June 17, 2009
From JFK airport, we were taken to some hostel in Brooklyn. A hostel is something like a student dorm, only worse. In an indecently cramped room, there were 3 bunk beds; I fell asleep instantly on one of them, as I hadn't slept properly for two days. FYI: a night in the hostel costs $20, but at least there is a decent shower here.
I woke up early in the morning to the wailing of police cars outside the window. We washed up, checked out of the room, and went to look for the subway.
Brooklyn streets look like a sheet of graph paper. Every two or three houses is a block, and before your eyes is another intersection full of buses and yellow taxis. By the way, the traffic here is exactly like in Moscow—drivers yell at each other and honk, and nobody lets pedestrians pass.
After walking a few blocks, we found the subway. There are no ticket offices or grandmas in the subway. Everything is automated—there are only machines selling cards. But there are no turnstiles either—instead, there are rotating iron doors. You can't jump over or climb through those.
Descending into the subway, we got on an A-line train and went without knowing where. Looking around, I almost fell into despair—90% of the people in the car were African Americans, many with dreadlocks, tattoos, and angry expressions on their faces. Choosing the most good-natured-looking one among them, I asked how to get to the bus station, to which he replied with a stream of unknown (or incomprehensible?) words that flew very quickly out of his thick-lipped mouth. I had to look at the map, but I didn't understand a damn thing in it—neither where I was nor where I needed to go. Because of this, I involuntarily swore in Russian, to which some old lady immediately reacted.
— Where are you going, son? — she asked.
— Port Authority Bus Station
— You have 4 more stops and then you get off.
I chatted with her a little more before I had to get off. It turned out that she had been living here for 40 years.
At the station, I bought a ticket to Norfolk, had a snack at Burger King, and set off on a long journey to the state of Virginia.
