I am afraid I have lost the magic of the city, now that I am far from it (or She? Or He? it is a lady to love?  Or  a party-mate which presents you his friends? Or just a city?)
I am not able to say why NYC is so famous, why people loves or hates it so much. What I have now is the feeling that New York is what you see in it, is everything and nothing special itself.
I’ll try to explain…
(if you have time, before reading, listen to these songs…they will give you MY NY mood; Don’t panic – Let Go- New Slang- I’ll just don’t think I’ll ever get over you- One of these things first)

NY is a huge city, made up by 5 burrows, which are Manhattan, The Queens, The Bronx, Brooklyn and Staten Island. Actually, New Yorker who live in Manhattan think THAT is the real City.
Manhattan is an Island on the Hudson River which divides NY by New Jersey.  Is not too big, just 87 km^2; but all the most famous New York icons are settled there. Central park, Time Square, Broadway, the 5th avenue, The Rockefeller Center (where you can ice-skating under the huge Christmas Tree), The Art Museums, As well as Harlem, Little Italy, Soho, Chinatown are there.
And if something is not there, you can see from it: an example? The Statue of Liberty.
But actually anything is so special, just seen by itself.
Time Square is just a place with a lot of advertisements, even if they are colorful, changing, huge…
The Brooklyn Bridge is a bridge, many others are more amazing.
The buildings are nice, from the past century, but in Europe we have cities with nothing less.

Now, with everything said, I will tell that I could love to live there.
What is amazing in NY- but that’s is according to me, and I just spent three days there- is that whatever is your mood, whatever you’d like to do in that moment, whatever is your attitude for life, you can fit in New York.
You walk among the long streets, and you are surrounded by people, a lot of people; you can feel life around you, and just let you be in that drift of movement and business.
But if you need to be by yourself, to feel alone, you can sit in Time Square, and let you wander among the crowd, the people at the Cross-roads, without really focusing on anyone. They will not take of you, do not worry,however you behave. You will be alone as never and if you were sitting along on a beach staring at the waves movements, your thoughts could be stimulated as well.

And than of course you want to eat the strangest thing and found a place near you where is fresh made; or you can say “I’d like to see a play tonight” and find your self in a theatre in Broadway (!I did! Details next time), you can desire to go to a museum, to play baseball in Manhattan, to go to a roller coaster, to browe rare books, but buy a cheep used one, after beeing delighted by the last technology goods…and I could go on forever…

So, I think I have lost the magic of the City, now that I am far from She. Because what it’s special is how She makes you feel when you are here.

I want to be a part of it – new york, new york
I want to wake up in a city, that never sleeps

(* nda: but maybe it’s not so special, and I just enjoy so much the CHANCE of living even for few days in a city where the language is not a problem, where you can wonder around and understand -almost- everything, where you can feel part of it, and even go to the theatre!)

I am on the bus, going to NYC!

It’s pretty cool, like an airplane…the driver introduced himself as “the captain” and explained al the facilities we have…power, drinks, snacks and wireless!

e ora, come dicevo, una informazione che e’ dedicata a tutti quelli che colgono, ma sopratutto ad Emanuele: ieri siamo andati a cena in un bar downtown (Lost Dog Bar: da fuori sembra un posto di quart’ordine, ma poi si mangia bene, quasi ricercato..se ti capita di passarci, Ale, non farti spaventare..) allora, dicev, sul menu dei drinks c’era..l’Appletini!!!

Secondo te Ema se l’avessi ordinato si sarebbe materializzato JD?

By the way, tra i drinks c’era anche il gelato alla banana affogato nella Guiness…ho dovuto chiedere la traduzione per esserne sicura. Anche allora non volevo crederci.

Tomorrow I am going to NYC!

I will do  few work in the afternoon, and then…sightseeing!

I will be in New York. Once I reach the Columbia University, there’ll be people who will take me and bring me around. But I have to get there.

So, tomorrow at lunch time (late afternoon for Europe), think about me. The tiny Silvia will go down the bus, will put her feet on the ground and she will be in the Big City. And then, suddently, the camera will move fast far away from her, letting you see the bus station, the city center, the all Big Appel, The New York state, the US…(yeah, like an Hollywood movie! And actually, I will not be by myself. I have four pages and maps of instractions they gave me, about how to reach the university..)

So, I promised news about Cornell..let’s see.. some random scratches…

Cornell is the university of Ithaca, member of the Ivy League. It’s a private university, but it was founded in the late XIX century by Ezra Cornell, who wanted a university for everyone, male and female, rich and less. You have to think that, eg, universities like Standford of Princeton were reserved to man until the 60s! (1960..)

It is built up on a hill, around 300 meters above the Cayuga Lake, which is one of the so-called “fingers lakes”; they are a bunch af narrow lakes created by glacial era ages ago.

but I live close to the campus edge, so in the morning it’s quite easy to walk toward the campus and reach the Space Science Building. I just have to walk a bridge, go up the stairs in the wood, greeting the squirrels in the grass…seems easy..I do not want to think how should be to do that in winter, when it’s -20 C, the stairs are frozen, the wind blows strong from the lake…amazing!

But since I am here now, when every thing is closed and the campus is almost empty, I can at least enjoy the green ivy on the buildings, the stadium at the sunset..and get lost, of course! in the maps I show the loop I was able to do trying to reach home…I can only say that was my second day..Is it enough as excuse?

Here is the whole campus map.

——

Plus, now I am starting to interact with people

last saturday I went to Martha and Riccardo’s place. They live 300 meters above the campus, so almost in the mountain, in the middle of the wood; Martha cannot let the plats grow because deers eat them!

So, we were invited at dinner, followed by the vision of an old back-and-white movie, as tradition. I was scared, and I was right. If now it is not so difficult for me to get the general idea from an American movies, was instead impossible to understand more than half of what Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, and James Stewart said! weren’t old actors supposed to study a lot to speak well? Crap…

PS: At the end we (they) decided to see “A Philadelphia Story”…

First results:

• I know squirrels and marmots and rabbits don’t only live in Disney’s world!

• I am able to use whatever can opener in the world: even the one in Cornell has no secrets for Silvia (for people who do not know, I didn’t had dinner the first week in Munich because I couldn’t manage to use the German one!)

• I still get lost inside the campus

• Even in the cold-northern Ithaca they have vineyards (and actually Ithaca is as south as Rome)

Ok, here I am, back. I had a quite busy week, working speaking…and I am still fighting with code…I hate programming…I like programming…I hate programming…I like it..

Anyway, since I am still alone in my HUGE apartment, in the evenings I came back quite late from work, I had dinner, and then I used to go to the common house (which is common because is supposed to be use by many, but it’s quite empty at the moment. But it has internet!)

[here, a picture of the real for-lonely-evening-american food]

The hole campus is quite empty now, because courses are finished, and the summer session starts in July! Lucky me

but it’s actually nice to wonder around the campus, it’s so peaceful, green..and it’s impossible not to desired to lie on the grass with an ice-cream, …and a book…and fall asleep..for how long who cares…

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Untill a white rabbit wakes me up and I have to follow him…

oh, sorry. I was saying that I spend my day in the office, but it’s not completely true. On Saturday afternoon I went DOWNTOWN (and in Ithaca, where the campus is on the top of an hill, is really “down”), in the evening I had the pleasure to be invited to a Black&White dinner by my (work) guests here. And on Sunday they took me to walk near the Cayuga Lake..

But I say that it’s enough for tonight. I will keep the stories about Ithaca geography for tomorrow, or I’ll be silent for another week.

ohoh, I mixed the US states..
Today was another day of hard work, but in the evening I walked home without rush, taking pictures and enjoying the light changing at sunset. On the album I posted some images  of the oldest buildings in the campus.

I was crossing a street, when I saw a big rabbit near me. I came closer to take pictures, and he wasn’t actually scared by me. In two days I have already seen multiple squirrels (with both long and short tails), rabbits, beautiful birds…I am waiting for a bambi outside the office tomorrow!

[in few days I hope I'll have a better idea of what I like or dislike here...but just being here is amazing, living the campus life (at least) once in my life, trying to figure out what I could have had or not...and actually having the possibility of doing a comparison for real! It's not so usual in life.. ]

{oh, not so amazing…I’m in the common house – it’s 11pm – and I’m alone. I’m sitting on a sofa. A guy has just opened the door and switched the light off, thinking nobody was here..he didn’t notice me..sigh}

…or am I in a cinema set?
It seems to live in one of the tipical american telefilm where young people spend their lives in the campus, among sports halls, old bricks buildings and parks…Here is Cornell!

So, the trip was looong but lucky, as I discovered later, because I had ONLY 45 minutes of delay arriving in Cornell..but on a trip of 14 hours it’s actually nothig. Plus what often happens is that the plane from New York to Cornell is delayed because of bad weather (when I landed a storm was coming..we had turbolence! ) or because one of the previous flights is late. The route is so short (about 45 minutes) that there are many flights during a day, made with a small, cute plane (dad, the picture is for you).

Yesterday evening Martha (one of the two people I will work with) took me to my place and the to the shops. I live in one of the “students” streets, Maplewood park, where there are a lot of one-floor-four-rooms houses and a common space.

I have already notice that Saturday morning there will be the Bagel-breakfast…

The houses are 15 minutes away (by foot) from both the campus and the shops; of course in opposite directions . Oh, I should correct: they are 15 m away from the Space Science building, not the campus which is itself half of the Ithaca city. And Ithaca is bigger than Garching!

Today, after a non-stop sleep of ten hours, I woke up, and reached the office…the campus is huge, there are many faculties, the dormitories (they seem taken from Harry Potter!) and a lot of green, small falls, a river, parks again…pictures are coming soon, but it is exactly how you can imagine. Even the stadium with the local team colors! And the hockey court, the tennis fields, the football ones, atlethics, climbing facilities, a swimming pool, gyms…but also a theatre, an Art Museum..a lake…and I have not yet seen everything in the campus nor the city “downtown”.

The rest of the day was quite, I (tried) to set up for the work, I went to the shop, had dinner, wrote a post for the web and now I am going to the common space to see who is around.

See you soon.

Silvia

and…finally…(thank to my web-master, I have to admin) the Starhitcher albums-page is born:

STARHITCHER ALBUMS

see you on the other side of the Ocean..!