Cleveland: Fasten your Rust Belt

I went back with Susanne to Cleveland, Ohio (on the shores of Lake Eerie, about half way between New York and Chicago) for the last part of the trip we made together.

The Greyhound there was an experience in itself ... it was an overnight bus with a huge cross section of people traveling on it, chaotic in a 3rd world kind of way (everyone gets on the bus, then suddenly everyone has to get off it again and go to the next bus; if you can't find a seat, too bad, despite having a ticket, you stop repeatedly in the middle of the night and have to get off the bus, even if you're continuing with the same one, and so on). Here's a picture of the bus station in Pittsburgh, a city I almost went to study in, at 3am at which stage Susanne wasn't interested in having photos taken any more!

Cleveland is a rust belt city, struggling to find its feet again after the industry from its heyday in the 20's withered away. It combines a prohibition-era style with industrial gothic and a feeling of desolation.




Susanne lives with three other German students in a wooden house in Treemont, about 5 km outside of Cleveland, and works as an intern in the Metro hospital, where "saving lives is just the beginning". The hospital is the one in the city which is the last recourse of people without medical insurance (there are a lot of these in the US); she sees a lot of patients who are seriously ill with easily-preventable diseases. She is counting down the remaining weeks of her visit.