Pittsburgh Trip

For a long time I have been planning on maintaining a dairy. I even started writing one with gusto but could not keep up with it because of my schedule or you could call it 'pure laziness'. But taking inspiration from a couple of friends who contribute regularly to their respective blogs, I have decided to start my own blog. I do believe I have a flair and penchant for writing. Ofcourse, you won't find very personal stuff but you will get a very good idea about my likes, dislikes and my persoanality. So here I am, typing away drops of words in this infinite ocean of the world wide web and even if two people glance through what I have written, I would consider my job done.
I went along with a couple of friends, Harsh and Puneet, on Sun, Mar 12 from Buffalo, NY state to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in my car. It was a 3 and a 1/2 hour drive on a gloomy day. Our first stop was the Sri Venkateshwara Temple which is supposed to be one of the oldest temple in the US. After losing our way when we were almost there, we finally found it. As expected, it was fairly crowded with a variety of different cars parked in the parking lots. I was a bit disappointed with the interiors since it seemed that they tried to fit many deities in the reasonably big complex. Even the 'Gopuram' seemed to be made of plaster of paris instead of the stone ones you have in India. On the other hand it is commendable that there are such things in the US. I mean 20 years ago you could not have imagined having temples in the US but now almost every major city in the US has a substantial Indian population and atleast one place of worship, be it a temple or a Gurudwara. Pittsburgh, by the way, has 2 temples, the other one is simply called 'Hindu temple'. After visiting the temple, we had lunch at this small restaurant near the the temple called 'Udipi cafe'. We had a sumptuous south Indian meal and I must say that it was a pretty authentic one. We then went to see the actual Pittsburgh. This city was established in the late 18th century and was very well known for its steel. That's why their football team is called the 'Pittsburgh Steelers'. We went to the top of a hill, just minutes from the downtown, at a spot called 'Duquesne (pronounced due-ken) Incline'. From this spot we got a very good view of the downtown and the confluence of 3 rivers, Ohio river coming from the west and the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers flowing from the east. The temperature was quite comfortable and the view was fantastic. We clicked a lot of pictures and some videos. We even requested on of the tourists to click all the 3 of us together and here is the output.

After staying there for about 45 min, we made way to the downtown. There is nothing much to talk about the downtown except that there were huge buildings but very few people since it was a Sunday. We walked through the Point state park which is build on the confluence and it was surprising to realize that we were so close to the waters. Right across, we could see the Carnegie Science Center and the Heinz field where the football matches are held. By football, I mean the American version, not soccer. It is said that baseball is America's favourite passtime but football is America's passion. We also saw a group of youngsters playing this game. You may notice that most of them are extra large. Two-thirds of the American population is overweight and one-third of these are obese.

It was 5 pm and we decided to see the University of Pittsburgh (UPitt) even though we had not planned it initially. So we found out the route using the city map and we were cruising along Forbes avenue when all of a sudden, it became a one-way. So we had to make an unexpected turn and just lost our way and landed up at the gates of Duquesne university. This is one of the universities that one of my friends Suraj studied in and we just clicked away. We couldn't find anyone who would tell us the way to UPitt and after some searching, we came across an Indian student who happened to know Suraj. Incidentally, he too was going through UPitt and we followed his car and when we reached UPitt, he signalled us and sped away. We parked our car, looked at our watches and reached a consensus that we had a hour and a half to look around. UPitt is arounf 5 miles from the downtown and is a downtown in itself. It does not have a campus feel to it since the main roads pass through the university but we were really impressed with what we saw. It was an aesthetic mix of the new and the old. There were some really delightful old structures like the libraries and the cathedral. The world famous Carnegie-Mellon institute is situated here. We saw the buildings of software, music, art and natural history institutes from the outside and clicked snaps in front of statues of renowned people like Bach, Michelangelo, Shakespeare etc. The area was very young and vibrant since 90% of the people around were students studying in the two universities. It kind of reminded me of the MIT-Harvard area in Boston.

Thus after a very satisfying day, we finally bid adieu to Pittsburgh.

The following weekend, I went to Ohio state but that is another story. Till then, enjoy some snippets of Pittsburgh.

http://uk.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/pashi_v/album?.dir=1714