Boston Differences
"Leave it in the carriage and they can scan it." This can be very confusing for someone from out west. You hear carriage and you think of a horse drawn carriage. But "scan it" is something very modern. We were at Costco and heard the lady on line (no, that's not a typo, more on that later), tell her husband to leave something in the carriage so the cashier could scan it. Yep, a cart is a carriage here. It was very confusing at first to be told at Home Depot I could put my bag in the carriage. "Does she mean she wants me to go out to the car to put my bag there?" I thought. And then saw she was gesturing at the CART. And then at Costco there was that word again. I'm not sure I can get used to a cart being called a carriage. It's just weird. They also say "on line" here instead of "in line." So in the above story, we were "on line" at Costco. They are also parking Nazis here. For real. One side of the street is street cleaned the 1st and 3rd Wednesday of every month and the other side is done the 2nd and 4th Wednesday. Some of them are no parking from 8 am-12 noon and some are from 12 noon-4 pm. Ours was parked on the 12 noon-4 side and we got a ticket 15 minutes after noon. So they aren't messing around with their street cleaning apparently. And don't expect to be able to park within a 10 minute walk of your apartment if you are trying to park after 7 pm on a week night. No more week night errands for us! We have had a parking spot since we got married so this fend for yourself parking is new to us and can be exhausting!
Another big difference between here and Utah, probably most of back west actually, is AC is NOT standard here. Most of the apartments here are at least 100 years old and while they are extremely cute because of that, they do not have the duct work necessary for AC without extensive work being done. So do yourself a favour and budget in $300 to buy a couple window AC units. We only have one right now since summer is winding down but next year we are definitely getting another one! It's a good thing our apartment is so cute and old fashioned because if we had a less cute apartment and no AC, this adjustment would be pretty rough.
Renting here is also way different. In Utah there was the owner, a property manager, and you. You go through a property manager to do all the paperwork, make payments, etc. and they work for the owner. Here there is another person in the equation. Property managers don't deal at all with finding tenants or doing leases. There are brokers that do that job specifically. Because of that you will usually have to pay a broker fee which is usually equal to one month's rent to find an apartment. You can look on Zillow to find some properties that look good, but don't plan on seeing that property because we found that more often than not, those were just stock photos brokers posted so you would be forced to call them to see any real properties. We found a few different brokers that showed us some places and the third broker we spoke to was the one that found us our apartment. So we signed all the paperwork with him, paid the first and last month's rent and broker fees with him and then that was it. Now is when the property manager actually comes is. If we have any issues or anything, we go to them. It's an annoyingly long process and was very confusing to us at first since we had never dealt with anything like this before, but now that we are settled it doesn't really matter that it was different.
Sometimes it feels almost like we are in a weird, bizarro America being here. Some things are just so different that we knew would be different, but then there are small differences that we didn't even think about. We have been to the grocery store/Costco twice out here and have found NO WHITE ONIONS here. I'm sure they have them somewhere but we haven't seen them yet. And we didn't see russet potatoes either! Those are like a staple in Utah and here they don't even have them. Again, they probably have them somewhere, but not where we've been yet. And the milk is different. I don't know what makes it different, but it tastes just a little different. I think the cows here eat something different we heard from someone, but I haven't cared enough to research it. I just know I like it better for my chocolate milk. The good thing though is that mostly the cost of food is the same here. Some things are more expensive but some things are cheaper. The thing that is more expensive here is laundry. Our laundry place downstairs is $2/wash or dry and the laundromats within walking distance are $3/wash or dry. Not terribly expensive, but annoying all the same.
Some of these differences will take some getting used to, but I can't wait to find all the differences, explore all the new places and enjoy every minute of our time here.
Another big difference between here and Utah, probably most of back west actually, is AC is NOT standard here. Most of the apartments here are at least 100 years old and while they are extremely cute because of that, they do not have the duct work necessary for AC without extensive work being done. So do yourself a favour and budget in $300 to buy a couple window AC units. We only have one right now since summer is winding down but next year we are definitely getting another one! It's a good thing our apartment is so cute and old fashioned because if we had a less cute apartment and no AC, this adjustment would be pretty rough.
Renting here is also way different. In Utah there was the owner, a property manager, and you. You go through a property manager to do all the paperwork, make payments, etc. and they work for the owner. Here there is another person in the equation. Property managers don't deal at all with finding tenants or doing leases. There are brokers that do that job specifically. Because of that you will usually have to pay a broker fee which is usually equal to one month's rent to find an apartment. You can look on Zillow to find some properties that look good, but don't plan on seeing that property because we found that more often than not, those were just stock photos brokers posted so you would be forced to call them to see any real properties. We found a few different brokers that showed us some places and the third broker we spoke to was the one that found us our apartment. So we signed all the paperwork with him, paid the first and last month's rent and broker fees with him and then that was it. Now is when the property manager actually comes is. If we have any issues or anything, we go to them. It's an annoyingly long process and was very confusing to us at first since we had never dealt with anything like this before, but now that we are settled it doesn't really matter that it was different.
Sometimes it feels almost like we are in a weird, bizarro America being here. Some things are just so different that we knew would be different, but then there are small differences that we didn't even think about. We have been to the grocery store/Costco twice out here and have found NO WHITE ONIONS here. I'm sure they have them somewhere but we haven't seen them yet. And we didn't see russet potatoes either! Those are like a staple in Utah and here they don't even have them. Again, they probably have them somewhere, but not where we've been yet. And the milk is different. I don't know what makes it different, but it tastes just a little different. I think the cows here eat something different we heard from someone, but I haven't cared enough to research it. I just know I like it better for my chocolate milk. The good thing though is that mostly the cost of food is the same here. Some things are more expensive but some things are cheaper. The thing that is more expensive here is laundry. Our laundry place downstairs is $2/wash or dry and the laundromats within walking distance are $3/wash or dry. Not terribly expensive, but annoying all the same.
Some of these differences will take some getting used to, but I can't wait to find all the differences, explore all the new places and enjoy every minute of our time here.
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