Detroit
1045hrs
The train from Pittsburgh was late, so we had to wait around for a while. Colin tried phoning his friend who we've come to see (she was out - he's trying again now), and while I waited for him, I inadvertently listened in on the bloke on the next phone's conversation. I couldn't make much sense of it, but he mentioned a friend of his called Skeedo, which has got to be the best name I've heard in my life. Imagine my excitement, then, when he said that Skeedo was coming to pick him up.
It was a long wait, but Skeedo finally arrived. I snuck outside to see him, but he was helping the other guy put his stuff in the trunk, and his face was obscured from view. When I finally saw him, though, he looked just like a Skeedo should. He was a short old man with a baseball cap and pale, loose skin, grey hair and a wispy moustache. I'll sleep soundly tonight, I thought.
I didn't, though. By four thirty I'd had almost no sleep at all. We then changed to the coach which brought us here, on which I got no more.
We went and used the bathroom of a cafe called the White Castle, where we shared a bag of French fries for breakfast.
After that we came to the youth hostel, which meant a three-mile walk through the centre of Detroit. There is precisely one good thing about Detroit, which is the manholes. In other cities, particularly New York, I've seen references to the fact that steam comes out the manholes, but no evidence to back it up. This is the first place I've seen a steaming manhole, and there are hundreds of them.
Other than that, the place is a dump. Most of the buildings look like they were last used fifty years ago, and then as targets by the Germans. I really can't stress strongly enough: never go to Detroit for pleasure. It's a complete hovel.
The youth hostel showed no sign of raising the tone of the place. It's in a dodgy looking side street and from the outside looks like a dodgy looking bar. Unperturbed, we entered.
Behind the reception desk was a large man with a shaved head. In my memory he was wearing a string vest and covered in tattoos, but he probably wasn't really. He had a stereo on the desk, which was playing a tape of an amateurish and particularly tasteless reworking of Candle in the Wind, with lyrics relating to the death of Princess Diana. We approached the desk, and he turned off the tape.
"We're looking for the youth hostel."
"U-hu."
"Is this it?"
"Yeah, this is it."
"Can we book in now, or do we have to do it between certain times?"
"You can book in now."
We booked in, and came up to the room. A French woman, who appears to be some kind of chambermaid, joined us on the landing. She showed us which room was ours, and Colin tried to unlock the door, with little success. The woman gave it a shove, and it opened stiffly.
The first thing she did was look in the bathroom.
"This is a mess!" she said. She said she'd clean it, after she'd made the beds. While she was making the beds, she expressed surprise that we'd come here, as if you'd have to be mad to stay in this youth hostel.
"There is nothing here, no bus, nothing," she said.
"Don't argue with a black. Just leave," was her advice for surviving in the city, where, she tells us, there are more guns than people.
Colin rang his friend, but she was asleep (she works nights). We're now just waiting for her to ring us back. We could go out for a bit, but considering what Detroit has to offer, it doesn't really seem worth the bother.
Same day
Detroit
1331hrs
It's wet and nasty and cloudy and misty here, which according to the chambermaid is always the case in Detroit. Colin's friend still hasn't called, and since she works nights it seems reasonable to assume she won't be up until about 10 p.m. This whole part of the trip seems very badly organised to me, but no doubt it will all work out for the best. The one good thing about this youth hostel is that we have an en suite bathroom, which isn't that dirty since that woman cleaned it. The rest of the room's pretty dodgy though - all of the doors stick, and there's a lamp with a cord to turn it on, and if you pull the cord too hard the lamp comes apart. The windows, in contrast to the doors, are too loose, and if you're not careful, one of them at least would shoot right down on top of your skull, which I imagine (though I haven't tested it) would be painful.
Same day
Detroit
2032hrs
This afternoon we went out and explored Detroit. We found a phone box and Colin called his friend again. He's now spoken to her mum, her dad and her sister, but not her. She'd woken up and gone out by this time. We've only got one more day in Detroit, but we should manage to contact her tomorrow.
We went on the people mover to the shopping centre. The people mover is a train service, with trains running on a track high up around the city. It only has one route and only goes in one direction, but it only has about eight stops so that's all it needs. It costs fifty cents to use, although you could easily step over the barrier and use it for free. It's entirely automatic, it doesn't seem to have a driver.
The shopping centre had a W.H.Smiths, but it was far from the big stores that sell everything we have in Britain. It was really little more than a sweet shop, with a couple of shelves of magazines thrown in. We bought a book of crosswords and other puzzles, which should keep us entertained on a few train journeys. We've got a couple of long ones coming up.
Detroit is the most boring, pointless city on the face of the planet, and if you replaced it with a rotten cabbage while no one was looking, it would be weeks before anybody noticed.
