As you no doubt expected: my trip to NYC and Southern Florida was great!! NYC is really overwhelming, vibrant, frenetic, weird and fascinating! During my 3 1/2 days there I only took the subway twice: once to get me a soulfood dinner in Harlem (the waitress turned out to be an academic expert on the relation between the Dutch and slavery), once to the Mademoiselle Liberté/Ellis Island ferry. The rest of the time I just walked and walked and walked: I think my poor shoes must have covered some 100 miles! The MOMA definitely was the highlight: I spent an entire morning there. The Guggenheim was slightly disappointing, as it was covered in scaffolding and only a small part of the collection was accessible, but the architecture is wonderful indeed. Some other stuff I really enjoyed: the view from the Empire State Building, getting warm with a hot cider (with cinnamon stick), Ellis Island, kraut dogs, Starbucks (by now I'm even more or less used to those buckets of slightly coloured hot water maskerading as "regular coffee"), those thousands and thousands of rickety rooftop water tanks (aren't they regularly blown into the streets??), Channel 13 (what a contrast with the cheapness, loudness and superficiality of most other channels!), and of course: having a TGIF drink with a charming Myspace friend :)!
Florida was much less exciting, if only because it's even flatter and wetter than Holland. But we still had a pleasant holiday, even though we're no beach lovers: a few days in Miami Beach's "art deco" district (Miami itself isn't much), Key West (very touristy, but with reason), walking and cycling - yep, I'm Dutch - in the Everglades (the scenery is rather boring, as in all of Southern Florida, but the wildlife is great), St. Petersburg (a great Dali museum!), Fort Myers (the Edison-Ford winter estates), Fort Lauderdale (King Tut!), and then back home. What really fascinated us was the Coretta King funeral service: it even convinced me that religion doesn't necessarily HAVE to be brainless, narrowminded and intolerant...
SOME RANDOM BIZARRENESS
The "Sky Mall" catalogue on Delta flights: I've never seen so much ugly and/or useless stuff in my life! Or is anybody out there craving an electric garlic toaster...?
The small print in TV commercials: even if it were shown for more than half a second it wouldn't be legible. Yes yes, I know: blame the lawyers :)!
Heard on CBS: "kindergarten student". Majoring in shoelace tying?
Gas is still ridiculously cheap: in Europe we pay more than double :)!
The security business must be absolutely booming: I was almost the only one going up the Empire State Building, but there where at least 80 people guiding me along...
To show he really did something about it after the recent child abuse cases in NYC the mayor hired 30 extra.... lawyers. Does that mean some good can come out of our profession after all..?
Several times we were approached by people asking us Europeans not to despise all Americans because of what George W. Dimwit does to human rights, democracy and the world in general. We try, but it's not easy...
The Dutch flag (red-white-blue in three horizontal bars) is being massively desecrated by US businesses everywhere!!! The white bar is used for profane messages like "WELCOME", "OPEN" and even "NOW LEASING"! I think I'll find me a star spangled doormat, as a form of peaceful retaliation.
Times Square may be the centre of the multiverse, but it's NOT a square.
Why do car commercials always show monthly lease rates instead of the price???
American drivers are models of civility compared to Europeans (with the exception of the boring Swiss), but what ARE those NY cabbies honking about all the time??? As always Prof. Pratchett was SOOOOOO right: "The shortest unit of time in the multiverse is the New York Second, defined as the period of time between the traffic lights turning green and the cab behind you honking." I think it might be a good idea to change the law, so that in future a horn must sound at least as loud inside a car as immediately in front of it.
Any comments on the above :)?