Day 32: From the 'Burbs to the City

Thursday, October 2, I prepared to leave my friends in West Lawn and make the short hop over to Reading to stay with another friend for a few days. Before I left, Bill took me to an Amish Farmer's Market in Wyomissing, another Reading suburb. It was a very nice, extra clean and tidy indoor market with a deli, fresh organic locally-grown produce, baked goods, meat, desserts, candies, and just about anything you could want.

In the afternoon I drove from the safe suburb of West Lawn nine miles to my friend's house near Albright College in Reading, where he is employed as an Associate Professor of Sociology. He and I talked for about ten hours, and he was able to give me a good overview of the demographics, culture, and crime rate in the city (more on that in a later blog entry). He gave me a tour of the semi-detached house (basically what we would call a townhouse duplex) that he bought about ten years ago. It is typical of housing in the area: an older brick building in need of some updating and repairs, mostly on the outside. The inside is quite nice and much has already been updated. The 2,400 square foot home has three levels, plus a basement/garage underneath, for a total of four stories. He enters his garage from an alley that looks like something from a war-torn developing country. When he showed me the alley, he said, "Welcome to Beirut!"

"Beirut"