1st Day in Boston

First day in Boston, probably best spent walking. I really enjoyed sitting at the foot of Ben Franklin's statue on the old grounds of Boston Public Latin School. The place was very quiet, I listened to the birds and rustling leaves, feeling the wind and the sun. Still I felt like I wasn't quite here, on my trip in the US. Then again, that might be expected too much. Can you actually feel where you are? Nonetheless, I was feeling a bit introverted. But after opening up mentally, I was feeling like being here, in Boston, in America, and felt free to go on. Anyway, really enjoyed it, thought “I like Boston.”

Then I started walking and found myself wondering why everything was closed. That was when some guard at a shuttered supermarket told me they had shut down Boston for the manhunt. They shut down an entire city! Wouldn't happen over in old Europe, I guess. I kept on walking for more or less the whole afternoon. Again I was looking for a place for the next night (reminiscences of London here). Later in the evening I learned that there even was a suggested curfew, though not a mandatory one, in order to prevent the guy on the run from mingling in a crowd, and thus helping police in their search. Apparently I had walked through Boston for five hours during a manhunt for an armed terrorist. Congratulations, Chris! Really smart.

Sounds more of a big deal than it really is, however. There still were a lot of people walking about, even though not as many as there usually are. Many where doing some sightseeing along the Boston Freedom Trail, as for some time was I. I don't know if like me they hadn't heard of the curfew, or they simply didn't care. All in all, it felt like a normal day, just a bit more quiet and a larger police and military presence on the street.