New York?

Papa and Mama have had to hear a good many hare-brained schemes about going to Australia, and taking solitary walking tours across Germany and around England, and of course the one about going to the midwestern US and working on a horse ranch. But! I have a new scheme, and this one I intend to pull through, and that is to move to New York, for at least six months, in January.

I will find an apartment, or a sublet room or two, which will cost about $1000 per month. Then I need to get my paperwork in order; before finding the apartment I will already apply for my passport (I only have an ID card, or Personalausweis, now), and after finding it I will apply for a visa to enter the US. Besides, I need to find work. It appears that the majority of magazine and newspaper internships are unpaid, but I would try to find one, and then do unskilled work, for instance flipping burgers, in order to earn the necessary money. The other route would be to find work as a live-in nanny in a well-to-do household, but I haven't much experience in looking after children and think I would be a bore, besides which I want to be as independent as possible. For at least the first six months I could live off my savings account, but I have no intention of doing so, especially as I will (as I do here) only permit myself to go to institutions like the Metropolitan Museum and Ellis Island once I have an actual income. As far as the internet goes, internet cafés or libraries will have to supply that, but I should definitely procure a cell phone, so that my employers can contact me. Whether a landline telephone is necessary, too, remains to be seen.

Anyway, I have been fascinated by New York for a long time, in its phases from Fifth Avenue to Harlem. My grandparents and great-aunt used to order the Metropolitan Museum gift catalogues, so I know its famous possessions fairly well, at least in Christmas tree ornament form. (c: I like the architecture, too, from the distinctive skyscrapers through the smaller brick apartment buildings to the brownstones. Then there are dozens of films set in New York that I've seen, not only The Devil Wears Prada and an Olsen twins film that I did not finish watching, but also Honey and other well-meaning films about rising from a poor crime-riddled background through (hip-hop) culture or sports and making something out of one's self, and North by Northwest and Sabrina. And, besides, I've either grown up with or discovered for myself New York productions like the New Yorker, the New York Times, and the New York Review of Books, talk-shows like Late Night with David Letterman and The View, and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report.

Besides, I also very much want to go back to North America. There were many things about Europe that were a great relief to me when I came here, but also many things that were a great disappointment. I don't want to be unfair, and I should note that there are many exceptions to all of my characterizations, but here are my observations:

Above all, Europe is much more classist than I had expected, certainly much more classist than Canada. In Canada the middle class really rules. If you are poor, you are at a disadvantage, evidently, but you are not intrinsically inferior to anyone else. Education, especially, really doesn't matter so much. Students and people in their senior years of high school tend to ostentatiously use long words, but the customary language is fairly straightforward, and it doesn't matter if a professor or a panhandler is speaking, they sound pretty much the same. Everyone wears similar clothing, too, unless they are trying to make a statement. And no one really cares if you can discourse knowledgeably on Ricardo's theories on economics or the poetic works of Tennyson, because what does it really matter in day-to-day existence? If you are well-educated and well-dressed and speak elegantly, good for you, but if you put on airs or are mean to other people, you will be despised for being arrogant and not knowing your place. Here, I get the impression that people categorize you according to dress, speech, and education – and, I will add, national origin (/race) – into superior, equal, or inferior. And, if you are inferior, you are ignorant and low-minded, shabby, and aesthetically unpleasing.

What I do not like about the Canadian mindset is that I really do care about education; to me it is much more than knowing that the capital of Bulgaria is Sofia or having written a dissertation, but expanding your interests, thinking about and coming to a better understanding of the world and your self, filling your mind and discovering things that will enrich your existence, and being able to talk to people about things that are more important than your personal life. People can have this education without going to an Ivy League university, or any university at all, but it requires a considerable effort, and in Canada you are rarely encouraged in it. Secondly, the problem of the middle class mindset is that it is much more assimilating than diverse; to give a concrete example, as everyone dresses pretty much alike, you are often branded as a "weirdo" if you wear something different, and especially in school I was unhappy because of that.

But I think that the problems of the European mindset are greater. Everyone is inexorably compartmentalized, and this compartmentalization does very little for an open and free society. Besides, I have heard obnoxious xenophobia here, from people who would never admit that they are xenophobic, in the good old colonialist tradition of generalizing about national character. This is also rife in North America, but people are unable to overcome the pea-brained conception that just because someone is from another continent, and possibly observes another religion, he or she is as peculiar and different as if they had come from another planet.

Aside from that, in Europe I was also looking for a world that either does not exist now or never did exist anyway, where the architecture and art are tasteful, the quality of food and clothing are excellent, and, above all, the people are high-minded – fair and considerate to everyone, good at understanding themselves and at restraining themselves from saying and doing petty things, and unselfabsorbedly interested in the world at large. At home I was raised according to a noblesse-oblige-y mindset – that you behave reasonably to other people either because you are a reasonable individual, or because you'd feel ashamed if you behaved otherwise, and that you learn to be knowledgeable in many fields as well as you can, both because you are interested in them and because you want (and are expected) to be able to talk intelligently with people in those fields – and apparently that is very rare here, too. As a side note on the architecture, I should say that a lot of that was destroyed in World War II; there has been lots of good architecture since then, but, because of financial constraints or other causes, the majority of the building has been poorly adapted to its surroundings, second-rate, and depressingly bland.

Anyway, what I'm hoping for in New York is a lively city, where there is such a diversity of people that it's impossible not to find people with whom one gets along really well, where there are plenty of things to observe and learn, and where the majority of my neighbours will be quick-witted and open-minded and fascinatingly individual.