Buffalo: Reiseführer, Preise und kostenlose Unterkunft · 2026

SSSaniya Shonbayeva06.12.2019Lesen

When you are in America, you will surely have a to-do list. For example, if you are in the DC area, definitely try the crabs or lobsters. They also have the famous Old Bay seasoning; it has a unique taste, but it goes divinely with fries. Must try “Buffalo Wings”, “Ranch” sauce, and a Cheese Steak with lettuce, tomato, and fried onions. Gorge on donuts from “Dunkin Donuts”. Each of you must order a McChicken from “McDonald’s” because it only costs $1. Experience the taste of “Ginger” lemonade and “Dr. Pepper”. Sprinkle red pepper and Parmesan cheese on pizza, eat a Turkey Sandwich almost every day, and understand the difference between American and Provolone cheese. My expectations of America were confirmed, even exceeded. It might be an acquired taste, but I loved it. “America suits you,” many told me, and they were right. I love American culture and the people themselves. They are free and simple. No one will judge you; everyone lives their own life. People are incredibly kind, wanting to learn about you, your country, and your culture. I also noticed that American teenagers aren't very social, but adults, on the contrary, are. If you make friends with someone over fifty, they will take care of you like their own child. Fortunately, I didn't experience any negative emotions all summer, so my mood was always good. In my opinion, the Work and Travel USA program is an incredibly cool opportunity to go to America and experience their culture. It is one of the easiest ways to get a J-1 Visa and stay there for more than three months. If this is your dream, you must do everything in your power to achieve it. After all, it is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Try, don't be afraid! If it doesn't work out, try again. After a summer like this, you are left with unforgettable memories, friends from all over the world, and, of course, invaluable experience.

ЛЧЛена Чернецоваlena_chernetsova · 15.10.2012Lesen

Hours of monotonous routine. An endless succession of olive-green, gold, white, and chocolate satin bedspread stripes and bottles of cleaning detergent—four absolutely identical types. I look into the eyes of my reflection—with slicked-back hair, in an oversized black uniform with a yellow hotel stamp—and feel my terrifying sense of displacement. I am a stray atom, a plant, a terrorist-in-waiting within the service system. Any moment now, I will be exposed and tossed to the outskirts of the habitable universe. —Do you prefer a room with a Bible? While we successfully pretend to be interns, I listen to Valery's grumpy instructions and Sevil's incorrect Russian verb endings. Valery shows photos. Three children? Wow. Twin grandsons Roman and Jeremy? I've never seen such adorable, sturdy boys. Valery has a two-toned hairstyle. Valery smokes strong tobacco. Sevil jokes a lot. Sevil has sad eyes, and she only drinks one type of wine. The long vacuum cord and hose have to be slung over my elbow and wrapped crosswise over my chest, like a machine-gun belt. Idiotic thoughts sluggishly stir in my head about a man fused with a vacuum cleaner as a result of a fatal short circuit—Housekeeper-Man, the birth of a legend. His superpower will be exhaling clouds of strawberry air freshener. I jingle the tips in my pockets like a master's sheep with a bell. The glowing display of the vending machine promises me heavenly bliss and a can of cold soda for $1. I agree, I completely agree, my mechanical friend. After devouring the bill, my friend blinks its display demandingly. —Give me my money back!—denied. denied. denied.—You lying piece of shit. Between nothing for a dollar and a cola for two, I choose the cola. The cynical scrap metal finally spits the can at my feet. —Actually, it's 75 cents in the common room. Wonderful. Lera and Dana managed to get their hands on a half-gallon bottle of wine left behind in a room. The sun is scorching, as it shouldn't be in cold, damp Buffalo. —The heat needed time to crawl after us from Russia. It's obvious it's hunting us specifically,—Dana, in new work leggings and a tank top with rolled-up sleeves, takes a drag of her cigarette. We should have flown in April and brought the snowfall.

EExchangeexchangeiec · 29.05.2009Lesen

Road to Houston, New Mexico September 7th 4 AM - I'm in this tongue-twister of a city. There's nothing to do here, as Sanya said, time is tight, and the 5:30 AM bus is convenient. Wandered around the night city a bit, decided - I'm heading to Houston. 11:15 AM - I'm in Amarillo. According to the ticket, it's a one-hour stop, bus change. In reality - we were 10 minutes late, the bus left. You'll have to wait 6 hours for the next one. In the end, I didn't wait and left on a passing one in 3 hours (it was coming from Denver), tons of people again. At 2 AM I'm in Dallas, walked around, took a photo of a cool green skyscraper. Finally, 20 hours after that difficult city, having passed the third one on my way, Buffalo, on the morning of September 8th I'm in Houston.

KVKonstantin Volokhovskii08.12.2019Lesen

But enough about work. I do have some stories tucked away. Take my roommate, for example, who tried to get me fired because he wanted my position x). But let's change the subject to something more cheerful. It's time to talk about daily life and travel. Let's start with the "debts." I already mentioned the operating hours of local establishments, right? Well, let's expand on that. In New York, they close very early by our standards. It's especially bad on weekends—on Saturdays and Sundays, even tourist spots are often closed, how is that possible?! What a disappointment it was when I realized that tours of Buffalo City Hall are only held on weekdays during business hours. And when I decided to pop into a mall on the way from Buffalo, it turned out it closed at eight! Help! Many eateries close even earlier. That's New York State for you. That very unfortunate mall I also mentioned that you can survive in America without knowing English. That's true. Even at my job, I had colleagues who only spoke Spanish. And living under the same roof as me was a J-1 student from China who knew almost nothing at the start of the program! I already said that technology makes everything too easy, right? Anyway, if you lose your memory and forget English, no worries, you have Google Translate! Seriously, it translates from Chinese quite decently, tested x). However, don't count on it. First, because of this, you'll have a much smaller choice of jobs, and as I said, working with Americans is not scary and even fun, and second, it will be much harder for you to find friends among the locals. I also promised to talk about accents. With Spanish, by the way, everything is much easier. I had problems with African American Vernacular English until the very end; even one American said in conversation that he doesn't always understand it either. But I got used to the supervisor with a Spanish accent by the second day. Latinos, by the way, are even more sociable than regular Americans, don't be afraid of them either x). Essentially, it all comes down to how clearly the person speaks. I sometimes worried that I didn't understand the person on the first try, but then I remembered—in Russia, it often happens that someone doesn't hear someone else, right? So, don't worry more than necessary. Okay, moving on. Now about... Deception in supermarkets! Okay, deception is a strong word, but there is something you should know. American stores often have promotions, but they are cleverly disguised. You see, if a price tag promises you a lower price when buying multiple units of an item, it doesn't always mean you actually need to buy multiple products. It's easy to check—go to the checkout, and if the price per unit is lower than usual, you've found such an example! There were two variations in New York: "Y/X$" and "Y for X$" (X is the price, Y is the quantity), and if I'm not mistaken, in the first case, the price didn't depend on the quantity, it was just a discount. Moving smoothly to food. By the way, many people worry that they will gain weight in America. Not at all! I can't recommend my diet, as on workdays I often ate twice a day (since I almost never took anything with me to work), but combined with physically demanding work, I lost about 10 kg this summer. I ate quite budget-friendly: grains, pasta, sausages, potatoes; when I had money, I included meat in my diet. I recommend a pack of 12 chicken legs, especially on sale x). Except for breakfast, I almost splurged: I made a kind of variation of overnight oats, consisting of the porridge itself, yogurt, and a banana. It came out to about 1-2$ per breakfast. Oh, yes, sometimes laziness might get to you, and you'll go buy ready-made semi-finished products. I mainly did this with 1$ pizza, but I didn't overdo it. I also tried buying noodles from Dollar Tree but... I've never had such a strong allergy as then... Walmart is a model of a good supermarket, but getting there by public transport is a bit expensive But

KVKonstantin Volokhovskii08.12.2019Lesen

Well, the time has come for the final part of my story. First, I'll tell you about my travels after finishing work, and then I'll summarize both the blog and my trip, deal? By the way, a very important point. Don't forget the day your work visa expires! I forgot, and told my manager I was staying for another week, so she managed to make a new schedule. This time her angry look in my direction was justified x). My forgetfulness also had a few other unpleasant consequences. First, I didn't have time to properly plan my trip and did it... the night before leaving. Second, I lost a few days of precious time because I could only get my paycheck after the weekend. Third, as I already said, booking transport tickets on the last day is, damn, expensive! Considering that it's almost always possible to negotiate with an employer, it's better not to step on my rakes. Transport terminal in Buffalo, from here I left the metropolitan area where I spent the last 2.5 months. If I got to Niagara by Amtrak, then for my mini-trip I decided, first, to save a little, because some railroad fares really make your heart skip a beat, and second, their transport network isn't very flexible. I used Megabus and Greyhound. There were troubles with both. The former were almost an hour late (though we arrived on time anyway), and they didn't handle luggage very well. The latter... arrived too fast! And I wanted to sleep on the bus longer! I'll also say that it's much more cramped on the bus than in a train car. Anyway, I got a bit carried away, let's get back to my route. From the transport center in Buffalo, I took a Megabus to Washington with stops in a few other cities. I'll make a remark again about the local pronunciation of cities. Americans call Philadelphia by the affectionate, as it seemed to me, word "Philly" x). I arrived in Washington during the day, so I immediately dropped my things off at the hostel (although they checked me in before the check-in time, and that can happen) and set off on foot to the center, checking out various interesting places marked on Google Maps along the way. Here, another mistake of mine as a novice traveler comes into play, let it be revealed only in New York. Walking around the city almost aimlessly is definitely cool, but in the end, it turns out not to be quite efficient. Washington is amazing, I imagined it to be much more boring, but it's interesting even just to walk around it, looking at the whimsical architecture. But in exchange for that, I didn't really have time to go through the museums, which saddened me. By the way, if you are a night owl like me, I have bad news for you. The opening hours of museums here are even shorter than shops, until 5-6 PM. So adjust your schedule in advance, I just slept through everything. Essentially, out of my one and a half days (I arrived by noon and left the next midnight) in Washington, I managed to walk around the entire memorial square (the first day minus walks around the city and the next evening were spent on this), walk around the center, and go through most of the Air and Space Museum. I also ran through the American History Museum, but I had less than an hour for everything, which is unforgivably little. Capitol. Yes, just like in the movies. Washington Monument. There are many free and cool museums all around it. Summarizing regarding Washington: Wake up as early as possible, especially if you want to get into museums (you can even get into the Capitol); Plan your route more carefully so you don't walk in circles. I walked around the White House area twice because I couldn't find it x); Don't skimp on public transport, it will save you a lot of time. By the way, I haven't talked about it yet. For starters, a fun fact - in Washington, the subway is, suddenly, "metro", not "subway". But it is famous for its confusing fares. My technical education wasn't enough to understand when and how it's more profitable to ride it, mostly because a fixed amount was always dedu