What kind of accommodation establishment doesn't serve coffee? I grumbled inwardly as I got dressed. I'm the type of person who needs coffee as soon as I wake up. Right after peeing, but definitely not before dressing. I don't know why I was surprised that this hostel didn't have what I would consider to be a basic human right. It's what I deserve for paying $20 for a night in New York City.Nestled not-so-cozily underneath the J metro line in Brooklyn, I had stumbled in the night before after making the trek from JFK International Airport. I could hear the train whirring by as I found my shared room and set my stuff down on the bottom bunk. I was tired from the 8 hour flight from Amsterdam. It was 9 pm, which was 5 am where I'd come from, and I hadn't slept yet. I wanted to collapse right into bed, but I desperately needed a shower, so I made my way down the hall to the bathrooms with my towel and my cosmetics bag.
I opened it and realized that I'd forgotten to buy shampoo at Amsterdam Centraal before heading to the airport that morning. I have been using a solid shampoo from Lush for years now, but I'd run out just before my trip and apparently was too focused on ordering my favorite dish from Dӧner Company to remember to visit the Lush store in the enormous train terminal. All I had in my bag was a travel-sized container of Lime Verbena Body Wash. I decided my hair would be better off unwashed for now and opted for a body-only shower for the night. I opened one of the shower stall doors and looked down to see a bunch of hair clinging to the drain. Nope... I tried the second. It wasn't as bad as the first, but there was a wad of used tissue sitting in the 3-tiered rack that hung from the side of the tall shower wall. Nope... I tried the third. This one'll do. Like Goldilocks, I didn't feel at home in this strange place, but I made do with what I had.
After a hot, but barely trickling shower, I padded down the hall in my towel and found my room again. I found it strange that my bunkmate had been sleeping with the light on when I'd first entered, but I left it that way during my shower and as I got ready for bed. It was past 10 o'clock, which was when "quiet hours" started, but I could hear loads of people talking and someone was on a speaker phone call. Why did it sound like they were standing right next to me? I could hear every cough, rustle, and conversation. I looked up and found my answer. The small room just big enough to turn around in had a panel of lattice, like the kind you'd see in your elderly neighbor's yard, instead of a ceiling. Wow. I should've splurged the extra $6 and stayed at that other place, I thought as I flipped off the light and crawled into bed. I popped my headphones in and turned on my audiobook, thinking it better to listen to one calm voice than fifteen annoying ones, and drifted off to sleep.
Maybe because of the time difference, maybe because I could hear an alarm going off in some other room down the hall, but I woke up around 6 am. I lie there for a bit, waking up slowly, scrolling through Instagram, popping my audiobook back on (I'm addicted to these things) and closing my eyes for a bit longer before finally deciding that the day was going to start. I knew I had to figure out where I'd be staying for the next few nights, and I figured I'd be up to the task after a cup of coffee. Still in my pajamas, I went downstairs, through the lobby, out the front door, taking an immediate turn to the right and punching in the code for the cafe/lounge area that belonged to the hostel. After a few tries, I managed to enter the correct number sequence and find my way to the back of the large room where the kitchen was. I looked around for the coffee machine and went through some of the cupboards only to find that, you guessed it, they don't serve coffee. I hate this place.
Twenty minutes later I was dressed and walking down the streets of New York to the coffee shop that the guy at the reception desk had told me was just a block and a half away. I guess it's better this way. You'll always be more effective at getting your life together if you're wearing pants. I thanked Benjamin Franklin and Lady Liberty that here in America, it was easy to get things like coffee in large quantities. I guess "large" is subjective. Any European would tell you that 16 ounces of coffee is a lot, but we Americans call that a medium, and sizes go all the way up to extra large. I was glad to be back in the land of big ole portions.
I sat down and opened my journal. I knew I needed to make arrangements for this unexpected visit I'd found myself in the middle of, but I was waiting for some people to get back to me. I have friends in New Jersey and Philadelphia because I used to live there, I'd found myself a loving community in the two years I'd spent in the area before I started my exchange year in Amsterdam six months ago. I sat there thinking, I know they'll be happy to see me, and I know I'll find somewhere to stay, but I was a little nervous nonetheless. I wasn't giving them much notice, and I still had to get there from where I was in New York. Traveling between countries entails dealing with a lot of issues you don't think about everyday, like exchanging currency, whether or not your cell phone or debit card will work, using the trains and buses with no problems, and depending on where you go, whether or not they speak the same language as you. I'd only been living abroad for six months, but I didn't have an American phone plan anymore, my American debit card has been inactive for months, and my paychecks are, of course, in euros. Luckily I'd exchanged my currency already, not without realizing how weird the bills had looked in my hand.Getting from New York City to Philadelphia wasn't going to be hard per se, but I did need the help of a friend to buy the bus ticket, since the website wasn't allowing me to use PayPal, and I had to have WiFi to make these plans, since my cell phone data wasn't going to work. Besides that, where should I go when I get there? To whose house? I reached out to Steve and Heather, whom I call my Jersey parents, but I hadn't heard back yet. I waited for responses as I journaled about why I was even here.
It would be unusual for most people to accidentally end up in New York, but I wasn't that surprised that it had happened to me. Since I started traveling a little over two years ago, almost every single trip that I have made has gone, well... not according to plan. The reason I ended up on the east coast in the first place was a hoax. I was bound for Puerto Rico, but never made it, even to this day. So when my friend, Dean, had started to give me signs the night before of throwing off the plans we had to spend a weekend together in the Caribbean, I took it in stride.
Dean lives on one of the Caribbean islands. He used to live in Philadelphia, and that's where we met for the first time two years ago, after hitting it off with each other on a dating website. We'd got on really well from that very first minute and, over the next several months, saw each other on and off, always enjoying each other's company. When I'd left the east coast to spend half a year back home in Idaho we'd stayed in touch, always remaining friends, sending pictures to update one another on our lives, calling now and again, it was real gezellig. When I came back to Philadelphia the second time, we had even gotten together for dinner once or twice, even though he was steadily seeing someone he met through a mutual friend. We were proper friends.
This continued after I moved to Amsterdam, as expected. It is always good to hear from Dean, even though sometimes months go by in the interim. We often talked about visiting each other. He had moved from Philadelphia to the Caribbean two months before I came to Amsterdam; after more than a year of asking his company to transfer him; they finally did. One time, when we mentioned visiting each other, it took a more serious tone. We checked how much it would cost for him to visit me in Amsterdam, but the flights were outrageous, plus Dean wasn't the type to put forth a ton of effort traveling to visit someone he'd casually dated more than a year prior. For some reason, when we checked the same flight but in reverse, the prices were considerably more affordable. I am always willing to do a bit of traveling, and besides, would you rather spend time in the sunny Caribbean or visit a country on the same latitudinal line as Canada? That's what I thought.
But it doesn't matter anyway. I don't want to get into details about why Dean decided he wasn't up for a visit. I'll only say that it was half anxiety about how travelers coming from certain destinations were being denied entrance on the island due to the coronavirus outbreak in Europe, and (this one is my own speculation) half anxiety about how the visit itself would go. I don't really blame him. I can't say that in the week leading up to it, I hadn't had thoughts of canceling, but the money I'd put into it held a lot more value to me than it did him. I just cannot justify spending $400 on a vacation I didn't take, but I had felt a tinge of regret more than once over spending the money in the first place. Dean and I may have had fun dating one another before, but that was a long time ago, and there was a reason we hadn't "taken it to the next level." He and I had always had a light and easy situationship. Flying across the Atlantic just to spend a few days with someone could be interpreted as something more than light and easy. It's enough to scare away anyone who's not looking for a serious relationship.
But again, I had spent good money on this plane ticket, and I'd be damned if I was going to stay in Amsterdam and just watch it go to waste. Instead, I had taken all the shorts, and tank tops, and swimsuits out of my bag (moment of silence for the warm weather I wouldn't be basking in), replacing them with long pants, tights, the only dress I had that was long sleeved, and thus, readjusted my sights. I had checked my world clock, was there anyone I could call in Jersey to warn them of my arrival? It was the middle of the night, so no, I'd just have to figure that part out once I got there. Maybe I'd show up on their doorstep, bags in hand and just knock. Wouldn't that be fun? I have to force myself to find hilarity in these types of situations... for sanity reasons. So yes, that's why I was here in this coffee shop in Brooklyn, a full 24 hours after taking those swimsuits out of my bag. And I was waiting for responses. And I was journaling.
45 minutes later, no one had gotten back to me yet. Now that I was in the same time zone as those I was reaching out to, it made it a little easier and put some of my nerves at ease. I know eventually they'll wake up and get going. It's Saturday; if I know Heather at all, she'll be running errands today. I had caffeine in my system and I'd started to think more clearly. I decided my hair would definitely need washed and I'd need to eat soon, so I put my coat and scarf back on and walked to the supermarket that I'd passed between the hostel and the coffee shop.
Traveling when you're poor means being very, very choosy. I wanted to get myself a nice food-truck bagel for breakfast, especially because that's one of the things I miss when I can't have it (believe me, I've already started a list of the things I'm going to eat this weekend), but I knew that I could only afford a few frivolous purchases, and I didn't want to waste one on a bagel, on my first day in the city, no less. Better save that for cover charge into my favorite gay bar, to see whatever variety show they'd had on that night, or a glass of wine at my favorite jazz hall. I was feeling giddy about being in my favorite city again, and daydreaming about the lovely things I wanted to do.I entered the store and started shopping to the soundtrack of Mexican music. Right near the door, I spotted some avocados priced 2 for $5 and knew I could use one to make avocado toast, and still have the other to eat later. I also grabbed some raw almonds and peppered salame. These are my go-to snacks that I know I can count on while traveling. They store well, provide energy, and are pretty filling. After I had my food for the day, I found a small hygiene section in the cleaning aisle. They didn't have shampoo. I would have to wash my hair with a bar of soap and be grateful that I'd at least packed a small container of a leave-in conditioning treatment. With that, I went back to the hostel and showered, properly this time. Then I packed my things, checked out, and headed to the cafe/lounge area again to eat my breakfast and pull out my laptop.
Two hours later I'd made headway with a bus ticket to Jersey, Heather was going to pick me up on the other end, I'd found someone who would let me crash if I were to need it, and I'd made contact with a couple of the people I wanted to visit if they were around. I made another trip to the coffee shop to begin writing this post, feeling relaxed and unhurried, but I was too busy talking to the French guy sitting next to me who had struck up conversation and unsuccessfully trying to connect to the internet to have actually drafted anything. After chatting and having a coffee with him, I let Google Maps tell me which trains I'd need to take to get to where the bus picks up its passengers and said goodbye. I'm typing this now from my seat on the charter bus that runs from New York to South Jersey and then Philadelphia multiple times per day. I'm 30 minutes from my seeing my Jersey parents and if I'm lucky, eating a homemade pizza pie on 5th Avenue.
What will I do this weekend? Crash a wedding? Skate the parking garage in City Hall? See a drag show in the Gayborhood? All of the above? I have a feeling I'll be finding out the answers to these questions only at the moment its happening.
