On The Auditory Road

So my ridiculously early alarm woke me up, way before my host was up, and I walked to the Amtrak station. I wanted to make sure I get there early as I still had to buy my ticket and there was no way I was going to miss this train as the one after wasn’t for another 12 hours.

After navigating my way there entirely by my natural sense of direction I realised I was a good hour early and the ticket desk wasn’t even open so I had to use one of those fandangled ticket machines which I spent at least 10 minutes trying to understand i then went to Subway and bought an omelette sandwich and missed Erica and our trips to ‘bway to get meatball subs for 2 quid.

Getting a train in American is significantly more hassle than it is in England, you have to show ID when you buy a ticket and your name gets printed on it. There also seems to be a complete excess of staff, after lining up at a gate for the train (yes, this is as ridiculous as it sounds) and having my ticket checked by two guards I meet about another 5 guards working on the same train as well as a driver, I have no idea what these people actually do other than wander up and down the carriages.

The train pulled away and I enjoyed all the beautiful views through Mississippi and Alabama, these are two of the prettiest states I’ve seen, extremely sparse and full of country; it really made me dream of the simple life and wondered whether my ingrained urbanite ways are truly the things I want.

The trains journey seemed to go on forever, passenger trains in the states are not the priority, freight is, so if a freight train wants to go past then it will and it will crawl pass at 40mph and Amtrak ill wait like a little bitch. I never thought I’d appreciate the train system in England quite so much, I won’t complain about it for at least 2 weeks after returning home.

At long last I got to Atlanta and was picked up by Brianna who I had stayed with in New York and we both decided we were hungry so we went to get some seafood; she bought a crabcake po-boy and I just went for some fried seafood and jalapenos, raw oysters are still nicer than deep fried ones though.

After returning to her loft she asked if I wanted to get drunk but given that she had turned over a new leaf and given up all kinds of intoxicating substances I declined and stayed sober (probably a good thing) and spent the evening in the only bar we could get into (She’s only 20) and played darts after some guys tried to con us into paying them money to play pool.

The next day there was going to be a party at her loft, we spent the day doing not much at all other than preparing the space. The party was an interesting one, there was live music as well as acrobatic artists (one of whom Brianna definitely developed a thing for after watching her change [which I accidentally walked in on.]) I paid a “donation” for a few beers and just enjoyed the show and hanging out with Brianna’s flat mate Sunny (Sp?) who is an electronic music DJ and producer (mainly dubstep from what I recall) and wants to move to London as he’s well aware that it’s the place to be (so why was I here in this hole of a city?)

The loft itself was a pretty big space especially for how few people lived there (4 but I only met 3) with artwork strewn over every wall, the point of the party was to show off the work made by local artists. My favourite was made by a man who took old paintings he’s acquired and painted dinosaurs on top the existing painting. there was a giant red painted steel sculpture for the centrepiece just inside the front door which was also pretty good.

The party finished and we were told of another one just starting at a nearby loft as a sort of after party, as Brianna wasn’t drinking she offered to drive us there, I really just wanted to go to bed but went along with it. We also gave a very strange man called Dennis (I don’t know his real name but Dennis fits) who just talked absolute shit and seemed to be constantly trying to cadge a place to stay at her loft, it is entirely possible that he was homeless.

When we arrived there was a mob of people attacking someone’s care (while they were trying to drive away) they were literally kicking, punching and spitting on this car and there was so many it took a while for the car to actually pull away. Brianna did the sensible thing and drove straight into the angry mob who reluctantly moved out the way (I suggested avoiding this situation but apparently I’m just a pussy.) The party was already over by the time we got there as some stuff had gone down (hence the crazy mob) so we all decided to climb on top off a stationary freight train which became fairly instantly a dumb idea as another train came at us on the other track.

I had already been told that at some point I would have to go to waffle house simply because it is ridiculously cheap and an American institution and so the next day we did. I bought a sausage biscuit and gravy as well as a steak and cheese sandwich. The food was cheap and pretty good though I have no idea where Americans get their idea of what gravy is supposed to be from.

Atlanta is an extremely strange place, there seem to be a huge amount of crack/meth heads and they’re not shy about being seen in public. At one point when we had to stop for gas around midnight we were basically harassed by a several outside the gas station, they put on some kind of weird good cop bad cop routine with one threatening us like “hey, HEY, what the fuck man you racist? you RACIST?” and the other saying things like “aww man, ignore him, I’m cool I’ll protect you man” seriously people, stop taking crack, really, just stop.

I spent the rest of the day mostly resting and bumming around the loft, I had a bus to catch around midnight and i didn’t have much money to do anything until then, it was nice to just spend some time relaxing and having a small smoke with sunny before being driven to the station for another adventure, this time going north.