I tried once again to write while waiting for a flight and this time it even worked... ;-) ...waiting for my connecting flight to Newark in Toronto where I had nine hours between the two flights, I managed to write most of the chapters, you'll read below. Just imagine how long it would have been, if I would have written all I wanted to write... ;-)
But before I continue the chapters just a few words on my trip to Switzerland and back: I went back for a long weekend (took 4 days off) because of the marriage of my cousin and since she was the first one of my generation getting married and more or less everyone from my family (several traveling all the way from South Italy) went to the wedding, I just couldn't miss... ;-) ...and on my way back I had to wait a long time in Toronto anyway and so I chose a flight with a long gap between the flights and went to see the city which features some nice places and the world's highest observation deck (Sky Pod of the CN Tower)...needless to say that I went on top of it...nice... ;-) ...pictures will obviously follow...
Chapter III - So much to do and so little timeThis chapter covers some of the things, I did in my free time in and around Princeton. Although the "around" part can cover quite a large area in the States... ;-)
Princeton itself can be very shortly defined as a nice but very quiet little city. There are several restaurants, two bars and a brewery and a very nice University (you may have heard of it...) and Campus. Certainly a nice place to hang around, but not really the best place to go out. Yet, there's one thing I have to point out for people that like burgers: If you ever come to Princeton, make sure to get one at Hoagie's.... ;-)
For the going out part there is one simple solution and that is to do private parties. Fortunately some interns and other Siemens coworkers live in their own apartments/houses and so there are quite some opportunities to mix Siemens interns (mostly engineers...mostly male) and all local au pair girls (mostly female) into one of these places to have a nice evening...works just fine... ;-) ...and if there are no private parties going on you can still drive to NYC, Philadelphia, New Brumswick, New Hope (although that one may be dangerous in some cases ;-)) or to the shores and have fun there...
New York City is just 1.5h from Princeton and is often labeled as the greatest city in the world (at least that's what they say in the local radio all the time ;-)) or the city that never sleeps. Now, the latter is certainly true for US-standards, as almost every bar/pub/club in the States closes at two o'clock while you can easily have fun in NYC till dawn. For the first part, I have to admit that the city is indeed very impressive. Especially the first times I got there, I was just amazed by the size (especially in the sky-direction ;-)) of the city. So, I can just recommend to everyone to either visit the city or at least have a look at all the pictures I took there... ;-)
And if the weather is not nice you can still walk around the Central Park and go into one of the many
museums there. Several of them are among the best world-wide. I didn't find time yet to go into many of them though, but that's mostly because I'm not really interested in art. So, I went to see the American Museum of Natural History with its nice exhibitions on meteoroids (they have some quite big rocks from space there), gems (unfortunately not to be kept as souvenirs) and models of dinosaurs (largely made of real bones) as well as other animals. And the only other museum which I would really like to see would be the Guggenheim Museum...for its architecture... ;-)
As some of you may know, NYC consists of more than Manhattan. There are four more boroughs (Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island), but most tourists stick to Manhattan and don't see anything of the other boroughs (may be related to the higher crime rate there ;-)). For my luck there was an organized bike tour going through all five boroughs (in a moment of extreme genius someone came up with the name "
Five Boro Bike Tour" for the tour ;-)) and I joined it...together with around 32000 others. It was quite a huge event going for
42 miles on the closed roads of New York City (we even went on the highways...with cars going in the other direction... ;-)) and so I had the chance to see more of New York City than just Manhattan...there's also a video of the tour on
YouTube...
Some of you may also know that there are two rather important small islands south of Manhattan. Liberty Island with Lady Liberty greeting all the new arrivals and Ellis Island where all the new arrivals used to be "greeted" by the U.S. immigration...nowadays they're both just tourist attractions and looking at the huge queues in front of the ferries starting from Battery Park in downtown Manhattan, it seems that they're quite popular ones... ;-) ...what most tourists do not know is that there's a state park in honor of the statue of liberty (guess the name...yes it's the "
Liberty State Park") on the New Jersey side of the Hudson river. As we were on our way to a NBA Playoffs game at the Continental Airlines Arena (in New Jersey...a bit north-west of NYC) we shortly stopped at the park and went on the ferry to the islands...same as all the tourists do in Manhattan...just without the waiting... ;-) ...in the end we didn't even leave the boat to go on Liberty Island (didn't look interesting and you get better views of the statue on the boat anyway), but we went to the Immigration Museum on Ellis Island...quite interesting in my opinion, but I may be a bit biased being the son of immigrants...
Getting back to the going out part, there is also a great
Jazz Club in NYC called the
Blue Note Jazz Club. We went there to see the
Dizzy Gillespie All-Star Big Band...these guys are just great...it was obviously not allowed to record them while they were performing and so it's hard to tell you, how good they were, but well...just believe it... ;-) ...and you can find some pics done by Fred
here (I forgot to bring my cam for that event)...
Getting to see other cities also turned out to be rather easy in my case as Ivan was already getting ready to leave (he left in the beginning of April) and so he wanted to see a few cities before going back to Switzerland...said done...I already mentioned the snowy trip we did to
Montreal on the St. Patrick's Day weekend and after that we also went to see
Boston...very nice town...not much sightseeing to be done there (unless you're fascinated by "old" buildings (i.e. 17th century) and really interested in the history of US independence), but the city itself just made a very nice impression to me...especially the region in Cambridge around the Harvard University (you may have heard of that one as well... ;-)) looks very nice...looks just like a great place to live and study... ;-)
Also after Ivan had left we were still in the mood of traveling and so we also went to
Washington D.C. to see this country's capital. Main attractions there are some of the longest escalators in the western hemisphere...ok that was actually just a case that we even noticed but as Wikipedia told me, I actually made a picture of the third longest continuous escalator in the western hemisphere at the
Rosslyn station and the longest one would have been in Washington as well (
Wheaton station). But seriously: The main attraction is the "Mall": a park with lots of museums (with free entrance!) and the main monuments like Capitol, White House, Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial...so we had a look at that as well...including seeing a guy strangely patrolling on the roof of the White House...and we also visited the National Air and Space Museum...that one is just great for anyone interested in flight, rockets and space exploration as their exhibitions include an original piece of the moon (to be touched), the Wright Flyer, the Apollo Lunar Module (you know "A small step for me, a big step"...etc etc) a V2 rocket and much more...just like with anything else: check the pictures in my Web Album... ;-) ...unfortunately, we had little luck with the
weather...although actually we were lucky to be able to get back home at all as there was not just a little bit of rain...there was a lot of it...enough to flood several rivers in New Jersey and to have the governor declaring a "State of Emergency" on the following Monday...for us this meant that we didn't have to go to work as there was the risk that we wouldn't be able to return home afterwards... ;-)
And in case you need motivation for traveling around you can just invite your parents and you have some more reasons to travel... ;-) ...and so I finally went to see
Philadelphia by day (I knew that it has a nice night-life already ;-)) as well. Also a pretty city...similarly to Boston not a lot of sightseeing be done there (again unless you're interested in "old" buildings and US independence), but just a nice city to walk around when the weather is nice...
One bad thing about working in the States is that you don't get a lot of days off. Or to be more precise, I don't have a single day which I can take off without having to work in the weekends to make up for the time. Additionally to that, they don't have all the nice religious holidays, I'm used to have in Switzerland (well ok besides Christmas). Yet, there are a few U.S. holidays like Independence Day, Thanksgiving and Memorial Day. The latter was on the last Monday of May and allowed me to have a longer weekend, which I spent in
Chicago. Stefan (I went to high school with him in Switzerland) had just finished his Master in Montreal and wanted to visit Chicago once again (he spent a semester at the Northwestern University right next to Chicago) and so he asked, if I wanted to join him. I think that was a good choice. From the cities I saw by now, Chicago would be my first choice to study in (closely followed by the Cambridge area in Boston...and I haven't seen the West Coast...yet). Chicago can probably keep up with NYC when it comes to impressiveness (3 of 4
tallest US-skyscrapers in Chicago) and nightlife opportunities (they have several universities in and around the city), but additionally to that it has a sandy beach... ;-) ...besides that, the city is just amazing from an architectural point of view as several of the buildings could easily be considered a piece of art...there you can see that some of the best US architects (like the one that designed the Guggenheim Museum) lived and taught in Chicago...for Chicago I can also suggest that you check out the
pictures that Stefan took as he had clearly the better cam and could make far better pictures of the night view from the Hancock Center...
So, What else can you do in your free time? Well, how about
sports? The area offers some nice opportunities to do some jogging, biking and hiking or to play tennis or golf (classy sports seem to be quite popular in the Princeton area). Personally, I still prefer playing basketball though and there are quite a few courts to do that as well...or if the weather is bad you can just watch the games...on TV for instance...or you just take your car (or train) and go to the stadium to watch a game...I already tried not to mention the
Knicks vs Mavericks (featuring the "German Wunderkind" and this season's MVP Dirk Nowitzki) game, I went to see at the Madison Square Garden in New York...so, I'll also try not to mention the three games I went to see at the Continental Airlines Arena in New Jersey, where the
Nets played against the Wizards (I wanted to see Gilbert Arenas, but he was injured...well...the game featured a huge performance by Vince Carter, the
first two-man trible double since Pippen/Jordan and a Buzzer-Beater leading the game to overtime where the Nets won...can't really complain ;-)) and in the
first round of the Playoffs against the Raptors (featuring our Italian prodigy and last year's first draft pick Andrea "Il Mago" Bargnani) and in the
second round against the Cavaliers (featuring Lebron James (a.k.a. "King James")...btw: the Cavaliers are currently in the NBA Finals...losing 0:3)...the Nets won all the games and Jason Kidd had a Triple-Double in each of them...but as I said...I don't want to mention that too much...I'm risking to have too many people not talking to me anymore afterwards... ;-)
You can obviously also do other standard stuff in your free time like going to the
movies...well ok the cinemas are usually bigger in the States as well...I can really recommend 300 ("SPARTANS! Tonight! We dine! In hell!") and Grindhouse (just cool)...or you can go
shopping...just like in Switzerland...well ok...the Malls are bigger...and they're open late during the week and even on Sundays...and if you go to an Outlet like the huge
Woodbury Premium Outlets (make sure to check the aerial photos as well) you even get the stuff for ridiculous prices...nice... ;-)
Another funny thing to do is to
visit some
people that are also in the States. So, I spent a weekend in NYC with Enno, who was one of my German roommates in Delft and is currently doing his internship in Boston. Then, I had lunch in NYC with Tobias who is a fellow ETH student and currently doing his internship with Siemens in Manhattan. And last but not least I had dinner with my amazing, fabulous and gorgeous (no, she didn't pay me to write that...really ;-)) cousin Graziella from Rome...this is especially interesting as I never managed to visit her in Rome which in the end isn't thaaaat far from Zurich... ;-)
Chapter IV - The struggle for housingFinding housing was a bit messy in my case, but that was just bad luck for me. I had already looked for housing from Switzerland and had some contacts which had some interesting offers. Unfortunately, the one offer that looked the best (a nice room in walking distance from the Princeton University for just a bit over 500$ a month), made me wait for almost 2 weeks as there were some problems with the girl that should have moved out from that room. Then, she offered me another room in her house which would have been available a bit later (Siemens pays for 13 nights in the hotel and I would have had to find a temporary accommodation for a few days...not really a problem with all the interns). And in the end, she just told me "Sorry, something happened with the house. I don't live there anymore, the rooms are not available anymore"...my internal reaction: "wtf?!?!?"...my actual answer: "wow, what happened?"...her answer: "don't want to talk about it"...great...fortunately, they are always sending new housing offers to all the interns in Siemens and so I could find another room the same day and so I was still able to move out of the hotel in time...
In the end, I moved into a room offered by a nice American landlady in
Hillsborough (15 miles (i.e. 20-40min) from Siemens) for 425$ a month. I'm certainly fine with that as I can use everything in the house (only have to share the bathroom with my German flatmate (permanent employee at Siemens, who will buy a house and bring his family to the States later)) and there are no flooded cellars and no dangerous stairs to go to the bathroom... ;-) ...in short: the room is nice (even fully equipped with stuff left by former interns like a sleeping bag and several city guides) and there are a swimming pool and a basketball court in walking distance...and several supermarkets (obviously not in walking distance) on my way home from Siemens, which are open until Midnight during the week and a bit less on Sundays...can't really complain that much...and with the gas prices in the States (still less than 3$ per gallon, although it used to be like 2.20 when I arrived) the long drive to work isn't really a problem either...
I didn't manage to write about last year's California trips yet, but I have uploaded a couple of new pictures. Since I bought a new camera (Fujifilm FinePix F72EXR) shortly before Christmas, I like playing around with its 10x optical zoom and long feature list including amazing ways to get bright night-pictures. Last week I went to the Huntington Botanical Gardens right next to Pasadena and tried to capture the colorful natural wonders in display there.
Today, I went to the Griffith Observatory located on one of the hills next to Los Angeles (right next to the Hollywood sign actually). The observatory features interesting exhibitions on the history of the universe, but most of all it has one of the best possible views on the huge city of LA. Especially at night with all the lights on, one can get a good feeling for the size of the city.
