Our station

to the right you see "our" subway station from where we took the train into boston. we would cross the street at the yellow "lane". the yellow would diminish over time, but periodically it would be repainted. more often than not cars would not stop. then i would yell a bit or otherwise make clear that i was not happy about that. i even once wrote the municipality asking whether something could be done about this crossing. there were some signs that cars are supposed to stop, but they werent very well visible (the yellow marking however should have been enough). but... the guy responded that this part of the road did not belong to the city, but to the MBTA (the massachusetts bay transportation authority; ie the boston subway), so i should write to them. i never did.... buses were coming at it like maniacs too, even though they were supposed to be driving only 6 miles an hour right after the yellow line...

every weekday we walked to this subway station and got off at north station. for 3 years! but when tim recently said "hey, can we still name all the stops?" we both could not. not with certainty.... funny, how quickly you forget some things...

Last week

another picture from last week. to the right you see the orange line station where we always get on the train. quite some snow!! and today it almost felt like spring....

Not really

some advertisement on the floor of a subwaystation in boston.... the weather defenitely is not getting hotter just yet! its quite stormy since yesterday, and today it snowed pretty much the entire day. not that much on the ground though... maybe that happens tonight, lets see.....

Secret entrance.....

while walking to the subway, we saw this alternative entrance.... we thought of trying it, but then realized we already paid our fare by having a monthly ticket, so it wasnt really necessary. was really surprised though that there was no sign, or a police officer or whatever to protect you from falling down or so.... as is usually the case.

today we discovered that 11 break-ins have occurred in our apartment complex about 2 weeks ago. they all happened within one week, in 4 different buildings. in none of the cases there were signs of forced entry, and in some cases residents even found their apartments locked.... we had been informed already about 2 break-ins, and had been left in the dark as to how, what and why. it was suggested then that those residents had forgotten to lock their doors and we got a nice letter reminding us to always lock our doors, to not give away our keys or write our address on the keys. of course, we had questions already then. on top of that, last week we were suddenly informed that ALL locks to all 550 apartments were going to be changed, and still no answer why that would be necessary since they had labeled those 2 break-ins as "isolated cases".... but now we know. 11 break-ins. in some cases they even locked the door after they stole stuff, and then we have to believe to no one has or can have a key that fits on all our doors??! can you believe it?! its really quite scary and very weird to leave our apartment, double-checking whether we locked it but at the same time thinking that that does not matter anyways right now..... who knows, perhaps they already have been in our place! good thing that we dont have any ipads, iphones or other fancy electronics..... (apparently thats what got stolen).
during the "meeting" we had today with a police officer and the management team residents came up with the weirdest questions, suggestions and theories as to how this could have happened, and how this can be prevented in the future. yet nobody asked whether there might be a secret entrance somewhere......
im rather mad that the management kept us dumb and didnt inform us right away that 11 break-ins occurred, ALL without any signs of forced entry (and who knows, maybe even more?!), we only found that out because we attended that stupid meeting where we just went out of sheer curiosity, as we were wondering what the hell a police officer could tell us about 2 break-ins.....

Who's crazier?

above a picture when your thickest wintercoat, a hat (or 2), a scarf and gloves were not necessary. its suddenly real cold!! -15C (9F) this morning, but combined with the wind feeling like -28C (-8F). whatever the latter means... its just cold! finally i can wear all those nice hats and gloves and scarfs... :D

last night we were in a very full orange line. it was so full that i could not hold myself onto something, but since there were so many people, that wasnt really necessary anyways. at some point a guy nearby with headphones on started singing some musical song pretty loud. some eye rolling and giggles were exchanged between other passengers, as he went on and on and on. then he got a call, and everyone got to join in on his conversation as he was talking soo very loud! it was mostly about nothing, and the person he was talking to apparently was waiting at the station we were soon to reach. the guy stepped out of the train and screamed her name several times. really, really loud. at that point another guy suddenly shouted; "enough!! enough! stop it! no more barbara or whatever her name is. no more singing!! there are other people in this train. enough!" now we suddenly had a screaming person on either side of us, and i wasnt sure anymore which one was more crazy. the singing guy sort of ignored the angry guy, and just continued his loud phone conversation with the person who stepped into the train somewhere else. the angry guy did not like that, and while we were approaching our final stop, he ostentatiously (this word sounds better in dutch) took out his phone.... if possible, he was speaking even more loudly than the singing guy, reporting the above... now more people were looking weary at him than the singing guy. after a thorough description of singing guy (which in itself could be a reason for singing guy to become very angry, but he didnt seem to be the angry kind, just weird and oblivious), angry guy went on to report that he was afraid (!!), as he spoke up to singing guy and feared there would be retaliation of some sort. by now, the train had reached its final stop and everyone was rushing out. he remained on the platform, on the phone. quite weird if you are so afraid of the person opposite of you, now coming out too.... but... singing guy just happily walked on, still talking on the phone, while the angry guy...? i dont know... but he surely won the weirdness competition, in my opinion...

Subway entrance

this is the subway entrance to south station. i think there are 4 of these, even, for the train in each direction on either side of the street.

i also like the thingies in between for the many, many free magazines you can get. most of them i have never seen! often they are empty anyways, and in areas with lots of homeless people they are usually used as storage for their blankets... so, beware... :)

Walking home

this is the path we take from the subway (to the right in the back) to our apartment. currently the weather is not that great. a lot of rain and fog.., as you can see. but not very cold. it feels weird to leave the house without a coat, but then when you are walking its actually too warm!!

i hope the weekend will be nicer, but often we have quite a few of these days in a row... (its a long weekend too, monday is a national holiday (for most people))

Orange line

this is the train i take everyday to get into boston. bostons skyline you can see in the background!

it is a few stations after the one i get on, where they store all the orange trains that are not in use.... you walk above them when you leave this particular station (you can see the reflection of the glass, unfortunately).

its so hot here! usually im ok with it, but at this very moment... beeehhh.. maybe its also my hote computer, and we were using the oven quite a bit this evening (making dinner, baking bread, etc etc). but as usual, i get cold just a few minutes after we turn on the airconditioning....

good night!

Charles MGH

charles/mgh, thats the name of the subway stop where i took this picture. thinking of it, it might well be the only stop that looks kind of modern in entire boston. at least of the ones that i have seen. actually, its only the glass cage that leads you to the platform thats modern... 

charles is for the charles river that you will cross when taking the outbound train to cambridge. mgh is for massachusetts general hospital that you will see on your left when taking the inbound train into boston. ofcourse, there is a wikipedia page for this red line stop. however much i love wikipedia, i never felt the urge to contribute to it myself, and often wonder how/when and whom decides its time to make an entry about certain things. but... it did tell me that the bridge that you are on when crossing the charles with the red line is named the longfellow bridge. i kind of knew that, reading it. what i didnt know, is that this bridge is also called the salt-and-pepper-(shaker)-bridge (shaker is apparently optional). this is because of the shape of the central towers on the bridge. hmm... we crossed this bridge several times by foot, yet i never thought, hey, those look like salt and pepper shakers! so... one day i have to go back and picture them, so that you can tell me what you think... :)

No loitering

no loitering.... loitering is a funny word. it looks funny, but i never heard someone say it. when i say it, it sounds funny, but perhaps im pronouncing it all wrong... :) im still waiting for an opportunity to tell someone to stop loitering... haha.

you see this "command" hanging every here and there. for example, at the start of the path to our apartment complex is a bridge leading to a street of (i think) single family homes. every night around ten, this bridge is locked for reasons that are beyond my understanding, and early in the morning its opened again. next to this bridge is the "no loitering" sign. but how can you not loiter there, if you cannot pass the bridge if you fail to come home before 10?! (locals actually know a way past the 2 gates on either side, so i really dont see the point of locking it. perhaps to make the no loitering sign useful?).

so... no loitering means that you are not allowed to remain in a certain public space for a certain amount of time (dutch translation here). wikipedia is not very helpful, other than mentioning its mostly prohibited in the US, UK and australia. in theory you could get arrested for loitering. i dont really like the image, the policeman with baton and the 3 guys, casually hanging around. the one standing is smoking. even with this simple image, they managed to throw in some stereotypes!

the sign above was at the subway station (green line, science park), above a bench. but isnt waiting for a train some kind of loitering too... ? how am i supposed to wait for a train then.. ?

Park street

last week or so we were sitting at park street, waiting for the train to come, the train in the other direction was just leaving (im thinking really hard where we went or came from, i cant remember, and i think its odd we were waiting for a red line, but we clearly were, as you can see...; our home is on the orange line). in weekends and evenings trains come less frequent, and its not that crowded, so i felt more free to take some pics.

when we were in boston for the very first time, we rented an apartment close to the park street stop. it took a while to figure out this station (in fact we didnt manage to figure it out during that week). you can walk to the orange line, the red line, and upstairs you can catch the green line. but it was not clear to me, at all, how to get from one platform to the other. especially when arriving on the green line "outbound"... complete desorientation. "i see the platform i want to go to now, but HOW do i get there?!" to complicate matters even further, there are 4 different green lines "inbound", and i had no clue how people knew which green line goes where (then i found out they have letters, B, C, D, and E, and there are 2 platforms, B & C stop on one side, behind each other, D & E on the other. but this took me months!!). the designation "inbound"& "outbound" was weird to me too at first, they sort of randomly choose the center of the city, and depending on that, directions are given as in- or outbound (sort of like up- or downtown, i guess, only boston is just so tiny!)

hmmm, i guess this is boring, if you have never been to park street in boston. if you ever go; remember that you are allowed to cross the tracks of the green line at park street. you dont have to wait until a train arrives, going in on one side, and leaving on the other..... :) (when someone told me that, i was just glad not being the only one who thinks this station is very complicated...).

Lousy parking

when walking to the subway one morning we saw this car... parked like that!! i think the photo does not entirely show how ridiculous this was, and how, relatively, steep.... i guess he/she didnt fit in the normal way you are supposed to park you car, and came up with this solution instead. im just wondering if it was sheer frustration and anger, or perhaps also just for the fun of it...?

we once got a ticket for parking in the wrong direction. something that does not matter (anymore) in the netherlands, you can park however you like, so we were not aware that here that can get you a ticket for that. luckily for us, the ticket never made it to "the system" tim found out when he called to pay the fine (what was it? 20 or 40 dollars or so?), so we never paid... we thus were sure this car would either be towed, or at least get a ticket. but when we got back home in the evening, the car was still parked like this...

around our subway station are 788 parking spots, and they are always, always all occupied (during the week, that is). for some you still have to walk a good 5 minutes to the station, and parking costs you 5.50 per day. i just calculated that that is more than 20,000 parking dollars per week (!!), just for this station. wish that would go straight to me.... !

Yellow fan

the MBTA recently painted the fans in the subwaysystem yellow. when i first saw them, i found them really funny. sooo big! and would they really cool down the stations? soon i got used to them, until we had a visitor who showed me her pictures and said she tried to picture those big fans, as they looked so funny. only then i remembered that i once found them funny as well... :)

Boston's great!

this evening we saw a movie at the hatch shell, as you can see above! next to the charles river, boston organizes free friday flicks starting in june until august. the movie starts at sunset, today that was at 8.14, and thus every week the movie will start a little earlier, funny, no? we got some pizza, sat on some scrubs (tim brought them from work, we fogot to bring a blanket like real americans), enjoyed free salads and beverages... and finally a movie. this time it was despicable me, an animated film. i liked it so much!

on wednesday's you can go to the hatch shell as well, then to enjoy some classical music, as i posted last year. in the meantime, it was really, really hot today. at some point the temperature was 39.5 degrees celsius, or 103 F. the only day it was hotter here in boston was on july 4th, 1911, when it was 104 F. when stepping outside for lunch today, i had the feeling i stepped into a hair dryer, as it was very windy, somehow i liked it! anyways.. authorities take the heat very serious, you can goto "cooling centers" in the city, and i now know that the MBTA has distributed 66 extra fans throughout the subway stations, where it can be real hot. as such, the total number of fans is 276. just so you know! :) here you can read it all.

Customized MBTA

on saturday we were in the green line, and saw those 2 chairs! i really had to suppress the urge to go and sit on them, as we had to stand. no clue whom they belonged to. perhaps it was some sort of social experiment? who is going to sit on such a chair?

or maybe it was because the MBTA is trying to renew itself? i read in the newspaper this morning that the MBTA (which stands for massachusetts bay transportation authority, or the T, in short) is thinking of selling "station naming rights". as such, the T would incorporate both the station name and a corporate brand into the renamed facility. in doing so, they could avoid an increase in fare prices, which would be a good thing (although i think the T is really cheap, especially compared to the netherlands, where it is ridiculously expensive) but can you imagine the weird names wealthy people could come up with? or mc donalds could name a T stop after itself? hmmmmpf, i think its not a good idea; we would have to replace our shower curtain that has a map of the subway system each time someone buys a new T stop!

i think they should start smaller; why not selling seats on the T? then you are guaranteed to always have a seat! the bigger the seat, the more you paid... ;) and ofcourse, you can customize your seat, as above. that just must have been a pilot experiment. it worked, nobody sat on them!

Being told..

... what to do is sometimes very weird, unnecessary and even counterproductive, i think... and very weird if publicly displayed, like above. does that mean that uniformed men/women working for the T prefer to have their shirts out of their pants? and they prefer to wear other hats than uniform hats? such signs just make me wonder...

also read today that the city of boston is prohibiting "sugary drinks" on city property. no more cola, no more energy drinks etc can be sold at, for example, the boston common. sugarfree drinks however, are still allowed. are they out of their minds?! it instantly makes me wanting a coke! im wondering whether the building i work in, also is city property. every now and then, lets say 2 or 3 times a month, i go down to the cafetaria and buy myself a coke, and i enjoy that very much. they want to take that away from me? can i please decide for myself whats good and whats not?! sugarfree drinks are not healthy either! reasoning behind this: "the majority of boston residents are overweight or obese." drinks that still are allowed include water and skim milk, diet sodas, iced teas, and 100 percent juices. well... 100% juices perhaps contain even more sugar than a coke; and most vitamins are gone out of those drinks before you can drink them! i propose they also shut down all starbucks... the amount of sugar they pour into their "latte-coffees" is rather unhealthy too.

Saint Patrick....

... is taking a nap!
so, its saint patrick's day, and wikipedia can tell you everything about that day! perhaps 50% of the people at work wore green (i rediscovered i have green shoes..!) and in the evening i saw what this day really means to bostonians; wearing green shirts/hats/wigs, going to irish pubs (or stand in line to get into one), and drink.... there were so many people on the streets! the weather was surprisingly mild; mane cafes had their windows open and at one place people were even sitting outside!! (although with jackets)

we just got home, and above what i saw in the orange line... (in real the belly was much greener!!), and someone sleeping behind his drycleaned shirts.....

See something?

 

when you are waiting at a subway station, you hear a lot of messages. that the train is approaching, then that the train is arriving, that you should watch your personal belongings, that you should not litter the station as that could cause fires. that courtesy counts, and that if you see something, you should say something. apparently, commuters dont really hear all those messages anymore, and so for the "see something, say something" campaign they now started with a different approach. because... people in boston dont see, and/or say as much as people in other cities/countries and thus not that many suspicious people and/or packages are reported. they want boston to do better!! (but, maybe there are not that many suspicious things going on here... :D ?) yesterday at north station there was  this enormous package. i asked tim whether he saw it (its right in front of you when you enter the station), but he said "huh, what package?" so... today i was in front of the package, and i took a picture of it when he arrived at the station. then we went downstairs, and i asked him; did you see the package? guess what his answer was...

ah, and.. "The campaign is funded by a $1 million grant from the Department of Homeland Security’s Transit Security Grant Program.  It promotes a collaborative effort of state and local agencies to work together educating the public to be more aware of their surroundings, and report any behavior that may appear suspicious to the proper transportation and law enforcement authorities." but for sure they didnt reach tim.... maybe he should watch this video....

Observing people

this was last week in the green line. the girl in pink was sketching fellow passengers, without trying to hide it in any way. i therefore felt more free to take a picture of her in return.... :) 

my post about the subway legs got posted on a boston news site with quite a bit more readers than i generally have (it actually happened once before with this post). flattering... but.. suddenly i worried.. did i write something that i shouldnt have? is it ok, even though i didnt ask those girls? normally, they would maybe be seen by maximal 50-100 people, now it suddenly were 2000.... does that make a difference?

and then someone posted a comment on that site "good thing he took the picture in the station as opposed to the train, there would be tweets out demanding his arrest!" (the MBTA here has a twitter site where riders can post for example pictures of people behaving indecently in the T; this has helped arresting some people already). and that did make me wonder.... i know you are allowed to take pictures of strangers. but when they are dressed like that, does it make a difference? does it make a difference that i am a she, would it have been less OK had i been a guy? what if they had worn jeans? what does it say about our society? why is there a difference in the first place, is there a difference, since they were "dressed like that"? and what does that mean, "dressed like that?" didnt they themselves choose to be dressed like that? and am i judging them, just by picturing them? and... so on and so on.. then, even... could i be arrested? :) how to explain? ah well... i have this blog, you know, and i like to take pictures of strangers... 

hmm..., i am just an observer, and try to capture what i find fascinating/typical or otherwise interesting.... be it women in short skirts or ice on a fence.... :)

Subway legs

we saw some legs this evening! tiny skirts and high heels... i took 3 pics but they were right in front of me... so i didnt dare to try more.... the skirts were so extremely short and the heels sooo high, the girls had difficulty walking. this is a very common sight here, for girls/women going out. am i glad im not a real american woman! :)

this was at north station, and they had no clue which train to take....
for another leg photo: here :)