2013/08/28: New York - Montreal

If you have only time (and/or money) to do a one-day train ride in North America, go from New York to Montreal (or vice versa). The train equipment is not really convenient (but you’re not disappointed as long as you’re normally using European trains and not to Amtrak’s comfortable Superliner cars), but the landscape is great! Travelling all along the Hudson River Valley from New York City to the northern end of the New York state, you see a lot of water, iron bridges, fog, old houses, birds, rocks, water lilies. I can recommend to travel through this fantastic scenery.
Having crossed the Canadian border, the landscape is not spectacular until you glimpse the skyline of Montreal at the horizon. Crossing the St Lawrence, you have a great view at almost everything Montreal is famous for - Skyline, Mont Royal, Olympic Stadium, Habitat 67, Biosphère. What you don’t see from the train window is Montreal’s Old Town, Vieux-Montréal. But it’s only a ten minutes’ walk from Union Station, and it’s worth going there. It has nothing to do with other North American citites (except for Quebec City of course). It is more French than most cities in France. High heels and low houses, cobblestone streets and street musicians. It’s a fantastic place to spend three hours waiting for the night bus. As I had the rucksack (and two small bags) with me, I often changed between walking and taking a break on a bench (the later the evening, the longer the breaks). Sitting on a bench, four locals came from behind and asked me if they can offer me some food. At least from behind I’m meanwhile looking like a homeless guy begging for food… After a short funny discussion they continued their walk. Friendly, English speaking Quebecers, wow! This runs agains all (also my own) prejudices. Nevertheless, I’m happy to stay in Toronto and not in Montreal for the next four months.

2013/08/27: Big Apple

Due to a railway bridge which had been opened to let ships pass and a door which had been opened but didn’t close anymore (so that we were not allowed to go faster than 50 miles/hour), we arrived in New York two hours late – between D.C. and NYC seven quicker passenger trains passed! Having left the worst train of the whole trip, we checked in at the worst accommodation of the whole trip. From there (529 Putnam Avenue in Brooklyn, don’t go there!), we finally started exploring New York by taking a subway to Coney Island.
Coney Island is a famous amusement park in Brooklyn, …

which is home of the international Hot Dog Eating Contest (have a look at the “Wall of Fame”!)…

…and where you can find “Original Frankfurters”!

As Conny Island is located at the Atlantic Ocean, there’s also a beach (but Conny Island isn’t an island, it’s a part of Brooklyn, Brooklyn is located on Long Island).

After so many pictures of Brooklyn I should also upload a picture of Queens.

From some elevated subways in Queens you can have a view to Manhattan’s skyline.


This is not the skyline of Manhattan, this is a graveyard in Brooklyn:

We took the subway to get to Manhattan. It is easy to find the subway stations…

…and the names of the stations are nicely made…

…but in which direction should I walk to find the platform of line 7?

Not only New York’s subway is great, also the Roosevelt Island Tramway is worth a ride.

As Major Bloomberg tries to make New York “greener and greater”, a lot of new cycle lanes had been installed in the last years. There’s also a new bike sharing system, “Citibike”.

To ride a bike in New York, you should wear one of these stylish American helmets.

I cycled through Central Park,…

…along the Hudson River…

…and the East River,…

…through East Village…

…and over the Williamsburg Bridge.

I did a longer stop in the Meatpacking District, …


…where I walked along this great, new High Line Park, my new favorite place in New York (it hadn’t been opened when I was in New York five years ago).




Being in Manhattan, you have to see Times Square, which is crowded day…

…and night (and which is being pedestrianized at the moment).

The new “One World Trade Center” has almost reached his final height…

…and is already surrounded by other new skyscrapers.

Taking a (free) ride on the Staten Island Ferry, you have not only a perfect view at Manhattan’s skyscrapers,…

…but also at Jersey City (on the left) and Brooklyn (on the right).

On the bus ride via the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge back to Brooklyn and in Williamsburg it was too dark to take good pictures, but believe me that also the last evening in the Big Apple was a great one. Although the New Yorkers are not the friendliest people in the world and the prices for almost everything are exorbitant, New York is in my opinion the best city in the world. I’ll be back (at the 22nd of December).

2013/08/25: The Crescent

The Crescent makes a 2,200 km journey between two of the best cities in the world: New Orleans and New York, between “Big Easy” and “Big Apple”. The landscape looks partly almost European, some rivers, trees and fields could also be located between Orléans and York in the old world. But this is the new world, these are the United States of America – to be correct, these are eleven states of America: Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York. Having arrived in New York, we altogether travelled through 25 states (between Vancouver and New Orleans we had Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee and Mississippi), so every second American state was part of our tour. As the landscapes gets more European, the train conductors get more unfriendly (to be exactly: he’s a stupid asshole) and the trains less comfortable. The trains are faster and more punctual than in the western parts of this huge country, the population density is higher. Obviously the East Coast is closer to Europe. The first time since about four weeks my time difference to Europe is “only” six hours. Having switched the time seven times in the last weeks, I will keep Eastern Time now for the next for months.
The last stop before I fell asleep yesterday evening was in Atlanta, Georgia, host city of 1996 Olympic Summer Games and headquarter of Coca Cola and CNN. Now we’re already in Virginia, one of our next stops will be Washington D.C., the capital of the third largest country in the world. Via Baltimore and Philadelphia we will reach New York. I’m looking forward to this last great highlight along the longest holiday travel I ever did.

2013/06/24:The City of New Orleans...

…is the name of the train running between Chicago and New Orleans. The train ride of about 1,500 kilometers (19 hours) has two highlights: leaving Chicago – with views at the skyline at night from different perspectives – and entering New Orleans via the 9.3 km long Lake Pontchartrain Bridge, the longest rail bridge in North America. In between you mostly see trees, cotton fields and some sleepy villages. The only interesting city along the route is Memphis, Tennessee.



“The city of New Orleans” is not the most interesting train ride Amtrak offers, but the city of New Orleans is one of the greatest cities in the US, if not worldwide! “The Big Easy” lost 1/3 of its population after Hurricane Katrina hit ground in 2005 (1,500 people died, many more moved away to other cities and states), but it didn’t lose its unique easy-going spirit and its nonstop party town image. It seems to be a Las Vegas of the South, with 24-hour drinking licenses and drinking alcohol in the streets (“beer to go”) – unthinkable in most US cities – being more common than in Berlin-Friedrichshain. Bourbon Street, the heart of the noisy French Quarter, offers many possibilities to listen to live music every night, from Jazz to Hard Rock, from Blues to Rock’n Roll. As it is warm and humid outdoors, live takes place on the streets till the early morning. What a big surprise, what a wonderful experience, what a great highlight after exactly one month of travelling.

What I didn’t mention yet are two special means of transport: New Orleans’ old streetcars and the Mississippi steam boats. Of course we took a ride on both. Some streetcars date back to the 1920s, others are younger, but designed in an old style. The streetcar network consists of five different lines. The oldest one, St. Charles Avenue Streetcar, is the oldest streetcar line in North America still in operation (since 1835). The youngest one, Loyola Streetcar, has been opened in 2013. Almost comparable to San Francisco or Lisbon, the streetcars are an important brand mark of the city and printed on lots of tourist shop t-shirts.

The steam boat tour was another highlight of our two days’ stay in New Orleans. The roundtrip – naturally with live jazz music onboard – brought us along the Mississippi to harbor and industrial areas south of the city. As the Mississippi is the third largest river in the world, New Orleans has the fifth largest harbor in the US. And (they pointed it out at least three times) the Natchez is the only ship along the Mississippi which still works with steam engines (although they nowadays use diesel and not coal), other ships look also original, but work with diesel-electric engines.

Although the weather (a lot of rain especially on the second day, very humid all the time) wasn’t perfect, New Orleans is one of our favorite cities, if not the highlight of the whole holiday. Good that we didn’t take the direct train from Chicago to New York.