Returning to New York happened on October 4th with one of the Romanian girls on adjacent flights. At the airport, I decided to leave my luggage for a day, and together with the girl, I headed into the city with a clear mission: to bring her to her destination in the city, since I had already been here and she hadn't.
The destination was a hotel in the center of Manhattan, where our two colleagues from Addis and their friend were staying. Upon arriving there, we left our things and headed to Columbus Circle to meet two more of our former colleagues. Yes, I am surrounded by Romanians again. As if I never left. From Bucharest, to Bucharest, and back to Bucharest. Well, we decided that I would spend the night with the colleagues we met at Columbus Circle, and they would stay at their aunt's place in the Bronx. The Bronx, just so you know, is the outskirts of New York. The farthest part. Besides, I left my backpack in the girls' room, so I had to go back, and only then take the subway to the Bronx. Here, perhaps, I overpraised the city's transport, as it took us a very long time to get there. Either the trains weren't running, or they were canceled, or something like that.
Then they figured we could get off now, walk to another station, and take a direct line from there without transfers. Well, okay, I didn't even listen to them, I just walked in silence. I noticed it was getting dark around us. A couple of minutes later, I realized we were walking through Harlem. For those who don't know, Harlem is a predominantly African-American neighborhood in New York, and three white foreigners definitely shouldn't be showing up there at one in the morning. One of us, Radu, is a rapper by nature and really loves that kind of vibe. And you know, he was even happy that we were in such a neighborhood. Not a single policeman around, it was dark, strange people, but he was having fun. Honestly, it was kind of creepy. Even standing at the subway station, I didn't feel safe when some drug addicts were sitting on their knees in a circle near the bench next to us, doing something strange.
Anyway, you caught Tip #20, right?
On top of everything, we were very "lucky" and our train went express, skipping our station due to some repair work. We had to get back from the terminal station.
We arrived home around two in the morning and passed out almost immediately.
October 5th.
The thing is, I can't even get home properly :D
But I managed to turn off my alarms in the morning and oversleep. My flight was at 3 PM, but it's better to arrive at our airline 3 hours early. Plus, I wanted to stop by my friend's place on the way. And here I woke up, turned off the alarm, and fell asleep again. Then I opened my eyes - it was 10 o'clock. My phone was blowing up on silent, to the point that my mom called me long-distance, and besides that, there were Viber, Facebook, Telegram, SMS, etc. In short, I jumped up, got dressed, and flew out as fast as I could because it's a long way. The funniest thing is that on the way, I accidentally grabbed my friend's aunt's watch, which was lying next to my things. I ran back, returned it, and then headed to the subway. I traveled for 2.5 hours and arrived at the airport at 12:30 - just in time.
I checked in, dropped off my luggage, and went downstairs to the shops. I had a final meal at McDonald's. Well, that's actually it. Time to go home. It was a crazy adventure, but that's probably enough for now. I even wanted to go home a little bit. Now there were 15-17 hours of the return flight ahead, which went much faster than the initial ones. It was terribly sad to leave this country, but I know that I will definitely return.
