Smoke in the apartment, laughter, alcohol, swearing, guys, chips, unwashed plates, arguments, shouting at night, laughter until morning, sleepy eyes, hard beds, hotel towels, the smell of cigarettes... This is how I live now. 2 Ukrainians, a guy from Orel, Kazakhs, an Azerbaijani... and many other people whose names you don't even try to remember. Sometimes I forget who I live with and who is a guest. I work at Cavalier, still as a housekeeper, with the same mixed success. Fewer hours, less money... but now they don't force us to slave away in the laundry, where there is 150% humidity and heat near 50 degrees... less money, but I'm slacking off and sometimes taking days off to spend them... in New York!
You can get to NY by Greyhound, as I did at the beginning of my trip... or by the China bus. Greyhound cost me 60 bucks and 17 hours of travel with 2 transfers. The China bus costs 20 bucks and 6 hours without transfers. Everyone probably imagined a rickety, falling-apart bus full of Chinese people. But no! A very cool bus... it's much warmer than the Greyhound, cheaper, faster, and they even show movies... and no transfers, and it stops near cafes. So the Chinese are ahead of the planet as always. Then screw that Greyhound! I need to find out if this China bus goes to Las Vegas... because 400 bucks for a trip is a bit expensive... By the way! Greyhound has a real station... with all sorts of windows, ticket offices, a huge fleet, etc... but the China bus station is a cafe where a little Chinese woman sits and sells noodles. And there is one line for both noodles and bus tickets. She just sits there and asks: What would you like? Noodles? Of course... something to drink? Right away. A bus ticket to New York? No problem... that's how you need to work! Learn, Russians!
Well, 6 hours of driving... we drove at night, so I slept well and... I'm delighted, I'm in shock, I'm confused... I'm in New York! It's like I ended up in Sex and the City. Not at all the impressions I had at the beginning of June. Skyscrapers, taxis, people, screens, advertisements... I was delighted with everything! True, there were some misunderstandings with friends... but as they say, everything happens for the best. I walked around Manhattan, Wall Street, Union Square, Times Square... in general, everything as it should be. The subway kills any desire to criticize and dislike the St. Petersburg subway. St. Petersburg's is a fairy tale!! But in the New York subway, you can meet rats, blood, bullet holes, a vomiting black guy, Mexicans having sex, sleeping students...
I lived in Queens. And this is some other part of Queens... not at all the one I was driven through from the airport! Here there are cute houses, a fruit market, back lawns with a pool and barbecue, umbrellas and flowers... and somewhere on the horizon, the Empire State Building rises.
