The Niagara Falls
Seems I arrived at one of nature’s wonders after all! The bus out of Toronto arrived at 21h, an hour later than scheduled, because traffic in Toronto is an utter biatch. Checked in at the hostel, and did a quick food run because I hadn’t eaten since lunch that day. The Falls would have to wait until tomorrow, then.
So, off to Niagara Falls! Arriving at the scene, I immediately notice what a commercial thing they have become. There’s stalls with overpriced crap everywhere, and people buy that stuff, too. Argh. Anyhow, concentrating on the water puts me at ease again, and I find a (relatively) quiet spot somewhere. It is however hard to find quietness if there’s a constant buzz of helicopters soaring overhead.
Random fact: did you know that there are 2.500.000 liters of water gushing over the edge PER SECOND? And that Lake Superior (where all this water comes from) has a volume of 12.500 cubic KILOMETERS?
And 50 meters from this beauty of nature, you find this:
It’s really indescribable. Neon lights worse than a frickin’ luna park on steroids and high on XTC. Let’s escape this manmade hellhole, and (although I admittedly never thought I would say this), cross over the border into the US. They apparently had the decency to make the area surrounding the falls a state park, preventing mass commercial exploitation from taking place, and that’s a very good thing.
However, since I had acquired a student visa, I had to pay (again, wasn’t the $300 I paid in Brussels enough?) six dollars for a stamped piece of paper saying I entered the US on the 30th of August, 2013, at Buffalo. One problem: my bank doesn’t allow transactions with Mastercard without a PIN (in the US they still only swipe), and the customs didn’t have a PIN-enabled cash register. And I didn’t have any US dollars. AARGH! Why couldn’t they have stamped my passport as a tourist, and I could’ve gotten the damn visa paper the same night (making sure to have dollars on me), while crossing again into the US for my flight to Boston? In the end, the solution was that I had to beg the other people standing in line to change some of my Canadian dollars into US dollars, which eventually worked out. Bureaucracy, sigh.
Anyways, it was definitely worth it.
See that sweet patch of soft grassy hill on the left-hand side? That’s where I spent my afternoon, reading a book on my Kindle (thank god for that thing, it’s a huge improvement over carrying books around), and finally taking a day for myself to relax.
Oh yeah, and even though I missed the fireworks festival in Knokke, I got my fair share at Niagara. Apparently the tourists do keep the cash flowing.
And that was about it! Now I’m waiting for my bus at 1:35 in the morning, which will get me to the airport by 3:10, and my flight leaves around seven. I’m not getting any sleep tonight, that’s for sure. On the flip side, I will finally get to meet all the other students tomorrow… So excited!
Keep you posted
Steven