No car no freedom

I am sure there are couple of things quite different in the US than most of the other countries. But one of them made me stay at home from Monday to Friday for a few months. I had to stay at home with my sixteen-month old daughter, because we didn’t have a second car that I could use. I had to wait for my husband to come home to go out.

I feel like I need to mention a bit more about my first days here. I came to US six years ago since then I have been living in Cleveland. I didn’t stay at another city As far as I see if you don’t have a car you can’t go to school, you can’t go for shopping or you can’t go to your doctor’s appointment too. I can also say that many other cities are not any different from Cleveland. In short, if you don’t have a car, you stuck at home and loose your freedom. That was so frustrating. Only thing I could do was cook and watch TV all day. Not only I didn't have a car I didn’t have a driver’s license either. The good thing is my daughter was too young to go to school. Otherwise I had to walk her to school in Cleveland’s severe weather in the winter (as you know winter in Cleveland lasts almost nine months). If there was a good public transportation I could go wherever I want, whenever I want. In my country not every family has a car because they don’t really have to have cars. There are buses, mini buses, cabs in all cities and metro in the big cities. If you stand at a bus stop, you can see buses to different location in about every ten minutes. You can also see lots of cabs passing by in every couple of minutes. Public transportation is very common and not expensive. Most of the time we use public transportation because one litter of gasoline is about three dollars and finding a parking space is very difficult. Here four litters of gasoline is about two dollars and parking spaces are available almost everywhere. A good thing in my country is that there are mini stores in walking distance. You can get your daily needs from these mini stores. Here in the US you have to drive to a store for at list 5-10 minutes to buy each and everything you need.

I'm sure many families didn’t have a second car when they first came to US and they suffered for a while like me. So many cars, good price for gasoline, available parking spots and highways make US a center of attraction, but I wish public transportation was more common.

After these frustrating months I got my driver's license and we bought a car. I got my freedom again. Now I don't have to stay at home or wait for my husband to go out.