A little bit of Bombay (and sometimes other cities): A whole New World

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This July and August, I had the good fortune to go to the United States! I was accepted to a workshop at Rutgers University. This came after a run of bad fortune applying for a re-issue of passport to go to UC Berkeley for a semester-long programme, the previous semester. I guess the east coast is lucky for me.

I landed in John F. Kennedy airport in the early evening. It has many terminals, but mine wasn't very large, and soon after exiting immigration I was suddenly on the street! After following some directions I was able to make it to the nearest subway station via the AirTrain.

I was to go to Penn Station to catch the New Jersey Transit train to New Brunswick. The NYC subway is famous..ly not clean. Well, nothing I'm not used to in Mumbai. The funny thing is the signages would sometimes say "uptown", "downtown" or locality names instead of the last stop of the train, which was confusing sometimes. The main indication I was in the US was that everyone around me was speaking in the accent I normally associate with movies.

Penn Station is right below Madison Square Garden arena, and the Empire State Building is also visible. I stepped out to take a quick picture before taking the NJ transit.

Madison Square Garden is on the right.

Empire State of Mind

In New Brunswick, we were put up in Heldrich Hotel. It was really nice! In front is a statue commemorating one of the first public readings of the Declaration of Independence, in 1776.

A stormy view of CoRE Building (the computer science building).

View from high up in the CoRE.

Many buildings in New Brunswick are related to Rutgers, but of course not all. There seems to be a Hungarian-American community, with its own churches and clubs.

"Henry Guest House" - not a guest house named after a person called Henry, but the house of someone called Henry Guest.

The Lord God made them all.

A variety of eateries exist. Among other things, I tried vegan hot dogs, Ethiopian injera and mexican burritos.

I suppose you could have all these types of neighbours.

In a Mexican store. Haaland and Neymar are famous everywhere.

Injera, quite like a dosai. Very tasty!

On the final day we decided to go to New York City again — I had only seen it momentarily, and my friends who had landed in Newark not at all. We got out at Penn Station and walked around Manhattan for a while, including along Fifth Avenue. Yes, every building looked like the apartment from Friends.

Empire State again! Do you see it peeking out?

Moynihan Train Hall is a recent expansion of Penn Station.

We could pass for a boy band performing in MSG above. Right?

Lots of brands have large outlets here. We spent some time in a Lego shop.

Considered blowing my entire trip budget on this Lego F1 car.

From the tip of Manhattan, there is a free ferry to Staten Island. People actually use it to commute.

I didn't think the Spirit of America referred to socialized free stuff.

Bye for the next hour, Manhattan

The best part? The Statue of Liberty is visible from the ferry!

Liberty on the horizon

Proud of this shot!

Locking in, docking in...

At Staten Island, we decided to have dinner. In keeping with the world food theme, we went to a Turkish place called Mavi Cafe.

A falafel sandwich.

I also wanted to see Times Square. We'd have to hurry if we wanted to catch the last train to New Brunswick, so it was only a quick look. The others were underwhelmed, but I felt like I was in the Saturday Night Live intro.