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Housing
Luxury hotels such as the Eliot Hotel,
Hotel Commonwealth and
Hotel
Buckminster are not too far from the lab for the discriminating and/or
expense account taste.
Mid range hotels such as the Howard Johnson (HoJo),
The Inn at Longwood,
and the Holiday Inn are also
within reasonable distance from the lab.
The Youth Hostel is not too
far away from the lab for students who'll be in the lab for a very short
time.
Boston has a lot of apartments suitable for students (in mostly student
neighborhoods such as Allston Brighton and Fenway). You can
contact a real estate agent and make arrangements to find a place.
The landlords normally require the first and last month's rent upfront,
in addition to security deposit (one month's rent normally) and a real
estate finder's fee (1/2 or full month's rent). If you look hard
enough, there are landlords who deal directly with the potential
tenants. This way, you'll avoid paying a finder's fee to the
realtors. As you might know by now, Boston is not a cheap place to rent
an apartment, but it is a pretty nice city.
Since the rents are very expensive in the Boston area, most of the
students live on the campuses of their universities or share a flat with
other people. Before coming to the U.S., the best way to look
for a room is to visit the existing internet lists of free rooms and
flats, a very good one is
http://www.boston.craigslist.org/, and to consult
http://www.hio.harvard.edu/students_scholars/housing/.
Once in the U.S., there are a lot of announces for free rooms located on
the walls in each university (generally close to the cafeteria or the
library). As the lab is centrally located, Boston, Cambridge or
Brookline are very good areas to stay. From there, the student can go to
the lab with the subway (called “T” in Boston), or by bicycle
(especially in summer, since the winters are very cold in Boston) or on
foot if you are not located too far from the lab.
Visa
for Foreign Students
Please
contact
Ms. Paula Cohen (the administrative assistant of the OBL) at 001 617
667-2940 or to e-mail her (pcohen@bidmc.harvard.edu)
in order to get up to date visa information for foreign students.
Wireless Phones
The mobile phone is a little less spread in America than in Europe.
There are four or so main mobile providers:
Verizon,
AT&T,
Cingular and
T-Mobile. the contracts are mostly for 1 or 2 year at a time.
there are also prepaid cell phones available.
Land Lines
Local Land lines are available from
Verizon. The local calls are free and for the long distance calls,
there are long distance phone cards. You can buy them in the Store24,
Campus Convenience, City Convenience, 711, Mini Mart,... and there,
ask for the cheapest one for your country. The card called
Dial Around the World is one of the better deals in the market.
There are also long distance carriers, but those ones are usually more
expensive than the cards. These long distance carriers are
Sprint,
AT&T and
MCI.
Internet Connection
The main internet providers are
AOL,
MSN,
Verizon,
Earthlink and
AT&T. The internet access (56K) is unlimited and you pay between $15
and $30 per month. Those providers are pretty expensive, but there is a
smaller provider in the Boston area that is very cheap and reliable;
it’s
www.101.net.
Utilities
The local electric company is called Nstar,
and one of the local TV cable companies is
ComCast.
Transportation
Boston is a very walker friendly city, where anything is about 20
minutes away from where you are:):)
The T, as we call the subway system around here, works pretty well and
it is relatively cheap. For more info on the public transportation
visit the MBTA site. Please
visit our Directions page for further
information about our location.
As far as driving is concerned, Boston has the honor of being the
birthplace of road rage in the US. It is fun but a bit challenging
to drive around town for those not too comfortable behind the wheels.
Also, parking is very though to come by, and you could get towed faster
than you can say chowdahh.
Libraries
With
the OBL access card, the exchange students can consult books in the
Harvard Medical School Library located in the Longwood Medical Area at
10 Shattuck St. Boston, MA 02115 (http://www.countway.med.harvard.edu/countway/index.shtml).
As a Boston resident, the student can also get a card from the Boston
Public Library and borrow books there (700 Boylston Street, Copley
Square, Boston, MA 02116;
http://www.bpl.org). |
