Just for Fun!

You know you’ve been too long in New York / the US when:

-You buy cheese at Whole Foods and consider Brie for 5 Dollars a “great bargain”

-You cannot stand people beneath the age of 21 in a club and wonder how these “kids” got in

-You consider AC a measure of survival and turn it on first instead of considering a fan

-You get used to food prices four times the amount than in Germany

-You seriously see McDonalds as a restaurant you can eat at almost every other lunch break because of its “cheap” prices (compared to healthy food, which is wayyy more expensive)

-You forgot your basic cake and casserole recipes and don’t care to look them up because you know you cannot find the ingredients in American stores

-You shriek and panic when you see an underweight/normal-weight person cross the street, because you have become used to obese body figures

-You don’t get bothered by crying or spoiled brats and shrug them off as “normal” for American culture

-You don’t bother asking MTA personnel about the right direction because you know you will only get yelled at

-You see the Manhattan skyline from your roof top and cannot imagine your life before and without it

-You get used to degrees of 100 Fahrenheit and above during the 4 summer months, otherwise you wouldn’t have experienced the real thing

-You get annoyed with chicks and guys from New Jersey, Pennsylvania or Long Island, who are “stealing” your place in the line of a club and are wearing the usual bad-taste scent of cheap perfume or cologne

-The best party nights for you are from Sunday to Thursday/maybe Friday

-You work your usual 12h day and think you got out of work “early”

-Your waiter/waitress is ruder than you could ever be and expects a big 20 percent gratuity –duh!

- You get used to pushing people out of your way while entering or exiting a subway and not having to excuse yourself

-You miss your favorite street musician at the subway station or street corner you pass every day and wonder if a record label has discovered him/her

-You get used to “madmen” or other crazy people on the train and hardly bother to stare at them

-You think people from any other state in the US are exotic and foreign

-You see German tourists on the train and wonder what has become of your home country

-You cannot comprehend other people’s lives if they haven’t lived in New York before

-You travel and find every other city small, unexciting, bland, and unbearable

-You have to get out to nature and consider Central Park or Prospect Park well representable of a “natural” forest

-You aren’t surprised by 15 dollar (watered-down) drinks and overpriced appetizers that are tasteless

-You don’t bother about traveling elsewhere anymore because you are surrounded by Little China, India, France, Belgium, UK, and other nationalities on a day-to-day basis

-You see a guy walking around in something that could be one of Madonna’s dance outfits and consider it a normal event

-You detest Time Square and would never want to go there if you don’t have to

-You have discovered your favorite shops in SoHo AND Williamsburg and are happy to switch in between Manhattan and Brooklyn – uh lala, how diverse you are!

-Over half of your pay check is spent on rent and you consider it normal

-You don’t own a car, don’t have the desire to own one, and look down upon people who do

-You get used to people approaching you, posing random questions or asking you to ask them something and then demanding money for their “services”

-You come to see that virtually nothing is for free, and that reduced food is usually all cracked up or has other pitfalls

-You walk through the Village and think it perfectly normal to smell marijuana among cigarette smoke (and no one is being arrested); when you look closer you discover that another 39-year-old guy has lit his pot

-You only go to the areas and neighborhoods known to you of fear of ending up in the “ghetto” – come on, New York is all about exploring!

-You think it quite normal that your one roommate is a musician while the other is struggling to get a part in a Broadway production

-You are averse to cigarette smoking inside bars when you pay your home country a tribute

-You start to comprehend the racial issues splitting this country into many different parts and hindering its own development and you are completely disgusted by it

-You don’t get inspired by these creative vibes anymore but want out of the City

(June 11, 2011)