Yes NYC!

Yesterday we thought about what we will probably miss most of New York. One thing is certainly the encounters with very different people. Yesterday a guy looking like Keith Richards was carrying a bag with music coming out of it at the corner of our street. He stopped at the red light and started dancing to Latin rhythms. Then there was the one guy collecting bottles who had a really fanciful decorated shopping cart with a lot of toy animals that he must have found. And in the evening it took us five minutes to convince an old jewish lady in the subway that she was in an express train where she didn’t want to be. So that’s only one day but so many people you wouldn’t see in Munich.
Recently we went to a diner around the corner (the one with the German speaking waiter). When I ordered Chicken and liver from the daily specials, the waiter, an oldish woman, answered in German with prussian accent: “DAS würde ich Ihnen nicht empfehlen. Ich sage Ihnen mal was Sie nehmen sollen: Hier die Nudeln oder den Hamburger”. I must say I was quite taken aback. Not only that she spoke German but that she made it unmistakably clear that my choice would not be accepted. Of course I took the noodles.

Later she told us that she was from Ostpreussen and had come to New York in the 50s. She was glad to speak German and asked a lot of questions, telling us repeatedly to come back.