The states from a distance- a window into NYC:

A perspective of NYC from an expat living in München

Starbucks, McDonalds, fast food culture, the campaign of folks to keep stores open on Sundays…  I find all of these things about Munich profoundly disturbing, as they remind me of what I seek to escape here.  They are physical evidence of the pervasive and insidious nature of American culture.  I am enjoying Munich enormously, but even the little ways that American culture sneaks into Germany bother me, such as the fact that most of the “popular” music folks listen to and sing here is in English.  

Maybe my perspective on German culture is a bit romanticized at the moment, as granted, my admiration of the culture comes largely from a place of ignorance thus far.  I have not been in Germany long enough to have a very critical and well-informed perspective on Munich.  I have only been here long enough to gain some distance from the US, some time to consider US culture from a bit of an outside perspective, and an opportunity to return to the states and be confronted by the most disturbing aspects of the crazy consumer culture there.

I spent the past several years living in NYC- a city that many folks admire, mythologize, obsess over, long to visit and experience.  The question always arises- “Why would you leave NYC for little old Munich?”  I find this question similar to the other question that was posed to me in NYC before I embarked upon this big move- “Why Munich?  Why not Berlin?”  People living in big cities tend to be a bit caught up in their cities, to not see beyond the bubble of their “cool” locale.  The idea that NYC is the center of the universe mirrors the idea that the USA is also the center of the universe.  These narcissistic views do not permit folks to look outside of their bubble and see what the rest of the world has to offer (let alone to approach their local culture with a critical perspective).  

I left NYC and the states for a wide variety of reasons.  The pace of the city was killing me.  Everyone was on “go” all of the time.  When people are not working, they are commuting.  My commute to and from work exceeded an hour each way and took me through four out of five of the boroughs.  I had to travel all of this way, both on bike through insane traffic, around hundreds of double-parked delivery trucks and past angry people who were not interested in making the road safe, dodging jaywalking pedestrians and car doors flung open in my path. 

I biked a long dirty sweaty ride from Brooklyn up through Queens and over into and through Manhattan, up to Harlem, and then I took a subway the remainder of the way to the Bronx.  I traveled all this way to a job that I loathed, a job that did not provide me with health insurance, a job that I would’ve left in a minute if the possibility to change jobs arose.  But my knowledge of how miserable it is to be unemployed in a city of too many qualified applicants and not enough good job opportunities kept my nose to the grindstone day after day.