One long ride and the first day in NYC

Saturday, July 27th

This night I solely spend with being on the Greyhound bus, going from Toronto to New York City. The bus was scheduled for 10.30 pm and you have to be there an hour earlier. So I picked up my bags from the hostel at around 9pm and went all the way by foot to the bus terminal. Arriving at  9.30pm I had to wait for a bit, however we could'nt board until 11pm for whatever reason.

The bus seating was quite okay. You also have got internet and power outlets in the bus. The bus arrived at the boarder at Niagara Falls at 0.30 am. There already was a bus in front of us, which meant that we had to wait for half an hour. Inside the boarder control it also took quite a long time for everyone to pass. As a German citizen, I am resident of one of the (about) 20 countries, that can get into the US for visiting/travelling purposes for 90 days without any further trouble. All I had to do was to fill out a green sheet with my personal details (address, birthday, et cetera), my travelling purpose and the declaration of goods I am carrying with me. And that was it. Now I have a part of that green sheet stapled into my travelling passport, which I have to hand back when I am crossing the US-Canadian border again. It also cost a fee of 6US $ (they only accept US dollars and no Canadian dollars, be aware of this when crossing the border by land). Further, they scanned my finger tips (for finger prints) and took a picture of me. They probably store that information for an unlimited amount of time. Great. The boarder officer wasn't unfriendly, but he wasn't nice either. Our bus driver was of Indian descend and I talked to him a bit. He told me that his wife is German and that he knows some German phrases such as "Ich liebe dich" (of course!).

It wasn't until 2.15 am that we could go on! The rest of the ride was not to exciting, as it was dark outside of course. In Bufallo (US) we had a transfer. They split half of our passengers onto another bus, that was also heading to New York (starting from Bufallo, and obviously there weren't a lot people taking that bus). This meant for me that the Japanese girl who was sitting next to me left and I had more space.

I tried to sleep a little on the bus ride. It was not the best sleep that I ever had, but I relaxed for some hours. At least the bus was quiet.

We finally reached NYC at 12pm. 12pm! We ought to have got there at 8.30am. Oh my.

My family has some friends living in Brooklyn, who generously offered me to stay with them. There first thing I did when I arrived in NYC was to call them. They gave me some instructions on how to get from the bus authority to Brooklyn. I had to take the subway #2 Downtown to Flatbush Av. In New York, all the subs heading "North" are called uptown subs and all heading "South" are called downtown subs. In order to reach my subway I had to walk a little underground to Times Square Station and from there I could take the correct sub. The ride is about 40 minutes long.

James picked me up from the station as I had no clue of how to get to their house. At their house I first settled down for a bit, had a shower and just a little rest. Later on Elfriede and James were taking me out for dinner to an Italian restaurant called "Pinocchio's" I had a steak in Basalo wine with green beans and mashed potatoes along with a bud, which was very good.

It was evening by then. I went to bed early due to the lack of sleep.