JoelNothman.com

My trip to Boston began by being late. I was finishing my couscous and chicken lunch on Thursday (21st Dec 2006), and farewelling Jawina, and hadn’t even got as far as packing for our 3:45 bus (for which we had not bought tickets, which meant we were meant to arrive early enough to buy them at the station and get a seat on the bus). So packing was rushed, and yet so far I’ve discovered nothing forgotten but my touque (beanie), which hasn’t been necessary, but may well be when I get back to Montreal [I'm now back, and it's not necessary; I wrote this post over the last two weeks...]. A spare jumper wouldn’t have hurt. At least for the meantime, the East Coast seems to be having a pretty warm winter, and certainly no white Christmas: bare trees, and cool, wintry breezes, just missing the pleasant descent of snowflakes from above.

As I packed, Rachel, who I would be going with, kept complaining about how many boxes of books she’d somehow acquired (from Wednesday-night bins outside Redpath; from an abundance of second-hand bookstores) since being in Montreal, and wondering how she would get it over to her new appartement. She gave up for the moment, but had some other things to take there before leaving, and we decided that we were out of time to walk there and then catch the Metro to Berri-UQAM. We went down to the taxi stand at the bottom of our street, and took the first in line. First stop Durocher; second stop Greyhound at Berri. She brought two bags up to the apartment, I waited in the taxi with a driver who clearly didn’t understand our instructions, as he pulled out and started to head off, then, upon being corrected, backed up again and pulled in, knowing it was time to brake when he tapped the car behind.

We did make it to the station on-time and there were surprised to meet George who would also be heading home to Boston for the break. We took turns at a quick mincha outside on a street corner, me under the pretense of a mobile phone conversation, and Rachel under the pretense that she could doo with out one and not be approached by a strange man speaking a strange language that would scare her indoors.

The trip itself was fairly uneventful, except for Rachel, suddenly awake despite having slept little over the prior days, deciding that tonight when she got home would be a good time to make sufganiot (jam-filled doughnuts). I thought it was a great idea in terms of eating sufganiot, but thought it an unlikely event for that evening. The border process was different to last time, and much quicker; as I crossed it I changed my phone to the US SIM card to upsettingly discover that it was “unregistered”. Oh and we also realised at some point that we’d forgotten the Chabad chanukiah that I’d been using, and candles, that we had intended to light and leave at some pit-stop along the way. And someone decided to take Rachel’s seat at one said stop, making the two of us move: Rachel away from her window, which meant she wouldn’t sleep, and me next to some guy who was carrying home a very small avocado tree in a pot so that it wouldn’t be lonely over Christmas. We watched a little John Safran vs God that I had acquired but not yet watched. Strange stuff.

We arrived in Boston’s South Station on-time, which was late at night. From there, we had to take the commuter rail (only coming 45 minutes later) down to Sharon, Rachel’s home-town, which took another 40 minutes or so. Finally her dad collected us from the station, and with 10 minutes of driving, we were in the middle-of-nowhere that Rachel calls home. Rachel without a driver’s licence, and me still not having driven on the right side of the road, I felt like we were pretty far from anything significant, but it was nice to be out of the city (even if it meant I was in the sticks). We lit candles, span some dreidels, and went to bed.

The next (Friday) morning, we caught the first train in that we woke up in time for, which got into Boston at 11, and we were going to have to catch the 2pm back. There weren’t really many choices about that, the train just doesn’t come very often. Rachel waited for Emma who she was urging to see, while I went outside to brave the cold and get lost in a new city.

So what’s there to see in Boston, anyway? Most tourists start with Boston Common and follow a red-brick (or paint) road, entitled the Freedom Trail, around some of the city’s highlights, intending to focus upon America’s liberation from its European mother. I first visited the public gardens; like a good tourist, I photographed a graveyard along the way; took a few pictures in the park; chased squirrels up trees, again with my camera; puzzled at why there was what seemed to be a cherry tree with fresh flowers—the weather’s unseasonably warm, but not that warm. And then I headed across to Boston common, where not much was on except outdoor skating on the Frog Pond, the sun bearing down upon their skates gliding through the ice.

The Boston history exhibited in the Freedom Trail was not that exciting. Or maybe I needed to take a tour: there weren’t any handy information posts along the way. There were a number of graveyards, with more or less interesting graves in them, I’m sure, but I didn’t go in to find out. I stopped to eat lunch at the kosher Milk St Cafe, and was pleasantly surprised by a very nice (taste, texture, service) soup and pizza lunch for $6.50. Not only was it handy to have something kosher in the middle of the city, but it was good food!

Passing shops packed with Christmas shoppers and decorations, and a Santa or two at South Market, I unexpectedly found myself in the middle of a street amid the New England Holocaust Memorial. Beginning with a few information- or quotation-bearing slabs of granite alongside a path, and an American tunnel, you eventually walk into a series of tall, blue-glass, steam-filled chambers. As you look to the walls, there are written quotations, upon glass filled with numbers, all of the same length, rising toward the sky. Between each chamber, a fact etched into the ground. After passing through them all (six, perhaps), the experience is completed with a pillar upon which small rocks mournfully rest. It is solemn, amid the commercialism of the city; visible, but unidentifiable until approached; unexpected, yet powerful. I was surprised at the memorial and found it quite effective: unlike others I have seen it attracted passers-by through mere curiosity, and spoke to those unknowing, while reaching to others through its many symbolisms.

Continuing through a haymarket of cheap vegetables, I bought some persimmons to bring home to the Katlers (which turned out to be underripe, or otherwise different to what I knew), and found my way back to South Station. Not findig Rachel, I climbed onto the packed train and just hoped to find her when I got off so that I would have a ride back to her home. Just as the train pulled into Sharon, I looked up from my books that were entertaining me, and saw Rachel at the other end of the carriage, and Elan, also a fellow Hillel and Sharon resident, spotted me at just the same time. I greeted him as we parted and as Rachel spotted her Dad’s car.

One hour was a bit too long to walk to synagogue for Friday night services, but we lit all the chanukiot for the grand finale and watched, waiting till the last wick burnt out, before beginning dinner. Vegetarian, for a change. A nice quiche, and salad, and latkes, and sweet potatos, and beans, and brownies for dessert. As I often do on Friday nights, I stayed up reading this and that until my eyes could no longer bear it (fairly early in this case), and prepared myself for the morning’s hike with a good sleep.

It was raining a little in the morning, but it was still nice to walk out, down by the lake, across Sharon to Young Israel, where I was told I’d know another 4 McGill students. It seems a nice congregation, and the bar mitzvah sponsored an equally nice kiddush. But I was warned that there would be food at lunch too. Rachel’s friend Gavriella guided us over to their house for lunch. She had two younger sisters and an older brother who had a girlfriend over for lunch, all currently at the school Rachel once went to; their mother is a Conservative rabbi. Lunch, too was dairy, although the milk in the peanut sauce for the ?Seitan was only from coconuts, bought as a box of 40 for the price of 5 that the family had slowly been getting through (juicing, milking, eating, sprinkling) or giving away. Some vegetarian cholent, and some baked salmon (which, surprisingly, I ate), too. The company and the conversation were very lively and enjoyable. We just hung around at their house throughout the afternoon, but in the evening they had to pack for the Caribbean the next morning. Nonetheles we took Gavriella home with us, as I discovered that (a) there is not much to do in Sharon; (b) I should organise trips earlier, because you (i) don’t always have internet, (ii) don’t always have a mobile phone, and (iii) can’t be assured that people will answer them when you do call; (c) T-Mobile deactivates To-Go (pre-paid) accounts after 90 days without credit, and that if I had unnecessarily bought $5 when I came down to NYC in September, it would have saved me a lot of hassle now.

Vayehi erev vayehi voker (and it was evening and it was morning): Sunday. First train to Boston leaves from Sharon at 11:30. So Marshall, Rachel’s dad, drove us in (after a French-toast breakfast and some time playing with and photographing their bird). We were going to meet Yael at Sharon station and go together to Harvard Square, Cambridge, mostly to satiate my touristy needs. But first we decided to take another walk around the city, and see if the Milk Street Cafe would feed us again for lunch. A pity, perhaps that it wasn’t open. But that’s okay, because we didn’t have trouble finding an open Ben & Jerry’s and finishing a pint of ice-cream together.

Up in Cambridge, we wandered around, saw small portions of Harvard’s elegant buildings; watched as people touched the golden shoe of the purported Mr Harvard himself (actually a statue of an arbitrary student attributed as Harvard), which is rumoured often the subject of urination in fraternity initiations. There Rachel also attempted to use the Old College Pump, but no water came. We then visited a favourite stationery store of Rachel’s where she would have bought fountain pens if they weren’t so expensive.

In addition, I visited T-Mobile who are meant to provide my US mobile phone service, to find out how much they wanted me to pay them to reactivate my account. The answer was, as I feared, a bit much: $50, and for a different phone number. Not quite worth it for a handful of days. Oh well.

On our way out, we were generally amused by a mass of birds competing over a muffin left on a bench. Just thought you might like to know.

As the sun began to set, and keeping our eyes on watches to ensure we could find a train back to Sharon, we went took the T (metro subway) down to Brookline where we hoped to find a movie and dinner. We failed to find a movie, and we fought between a few choices for dinner, but eventually ended up eating felafel and shawarma at Rami’s, before realising we should start heading back.

When we got to Sharon, though, we walked to nearby Jenny’s place where Yael was staying. Despite maybe expecting Rachel to call home and get a lift, we instead spent a few hours at Jenny’s place. There we ate popcorn, I chatted with Jen’s brother, gave some suggestions to add fun to a handful of shiurim her sister needed to prepare, and watched as Rachel and her friends studied enneagrams and other irrational personality classification systems.

When the night got late enough, Jen drove us home to Rachel’s, and if we did anything much before sleep, I can’t remember what it was. In the morning, though, I had to be up fairly early to catch a bus. Rachel’s dad drove me into Newton, and thankfully I was able to buy a ticket 10 minutes before the bus arrived to take me down to NYC.

A comment on Boston in general: I felt that, despite the occasional public channukah decorations, Boston was probably the least multicultural city I’ve visited along my way. Contrasting it with Montreal before and New York after, Boston was very white, with the general exception of those selling at the haymarket stalls. It is interesting, if ironic, that this is the case in the centre of the US’s academia and therefore a fairly liberal seat, where surely affirmative action has brought other peoples into the universities, but their general absence is still very notable.