Out of New York and back home again

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After hurricane season, it's US Open season in New York City. Sometimes it's a bit of a nuisance to live in Queens and get through an hour of subway ride coming home from Manhattan. But not these days: Flushing Meadows has become my favourite backyard. On day 1, I just wanted to check out the premises and suck in the atmosphere of a grand slam. Turns out that without a $50 grounds admission ticket, you don't even get close to a tennis ball. Since the all access ticket (including Arthur Ashe) only cost 5 bucks more, the decision was easy: "Please Mr Needaburger, swipe your credit card". So on that fateful monday night, little Martin sat in the world's biggest tennis stadium, watching Big Rog crush that dude from...who gives a damn where he was from. Federer won in three straight sets. And although the TV gives you a pretty good impression about the atmosphere, it's only real when you're physically sitting there joining in the clapping and yelling. Only few bars would show the Open on TV here because baseball and football are so much bigger and - apparently - more popular. Still, for the second week of the tournament a big screen was set up in Madison Square Park to enjoy Tennis in company.


Those of you (still) reading this blog must be thinking to themselves: "Is this guy actually working here or just chilling??" Well, to give you one possible answer, we took off friday and went to visit Boston over the Labor Day weekend. To sum it up, Boston is half as loud, half as tall and twice as laid back as New York, the perfect place for students! Harvard University, Cambridge and the MIT are all located in Boston. We took a tour of Harvard, led by a senior student and this truly was a happening. Firstly, the campus is amazing, beautiful buildings, bars and restaurants surrounding the university and secondly, he made us be part of Harvard by telling hard-to-believe stories about past students and yearly student happenings like the Primal Scream (At midnight on the last night of reading period and before final exams begin, students streak through the Old Yard. The streakers begin in the north end of The Yard and generally make one lap around, but the more adventurous sometimes aim for more. This is done both semesters, even during New England winters. Some of the streakers will "dress up" in capes and masks, or top hat and tails, but their genitalia are still exposed. The walkways through which students run are lined with spectators and the Harvard University Band plays beforehand to excite the crowd. But don't get your hopes up, guys. The denial rate of Harvard lies at a record 94%!a(MISSING)nd one year puts you back $55,000. But I hear the food is great...
Boston is definitely worth a visit, if only for its relaxing atmosphere and beautiful brick stone architecture. And the accent they have is an instant classic (don't pronounce the R but instead really press on the american A, so car will be caah)!

A general remark after a bit over two months: If you care to notice, New York inhabits about ten places claiming to have "the best burger in town" or "the city's best happy hour". Even "the best shoe cleaner in New York City" can be found easily. Basically, everything is always bigger and better than anywhere else.

As autumn arrives, so are a lot of Swizzies in NYC. Looking forward to all you guys stopping by at the office and have a few beers with me in the greatest city of the world! :-)

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