The center of the universe is gorgeous, intense, full of energy, every corner radiates something different, fast, unforgiving, cruel. How to not instantly fall in love with it.
What a difference to Altkönigstraße 🙂
Most people move at a speed near running. People strolling are definitely tourists. People looking around to. Real New Yorkers browse a mobile in one hand and are holding a Coffee can in the other, move fast and manage not to crash into a car, building or other pedestrians. They carry at least a small bottle of water with them in the permanent fear of instant dehydration. Have to practice this.
Coffee!
Right now this is probably the most annoying and embarrassing for me. I am to dumb to configure a coffee! Tall is small, Small is Short but you have to say Short to get a really small one, Grande – G R A N D E is just medium?! Venti, a name every person on the planet associates with a size is large. It may translate to the Italian twenty, but the great translator who came up with this forgot that Italy, as the rest of the world, is using the metric system and therefore it does not translate to 20Oz (that are for some flavors / blends 24Oz). NASA paid a lot of money to learn this lesson the hard way. Not talking about the different flavors and blends. I am staying at the counter, feel plain stupid and then I have to tell my name to eternally link it to my incapability to order a cup of coffee and let everybody else enjoy my embarrassment. Tough lessons…
My next observation, now not in any particular order:
New Yorkers do not sense chilliness!
I have no other explanation as many girls run around in knee high tights and wear shoes with nearly nonexistent soles barely covering parts of their toes. Men are jogging of course in short trousers. The temperature at which I have seen this is 4 degrees celsius (40F). This scares the hell out of me as it can only mean it will get much much colder.
This is not true for dogs here. A lot are wearing rather thick coats!
Spam!
I spent money to buy Spam! 🙂 Yes, for the first time I bought Spam. Now it’s waiting in my kitchen to be consumed and I can’t wait to learn how Spam tastes!
Bleecker Street
Y E S !!! I was thinking about something like East Village, NoHo and Greenwich Village. Urban, international, open minded and I ended up with an apartment on the Bleecker Street. I was not aware that it is the center of exactly what I was looking for. One year will not be enough to explore this area that is hard to describe. Everything you need is just few steps away between one of the countless bars, restaurants and night clubs. There is even a real supermarket just one block away. It sells real food!
Music and R&B
Everybody who knows me knows: I do not hear R&B. Well, I can’t explain, but since the last two visits here I started to love it. Must be a virus or so. I can’t figure a better song to hear right now as Empire State of Mind.
Spanish
After I returned from South America I was afraid to loose the little I learned and soon it became obvious that I was right. Am am so happy, to realize that this is the unofficial street language. Plenty of opportunities to practice.
Stay tuned for more…
Referenced Flickr photos: Greenwich Village, various NYC street scenes
Kydroon 
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