Salem

9/18/2022

For this day, good weather with 28 degrees was predicted again. We actually just wanted to stay in Boston, but Salem seemed interesting. That's why we wanted to go there. Besides, the Charlie Card is also valid for this trip.

We hit the road with a relatively long drive ahead of us.
First, we noticed that there are few buses on Sundays. There was a long wait for the Silver Line.
We walked to the terminus and then got off at the Park Street stop (by the way, this is the oldest subway station, the first subway in the US was built in 1897).

Unfortunately, we went in the wrong direction.
So we tried to go in at another entrance. And here we ran into a problem because Charlie was no longer working… (It's valid until September 22 and allows unlimited travel - so we didn't understand what was going on.)
An employee just came, and we tried to ask her for help, but I wouldn't say she was nice. In fact, she just kept walking. We tried another entrance, but we had no success there either. Then we went back to where we were the first time. But we couldn't get in there either. We couldn't ask anyone because there was no one to be seen; if there was, it was inside the gates where we couldn't get in. It was a completely hopeless situation.
There is a phone number that Csibi called at that time.

It was suggested that we ask someone. For the reasons mentioned above, this option was ruled out.
We were asked if we were where we bought the passport. No. Do we have the receipt? No, because when we purchased the pass, the machine said that, unfortunately, it could not print a receipt.
Let's go back to where we bought it, because the machine has a number that we need, and then they will refund us the price of the pass. By this time, we were already 30 minutes behind schedule. I said to a million percent, I'm not going back there now. I started walking back to the previous subway station (sometimes stops are inexplicably close to each other, not just subway stops).
There Csibi tried the card, and surprisingly it worked. Then we thought the problem might be that we went down, came up, and wanted to go down at the same station, which might not have been possible, or the two times were too close together…
Whatever the case. We can't think of anything else; this is the only solution.
So we agreed that we would go in here and use my card, and Csibi would sneak in behind me at the gate… (Because his card probably wouldn't have worked if our theory had been correct). So we did!

We took the green subway to Government Center, where you have to change to the blue subway to get to the Wonderland (has a cool name!) end station. This metro is like the red metro in Hungary in that it doesn't go underground after a while. The blue metro also stops at the airport.

There is a bus station at the terminus, where you have to take bus 455.
We had to wait 25 minutes for this (it usually runs every half hour), but unfortunately, it was also delayed.
As mentioned before, Charlie is suitable for this bus, and we had no problems here. We talked about how nice it was to be able to use the bus for long distances.
The ride was an hour, and the air conditioning on the bus was so intense I thought we would freeze to death when we arrived.

I couldn't wait to get off and thaw out in the sun. It was very hard. We finally arrived in the town of Salem at 1:30 PM. We headed straight for the witch museum.

Salem has a uniquely rich architectural heritage. All major American architectural styles are represented. The PEM (Peabody Essex Museum) campus consists of three city blocks and several adjacent properties. It houses a unique collection of buildings and gardens spanning three centuries.
One of these is the John Ward House, which we passed on our way to the Witch Museum.

However, the museum has a sign that says you can only buy tickets online. It was about 2 PM, and the next available time was 2:45 PM. We bought our tickets and then took a short walk down the street next door.

We decided to grab a quick sandwich and a coffee. Unfortunately, the one we looked at was closed, so we randomly went to the first coffee shop since we didn't have time to look for anything else.

The whole town is built on witchcraft, with female figures on pillars in the street, Halloween stores, haunted houses, and all sorts of.

We ate our sandwiches quickly and were back in plenty of time. Here you have to join a queue where you get a sticker, and then you can join another line.
When it's time, you can go inside, but you're not allowed to take photos or videos here, unfortunately. 😔
You have to go into a large room and sit down where there is space. The room is dark, with only a big red circle glowing. It is very mysterious.
We advise you to avoid sitting against the left wall because you can't see anything from there.
As the performance begins and the story progresses, this part of the room is always lit. On the left side, above our heads, were about 4 stations, none of which we could see because they were directly above us.
The story itself is exciting.

I am sure you have all heard of the Salem Witches. 🧹
The Salem Witch Trials took place in the town of Salem in 17th-century Colonial America.
In the winter of 1691/92, two young girls, Elizabeth "Betty" Parris and Abigail Williams, began to act strangely, speaking oddly, hiding under things, and crawling on the floor. None of the doctors could medically explain the girls' suffering.
One doctor suggested that they might be possessed by the devil. The girls seemed to be contorted by the invisible hand of the devil. One means of warding off Satan's attack was to identify and name the witches. In addition to the two girls, Betty and Abigail, others called people who had allegedly bewitched the girls.
They accused Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne, and Tituba. Each of the women named was an outsider to society. The village community, threatened by indigenous tribes and without a formal government after abrogating the Bay Colony Treaty of 1684 and the 1689 Rebellion, believed the accusations.
As the accusations grew, they spread to the city of Boston.
In all, 80 people waited for the trial to begin. Only one defendant was acquitted because the girls had withdrawn the charges against him. All the others were found guilty of witchcraft. Those who pleaded guilty were forgiven of punishment.
After the verdicts, 20 people were killed: 19 were hanged, and one was crushed to death with stones.
The witch hunts ended at different times and in different places: in America at the beginning of 1693. In Europe, the situation was even more severe.
It is now believed that the girls' strange behavior was caused by some kind of food poisoning.

Here in the museum, the history of the local witch trials is told.
After that, the group is divided into two groups because the other room is smaller. The first group goes there, while the second group (we were in this group) goes to the gift store.
Then it's a swap. The second room also has an exhibition and different things on the wall. One should allow more time to look through everything thoroughly; we didn't understand everything and why it was there.

But the big question on the last big wall (and also in the performance) is: does the witch hunt still exist today?
And unfortunately, we all know the answer! Yes, it still exists today; they are no longer called witches…
It was derived from a formula: Fear + Trigger = Scapegoat.
It can be applied to many things today. You don't need to go far because it was precisely the same with the coronavirus. The fear of the disease, the trigger was China, and the scapegoat was Asians.
But it can be traced back to just about anyone: gays, political orientation, etc.
We couldn't take photos and unfortunately couldn't remember all the examples. However, you can still understand the situation of modern witchcraft.

After the museum, we didn't browse the souvenir store because we had already seen everything.

It's not uncommon to see people wearing witch costumes or hats on the street.

There's still the Halloween Museum and Salem Witch Village, where we would have liked to go, but we had to catch the bus back, and there was so much to see that we didn't make it.
There is a cemetery nearby, and right next to it is the Salem Witch Trials Memorial. It is a small square with a circle of stone benches with the names of those executed in 1692. Each stone bench was decorated with flowers.
I think walking around there gives you a chance to think about tolerance and understanding!!!

From here, we had to struggle to get back to the bus stop, as it was not very close.
Right next to the bus stop is the Witch House, which, unfortunately, we couldn't go inside, but is still very interesting.

The bus was late, of course. We waited for it for half an hour. Opposite the bus stop is a pink "Good Witch" store… 😀

The return trip went smoothly, as there was room on the bus, and the air conditioning was running in normal mode. The trip took 60 minutes, but after that, we were lucky with the two subways because the blue one left very early, and when we changed, we got the E, which rarely runs.

Since we had been eating the little sandwich in Salem all day, we looked for a restaurant (there wasn't much choice on Sunday night on the route we took). We found a restaurant, but there was no online ordering, so we ordered on the spot and asked for takeout.
In the meantime, Csibi looked at the schedule to see when the bus would arrive. We had to wait half an hour for the food, so two buses left shortly after each other.
And although the next bus was supposed to come 10 minutes later, unfortunately, we were out of luck because it came half an hour later. There was a CVS at the bus stop; we even had time to go there…

Of course, the food was cold when we arrived at the hotel, but it was delicious! 😄
So our adventure ended in Salem.

Additional Photos