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| U.S.A. - East |
| Population: 285,000,000 Ave Income: $ 34,000 per year Currency: £1UK = $US1.43 |
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Austin, Texas The bus travelled overnight and arrived in Texas in the morning. First stop was Houston, seemed pretty much like an average US city. Took a connecting bus to Austin, a town with a large student population and thriving alternative music scene. My stay in the hostel here was kind of surreal. Austin feels like a small city, and the hostel was outside of the main centre on the banks of the river. The only other visitors there were a bunch of loud female rowers on a college trip who kind of overwhelmed the place. Fortunately another non-rower turned up, a girl called Nicole from New York with a broad Brooklyn accent, and we went into town to check out some of the music. Austin is quite a pretty city - there are loads of students and this is really evident in the number of bars and cafes etc. 'The Strip', the main drag, was pretty lively with some good music and a general 'get pissed' atmosphere that is unique to a uni town. The next day we visited some of the surreal shops near the hostel. One was a junky shop owned by an old woman originally from south London. Nicole wanted to buy a cowboy hat for the wedding, so we went next door to a shop purely devoted to cowboy hats, every kind of hat you can imagine from JR-style Stetsons to more Mexican-style sombreros. We also popped into a gun shop. Texan gun laws are different again from federal US gun laws, in fact Texans are more relaxed about gun ownership than anywhere else. Left the shop feeling slightly unsettled. What surprised me most about Austin was how green it is - however, for someone whose only impression of Texas was gleaned from 'Dallas' in the 80's, this is perhaps not that unusual... |
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New Orleans Another night-time bus journey and arrived in New Orleans early one Sunday morning. I'd heard some pretty scary stories about New Orleans, mainly 'don't walk to the hostel alone!' As the taxi wound through the streets leading to the Garden District, it certainly felt like a dodgy area. The hostel was a ramshackle old converted house, and there I met a few Aussies, a couple of people from London and a couple of odd Americans, one of whom was taking time out from his fishing boat off the coast of the Carolinas. I ended up hanging out with them pretty much all the time I was in New Orleans. New Orleans has to be one of the most fascinating places I visited in America. It was very very different from the rest of America - but that is not really being fair to the rest of the country. I think it must be the French influence from the 1800's, the people that the city attracts, the music, the languid humid weather and the street vibe. Somewhere somehow the influence of voodoo is everywhere - nothing was quite as it seemed. Quick history: New Orleans was settled originally by the French and then the Spanish over the 18th and 19th centuries. Black slaves came to the city from nearby Haiti, and came to be known as 'Creoles' whose culture has influenced today's city. The city is divided into the French Quarter, of which Bourbon Street is central, the Garden District, which mainly consists of large colonial-style houses (see photo below) in, er... gardens. There's also the downtown business area, but I didn't go there. The hostel was right by the Garden District, so I spent a lot of time wandering round taking in the beautiful houses with ornate architecture. A main attraction of New Orleans are the 'Cities of the Dead', the cemetaries built by the French in the 18oo's. Seen the film Easy Rider? Then you will have an idea of what these cemetaries are like. They are build above ground as the water table in New Orleans is so low. We took a wander round one of the St. Louis Cemetaries - certainly not somewhere you would go on your own. |
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 New Orleans cemetary - click to enlarge |
 Garden District - click to enlarge |
| Bourbon Street is where it's all at at night. The city's motto is laissez les bons temps rouler, let the good times roll, and Bourbon Street is certainly where you can drink and dance all night. Excess is expected. After several nights that would surely have driven a saint to alcoholism, I decided to move on to save my liver. Plus the fact I had just over a week left of my trip and had to make it up to New York in time. | |
| Hostel in the Forest
Someone in New Orleans had given me a flyer about a 'commune' hostel deep in the woods of south Georgia, with the recommendation of 'it's spaced, man'. With this endorsement, I had no choice but to check it out. The Hostel in the Forest is just that - except it is not an ordinary hostel. I jumped off the Greyhound in Brunswick, a little town in the middle of nowhere. A stoned-looking hippy picked me up from the bus station and we drove through some woods to a clearing in the forest. The Hostel was made up of a main 'dome', build in wood and glass with a large veranda out front. Next door to this there was a large wooden dining room, and another dome with different rooms for the permanent members of the hostel. These buildings were completely surrounded by woods - I was introduced to all those at the hostel. It seemed to me I was the only visitor, most of the others were Americans and had been here for some time, tending the gardens and running the hostel. Everyone who was staying or living there were hanging around together and I was introduced to each one in turn. I really did feel like I was joining a commune. |
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| My accomodation was my own 'tree-house' called the 'Dragon's Lair', an octagonal wood and glass structure with a crude wooden sculpture of a wooden dragon outside, surrounded by trees and leaves - really beautiful. Because the hostel was eco-friendly, the toilets and showers were even more of a treat. The toilet was a shack behind the main domes, a compost affair painted in lurid colours. The shower - my favourite thing there - totally outdoors, surrounded by trees and nature. There was also an outdoor spa where everyone jumped into in the evening - all in the best possible taste of course. The picture below is the 'Drum House' which is exactly what it says it is - a room reserved for lolling around in hammocks and drumming. Incessantly. This was a bit too near my treehouse, but there is something mesmerising about falling asleep to the rhythm of the drums. |  The Drum Room, Hostel in the Forest |
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Most of those staying there were young hippy types who had dropped out of conventional living. Their conversations were peppered with 'man' 'far out' and 'that's so beautiful'. Everyone had daily tasks to perform - mine was to collect flowers for the hostel
dining room. This would have caused much merriment back at home. Dinner was a communal affair, where everyone stood in a circle and held hands and said one thing they were grateful for today. This was actually a really
nice idea, as you got to know people and where they came from. There was Tom, travelling through from Texas to Atlantic City. There were a couple of guys who had been staying in Florida for the winter who paid for their stay in the hostel
by bringing bags of Florida oranges. Anton was the manager of the hostel and he was from the Netherlands. There was Jay, a cowboy from Texas, a couple, Yasha and Two Horses, (I can't get over these Native names) who had the most wicked Deep South accents, and a couple of nutters who seemed to be
wandering around. On my second day there, an English girl who was working in New York turned up, and we were able to share our rather sarcastic reflections on hippy life.
I spent a couple of quiet days here, wandering round the forest, swimming in the lake with the others and generally chilling out. On a Friday night we went down the 'Juke Joint' with Miss Louise, and old black woman who was friends with the owner of the hostel, a local guy called Tom. The Juke Joint was a little shack bar playing jazz and blues music and serving only 40's (fo-ties) of Budweiser. I was really sorry to leave this place. Despite all the cliched jingoisms of hippy life, it was so nice here. However I had one week left before my flight back to London. I had never been to New York before and was determined to make the most of the city. |
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| New York
I took an overnight bus, stopped off briefly in the pretty town of Savannah, Georgia, then continued up the east coast. The bus was rammed and by the daytime bad weather had set in yet again, heavy snow storms which made the already grey east coast look especially uninviting. I began to wish I'd stayed in Georgia. The bus dropped us all off at the Port Authority Bus Terminal. I collected my bags and stood outside looking up at the tall buildings. It was a long time since I had felt overwhelmed by a city. I stayed in the YHA on the edge of Harlem. Nice enough but very impersonal. New York was cold. I kind of visited everything in a rush - Central Park, the Empire State Building, and one which was high on my priorities - Century 21 for shopping. In fact I ended up buying loads of clothes, New York is cheaper than London. On my fourth day in the city, I was lucky enough to meet a native Manhattanite called Rene who spent some time showing me round. We took a trip round the Statue of Libery and Ellis Island, touristy, but it was interesting to hear the history of immigrants to the States. Much of the architecture is pretty impressive in New York - the Empire State Building, the Flatiron Building (see below) the Rockerfeller Centre. But the thing that struck me the most was the energy of the city. Everywhere, on the streets, there is an attitude and energy, people shouting at each other across the street, traffic rushing by. Maybe visitors would say that about London but the vibe is just... different. Brooklyn was one of my favourite areas. I took the subway out and had a wander round some of the streets. It is obviously poorer compared to Manhattan but the energy is there nonetheless. One day I met up with Kate from the Grand Canyon hostel. We went round Chelsea and checked out some of the art galleries. Pretty interesting area - tall converted warehouses with water towers on top, in typical New York style (see photo). |
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 Water tower on a Chelsea rooftop - click to enlarge |
 The Flatiron Building - click to enlarge |
 Times Square - click to enlarge |
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One night Rene took me round some of the bars in Greenwich village and the East Village. Really funky, out-of-the-way places that I would never had
known were there had they not been shown to me. We met up with Tor, the English girl I met in Georgia and we all trawled round some of the bars and checked out the
live music. One cool bar we found had a French lady singing Edith Piaf songs loudly, and well. Another had a pretty good indie band playing to a moshing audience. We drove back through
Central Park in Rene's yellow merc, for the next day my flight was leaving back to London. |
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 The Chrysler Building - click to enlarge |
 Brooklyn Bridge - click to enlarge |
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| As I queued up to check in at New York's JFK airport, I couldn't believe a year had gone by and the end of my trip had come. I thought of all the places I'd been - 13 countries - although it felt like more - and all the experiences I'd had. Mainly I remembered the people I'd met, some of whom I am still in contact with over two years later. If anyone is thinking of taking the plunge - do it. It was by far the best thing I have done in my life so far. Just don't turn left at Alberquerque. | ||
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| Links
http://www.foresthostel.org - Hostel in the Forest website http://www.ic.org/ - ever wanted to join a commune? - here's your chance http://www.mardigrasneworleans.com/ - site about the Mardi Gras in New Orleans |
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