Epilogue
It is 5:09 am. I woke up
at 2am, and by woke up I mean finally stopped tossing and turning in the heat
of a bed that is two and half meters off the ground. It wasn't miserable, I
actually rested, but it wasn't sleep. I finish off what was left of my kefir and
left. I went to Oranienburger Tor but it was locked, and a few minutes later it
a city worked came and unlocked it but I had realized that the next metro
didn't come until 4:17. I went down anyway and stayed until I woke up a bit
more, staring at the mice calmly lapping up from little pools of spilt water,
and then decided to take the bus (which, when I looked at the instructions I
had written out, I realized that that was what I had intended to do anyway, but
it took me half an hour to get around to it.) Bus N6, where I got off with a
girl that quickly realized we should cross the street to get to the next bus,
Bus 128, on which a really drunk guy fell off the seat and was left with a
bleeding head, and I arrived at Tegel at 4:40, and clearly it didn't take too
long to check my bags and get through security. I lied to them about having
cosmetics: I have a small tube of toothpaste somewhere in there, but they
didn't find it, and I didn't have a plastic baggie. Life of crime over here.
The reason I had it was because of a fantasy of staying in Berlin; it involved
an overbooked plane and the possibility of me not getting my checked bag back
(it weighs 19.7kg) but that dream was shredded by the reality that my first
flight isn't actually delta; it's KLM, which is small and not overbooked at
all.
It's getting light
out. I have my boarding pass which covers both my flights but I will need to
get a bus ticket in NYC to get to Boston. The flight is boarding. 5:31.
~~~~
The first plane I talked to a guy from Norway; Berlin, EU, Norway, Catch
22. He was a med student and we got off the plane together but our terminals
were in different places. We never introduced ourselves. In the Amsterdam airport
I kept nodding off. I walked around briefly and sat down again, and some woman
from Iran started talking to me; she started telling me about how her daughter
is a professor in Toronto and how she has a baby so she goes with her to all
these cities for conferences to watch the kid. On the second plane I sat next
to this guy from Long Island, who was coming from teaching English through
Peace Corps in Rwanda. He was really drained; he was going to a wedding but his
Peace Corps ends in November so he has to go back. At some point I realized I couldn’t
talk anymore and plummeted quickly into sleep for a couple hours. We talked
some more after I woke up, switching to lighter topics than his Rwanda
experience. We never introduced ourselves either, but his name was Patrick, as
I gathered from some narration. I got off the plane and got myself a bus ticket
to Port Authority. While waiting for the bus, I met a man named Peter from Dodoma,
Tanzania, a veterinarian who was going to a conference, his specialization
being poultry disease control. I got to Port Authority and started looking for
another bus, but first I bought my first piece of food on USA soil; and
incredibly sweet cinnamon bun that I could only eat half of at first, my hands
covered in sugary goop. The first bus I found was 36$ so I kept looking until I
found one for $20 that left in an hour, and the bus driver told me it was fine
that I didn’t have a ticket yet, even though Megabus to Boston typically involves
buying the ticket ahead of time. So I found some shade and tried not to be overwhelmed:
it was culture shock coming to NYC, the skyscrapers stacked on top of each
other, the noise, the dirty streets lined with liter. I came back and waited on
standby with a guy who is part of World Teach, doing Management of the Asian
sector. Waiting was dramatic: they didn’t let some girl on because she had a
bike, and it apparently says on the site “no bikes” but it had never been a
problem for her before. She let out a whelp of desperation “what am I supposed
to do!?” her face matching in tone to her pink helmet. Some other guy had a ton
of bags and you have to pay $20 extra for every bag over one. On the bus I
asked the guys in front of me if they knew when the bus reached Boston: around
8:50. I fell asleep for an hour and when I woke up one of the guys started talking to me:
Ryan who goes to Boston College, studying Comp Sci and Finance. He switched to sit next to
me. At some point he said something about me being intelligent and I made a face 'fuck no' and said "no"; it was so blatant. We did end up at South Station at 8:50, and when I
exited the station I was relieved; Boston is a lot less overwhelming than NYC.
Some lady asked me if all the taxi's in Boston are more-or-less the same, but I've never had a reason to take one. Then Папа picked me up and I
was home.
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