Kiwis at large – Norway edition

And alas, the American dream was over. But what a ride it was!

I rode the bus to Stewart International Airport in Newburgh and took a flight back to Belfast in a record 5 and a half hours arriving at 7.30am. Having had only a few hours of uncomfortable sleep I did what any sane person would do and I called Alex D. Wilson for a chat (business AND pleasure).

I was stuck in Belfast airport for a few hours before catching a 2pm to London Stanted where I hurried through customs to board an international flight to Oslo, Norway. CUE RECAP!

Back in April when I was freaking out about what the hell I was doing in Turkey I messaged my friend Jess Morris, who I met at University and is the reason I met J McKay. We had kept in touch (sorta) and I knew that she had been working as some vague art thing in Norway and often had projects on the go. Having just left the home comforts of Liverpool I craved to join some new community and have things to do. So I reached out to her – at that time however she had nothing for me.

She clearly kept it in mind though, as a few weeks ago when I was sitting in Washington DC she messaged me with a proposition. She was in some need of helping hands during a festival she works for in her adopted home of Stavanger where she lives with her husband Hans. This matched with my need for plans post USA so I jumped at the opportunity and bought the aforementioned flights.

So here I was, landed in Oslo at 8pm. With no real plan, I had messaged a few couchsurfers to see if I could find someone to hang out with for a few hours between 8pm and 4am when I was due to get a train from Oslo to Stavanger. I got a reply from a sweet Norwegian girl called Frida, who had joined CS only days before.

I got the train from the airport into the city where I met Frida at the train station and she proceeded to give me a whirlwind tour of the city by night. From the station to the Symphony Hall, Parliament and the Kings House. It was lovely lovely. Around 11pm she went home and I went back to the station until it closed. I walked around for a bit until it opened again and eventually boarded my train and kicked back.

I slept a little on the train, at least until it started to get light and the train started to get busy. The train trip was 7 hours through some spectacular landscapes. From raw cut rock faces, forests, villages and golden marshes all set against a theatrical, swirling grey sky.

Come midday I stepped off the train in Stavanger and was greeted by Jess Morris, who I had not seen since 2011 but felt so close to, probably because of my friendship with J McKay. We picked up pretty much where we had left off all those years ago, sharing silly giggles.

Jess was in full swing of Screen City Biennial, a visual art festival dedicated to presenting the moving image in public space. She was head of production for the festival so was very busy running and maintaining all the different exhibit sites. We jumped straight in the car and drove through the small town up to her friends apartment, where she had been crashing for the last few weeks during festival time – as it was more convenient than her house which was a 20 minutes ferry ride away.

I had a shower and some coffee, after which I decided that despite my lack of sleep over the last two nights that it would be a better idea to push on through until the evening – so I offered my hand with the days tasks. We went down to the Stavanger Art Museum where we loaded a whole lot of gear into the car used during the main performance of the festival the previous evening.

Stavanger is a port and oil town with a population of just under 130,000. With its brisk, cold air, looming grey clouds and rolling hills it had a bit of a Dunedin vibe.

We ran around all afternoon between multiple sites, meeting and greeting colleagues, friends and volunteers. As the evening rolled in we got the ferry over to Langøy, where Jess lives. The island is about 1km in length and houses about 30 people. There are no cars on the island. I arrived in the dark so did´nt get a sense of the landscape. We opened some wine and had some food before I very keenly slipped into a delicious and long awaited slumber.

The next morning we had a cup of coffee, wrapped up and caught the ferry into town. We walked over to the studio of Jess´ Hans, who is a local artist currently on a residency in Berlin. We went to pick up his bike, so that I could have some wheels for buzzing around the city. We headed back into town and went down to the Information centre of the festival, located in some shipping containers on the dock – which will be my post for a few shifts next week.

We went over to the movie theatre to oversee a screening of some short films as a part of the festival. After a meeting with the projectionist to make some last minute changes to the programme which were requested by the festival director (who was quickly showing herself to be pretty incompetent) we had a coffee and sat in a small VIP theatre and watched the screening. Some were therapy, some where strange and some interesting.

I enjoyed Swerve (You’re Gonna Die Up There), which was three frames in a row on screen, one an astronaut driving a car who is joined by his ghost who warns him not to go to the moon, the middle frame the view out the back window of the car and the third frame an orchestra in a studio. I think I fell asleep for a bit but what I really liked was that at one stage the first frame pulls back from the windscreen to show that the car was in the same studio as the orchestra. FORTH WALL BABY! I was sleep through the rest of the shorts.

Then there was a feature Exotica, Erotica, Etc. which was a look at the world of seamen and prostitutes. It was pretty harsh, gritty world full of poetic beauty and tragedy. This was a line from one of the women who spent her life in this world.

“Sailors are like terrorists. They arrive in ports with a bomb called love and throw it. And do you know what happens? The bomb explodes when they go away and they never come back, destroying the hearts of all the girls in the neighbourhood. How strange – To love somebody who pays you…”

I fell asleep for a bit during this too, however this was not a reflection on the content and more my jet lag – this is the first time I´ve flown against the date line, so instead of waking up super early my body wants to keep sleeping.

Once we were out of the warm, dark room however I was back up to it. We had a few more tasks to attend to after the film, including a stop at Studio 17, a gallery which Jess runs.

After we were done we got the ferry over to Hundvåg, the largest of the Stavanger islands where her friend Kay was throwing a surprise birthday party for his fiancee Ida. On the boat we met a whole bunch of the other friends we were invited, so we all made our way up to the house at once where the unsuspecting Ida was waiting.

Kay was a real jovial and crafty dude, making his own beer, cider, chilli sauce (now distributed nationwide), soap, honey, beard oil and many other delights. So needless to say, we were in for an absolute treat. Homemade beer by the jug was poured into our mouths with beautiful slow cooked chilli con care prepared with some excellent parts of both cow and pig. Melt in your mouth chilli. The dozen and a half strong party ate, drank and were merry until the early hours, and kindly spoke english around me. I felt very welcomed and at home.

The great thing about island life is that everyone has to leave at a certain time because of the ferry. So at what ever time it was everyone walked or rode down the hill to the terminal and Jess and I got dropped off at Langøy for a sweet sweet slumber.

I spent Sunday and Monday on the island while Jess went to run around. I spent both days fishing with a little success on Sunday but not Monday. I was keen to catch and prepare a fish for food, but when it came down to it I didn´t have the nerve to kill the fish I caught, which was a pretty good size. Not knowing the species and therefore how edible it was I got it off the line and released it. Monday I had no luck at all. Sunday evening I prepared some food from what I could find and we tucked into another bottle of wine.

Monday afternoon Jess came home from the city and we went for a wee walk around the island. We past the home of the only other ´young´ people on the island, who happened to see us and invite us in where we drank more home made beer. Alex was a local who lived with his crafty wife who made some fantastic little furry toys. She had gone out so after a few drinks we invited Alex over to eat pizza with us at the house, which was our plan for the evening.

We rustled up some pizzas and drank cider until Alex´s wife arrived back on the ferry and came up to join us. We gassed for a little longer until they departed. I fell quickly into bed.

On Tuesday I accompanied Jess into town where we sat in a cafe while she had a board meeting for the gallery she runs while I did some work. After an hour or so we went to have some lunch before tending to some tasks at the Stavanger Concert Hall which was beautifully modern having being built in 2012.

We cycled around a little more and collected some things for dinner as Jess was hosting an evaluation meeting at the house for her colleagues. We got back to the house and I began preparing the Mexican feast and lighting the fire while Jess took endless phone calls and tried to relax. The girls arrived and we tucked into dinner. I left them to talk business and went and had a good chat to Stefan.

After the girls had gone Jess and I lay on the floor, drank chocolate milk and watched Sione´s Wedding, which wasn´t as good as I remembered.

USAdventure!

On Thursday morning Gareth and I got up and went into the city early to make the most of the day. We went into central Williamsburg where I showed Gareth all the hipsters and took him to the record store I had poured over the previous evening.
We crossed the river into Manhattan and headed down to Wall Street and the 9/11 memorial. We were due to meet the others at the ferry terminal to take the ride over to Stanton Island. Strangely enough while in Battery Park we bumped in to Sam shortly followed by Ryan. It’s amazing that in one of the biggest cities in the world you can still bump into people like a local farmers market.
We took the ferry over and after being underwhelmed by the area on the other side reboarded and crossed again. I escorted the gang to the rooftop bar I was at the previous evening so that they could watch the sunset and enjoy $10 beers.
I didn’t follow, as I had to return to Brooklyn HQ for a job interview on Skype, which was exhausting to say the least. I has hammered for its 50 minute duration by the three person panel but came out unscathed and feeling good. Fingers crossed.
I breathed a sigh of relief and cracked a beer while waiting for the gang to return. S J Clark accompanied and after a few drinks a couple of us went out, joined by Ryan at a few of the bars in the Bushwick area. Time rolled on and I turned in to my couch at around 2am.

Friday was a later start, but once up Gareth and I once again jumping into the city to go tick a few things off Gareth’s NYC list. We headed into Little Italy and grabbed a slice of pizza from a local family pizzeria while waiting for Steve to get in from the airport so that we could give him the keys.
We walked west across Manhattan, finding and admiring a Nike store which smelt like new paint (therefore assuming that it was the shop Ryan had fitted out two nights before) and admired its handsome interior.
We made our way to Ruby’s Music, a very high end guitar shop which Gareth wanted to visit. He and one of the shop assistance had a lot to talk about and funnily enough had colleagues in common while I admired all the beautiful instruments, and playing one.
G man and I went to MoMA after that, I had hoped to see more of the Frank Lloyd Wright exhibition I had glanced over last time but alas it was finished. We did a general sweep through, seeing a few new things like some Edward Hooper. We walked up to Central Park and had a slow stroll though in the quiet darkness which was a lovely break from the nonstop noise from the city.
We then headed up to Harlem where we met the rest of the gang, now completed by the arrival of Steven Andrew. We were attending Honk!, an evening of brass bands at a music venue called Shine. The venue was small and the roof was covered with record sleeves and fairy lights. The two bands playing that evening were 9 piece, all female Argentinian Damas de Ferro and 8 piece, all male New Orleans Creations Brass band. Both were excellent and I boogied like my life depended on it.
We were all sweaty and tired after the gig and given the long ride ahead of us we started on our way back, with some of the crew drifting off on the train.

On Saturday Gareth, Lisa and I ventured into Queens, having been told by Nadia the previous day that it was worth a stroll. We got the subway and walked to the river, where we could see the UN headquarters on the other side. We continued walking, heading towards the Queens Sculpture Garden. On the way we passed a baseball field at which we stopped to watch some of the friendly local game. They were in fact playing softball – but I doubt the specific differences between the two games will matter to my left wing, pinko, art gallery opening, theatre circle readers.
Speaking of you all, the sculpture garden was full of them. It had a couple of interesting pieces of actual sculpture, but the attention was diverted from them to a couple of performance artists that were unleashing their unhinged therapy on the chin-stroking, self congratulatory, pat-on-the-back Saturday art wankers who you would no doubt find spouting a drivel laden essay about their interpretation of the afternoons ‘performance’ at the post show orgy, which was probably less about art appreciation and more about free wine and picking up artist types.
Long story short, one person was rolling around on the ground in a shiny net with a speaker somewhere on their person reciting poetry while a group of three in clearish body stockings appeared to be PVA gluing newspaper clippings to themselves while playing bad, bad Casio tone and reciting droll, cultish “poetry” not dissimilar to the following paragraph of my own drivel which I have written to make you feel like you suffered through it too.
“the man takes a sponge from the counter and placed it on the cat, still warm from the microwave. What was the name of that waiter that served us last night, I wondered. He reminded me of a clock I had once. The winter will be longer if you hold your breath and carry a copy of the newspaper from the last moon of the equinox”
No wonder people hate art. We all went into Manhattan from there and found our way to Trump Tower, where Gareth really wanted to purchase a couple of Trumps “make America great again” caps as gifts for people. Pretty great sense of humour there!
The three of us went down to Washington Square where we met up with the team and headed to the Comedy Cellar – one of, if not the most iconic comedy venue on the east coast. It was a very intimate space, fitting 200 max I would estimate. The house was packed and our booking required us to have at least two menu items per person which I thought was a pretty good business model for a venue like this.
The comics were William Stephenson, Jon Fisch, Lynne Koplitz, Rory Albanese, Keith Robinson Judah Friedlander and Lenny Marcus. Some were known to me, all were excellent!
From there the team walked around a few bars in Greenwich. After a few I was tired and Gareth and I headed back to the pad.

The next day G Man and I headed into the city, it was the last full day for the rest of the crew so there were a few things that everyone wanted to tick off. I accompanied Gareth to the Natural History Museum, which was pretty damn cool and absolutely massive! We spent a good few hours there, looking at the animals which were set in the most fantastic scenes. We looked through the space part, which was ok, but required too much reading and had not enough models of the solar system. There were other parts that I can’t remember now.
We then headed up to tick off another box of ours, Soul Food in Harlem. We had looked into it and found the best place is Sylvia’s restaurant which had been around for some 60 years and been frequented by the likes of Al Sharpton, Mohammad Ali and Barack Obama. It cost a pretty penny but it was worth every sent. We each have half a chicken, Kentucky fried and a plate of ribs with sides of Macaroni cheese, garlic mash, string beans and rice. I had a Bloody Mary which I thought I was a fan of, but actually I had only had sips at tasting in Liverpool. Not really my cup of vodka.
We were so damn full, it was such a fantastic experience. What happened next was pretty crazy too. Standing in the street afterwards having a smoke, a man comes and asked g man for a ciggie. While rolling one he tells us about himself, asking as if we had heard from the hip hop crew The Wu Tang clan. He then proceeded to tell us all about his time with them, his friendship with Ghost Face Killa, a movie he was in in the 90s called Black and White and that his name was Lord Superb. We were pretty blown away by this claim but a little skeptical. We wished each other well and were on our way, after he gave me his email address and phone number. Sure enough, a google of his names confirmed that he was telling the truth. He did manage to gloss over the jail time – but who’s gonna shout about that. We were so chuffed that Gareth managed to get on the train without me!
We got home to a Brooklyn and went out for some drinks to celebrate the last night. Sonia got chatting to a girl in the bar and invited her to join us. I got chatting to her, and it turned out she was a comedian from Minneapolis attending a writing workshop at the onion. We talked a lot about comedy and improv at the next couple bars which was pretty cool. She also produces and releases videos through instagram and has a pretty impressive following. After a few more I walked back to the house and slept.

On Monday we had one final group breakfast at D’Santos, where I had been at least once every day during our time in bushwick. After that Sonia, Gareth, Andy and myself bid farewell to Lisa, Nadia and Steve and went and sat in a coffee shop for a bit and just chilled.
After a few hours they too left, expecting a more dramatic farewell than I because this is not yet my final goodbye – if all goes to plan.

I walked downtown and caught the subway over to prospect park area where I had arranged to meet Keri and Kelly, who were taking me in for the next two nights. They were a lovely couple in their mid twenties hustling the artist life in NYC. Keri had done a lot of travelling in the region east of turkey – Georgia, Azabejahn etc. A part of the world very unfamiliar to most. So that was very interesting.
We headed to their apartment at the end of the G line and settled in. I met their housemates and we tucked into a bottle of captain Morgans spiced generously donated by Steven. They ranged from marketers to paper pushers to museum staff to improvisors. An interesting and giggly bunch.

Tuesday was fairly relaxed. I went into Manhattan in the late morning to do some last minute site seeing and to stretch my legs. I like to give my feet a chance to air every now and then so wore my jandels, but in the last few days to temperature had really dropped back to what it was meant to be for this time of year. So I really had to stay in the sun when walking around. I went to the upper west side of Manhattan to walk past Tom’s Restaurant which is the diner used as the exterior shot for the coffee house frequented by the cast of Seinfeld.
I continued up the street and had a quick look around Columbia university before the random thought struck me to see if there is a Nintendo store in NYC. There was, and I went and let 12-15 year old Angus run riot in the store. It was pretty, pretty good.
I got back on the train and took the 40 minute ride back to the end of the G line to lie down and catch up on the two new Louis Theroux docos which had aired recently. Very dark states. Kelly eventually appeared and we make chicken soup for her friend Kristina who was under the weather. I was given the task of taking apart the rotisserie chicken which was fun. This was all done while watching classic episodes of spongebob. Kristina arrived and we ate and giggled. She had moved to the US two years ago from Latvia, but already had a very strong American accent. Keri arrived home from a painting class later on as did the rest of the flat mates and we all chatted before drifting off.

Wednesday was my last day in the US. It’s amazing how fast a month can go, but at the same time it feels like ages since I was spinning around starry eyes in Times Square before heading to Washington Heights 4 weeks ago.
I pulled myself out of bed and packed my things. I meant to get up early and do lots of things but the room I was sleeping in had no windows so I ended up sleeping until late morning. I hopped in Keris bike and cycled over to the library to print boarding passes, but it was closed until midday. I had been told that I should go and try another shitty cheap US staple called White Castle before a left, which serves sliders and the rest of the fried gaff. It was cheap and satisfying – 3 cheese burger slider, fries and coke for $5. Why by expensive produce when you can eat like this?
I cycled back to the house, finding a little print shop to print my pages, although this task seemed to difficult for the staff who were half asleep. I got back and grabbed my stuff and left Keri and Kelly’s. I went into Manhattan to have a coffee with Ted Whittaker, a Dunedin artist and former Kavanagh Student who is good pals with an art crowd I vaguely rolled with in my last year of living in Dunedin. He has been hustling the artist grind in NYC for the last year, and was staring his visa expiry right in the eye. A feeling I know all too well. We chatted for about an hour before her returned to work.
I only had a few more hours left to fill, so wandered Manhattan. I spotted a Bjark Ingles building from a few blocks away which I went to admire. I wasn’t aware that it had actually been constructed, having seen it in concept a few years ago. I went to eat some street Turkish food and got a sandwich for later before heading to the bus for Stewart.

What an epic month. Though just a taste of the big cities of the north east, I feel like I’ve got a real sense of how people live here. How people live within their means here I still don’t really understand – everything good is very expensive and a minimum wage doesn’t really exist. But people seems to make it work. I have seen some very liveable parts of NYC and having experience the efficiencies of the Subway makes you realise that everything is pretty accessible. Philly and Boston were very chilled comparatively and DC had its own buzz, though it was more bureaucratic than anything else. I saw the country react to its worst mass shooting in recent history and continued groans as day by day President Trump continues to embarrass his people.
While on a global scale it might not seem like there is much hope for the United States, meeting its people and experiencing its way of life gives me some faith. God Bless America.

Another NYC

Today I started by taking Gareth to D’Santos for some food while the others got ready for the day. We had some yummy eggs! After we returned the group of us caught the bus over to the Brooklyn Bridge and strolled across it. It was dripping with rain on and off but still a pleasant and crowded walk.

Once over the other side we caught the train to Greenwich Villiage and walked to Washington Square park. Gareth and I went down to the comedy cellar to investigate booking a table for one of the nights, and ended up booking for Saturday which had a killer line up. The Comedy Cellar is legendary for having most of the big comedy names performing there at some stage. Louis CK, Jerry Seinfeld, Bill Burr, Chris Rock, Dave Chapelle etc

We continued over to west villiage, passing the Friends building and up to the High Line. I hung there for a bit before I went to meet up with Ryan, a friend from Wellington days who, dedicated readers will recall, I last saw in Penang in 2015. We walked through Central Park and ubered down town to his hotel which was very fancy – all paid for by Nike. We had a drink on the rooftop bar which was directly under the Empire State Building before going to meet Sam Clark who is also here and I haven’t seen since before I moved to Liverpool.

We all got a burger together before Ryan went to oversee the fitout of the New York NBA store through out the night. Sam and I went back to Brooklyn and got some beers to chat over, not to mention another stop at D’Santos for a Tortas. Once he was gone I promptly fell asleep.

NY3

Our first day back in New York started with the inevitable hunt of breakfast. We are staying on Jefferson Ave, Brooklyn on the L line which takes about 15 minutes from 14th and Union Square. The area is a little further away from the super hipster Bedford ave in Williamsburg, but it is still littered with small independent eatterys, bars and street art. 
We found a great 24 hour diner called D’Santos in which we partook in the morning coffee rituals along with a wrap or bagel. Good cheap fry cook tucker. 

We got on the train back towards the river to find a flea market which in the end didn’t exist, but it gave us a chance to take in some of the river side. 
Fortunately the Brooklyn brewery was only moments away from where the market was meant to be so we went and enjoyed the free tour led by a very sassy lady. Beer, barley, hops, yeast, fermentation etc. 
We headed in a direction which took us to the previously mentioned super hipster Bedford ave, which was just that. We stopped in a few book shops and generally mooched through the area down to Williamsburg centre, where I had been a few weeks ago. 
We hopped the train over to Manhattan and down to Brooklyn heights so that we could enjoy the parks which run at the base of the Brooklyn and Williamsburg bridges. We had a slice in another diner nearby before admiring the views of lower Manhattan from the raised residential area of Brooklyn heights. 
We went back to Jefferson Ave, via a supermarket for breakfast bits (which had a barrier outside for keeping people from stealing trolleys, but would also ironically keep anyone fatter than me out). We went for a walk down to a Chinese place which had the coolest, unfriendliest wait staff but the most delicious food! Then it was home to bed. 

The next day it was Columbus Day, the “celebration” of Columbus landing on American soil. The day is celebrated by a few groups of Italians and Irish, however given that most people are aware of the two sided coin that is colonisation and the effects it had specifically on native Americans in this case the tradition is dying. 
I met up the Hege Neset for breakfast, a Norwegian girl who I worked with in studio 2 pretty much from the beginning. I took her to D’Santos, which I’ll be frequenting I imagine. She was over for her friends wedding and was staying in the area – what are the chances! I went back to see the place she was staying, the apartment of the bride and groom who were away on their honeymoon. I got chatting to the grooms aunt and cousin before Hege went to nap as it had been a string of late nights. I bid farewell and went back to ours to see if anyone was still there. 
As luck would have it, Sonia was there so we went into Manhattan to catch up to the others who had gone in to see the Columbus Day parade. It was a drizzly day so it was a bit of a wash out, with a few sad looking floats and kids with flags. But 5th Ave with fully blocked off so it was hard to move anywhere. We retreated into Central Park and wandered, heading to the Alice in Wonderland Statue and the John Lennon ‘Imagine’ Memorial, which was packed with about two dozen people all singing greatest hits together which was lovely. We later realised that it was John Lennons birthday. 
We met the others (Andy, Nadia and Lisa) in the middle of the park and set about heading down to relevant theatres to find out about standby tickets for shows, I led the charge and the only thing I’d really folk out for would be Book of Mormon. On getting to the theatre I realised that Monday night was not a show night but I was able to get the info I needed. 
The others were in need of a sit so I broke away from them to go and find out some more things, including standbys for the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon which would be fun to see. I then went to Trump Tower which I had seen was open to the public during the day. The lobby was 5 floors high leading to a public garden. The lobby itself had a waterfall down one wall and the walls were of course gold tinted mirrors. Everything was trump! Trump bar, trump ice cream, trump perfume, trump golf clubs, trump Starbucks. It was pretty good. 
I headed down the street and jumped on the train which took me the wrong way down Manhattan, but I wasn’t actually trying to get anywhere specific so it didn’t matter. I went to Union Square to get some food before getting on again and heading over to Bedford Ave to go to a Rough Trade NYC, a fantastic record store. There was a very famous old 70s band called Sparks doing a signing there which people were gathered for. I just hovered in the background seeing which dunedin and kiwi folks I could find vinyl of, it turned out there were quite a few. 
I got the message that people were heading back to the house so I got back on the train and headed back for a chill with the gang before bed. 

On Tuesday we got on the subway and headed to the Brooklyn Botanics on Prospect Park, which I understand is the self proclaimed masterpiece of the designer who did Central Park. It was a very sunny and less humid day today so i great time to be outdoors with the squirrels, chipmunks and hot dog vendors. 
We spent a few hours rambling through the botanic gardens, which was free on Tuesday mornings so it was full of school kids. The bonsai trees and fragrance garden were lovely! 
We got back on the train and headed down to Coney Island, which I’m pretty sure is not actually an island based on a quick look at the map. We headed down to the board walk and beach which also has a large carnival ground and the famous 90 years old Cyclone rollercoaster. The place was absolutely crawling with Orthodox Jews who kept asking us if we were Jewish. They were getting in the icicle sea fully clothed, it was very odd. After getting asked again and again I had to ask what they were celebrating. Turns out it was some kind of harvest celebration which involved Jews coming together and blessing each other with plant things. 
Son, Andy and Lisa were brave enough to ride the rickety old rollercoaster, which Nadia and I clearly valued our lives ( and our $10) too much to risk it. 
We got back on the train back to Manhattan as we had acquired free tickets to the 9/11 museum for 5pm. We arrived in the nick of time and I met up with Ness, J McKays sister who was over for a conference. We half took in the museum and half caught up. The museum was beautifully laid out in a kind of polished bunker which featured twisted metal, bashed up fire trucks and a lot of audio visual. 
We were there for about and hour and a half before deciding we were done and maybe our giggling (about other things) might not have been that appropriate there. 
I took her to the roof of the building I stayed in with Alicia the other week, with no questions from the door man. It was a different view to the one I had had last time as it was night to so the city was brightly lit. We took it in and got vertigo before heading back down and finding a wee bar to sit in for a few hours. We had a really good catch up. 
We hopped in a cab back uptown to near Times Square where she was staying and where I was to meet the others. We said our goodbyes and I went and had a wee in the Times Square McDonalds. 
I found the others who had just got Gareth off the bus! We took the tired Irish man back to Brooklyn, feeding ourselves on some massive slices of pizza and slipping in a sweet sweet slumber. 

Cambridge, Somerville and back to NYC

The next two days in Boston were fairly relaxed. I left Snehas place and spent Thursday hanging out at Harvard and MIT before meeting the housemate of my next host. Sami is a early childhood teacher and tarot card reader from the area. We went to a diner for some food before heading back to the house, where I met my host David who was most charming but very tired. 

The next day Sami and I explored Somerville, an area northeast of Cambridge. It is a most charming area well on its way to full gentrification. In the evening David and I shared a lovely dinner with some old fashioneds and shot the shit before heading out to a bar to meet the locals. A very pleasant time was had by all. 

The next day I snuck out around midday and headed back to New York where by evening I would be reunited with my Huskie family for a week of galivanting around the concrete jungle. 

Boston 2

Another relaxed day exploring Boston and its surrounding suburbs. I walked from Sneha’s place down to Harvard and MIT, spending some time exploring their campuses before heading back into the city, exploring some of the old portion of the city before heading back for the evening. 

Bahstahn

After an hour and a bit stop in NYC at 5am I was on my way up the coast to Boston. By midday I had reached south station and was finding my around this noticeably cooler city. I found my way to the Common, where I tried to follow the freedom trail but wasn’t that committed to it today. I just ambled around the city all afternoon, making my way over to Cambridge toward Alwife in the evening where my host Sneha lives. She is an Indian born computational linguist who is working on AI for application in the medical field. Pretty interesting stuff. 

The tragic final day in D.C.

Woke to the news of the worst mass shooting in recent years. People were glued to the TVs in the public plaza I was sitting in that morning to use internet. It feels like Groundhog Day every time this happens. The same sets of condolences and prayers, the same character accessment and the same arguments online. Missy tells me that there have been 275 mass shootings (more than four people) in the 273 days of 2017 so far. Nothing will change, this is just the reality. The biggest irony is that people have the right to gun ownership but do not have the right to the healthcare required to survive it. 

Regardless, that didn’t stop me watching the first episode of the long awaited 9th season of Curb Your Enthusiam, which premiered last night. Pretty, pretty good. 

I was due to go on a tour of the Capitol today, but some how very absent mindedly missed my scheduled tour. Kicking myself, I made my way down to the visitors centre anyway to try my luck at joining any random tour. As luck would have it, I was straight onto the tour which was just starting. 

The tour began with a 10 minute documentary about the building’s origins, it’s burning to the ground by the British and the subsequent rebuilding, and the trials and tribulations faced by the system of governance. All very wanky patriotic shit, claiming the ”new” system to be the greatest in the world. Ho ho ho – nice try guys. 

The film finished and we were taken in small groups into the rotunda which was covered in paintings and statues, with a very Christ like image of Washington on the ceiling – strange for a society whose intention was not to deify their leaders. We were fed a lot of historical information which I can’t remember. We were taken into the original senate chamber, where senate would sit in the days when there were only a dozen or so states. Also full of statues. 

This all took more or less an hour and our guide was relatively entertaining. Certainly worth the $0.00. From there I followed the tunnel over to the Senate Library, which is supposed to be the most ornately decorated building in the US. It did not disappoint, with a lovely entrance hall and reading room. It also had a very interesting exhibition on court room artists.  

From there I walked past the Supreme Court and headed to the Hart building, which houses the offices of senators and you can just walk around. I spent some time in there, snapping pics of star senators plaques. 

From there I went to the national portrait gallery and American Art Museum for a bit. They had some nice stuff, New and old. There was some work by a photo journalist called Ashley Gilbertson who I had seen give a very emotional talk at Semi Permanent in 2014 – he did multiple tours of Iraq as a photo journalist but these photos were of the bedrooms of soldiers killed in action, who’s parents typically leave them untouched. Moving stuff – some of the images are here.

From there I went to say goodbye to Conrad, after which I did one last lap of the white house by night and headed to missy’s to say bye. I then headed to union station and got on a midnight bus to Boston, due in late morning. 

Baseball and buds

Third day in Washington. I was up and out of Conrads at 8.30am to grab a coffee and use some internet, making some pretty great plans for the first part of my return to Europe. 
I dropped some bits off at Conrads and headed over to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum which was fairly entertaining. 

At 12.30 I went over to Missy’s. We had planned to go to a baseball game together today but all the cheap seats had sold out, so I proposed the next best option. We went to the Safeway and got the supplies to have our own home viewing of the game, complete with American beer and hot dogs. 

I couldn’t really follow the game, if you thought cricket was slow, baseball isn’t that much faster. A lot of pitching, not a lot of swinging. And the more beer I had the more my attention was diverted. An American experience none the less. 
Later that evening Missy and I went to Conrads, where I had offered to cook dinner. Conrad was worst for wear after a night at a music festival so a home cooked meal was just what the doctor ordered. Parmigiana, salad and red wine. Good times!

Bagels and the Bill of Rights

Day two in Washington DC. I stirred early as usual and wrote my obligatory blog posts from my remarkably comfy couch while Missy snoozed behind me in her bed. 
She eventually woke and hopped out of bed, her first words uttered being “coffee?”. What a dream boat. We slowly warmed to the morning with CNN on in the background with word of the Puerto Recan crisis which is currently unfolding. I had just learned yesterday that the island is a territory of the United States – classic ignorance. 
I got cleaned up and ran down the street as I had to go and meet Conrad, a Galwayman who was my host for the next two nights but had misjudged his schedule and was off to a music festival in the afternoon. However he very kindly met his obligation and left his house to me for the evening in his absence. God bless couchsurfing. We talked for half an hour or so over a cup of tea before I left him to prepare further for the afternoon and evening ahead. 
I went back to Missys house and collected her, as we had a picnic to attend. Nearly two years ago, when travelling in Eastern Europe with Sam Clark and Staire Gilganis we had the pleasure of travelling from Belgrade to Sarajevo with 3 American girls. I had kept in touch with them and one, Kaitlyn, currently lives and works as a lobbyist in Washington DC. 
I went to the supermarket to collect a very random assortment of picnic food (food is so damn expensive in the US, I paid $7 for a bag a grapes. GRAPES!) before Missy and I half walked, half ubered our way down to a grassy knowl (no one was assassinated) near the Vietnam veterans memorial. 
Kaitlyn and I were reunited and we had a lovely picnic in the middle of the grass, away from the tourists and in direct site of the Washington Monument which was sporting a delightful dramatic sky behind it today. Very nice.

After lunch and a general chat Missy left us and Kaitlyn and I embarked of a fact finding mission to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. As a lobbyist in Washington DC she was a great source of information for my endless questions about legislative procedure and current hot button issues (there was a “dreamer” protest on the mall that afternoon). 
The museum was good, but like MoMA the week before, museums always bring out mine and my company’s sarcastic side. There were dinosaur bones and recreations of early ancestors. It was pretty cool. 

More interestingly, following that we went to the United States Archive museum and saw the Constitution and Bill of Rights. The security guards were pretty good about the reasonably sized blade Kaitlyn had in her bag (for picnicing purposes only, of course) and warned me to watch my mouth around her. Unfortunately there was a no photography policy in the museum – here’s the photos I took. 

It was closing time by now so Kaitlin ran me pasted the east side of the Capitol building, where everyone gets dropped off and do their press conferences, past the Supreme Court and the Senators Offices, where on Monday I can go and get selfies with the plaques of my favourite senators – watch this space readers. 

I left Kaitlyn at Union Station and went back to see Missy before she went out for dinner. Apparently I missed a Tiffany Trump by only a few seconds! 
We had some wine and watched Seinfeld while she got ready to go out. We stepped out together and made some excellent and super American plans for tomorrow before we went our seperate ways and I headed back to Conrads to charge my phone and eat some of the picnic food left over from the afternoon. 
Conrad has no internet at his place, so I took the time to eat tortilla chips, drink a beer and write this blog post to this point. Some may notice a stark improvement in the entertainment value of the writing. This is what happens when Angus McBryde is 2 wines deep. Also, in honour of President Donald J. Trump, I will refer to myself in the third person in that previous sentence (only). I also took the opportunity to have a shave. 
I also invented to ‘cheese taco’, which I’m surprised is not a thing yet, given how ridiculous American food is. I mean, in 2017 you can get a hamburger where the bun is made of NOODLES! This is just replacing the soft tortilla with cheese! Simple!

At 9pm I got on the metro over to Arlington to go to Iota, a music club mentioned by Conrad which, after 20 years was shutting it’s doors for good after tonight. I managed to avoid the door charge by walking into the wrong entrance and watched a couple of the mainly bluegrass bands in the good natured, mourning crowd. 

After the second band I could feel myself fading so jumped back on the metro and stared at the south side of the White House for 10 minutes or so before heading back to Conrad’s and going to sleep.