I and hundreds of others stand in the cold at Penn Station, Manhattan, waiting for the bus that will take us to Washington D.C. this Sunday the 18th of January. People from all over the world, all colors and all ages make up the line. Myself of course, a Swedish-American, a couple from Brazil and a black man with roots in Congo and has worked on Barack Obama’s campaign.

A homeless dude walks by and hollers:

Go Obama!

Someone responds the same way.
People look at each other, nodding and smiling. Almost everyone is in line to go to the America’s capitol and that for the same reason. Something that’s clear by people’s chitchat, that type of conversation between total strangers, which is so typically American.

We are loaded onto the bus with our bags all the while an Asian-American is loudly exclaiming the rules of the bus. One stop. 10 minutes – on the dot. Bathroom in the back. Oh, and the wireless connection (which was why I chose this particular bus company) isn’t working. Damn! I had work to do.

I could have flown directly to D.C. from Stockholm, but I figured I’d take care of some business in NYC plus I really, really wanted to be on a bus to maximize this experience. Most of the time, the people who ride buses in the otherwise car-crazy America, are the poorest, military people, homeless, students and single mothers. For me, who have a background as an American reporter in the newspaper industry, it’s in these places you get the best stories.

Fred, the man from Congo, and has worked on the campaign, also has a past in Congolese politics, but has to flee his country because of civil war, speaks fondly of Obama, whom he’s had the honor to meet several times. Of George W. Bush on the other hand, Fred doesn’t have too much nice to say.

“He has been spending this country’s money like a teenager with a credit card,” he says and shakes his head. The disgust is visible in his very dark face.

At the pit stop on the border to Delaware, Fred rushes in to get some food fried chicken, which he handsomely shares with everyone around him.

Some college students say that the trip is supposed to take four hours, but that we can expect to be delayed several hours because of traffic. And Fred chimes in, saying that we should consider ourselves lucky that we are coming in today, Sunday. Tomorrow, he says, Washington D.C. will be a closed city. It will be difficult to get in at all. Unfortunately we are so late that when the bus rolls in to Chinatown and I see the familiar face of my little “brother” Sam, I have missed a HUGE free concert held at Lincoln Memorial. A big shebang in which Beyonce, Shakira, Bruce Springsteen performs and Usher and Steve Wonder sings a duet. Tiger Woods was there. Obama was there. E.V.E.R.Y.O.N.E. was there.

But hey, the party has only just begun and I am a girl with a ticket to the Obama Inauguration.