSA agent directed me towards the X-ray machine, and I said “I opt out.” She got out her little radio thing and announced, “We’ve got an opt-out.” Yep, just like everyone else on the internet said.

They took me through the machine (which they said was off while I was walking through it), and into the area where your bags come out of the x-ray machine. I stood with my shoes off still and my arms out on a little mat and a different female TSA agent came and did the infamous pat-down, in rubber gloves. She seemed to be slightly uncomfortable with it. Apparently my pants and shirt were tight enough that she didn’t need to go inside my clothes, though she did ask if there was something in my pocket (there wasn’t, it was just scrunched up because my pants were tight and I was sitting on a bus for 4 hours beforehand). She did touch pretty much everywhere on my body, including my boobs (mostly right above and the underside though, clearly trying to avoid making it into a bona-fide boob grab) and up the inside of my legs, very briefly (most of the time was spent on boobs, around the pocket/hip areas, and ankles, where my jeans were a bit scrunchy).

In total, it lasted about a minute or so, and was actually relatively painless from my perspective. I did not feel sexually assaulted, or like I was in a medical/gynecological exam. And it was nothing that all-girls school in Japan didn’t prepare me for.

I was, however, the ONLY person to opt out, out of everyone I saw ahead of me in line (around 30 people or so).

Despite the TSA’s attempts to make you feel bad / discourage you from opting out (the “we’ve got an opt-out” line, etc.), I did feel like choosing the opt-out and getting groped was actually interfering with their day and their procedures on a micro-level. To protest and interfere on a macro-level is the point of things like National Opt-Out Day (November 24), and Loopt’s Touched by the TSA iPod Touch Giveaway.

So I would choose the groping again over being zapped, and I encourage anyone who is considering opting out to go for it. While I’m sure your own personal groping experience will vary widely based on which TSA agent is doing the feel-up, it’s not as traumatic as the John Tyner internet saga may indicate.

Also potentially insane (for me) because I don’t actually watch Stewart or Colbert — I’ve probably seen a combined 2 hours of their shows in my life. Stewart does seem to be consistently funny at least, though. Colbert, not so much my cup of tea. My friends are much more actual fans of this stuff, but they rightfully identified the fact that I would at least enjoy this trip. Stewart, Reddit, Colbert, and road trips. Here we go! And it was, in the end, a completely sane choice of me to go.

The Drive to DC

First 8 hours or so were pretty boring. Then we hit hills and pretty trees, right around West Virginia. So much nicer than midwestern farmland. Ooh-ing and ahh-ing ensued. This was also where Bhargav learned first-hand that it’s bad to schedule phone interviews for when you’re driving through the mountains of West Virginia at 70+mph because YOU WILL GET DROPPED.

Stopped for food at WVU. Morgantown was significantly bigger than we had imagined, and even had a building that was like a Bizarro Assembly Hall (this is the real one, of course).

Finally, we realized we wouldn’t really be on a roadtrip without a good hashtag, so after browsing the internets for a while we found what we needed: #roadtrip4sanity. Stolen by a group of rally-goers from Drake University in Iowa (that’s further from DC than us!) Sorry dudes, you had the best hashtag.

Arrived in DC around 7 PM. Ate Thai food and crashed.

The Rally

Our hotel was at the end of the Green Metro Line. Here was the line to get on the train at 9 AM. Queue4sanity:

RoadTrip4Sanity members, minus me:

Metro was kind of crowded after a few stops, as you can see by this reflection:

Oh right, we’re in DC!

Finally got to the rally around 10 AM. It was not too crowded at this point. We did find these charming folks:

The corn syrup is a nice touch.

I had some friends already standing somewhere in the crowd, but it quickly became apparent that meeting them was NOT going to happen. So we settled into our spot.

Team Fear dude in the background trying to horrify us. We are unfazed.

Nearby sign:

People behind us:

We were behind jumbotron #2, on the left.

And then hooray, the rally finally started!! The Roots played for a really long time (too long in my opinion), and then finally we got some Stewart/Colbert goodness. Thoughts on the rally lineup:

• Mythbusters = boring. Doing the wave once in a crowd of 215,000 people is kinda cool, but doing it like 5 times is not. Move along, guys.
• Music was overall pretty eh. I did like Cat Stevens vs. Ozzy Osbourne though, that was entertaining. But, um, KID ROCK?? REALLY??? That was unnecessary torture, guys.
• The Fear Awards were great. Zuckerberg for Facebook’s creepiness and privacy nonsense, Anderson Cooper’s tight black t-shirt for only appearing in disaster situations, and NPR for not showing up on Saturday: “If their employees attend Jon’s rally, someone might think that NPR is liberal. No one could tell from the free pledge drive hemp fiber tote bags they use to carry their organic kale rollups to their compost parties.”
• Stewart/Colbert banter was right on. Wanted more of that, less of other stuff (like Kid Rock). There was also a surprising lack of Colbert, in general. When he did make appearances, it was entertaining, but the thing was a whole lot of Jon. Great job on that duet, too, Jon.
• So Jon’s speech at the end. We all knew it was coming, and by 2:45 the crowd was notably antsy for it to happen already. He did a good job, people were moved, we got the point that the media is fucked up, and that the 2 sides refusing to listen to each other is, well, kinda a problem. You can go read lots of other commentary on his speech elsewhere, but at the very least it gave people a sense of closure about why they were there. Sorta.

And then it was over. I split with my group, and battled the horrible crowds for over half an hour in order to meet up with some Philly friends at our pre-designated meeting spot. On the way out, I was watched by all the hipsters on port-a-pottys:

Technology Fail, part 1, and Philly Meetup:

Now, phones on the Mall had basically not been working since we arrived at 10 AM. I knew this would be a problem — I was in DC for 4th of July, which was much much less crowded than this, and could barely get a connection the whole time. Unfortunately, being in a crowd of 215,000+ people when you are trying to meet up with a specific set of 5 of them is NOT EASY without the benefits of modern technology. I had phone service for about a grand total of 2 minutes over the course of 10 AM – 3 PM, during which I called Rob and worked out that I’d meet them on the steps of the Air and Space Museum after the rally. Of course, it took me like 40 minutes to make it there due to the crowds, and I couldn’t call to ask which of the zillion staircases they were on. I did manage to run into them just as they were getting up to leave, by a stroke of magic/good luck!

Jake found a good sign:

Post-rally hunger, conquered, in Eastern Market, which was still REALLY crowded but not as crowded as the stuff near the Mall.

Probably the most normal picture of Crystal ever taken.

Unfortunately, Philly peeps were off to B-more for a Halloween Party, so we only could hang for a couple hours. Still good to reunite with the BroHo gang though, after a 2 month break. And, they were kind enough to give me a ride over to Dupont Circle for the…

Reddit afterparty

First I had a brief meetup with a couple of random Michigan friends who had driven in for the rally. Afterwards, I was walking down the street to go find the UIUC group again, when I practically ran into Alexis Ohanian (who I’d met at Reflections | Projections 2009, of course) in the giant mob of people outside of One Lounge, the main Reddit venue was. UIUC group came to Reddit party, but unlike promised, the bar was not letting anyone under 21 in, which sort of ruined it for half of us.

So we tragically had to split up, or risk being beat up by a giant and unfriendly bouncer. It was also annoying that the bar was also hosting some other costume party, so it was not purely Reddit people, and yet my friends couldn’t stay. The party itself was pretty excellent though. Everyone from Reddit was really nice (both people who actually work on Reddit, and people who USE Reddit). Reddit is not always the friendliest community (especially to girls. on the INTERNET.) but I was pleased to see that no one who was a jerk showed up (I guess they stay in their internet-caves at home and don’t like to come out to parties across the country). Met Jenny Lee, Chris Slowe, Foo, and the the dude who created Awesomesauce, plus about a zillion other people. Spez was there too. Got that weird “oh I recognize you from the internet” feeling going on. But yeah, good party, Reddit, minus the part where my friends couldn’t actually attend it.

Technology Fail #2

Finally headed back from the party around 1:30. The Metro ride went swimmingly, encountered prince charming (who is apparently a UPenn student) headed for a Halloween Party, and things were good up until the taxi drive from the station to the hotel. Of course, the driver had no idea where anything was, and I needed the actual address of the hotel for the GPS. I don’t KNOW what the address of my hotel is! Used iPhone to log into facebook, find the message containing this info, read off the number and the street name, and BAM, iPhone dead. Come on iPhone, how many times are you gonna put me in dangerous situations by dying on me when your battery meter says you’re fine? (I had even charged it during Philly-meetup-fooding!)

Highway-Chase Reddit Meetup

Sunday we woke up earlyish and embarked on the 12 hour journey back. Near the rally there were lots of cars with related signs, etc. But we were out of the general rally radius, and back in Ohio or so when we encountered this car.

They also had a Reddit alien in their window. OMG! We flashed a QR code at them (Redditors were collecting each other’s QR codes all rally long) but that failed, so we just wrote usernames on pieces of paper and held it up to the windows. Best reddit friendship ever, formed at 70 mph with some Wisconsin dudes.

TL;DR: sanity, restored.

1. The World Cup
I don’t watch sports, as a general rule…so the World Cup wasn’t even on my radar. I thought I would remain immune, and I did — but after weeks of being in a lab full of Brazilians and Dutch, even I could not resist the World Cup Vortex. The tipping point was going to a bar to watch the US/Ghana game (where we were eliminated) — somehow, being surrounded by everyone ridiculously shouting “Freedom!!” when we scored opened up a spot in my heart for the rest of the World Cup. I continued to follow along, and even though the teams I rooted for almost always lost, I was soon watching games midday, texting my friend Nick play-by-play updates during the Germany game, and, by the end of it all, even sort of understanding what offsides are. Crazy. Oh, and the whole internet picking up on the vuvuzela meme didn’t hurt, either.

Paul had to be consumed, after all he did.

Lots of orange at Silky’s for the final, aanvalluh!! Twas sort of tragic in that bar afterwards.

2. Naps
I spent the year I lived in Japan training myself to wake up milliseconds after my alarm went off and leap out of bed, to maximize the amount of sleep I was able to get before the 7:19 AM train. Unfortunately, that backfired and made me super-sensitive to all alarms that ruined a lot of potentially good nights of sleep early on in college. By my second year, I had regained the ability to wake up only in reaction to my own alarm, and still get up immediately, without waking to anyone else’s alarms. Which got me thinking, despite never having been a napper (except for in cases of being extremely sick), maybe I could also train myself to be able to nap.

And, after some effort this summer, I successfully conquered the nap! I still need to work on a couple of skills, like falling asleep faster, and setting my alarm for the actual time I want to wake up… but I am nap-capable on a basic level now.

Nap ground zero.

3. Frats
Despite going to a school with looots of greek life (or perhaps BECAUSE I go to such a school) I generally don’t hang out at frats. As a result, I pretty much maintain all the typical frats/frat-boy stereotypes in my head. But, since an average Friday night in Pittsburgh would go something like this, we ended up spending a lot of time at the frat:
1. Mikesh throws a party
2. Everyone shows up to party
3. Hang out for a while, until Mikesh’s roommate kicks us out
4. Everyone has to go home, but WAIT, Chris invites us to the frat he lives in
5. Since the frat is right across the street from where we all live, there’s no reason not to go!
6. Fratting ensues.
Lather rinse and repeat many a weekend.

As it turns out, the frat wasn’t bad — it was even relatively clean (especially the last few weeks we were here). And the final night, it was revealed that many fratters were, in fact, of Montreal fans, and we spent an hour abusing the sound system with our Skeletal Lamping dance party. of Montreal-digging frat people, who knew?

Side complaint-about-Pittsburgh: of Montreal reminds me how much I cannot wait to see them for the fourth time, at Pygmalion 2010 in September. This thought also reminds me how non-existent the Pittsburgh music scene was. There were exactly zero shows I was interested in there all summer. Thumbs down.

But the frat doesn’t get an A+ in my book, for there was definitely a dealbreaker: The DEATHFAN. Fans without fronts should not be ANYWHERE, they DEFINITELY shouldn’t be run at parties… even really hot ones, unless it’s the kind of party where everyone sits quietly and far away from the deathfan (these types of parties are unlikely to occur at frats).

4. Truck food
As I complained last time, Pittsburgh food leaves something to be desired. You guys told me that I should learn to love what pgh is actually good at instead of the lack of Chinatown-level eats. The solution was basically truck food.

I don’t really like the one-and-only truck back home, so I was reluctant about the CMU trucks at first… until I realized they all served ethnic food. CMU has 2 thai, 2 chinese, 1 indian, and one middle eastern truck, all over in a row by the track (Here’s the exact location of the CMU trucks if you need help finding them). All of them require cash, every meal costs $4-$5, and most importantly, thai iced tea is available for $1!! I think the middle eastern and one of the thai trucks are my favorites. Yes, the trucks are junky, but delicious, and as far as Pittsburgh goes they’re almost the best asian food you’re gonna get anyway, so why not? The Pitt ones are 2 indian and 1 thai, but they’re a bit far if you’re working at CMU (over near the Cathedral of Learning).

Also, unrelated, but if you like wings… apparently Pittsburgh has a place for you to get cheap wings any day of the week. I’m not sure why “wing nights” are such a thing, but I’m not complaining.

5. Dorm Life
Like anyone past week 1 or so of freshman year of college, I hate living in dorms. Who wants to share a room with someone, anyway? However I think for the purposes of this year’s REU, it was a necessary evil that resulted in a lot more friendships than I would have had otherwise. (Sharing rooms was still not ideal — we all managed to live near each other AND befriend each other last year, while having our own rooms…) It felt a little bit first-week-freshman-year-ish at first, which feels really odd when you’re not a freshman, but it was worth it overall for the ability to meet people from my program and all the other research groups around. And most importantly, without dorm, The Fort would have never been able to exist:

6. American Karaoke
Due to living in Japan, I have been skeptical for many years about “karaoke” as it exists in this country, and have often karaoke-snobbed at people who think that the definition of karaoke involves singing in front of people you don’t know. Seriously? That’s not even real karaoke, I say. Small cramped rooms, iced oolong tea, Mr. Children and Arashi songs are the real staples of karaoke, clearly. Oh, and NEVER HAVING TO SEE ANYONE YOU DON’T KNOW. Real karaoke clearly wasn’t going to happen in Pittsburgh. However, I actually lost my American karaoke virginity in DC, at a sorta Japan-themed bar because word on the street was that they were a) Japanese, b) had karaoke, and c) didn’t card. All were true, but as the place was quite crowded, we barely got a chance to sing one song, because instead of just competing among your friend group for a turn, you must compete among every group in the bar for a turn. I also went to a place in Shadyside back in Pittsburgh and went early enough to actually sing a few different songs. Still enjoyable though.

I think American karaoke is actually less embarrassing than real karaoke. Yes, you are singing in front of people you don’t know, but at least for me, that means I care about their opinion less than the reaction of my close friends. Furthermore, this is taking place in a bar, which means 99% of the people there will be either a) drunk and not paying any attention to you or b) drunk and happily singing along to your musical selection too, and therefore also not paying any attention to you. Either way, there’s not a lot of judgemental vibes going on.

However, the connection between alcohol and American karaoke is annoying, problematic, and unnecessary. Many of my friends in Pittsburgh were under 21, and it is completely ridiculous that they couldn’t come and sing “Take On Me” with me just because karaoke was taking place in a bar. Karaoke is practically Japan’s official pasttime for children and teenagers. Come on now.

DC Ameraoke

So yes, Pittsburgh has clearly changed me greatly as a person, but hopefully my friends and family will still recognize me. As of today, Pittsburgh is over and I have moved on my next adventure: Philly, a week’s worth of clothes, electronics, and NO PLANS.

So why the Pittsburgh stuff anyway... this summer, I'm doing research at the Pittsburgh Science of Learning Center, which means I'll be an expert on Carnegie Mellon and Pittsburgh by the end of July, as well as learning a thing or two about learning science, misconceptions about decimal arithmetic, and specifically how examples with errors in them might help you learn.

Carnegie Mellon

Kinda looks like this:

The campus is really nice, pretty small, and you can see the Learning Cathedral from, well, everywhere (the tall thing in the background):

The best part of the engineering buildings is that they’re all connected by bridges. The downside is that you never know what floor is ground level – it can be anywhere from floor 1 to 4 depending on what building you’re in, and the bridges aren’t on the same floors either. After 3 weeks though, I’m confident that I could survive without actually going outside in the winter.

The Gates building is the wackiest looking, but it does have a bunch of nice couches and a balcony that I work on sometimes, when my lab’s lack of sunlight is getting to me (get it, there’s a lot of windows in the gates building… ha…)

The bridge to the Gates building is cool…

…especially at night.

(we had a mini photo shoot there last night):

But the CMU campus is not all fun and games. In fact, there is one horrible, horrible thing going on here… a giant, slanted pole in the middle of the main quad area, with people walking up it:

This thing actually creeps me out significantly. Why are these people walking up into the sky?

Any why must these creepy fake people watch them from the ground? Sometimes there’s real people staring up at the pole too, but I assume they’re fake… as was happening when I took this picture… spot the real boy!

ITS2010

So I started work on June 7. My second week of work, however, was effectively lost, because I ended up volunteering for ITS2010, a conference going on at CMU this year about Intelligent Tutoring Systems, which is pretty relevant to the research I’m doing. Also I was interested in participating in a non-reflections|projections conference and seeing how they do things. There’s a bunch of pics from the conference here. The conference basically involved:
- lots of cool talks about intelligent tutors (computerized educational software that is ‘intelligent’ in some way, usually adjusting to the student somehow)
- lots of free cheese & wine, and a constant supply of coffee
- meeting lots of new people from all over the world who research the interesting stuff mentioned above (yeah, my Japanese knowledge DID come in handy!)
- A kickass banquet, with more of the above-mentioned free foods, plus, pretty plants with little aliens in them! (Banquet was at the Phipps Conservatory)

And Jack Mostow singing…

…and us singing with Jack Mostow:

Pittsburgh Wisdom

Here’s what I’ve figured out and noticed so far…

- Public Transportation: The bus system leaves a lot to be desired. There’s not really enough buses to begin with, but the service makes the experience even more unpleasant. Buses don’t stop for you unless you practically jump into the middle of the street and wave at them (and even then, they stop like 30 feet in front of the bus stop), they love to yell at you about you paying at the wrong time (going one direction you pay before the ride, going the other direction, it’s after, god forbid you don’t know which to do). While the occasional bus driver will be extra friendly and help you find your way, asking simple questions to most drivers incites severe rage, such as when we asked about Highland Ave., and the bus driver snapped back at us, “What about it!?” Come on, lady, we’re on a bus, what do you THINK we want to know about it…? or the other day when we got on a bus that had opened its doors, only to be yelled at because apparently it stops and waits before we can get on the bus… let’s just say, I avoid the bus whenever possible, because it just makes me depressed.

- Taxis: The lovely bus system ceases to function after around midnight, which means you’re stuck trying to find a taxi. Yeah, good luck with that. The first weekend here, I was stranded with my friend in Southside, the main go-to for nightlife. At 2AM when everything was closing down, we tried to flag down a cab, but there were very few, and the ones that did drive by were full. Upon calling a cab company, they claimed they wouldn’t send me a cab, because I was in a busy area where you’re supposed to “just flag them down.” We had to specifically find a more remote location to wait in order to call a cab, and even so it took 45 minutes for said cab to show up. I have a feeling this is not the last time I will be stranded somewhere in Pittsburgh.

- Food: Don’t expect too much. Pittsburgh seems to be really good at bar food, especially half-off late-night food (Fuel & Fuddle is excellent, though getting a table for 14 people at 11 PM does prove to be challenging), but if you’re looking for ethnic food (and I am) you’re pretty much out of luck. There’s a thai restaurant in shadyside that’s good but far too expensive, but that’s kind of the only asian restaurant for almost miles… other than the CMU trucks, which are actually pretty decent. More on them another day.

- Weather: Just carry an umbrella with you, all the time. It will be totally sunny, then start pouring for half an hour (right when you need to walk outside, too)…so be warned.

- Bubble tea: A major issue for any new place I live in… and Pittsburgh has by far the worst bubble tea situation out of any place I have ever lived. I have tried four places now and only one has been good enough that I might go back.
Stay away from:
- The kiosk in front of the learning cathedral… not enough boba, flavor was eh.
- Lulu’s: possibly the worst bubble tea I’ve ever tasted. Threw it out halfway through.
- Oriental Express: Probably the best option in walking distance of CMU, but still pretty eh. I liked the Taro, but have heard bad things about fruit flavors (which I never get).
The only good option so far is the Rose Tea Cafe in Squirrel Hill. It had your standard bubble tea that one might expect from every bubble tea establishment… not enough flavors, but I’ll take what I can get.

- Paper towel dispensers: I have never been to a city that has such a hard time with dispensing paper towels in bathrooms. Across the city (including my own dorm, and places at CMU), the dispensers just don’t work, the paper gets stuck inside, or whoever is restocking the paper just completely gives up and there’s just a roll of paper sitting on a countertop, outside of the dispenser. WHY IS THIS SO HARD, PITTSBURGH!?

- Mt. Washington/The Incline: Is definitely worth going to after dark for an awesome view of the city.

Lots more Pittsburgh insights later, DC next week, and more. Peace out.

Our general trajectory was:
Chicago → Philly → NYC → Boston → Philly

Noam’s job is in Philly, so we made that our home base. We departed last Tuesday, stayed with friends at UChicago for a night, before heading to Philly to drop our stuff off, and catching a bus to NYC. We didn’t have a car, so all transportation must be public. Things we booked ahead of time:

• The flight from ORD → PHL, obviously
• All bus rides, which was 5 total, because there’s no direct Boston → Philly bus, you have to get off at Penn Station in NYC and switch buses. We used megabus for the first three buses and BoltBus on the way back from Boston to Philly. BoltBus had nice leather seats, and we took earlier buses than we had reserved because we were scared we wouldn’t make the connecting bus, so we were standbys and they always had a spot for us. Megabus was nice because there were two levels and we got a good view of the cities we drove through. Both bus companies had crappy, horrible, yet existing, internet. Both were much cheaper than the Amtrak option.
• Hotel in New York. We stayed at the Wellington which we of course cross-checked with the Bedbug Registry, as bedbugs weren’t really on our list of things to experience in NYC. This hotel was good, though a bit noisy (thin walls, hear people opening/closing doors, etc.) but had a great location, literally one of its doors opens to a subway entrance. Super convenient.
• Tickets to a comedy show for our first night in NYC, at the UCB Theatre which we had heard was good on the internets. It was.

Alright, now onto the stories and the photos!

Wednesday: The Three-City Whirlwind Tour
We woke up in Chicago, and took a 7:15 cab to O’Hare. It took an hour and a half (it would take about half an hour with no traffic). We were very stressed about missing our 9:35 flight, and without a seriously skilled cab driver who was willing to do things like get off the highway and get back on, we would have missed our flight. An evil lady at security who forced Noam to squeeze her rolling-suitcase into the carry-on size limit box didn’t help either, as we had to spend 15 minutes emptying it enough to fit, while everyone else walked by with much larger suitcases. We made our flight with 10 minutes to spare before takeoff.

A very short flight later, we landed in Philly, got no information out of anyone at the airport about transportation to the UPenn campus (the lady kept saying “call them yourself” and I didn’t really feel like getting her to explain who “them” was when she refused to say anything other than that one sentence). So we took a cab to Noam’s apartment, dumped our stuff, and ogled her 22nd story view of Philly:

We then walked down the street for some delicious Indian food and took one of the best pictures I have ever seen:

Got to sit at the front of the top level of the megabus, and saw lots of Philly as we left.

The bus took an extremely long time as we ran into evening rush hour traffic. Got to NYC around 6 PM, dumped our stuff at the hotel, grabbed a snack, and took the subway to our show which started at 8.

UCB Theatre was a pretty small venue, around 100 people in the audience. We had reserved tickets online for two comedy shows in a row, both of which were 5 bucks and very funny. The host of the first show did an icebreaker based around this incredible ad from ediets.com, shown below. From 0:18-0:35 is really the significant part of the video. Then he had the audience recreate the jingle, with a third of the audience singing each of the three lines of “ediets.com / now you got it going on / now you got it going o-on”

The funniest guy was John Mulaney, who writes for SNL, and told us about many things, including how Justin Bieber terrorized him in the hallway once while being the musical guest for SNL, and how he was both ashamed and touched to have the world’s busiest and richest teenager and his crew laugh at him.

At UCB Theatre Noam and I ran into two different friends from high school. Our high school is 800+ miles away from NYC. It also has 300 total students, so counting above and below our grades for the years we were there, we know roughly 540 people who graduated from our high school. Total. This venue had 100 people there, tops. And four of them were from our high school. Insanely small odds. Unfortunately, we hadn’t worked “running into random friends from high school” into the NYC plan, so we didn’t get a chance to hang out with them later, though we received invitations, they would be for when we were back in Philly. Alas.

Thursday: Epic NYC Exploration

So… one day in NYC to fill, unplanned, what do you do?

Step 1: Bagels and Coffee. We wandered northwest-ish from our hotel and found Bagel Stix for generous amounts of cream cheese and lox on bagels, and iced cappuccinos.

Step 2: Central Park Proposal. Brought the bagels with us to have a bagel picnic. On the way to our picnic spot, we passed by a couple, walking on a little dirt path near the street. Right as Noam and I passed by the guy, the guy was down on his knee, and proposed! I was sort of confused as his choice of proposal spot (random dirt path? Not near the road but not away from it either?) or why he didn’t wait until we were more than 1.5 feet away (there was no one else coming after us), but we just rolled with it and watched them hug and kiss and be happy because they’re getting married. Noam’s camera has paparazzi level zoom, so here’s the happy couple:

Step 3: Finish bagels and wander Central Park until you get to the Met. You know, like Gossip Girl. I don’t really understand how Serena and whatever the friend’s name is have tender BFF moments on the steps of the Met, because there were so many friggin’ people. Oh well.

Step 4: Strawberry Fields. Takes you back south through the park.

Step 5: Buy shoes. We passed by an Aldo, my favorite shoe place in the world (actually, we passed by like 6 that day) and both got new shoes at relatively inexpensive prices (for Aldo). When I was trying on my new gladiator sandals (how ever did I go so long without them?!) a girl sat down next to me trying on some other shoes, and complimented the shoes I was trying on (which is odd, it’s not like they were even mine yet… I guess she’s complimenting my taste in shoes? I also felt slightly bad because they were the last pair of that style). Then she decided to kind of sadly complain about how she lost her job two weeks ago and is getting nicer shoes for all the job interviews she was going to. I think if I’d stayed a few more minutes I would have heard her whole life story. So…that was a depressing conversation.

Step 6: LOVE. You just gotta. It’s all you need.

Step 7: Times Square. It’s famous. There weren’t that many people there though. Not really busy, kinda a letdown.

Step 8: The Village, Soho. Went there for walking around, shopping, etc. Had coffee at Think Coffee near NYU. It was getting chilly out and I hadn’t brought a jacket, so we shopped at a few stores in Soho until I found a shirt at UNIQLO! So glad they’re in NYC, and I also bought clothes to stay warm from UNIQLO in Osaka. Good times at UNIQLO, though I think I actually liked the clothes at the NYC one better than the ones in Japan.

Step 9: Rain and Chinatown. It started pouring, so we went to Chinatown and entered the first restaurant we saw, and consumed fish soup and eggplants and were happy. We purchased bread at a bakery that claimed to have read bean in it. The next day we found, tragically, there was no red bean. We were so ripped off.

Step 10: Empire State Building. We thought we may as well see it on our way home, so we got off the subway at the appropriate place, and realized that since we were standing right under the building we couldn’t actually SEE it (you know, skyscrapers are tall). Instead, we did find K-Town, which was friggin’ awesome. And very nice at night (probably 11 PM ish?)

Step 11: Froyo at Pinkberry, and KARAOKE. You just gotta. Thank you, K-Town, for having karaoke. So much Lady Gaga and Katy Perry were sung. Also the karaoke room was friggin’ enormous.

Step 12: Subway back to hotel! And sleep! Job well done!

Friday: NYC → Boston

First, we got breakfast at Radiance Tea where we experienced matcha lattes and mochi. BEST BREAKFAST EVER, and like a 1 minute walk from the hotel.

Then we got on the bus at Penn Station to Boston and suffered a long bus ride. Batia (who we were visiting in Boston) met us, took us to Boston Chinatown while we waited for the bus to Waltham. Bubble tea. Good times. When we arrived, Batia, MPitt and friends were holding a vegetarian BBQ in their backyard. Delicious!

Saturday: Epic Boston Exploration

Walked 13 miles! Saw 3 colleges!
Here is the map of our route

Here’s what we saw:

Newberry Street for shopping, where they had an Espresso!

Noam’s Gnomies, also on Newberry:

Boston Commons & Gardens:

Took the Freedom Trail through downtown to see some famous old stuff:

Batia’s favorite, graveyards!

Went to the water:

Crossed the river to cambridge, visited MIT’s Stata Center since I am really into seeing cool CS buildings around the world.

Went to Harvard Square, where it started to rain, and we ate at a Vietnamese place. Afterwards we explored Harvard and found where Noam used to go to daycare!

Gotta do something with signs.

And then we waited through several buses to get back to Waltham. Creepy middle aged dude on the bus kept asking us what our ‘party plans’ were there. We didn’t answer him, but agreed that we had party plans, they were just exclusive (mainly, excluding him.)

Then, we experienced the awesome that is Eurovision. For those of you who don’t know, it’s a singing-contest among all the countries in Europe, each who send a representative to sing some ridiculous pop song, and then all the countries vote on each other and a winner is selected. Batia says the insanity of Eurovision makes her proud to be an American (we don’t participate). I gotta say, this was one of the more patriotic moments of my life.

The winner, as we found out after like four hours of pure awesome, was Lena from Germany:

Anyway, that was Boston, and the next day we went back from Boston → NYC → Philly and finished unpacking into Noam’s place, and I snagged an empty room from one of her future roommates who hadn’t moved in.

Philly Adventures

The sightseeing Noam and I did in Philly involved checking out Philly history near Independence Hall, etc. We even got these sweet badges from folding our map correctly at the Independence Center. However, this meant we got a ton of extra attention throughout the day as all the tour guides and such would question why we got junior ranger badges (did we deserve them?) and whether we even counted as “junior” as we are clearly not children. We didn’t see any kids with the badges, which probably means we’re just really good at map-folding (well, Noam is… I watched.)

They’re pretty into the Liberty Bell there. Not as much as Ben Franklin though. Apparently he was the man. Noam is also pro-liberty:

The rest of this week, Noam went to work while I became an expert on cafes in the UPenn area. If you need a cafe, I have some pretty strong opinions on: Capogiro Gelato (good!), Lovers & Madmen, and Green Line Cafe (meh!). I wrote yelp reviews for all of them so you can read about my horrible and good experiences if you care.

The reason I had to become such an expert at cafes was that I needed to be at them ALL day while Noam was at work. The security measures at her apartment were kind of insane, and they wouldn’t give a guest card to me, so we had to spend 5 minutes signing me in every time. Bleh. That meant I couldn’t be there during the day, and her roommates’ (once they showed up) 9 PM bedtime and their demands for library-like silence meant that I shouldn’t really be there at night, either. We stayed away from the apartment and galavanted around Philly with a bunch of new and old friends, including eating with Noam’s new REU buddies and such.

After a week of repeat visits to UPenn cafes, Ben Franklin statues, Chinatown, and Lorenzo’s Pizza, I am off to Pittsburgh for a while. Summer is officially rung in.

Oh, and all the other pictures are here as always.