"You know the thing I love best about this city?", someone asked me last night. He was a stranger but for that confession.
"The freedom? The feeling that you could do anything here? The glitz of the UN?", I ventured. We were talking in one of the most iconic of buildings in Midtown Manhattan, after all.
"The fact that you can take a train to the sea."
Well, there's that.
"For someone like me who comes from a landlocked country [Austria], it's amazing to me how I can sit down in the subway and just...emerge at the ocean."
Of all the things he liked about New York, that was one I would perhaps not think of immediately. So much of my life here in the past two months has been about the grangy towering metal and glass and what goes on within. That interspersed with lovely, lazy brunches and walks in bits and corners of the city. Oh, and snow. Endless snow. Easy then to forget that beyond this piece of solid metamorphic rock, we are surrounded by so much more.
But the sea always finds a way to travel with me, somehow. And with all the moving I've done over this year, I might as well be floating on some (cold) current around the world's oceans. Water meets water meets water, right?
Still, blame winter and the clouded over skies, or just plain old inertia, I realised I haven't paid homage to the sea since I got here. So here's a picture from the city I left it in last. It's not the sea, but it's so close, I can almost smell it.
"The freedom? The feeling that you could do anything here? The glitz of the UN?", I ventured. We were talking in one of the most iconic of buildings in Midtown Manhattan, after all.
"The fact that you can take a train to the sea."
Well, there's that.
"For someone like me who comes from a landlocked country [Austria], it's amazing to me how I can sit down in the subway and just...emerge at the ocean."
Of all the things he liked about New York, that was one I would perhaps not think of immediately. So much of my life here in the past two months has been about the grangy towering metal and glass and what goes on within. That interspersed with lovely, lazy brunches and walks in bits and corners of the city. Oh, and snow. Endless snow. Easy then to forget that beyond this piece of solid metamorphic rock, we are surrounded by so much more.
But the sea always finds a way to travel with me, somehow. And with all the moving I've done over this year, I might as well be floating on some (cold) current around the world's oceans. Water meets water meets water, right?
Still, blame winter and the clouded over skies, or just plain old inertia, I realised I haven't paid homage to the sea since I got here. So here's a picture from the city I left it in last. It's not the sea, but it's so close, I can almost smell it.
How's that for sea-rious yearning? I'll send you a picture postcard when I make it to the shore.
