Pittsburgh

I took the bus to Pittsburgh, arriving a little after 7pm. I had gotten lucky and had found someone to host me through Couchsurfing.com. Arunan, my host, picked me up at the bus station and we went out to dinner. The first place we tried was closed so we went to the Church Brew Works. This is a brewery housed in a converted church. I have to admit that it felt a little bit wrong to be sat at a bar drinking a beer in a church. The beer was excellent though. The food was ok, I had my first taste of Perogies, a potato dumpling staple of Poland. It wasn't bad, just bland. After Arunan drove me to the top of Mt. Washington so I could get the night view of Pittsburgh. And of course it was beautiful. I think I need to buy a thesaurus so I can widen my range of adjectives. Despite my awful writing I hope I am able to convey that I am still enjoying my travels. I am not yet taking things for granted and haven't become jaded by what I have seen so far. I am beginning to understand why so few Americans have a passport and why so few feel the need to leave the country. There is so much to see and do here, one lifetime would never be enough. As it is I am always finding more and more reasons to come back and I haven't even left yet. I truly believe that the British only travel out of necessity. We travel for sunshine, good snow and some would say good food. The last one is not true, you can find good food in England. You just have to look for it.
The following day I went to the Warhol museum, prior to coming to Pittsburgh I hadn't known that Andy Warhol was born here. I wonder how he would have felt about being buried here and having his museum in the city when most of his life had been spent in New York. I guess if he had really cared he would have written a will to reflect his post mortem wishes. I enjoyed seeing his works but am not inspired by them, he had talent to be sure but not really my kind of art. I think I am more traditional than I thought. There was an exhibition called Supertrash which featured lots of "B" movie posters. Most of the films I hadn't seen with the exception of Carrie. I am not sure what they are trying to portray with the exhibition. Whatever the point is, I missed it. There was an exhibition of poster art by Shepard Fairey, he did the Obama hope portrait. I loved that exhibition and actually wanted to by a copy of one of the posters on display, unfortunately they weren't available in the museum shop. A totally missed merchandising opportunity. The best thing about the whole museum is the cloud room. Created for a 1966 exhibition Warhol made a sculpture consisting of free floating silver pillows. The cloud room contains about ten of these "clouds", a load of fans and you. It was like being a kid again and getting to go into the ball pit.Very relaxing.They should rent the room out as a relaxation course for stressed executives!
Four lunch I went to Piemonte Brothers, a Pittsburgh institution. The specialty here is to put the contents of your plate into a sandwich. So where in other restaurants you would have a sandwich with fries and coleslaw on the side, here it's all in the sandwich. The sandwich was good, but...not that good. As I was eating it I was just thinking that I would like everything separate and not stuffed between two pieces of bread.Well, I had to try it and of course, I took a photo.
Arunan picked me up early evening and we went tot he Polish restaurant for dinner. The food was excellent and really well priced. Even their Perogies were better than the ones I had had at the Church Brewery. After dinner Arunan was trying to think of places we could go for a beer, I suggested that we just grab some beer and watch a movie at his place. i had been walking around all day and I just wanted to sit down and relax. Little did I know that my request was not simple. We drove to what a I presumed to be a liquor store and Arunan was explaining to me why people buy their beer in a bar. I didn't understand what he was talking about until we got to the off licence. In Pennsylvania you cannot buy wine,spirits and/or six packs of beer from an off licence. You have to go to a bar or a special state alcohol store. All you can buy from an ordinary off licence is a case of beer, so 24 bottles usually. So we bought a case of beer and went back to the apartment.A good end to a very cold day.
Wednesday morning found me hanging out with Jims brother, Craig, once again. Craig, it turns out, is every bit as a good a tour guide as Jim himself is. Must be in the genes. We headed out of town for our first stop, Jumonville. Here in the middle of the woods George Washington and his men ambushed a French Canadian scouting party, in the process killing the leader, Joseph Coulon de Jumonville. Up until this point the British and the French weren't openly hostile to each other, although both countries were trying to expand their territories in the U.S. and enlisting the help of the local Indians to do it. Washington moved on to a nearby valley and set about constructing a fort, Fort necessity, as a scout had got away and reported back to the French leadership in Pittsburgh what had happened. The fort was attacked and Washington was forced to sign a surrender. Included in the terms of the surrender was an admission by Washington that he had personally killed Jumonville. In his letters Washington always maintained that this was not the case and that his translator had misled him. Since the translator had been handed to the French as a hostage no one was able to check this! The location, literally in the middle of the woods, isn't interesting in and of itself, but what happened there and what it led to, most definitely, are. I went to Fort Necessity. It was not a good location, I could see that, even without the benefit of hindsight. The valley in which Fort Necessity sits is also the sight of the road that the British built across country to connect the east with Pittsburgh. At this time the French controlled Pittsburgh and with it all access to the Ohio river. The British wanted a way to get their troops there so they could talk to the French about sharing this valuable asset. Not!!
Craig and I tried to go to Falling Water, one of the houses designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, but we were out of luck as it had just closed for the day. The house is built on the side of a hill over a waterfall, this feature is incorporated into the houses design. It was designed for Edgar Kaufmann Snr. a Pittsburgh businessman,who according to Craig, was a naturalist and would hold parties there, dress optional. After being turned away from the house we picked up some steaks and went back to Craigs house where I finally got to meet his wife Terri and his son Craig. I stayed the night, sleeping on the best mattress in the house.