It seemed a suitable title given my previous blog so i'm runng with it :) I've just got back from New York and I'm happy to report that I've changed my opinion on that city! I headed over there to catch up with a friend, John Burridge, for his birthday. Perhaps a bit extravagant as I was only there for a weekend but, as a friend recently said "our parents might be the generation of jet travel, but we're the generation of cheap jet travel", never so true as now. My previous experience of NYC had been fairly bad, it was the last stop on my round the world trip 7 years ago and as such I was relatively depleted of tourist "energy", and spent most of my time shopping. Throw into the mix that I didn't know anyone there and that I had seen too many hollywood movies making me think that I'd get killed walking most places, it didn't exactly bowl me over with it's charms. This time though things were very different.
The first thing that I noticed this time around was just how friendly americans really are, they genuinely are interested in just interacting with random people that they meet. I think that London is probably the other extreme where pretty much everyone goes out of their way to avoid having to talk to a stranger. This leads on in part to service. One of my real rants about Europe is that no european that i've ever met in any situation seems to understand what the word actually means, I always get the impression that when you ask for something in most of the shops or restaurants that I frequent the staff think that they are doing you a favour by getting it for you. Americans on the other hand invented the definition of "service", everything is just so friendly and prompt. Sit down at a table in a restaurant and before you've even actually sat down someone is over with a glass of water, smilling, asking about your day and would you like a few minutes or do you know what you want to drink? It's just amazing how much of a difference that kind of service makes EVEN if it is fake, which I actually don't think it is a lot of the time.
Aside from service this time around I really saw a lot of different sides to NYC that I must admit made me think, again, what am I doing in London. It struck me on many occasions that the city seemed to be filled with people ... just like me. That is 30's, professional, travelled and a variety of interests. There weren't crazy crowds of children running around, or even worse, their teenage mothers. Of course NYC does have its downsides as well, most notably the fact that it looks like it's permanently stuck in the 1960's in that the amount of unadorned concrete is just phenomenal.While clean, the concrete all around just makes it feel dirty, which unfortunately does distract from its aethestic appeal. Still, there are amazing places like central park which not only huge, and unlike hyde park, INTERESTING it is also surrounded by some amazing architecture that you really can sit down and admire, while say, playing a game of chess ;)
NYC is cheap. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. New yorkers themselves sook about the cost of most things, most notably rent, but let me tell you coming from London, the place is seriously cheap. Most of the people I met complained about the rent at one point or the other and the most expensive place one of them was renting was less then HALF of what i pay in London. Food was a lot cheaper and almost all medium to high class luxury items were 20-40% cheaper then what you can get in London. Did I say that the food was good? Well it is, really good. Bearing in mind that I was spoiled growing up in Sydney, NYC has food that is approaching that standard, which is something that you almost dream about in England, and indeed most of Europe.
Of course the real downside of living and working in NYC is work itself. The americans have got to where they are today in terms of the worlds economy from working, a lot. In fact they work so much that I really don't understand how they can handle it as they only have 10 days, on average, holiday a year. John pointed out that the lack of holidays just puts more of an emphasis on the weekends, which I certainly noticed in my weekend there, but still, personally I need more time then that.
I wanted to write more but i'm a little pushed for time, I'm currently working out if I'm going to Prague next weekend, Ireland the following before I definitely head off to Iceland the weekend after that ;)
