Traveling during the holidays is a bitch. Yet when the school dictates a break, students have to do it. While students from all different areas left campus in planes, trains, and cars, most inevitably found themselves stuck in endless lines of traffic.
Transportation was maybe the most difficult for students driving, whether to Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, or simply leaving Middletown.
“There was so much traffic, it was ridiculous,” said Caroline Rober ’08, who drove home to Long Island on the Tuesday on which classes ended. “It took me a long time just to get out of Middletown. I actually hit someone. There wasn’t any serious damage, [but] it was definitely because of the increased amount of traffic.”
Rober regretted leaving around 4 p.m., which put her into peak rush-hour traffic.
“It was worth the drive home, I just wish I had left at a different time,” she said.
The drive for Rober took twice as long as it normally would. Other students found the same problem. Joanna Kenty ’08, who left Tuesday afternoon, had the same problem.
“It took two and a half hours longer than it should have; it was shit,” Kenty said. “My iPod playlist ended before I got home, which is always a bad sign.”
Students flying home for Thanksgiving weekend suffered with airline passengers around the country, who faced some of the highest airline travel rates out of the entire year, according to AP Network News.
Sarah Edelman ’09 was flying home to Florida. While she didn’t face crowds at the Hartford airport when she left on Wednesday morning, her flight back was a different story.
“When I came back in the Fort Lauderdale Airport … that was crazy,” Edelman said. “There were crazy lines, people were there hours and hours early. I was only there an hour early, and I thought I wouldn’t make my plane.”
For students living in Philadelphia or Washington, D.C., who traveled home on Amtrak, the journey back to campus was especially difficult. Although Amtrak trains run many times per day, several of the trains running during high-traffic times like the holidays sell out several hours or even days in advance.
“It was more crowded,” said Jennie Ehrenhalt ’09, who traveled to her home in Washington, D.C., via Amtrak during the break. “Tickets were sold out Sunday when I trying to come back, so I had to come back on Saturday, which sucked.”
Erik Rosenberg ’08, who was also traveling via Amtrak back from Philadelphia, was forced to switch trains in New York.
“Sunday was the worst traffic day. I couldn’t get a train…to New Haven. It was sold out,” Rosenberg said. “I had to walk all the way from Penn Station to Grand Central, but it was nice because I got to see all the Christmas lights up.”
Rosenberg, like many others, took a train from New York back to New Haven via the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA). Luckly for students living in New York, MTA is a commuter train, which means it does not sell reserved seats.
“We don’t really sell out,” said MTA employee Mike Desimona. “We could sell a lot of tickets, and depending on whether a train is over capacity, riders would have to wait for the next train on the line.”
Desimona said that depending on past ridership numbers, MetroNorth added extra trains during peak times.
“Of course holidays are going to be big travel times,” he said. “We have 25,000 people per day, so really every day is busy.”
For students living in New York and New Jersey, however, the MetroNorth line made travel much less painful.
“It was a little more crowded [on the train]; we got tickets just fine though,” said Tanya Llewelyn ’08. “It was incredibly difficult to arrange a ride to the train station.”
For other students, epecially those living far away, staying on campus may seem like an attractive way of saving money and avoiding the holiday traffic.
“It was basically too expensive to go home to California for just a couple of days,” said Ben Clifford ’09.
Because Campus Dining was shut down during break, dining options were slim to none around campus. Students who stayed on campus, like Hyung-jin Choi ’07, soon found that they were missing those home-cooked meals that most students traveling home got to enjoy. Even though some, like Choi, stayed in Middletown and frequented Main Street, some students decided it would be cheaper and better to travel further.
“We went out to Meriden,” said Walter Wilkerson ’09. “There’s a Boston Market there, we got a six person meal and split it two ways, and that lasted for most of break.”
Another striking difference, according to Wilkerson, was the deserted atmosphere. Since most students do go home during vacations, the campus is especially quiet during the breaks.
“It was weird, you get used to seeing people all over campus and then no one was here,” Clifford said.
Daniela Ivanova ’10, who is from Bulgaria, agreed that the deserted campus was quite boring.
“We had a lot of spare time,” she said. “Main Street was more interesting than campus because there weren’t many people on campus.”
There are a few ways a student can make their stay here during breaks more interesting, or at least give them some way to fill their time.
“I’m planning to stay here over winter break and hopefully getting a research assistant job,” Choi said.
Most students who were able to leave campus ultimately agreed that, despite the difficulties of traveling, the home cooking and good company made the trek home worthwhile.
“I only came back for two days, but yeah, I would say it was worth it,” Ehrenhalt said.
Leave a Reply