Sunday, March 11, 2012

Summer time

this was last week, a view of the brick desert, about which i wrote before. to the left is the city hall (behind the 2 people in white). this is only part of the brick desert, its perhaps twice as big as you can see here... ? i like the 2 buildings further back, which are both round, like the road (what was there first? the road or the buildings? i guess the road). if you take that street, you will eventually reach the boston common and park street. when i took this photo, it was a little chilly, but today it was very sunny and rather warm again. i was very much in the mood for an ice cream, but the closest provider (mc donalds in this case; i like their sundaes with caramel!), did not have any! buuuhhh. then we went to the lab where they have an ice cream vending machine (never saw that before), but it only took dollar bills, which we did not have. i was very disappointed. perhaps the universe was trying to tell me that i should not eat unhealthy stuff... hmppf.
summertime started here. that was kind of a surprise, an hour less! actually, they dont call it summertime in america. in proper english they do, and in dutch ("zomertijd"), but in american english they call it "daylight saving time". whatever, i like summertime so much better! now if i only could have had that ice cream...

Boston laundromat

a laundromat somewhere in boston. i dared to take only one picture... isnt this what you always see in movies? people waiting in the laudromat, or folding their freshly washed clothes. here, many apartments dont have their own washer or dryer. some complexes do have them in the basement (then you usually have to bring your own detergent and a lot of quarters to make the machines do their job), but the most unfortunate ones have to bring all their clothes to a laundromat. such a weird thing for dutch people that all have their own washer! i was one of the few weirdos who didnt, and brought my clothes home every weekend for a very long time (also, i was afraid of washing machines, they spin so fast and i thought one day the spinning would get out of control. so even when i had a washer, i took a while before i dared using it). there are hardly laudromats in the netherlands, but here they are on every corner, more or less. in our first apartment we had a coin-op washer in the basement, but clothes came out dirtier than when they went in.... luckily, we now have our own washer/dryer... (which makes an apartment immediately considerably more expensive). unfortunately, it looks similar like this one. not much fits in, and somehow the lint that comes off the clothes is later nicely distributed on the black clothes again, making them look... dirty... :( the machine is also much harsher than the dutch ones, even though (or perhaps because) it takes only 30 minutes or so, against 2 hours in a dutch one! so... clothes get worn out much much faster and several shirts already have tiny holes... :( but at least i can do my laundry whenever i feel like...