Boston

So it is the 4th day we are in Boston and today we are leaving. Although we don't actually live in Boston, but in Cambridge, a small town just across the bridge, where the MIT located. Friends of ours live here and we are staying with them. And because of that we haven't only seen Boston, but also Cambridge and Harvard, which are both nice little towns. 

We liked Boston, also I didn't like it more than Chicago. Chicago seemed to be more beautiful to me for some reason. 

So, we spent 3 lovely days here. First two days we were visiting the city and yesterday we were celebrating Maria's birthday. Her husband has organized it in a cool way - he planned a boat trip to one of the Boston islands for 4 of us and when we came there her other friends were waiting there and we had a picnic. She was of course surprised and glad and the party was really fun. Everybody was speaking Spanish except me (my husband speaks some Spanish too). But they were also speaking English to me. 

So, we had a picnic, than walked around the island (it only took around 20 minutes, the island was tiny but nice), than we bathed in the ocean (only 3 of us - me, Johannes and Efren). The ocean was not so cold, warmed than the Michigan lake in Chicago, where we also swam couple of days ago. 

In Chicago it is very easy to bathe - the closest beach is just 30 minutes by foot from the downtown, it is clean and comfortable. The water was clean and calm. 

So, after the picnic we had the following plan. One of Efren's colleagues, an italian Giovanni was to play piano at the Italian society center and we were going to visit the concert. We were late from the picnic and considered not to change our clothes and go as is, but luckily finally we did it, and I even put on the dress that I just bought that day in Boston (we don't have any fancy clothes with us, we only have very limited luggage). And it was a very good decision. When we arrived to the place where the concert was about to start, we found ourselves in a really noble society. We were also the youngest and even though we changed, we were still underdressed. All the men were wearing suits and women beautiful dresses. And it was not like the concert we were expecting to see, there were no chairs in rows, but the tables. 

So, we joined the table we were assigned to where 2 guests were already seating. They were two aged americans, were nice couple, we enjoyed the evening with them. It turned out that the wife was going to go to St. Petersburg in July, so I exchanged the contact with her and hope to keep in touch. 

Some time later Giovanni joined us to eat something before his performance. 

First there were some official speeches hold, partly in italian. I only understood that there is some anniversary this year and also that they have a new president whom they were introducing. 

Before the speeches there were snacks. During the speeches the snacks were cleaned up and the main dish was prepared. And then the most awful thing happened. 

The speeches were over and Giovanni was invited to the stage to start playing. And at the same time they announced the time for the main course!!! So at the same time with his playing people stood up from their places and went to line up and get the food. It was literally the nightmare of any classical musician - nobody was listening and it was terribly loud in the room!!! We were really shocked to see this kind of treating the classical musician, so we just went closer to the venue to hear Giovanni. He was playing great, several Scarlatti sonatas which are very technically complex and some Chopin. I may imagine how awful he felt with all that sounds coming from all around. I just cannot understand how was it possible to plan the event like this at all. 

So, Giovanni finished playing and returned to our table. After him there was another pianist, who was also playing good, but nobody listened to him either. 

Johannes even came up to one of the speakers and told him that nobody couldn't hear anything and the guy (actually that was some important person, I don't know his title though) started to go around and say tschhh-tschhhh, which of course didn't really help. 

The rest of the evening was nice, we enjoyed the time with our Spanish friends, a new italian friend and new american friends a lot. We went to a bar afterwards for a drink. There we were discussing the politics loudly and at some point while Giovanni was telling us something about the italian government, 2 guys from the nearby table approached him, they were from Italy too.