In my childhood, if you asked me to tell the first American city, I couldn’t avoid to mention New York! That’s what Western Europe common perception is, but nothing is more wrong than this: despite it is the most famous American city, NY is also the most European of American cities. Founded as a Dutch colony, for centuries it was one of the first destinations of mass immigration from the old Europe. The structure of the old city of Nu Amsterdam is totally disappeared, except for some remanence of the “Wall”, that gave the name to Wall Street, or Broadway (bread in Dutch is brood), or even the same way to pronounce New York (they still call it Nu-York, as its original Dutch name).

Long time has flown from that period, nowadays New York is known as the city that never sleeps, where everything is possible if you want. This is the city of the opportunities, but also the place where you can hide yourself among people: you can really do whatever you want, but success is not for all. New York is indeed a place of big contrasts, also geographically: for every crowded place in Manhattan, there are many more peaceful ones in the surrounding areas. Discovering this city is not easy at all, because what you can see as guest, only staying in the center, is a different story from what you can find in the sides.

New York and Halloween

Why a panda is talking at the phone in Bryant Park? Why people is not surprised about it? Ok, this is New York! Nobody get surprised about anything. Anyway, as you can imagine, like in all big cities, people usually don't come back home to change their clothes: that's why all the people get prepared for Halloween from the morning time. When the night comes, all the night creatures comes alive: you can see every kind of monster, super hero or funny cartoon figures walking in the Village.

However, the most picturesque side of this celebration is related to everyday life, while pumpkin's heads stands decorating the streets of Brooklyn. This is the full autumn season, with falling leaves that colors the streets.

Sandy

I don't agree with the tradition of giving lady's name to hurricanes, even if it's a common practice. Sandy is the hurricane that got stuck the city for 13 days between October and November 2012. The scene in front of my eyes has been dreadful: from midtown to downtown Manhattan was fully black-outed; in northern Brooklyn, in the area of the world famous bridge, the cellars were under the water, while in Coney Island the flood, together with giant waves, devastated all the houses of coastal area facing the ocean.

These were the areas that I could visit, because all the metro lines were shut down. Bus service restarted after two days, but been able to catch one was impossible. But in spite of the difficulties, I tried to have a full vision of the disaster. What was the official world press doing during those days? Well, some of them was reporting the arrival of the storm from the most critical points, but I didn’t met any of them in Coney Island, where I spent several hours. The third day, after the hurricane left the city, I found them in lower Manhattan, close to Battery Park, just in front of the new tower of WTC. All the mainstream media was talking about the same: the tunnel was still full of water, same news, same spot, same angle. For me it was quite disconnected from reality, from the total calmness of WTC area, no danger at all, while people was taking their pets to pee. But this is a different story...