6th Avenue

The New Yorkers were extremely friendly and helpful. Whenever we gave the impression of being lost, somebody came and asked if he could help us. We never feared to get muggled or robbed. I always got the impression that there are no native new yorkers around; we meet people from all over the world: the taxidriver from Iraq gave us hints how to tour the United States and make money, the driver from Bulgaria told us about the hard live poor people have. Even if there were only 10 people in a concert's audience, we meet music addicts from Canada, we met a musician, Udanov, who played in Resitzky's Arkhangelsk JazzQuartett and whom we met the last time in Northern Russia; we met our friend Jim Meneses, the drummer, who works in Amsterdam now - but they all come to the Knitting Factory in Leonard Street. What would this location be without it's internation recognition? To earn your living as a musician here is not so easy. We spent more than 2 weeks here, but it was hard to meet our musical friends privately. All were busy with their projects, and nearly nobody finds the time to listen to his collegue's music. Nobody wants to perform as a sideman in a group, everybody follows his own projects or career.

New York internetted: the digitalization is far more ahead than in Germany. Internet ads in the subway, in the free magazines everywhere, the possibility to send your comments by e-mail to the local paper, that is normal here. Companies compete to host your page or our domain, the telephone companies compete to get you as customer and offer free local calls - so it is easier and cheaper to become a netizen. I doubt whether the people use all the informative webpages to find out about upcoming events or to search for a new apartment or mate - but it is possible.

Jersey City Turnpike

Christmas in Jersey City

Before you exchanged adresses, or business cards; then the cards had the e-mail adress added; today it is common to exchange the URL of the homepages instead. There are some negative side-effects already: because of the strong competition of the phone companies and their pricing campaigns, communication is cheap and the telephone lines are more and more busy. The 'traditional' communication gets impossible at peak times, because too many people connect to the net.

A friend of us wanted to send us a message. He spoke on the answer machine. Some minutes later we listened to his message. Our host, who controlled the answer machine from Florida, listened to the message, too, and deleted it. Then he sent me the content of the message by email, because he thought we had missed it.

All the prejudices on New York were not true: the city was clean, the subway showed no signs of vandalizm and no drunken bums were strolling around. But one prejudice showed to be right: the city never sleeps. People from all over the world live here, but I got the feeling that they still keep apart from the other. I saw only few black people in the museums or in the concerts we visited, they still have their own culture. Typing in an overcrowded plane, when your foresitter leans down as most as possible is one of the most difficult things to do. Either you see the display or you can use the keyboard, both is not possible as the angle is too small. But as I want to finish my reports, I will go on.

Canal Street Subway Station

So now we flew back to Europe. The plane started with a 2 hours delay and we got more delay in Amsterdam and Frankfurt. To come home was difficult, but we had a great and interesting time in New York and New Jersey.

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These pages have been updated 01-15-1997.
© on text and photos (unless other origins are listed ): Cornelie Müller-Gödecke.
You can reach me at:    cmg@avantart.com
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