Inace ovde chudobinec, uz par izuzetaka, na sve strane. Isli smo up north na Niagara Falls, usput 500 milja dugacak prostor gde vladaju beda, glad i smrt.
Onaj Slawen je u stvari cist genija. Dosao, video sta je i kako je i onda isprovizirao nesnalazenje ne bi li prevario Hate-a. Umesto da mu je lepo rekao "Covece ovde je chudobinec, 'ajmo nazad", on se kao ne snadje, a ostavi Hate-a ovde koji se snasao.
Ljudskoj podlosti i pakosti nema kraja.
Evo par mojih utisaka koje sam poslao Jonathanu:
OK, after almost 4 weeks in NYC total, I’ve finally seen neighborhoods other than Manhattan that are nice. Jackson Heights in Queens is very nice and Astoria where I’m staying now (also Queens) is OK, Brooklyn part overlooking Manhattan is very nice too. Everything else I’ve seen - Bed Stuy, Bay Ridge, Brighton Beach and several other areas, are flat-out poor and shabby to say the least.
Manhattan is very nice, but insanely expensive. You know I thought that, to maintain the same life style I have in Prague, I would need 3 times the amount of money and now I know I was wrong. I would probably need 5 times, maybe even more. It is just brutal how expensive everything is.
I really did not expect to see so many poor people and neighborhoods in New York. I just didn’t, I was shocked.
There are also countless weird looking and weirdly dressed people. Not weird in a funky way like you see in Amsterdam for example, but more like “people of Walmart” weird. And I mean there’s a lot of them.
The subway is pretty bad too. Overcrowded, the trains are late and infrequent; not a great experience all in all. The metro reminded me of that in Moscow although people are less aggressive and much more considerate here and the trains are somewhat better. Moscow stations are far nicer though. And the ride is much cheaper of course.
But hey, it’s the Big Apple and if I expected to see a bigger version of Copenhagen - it’s entirely due to my naivety and stupidity.
The real surprise came on our way to Niagara Falls though. We went by car with some friends. That is what really, really shocked me. It’s a 500 miles trip from the city, up north to Niagara Falls - and what we saw was 500 miles of continuous poverty. Poor rundown houses along the way, ghost towns, everything looked so abandoned and neglected, trailer parks everywhere - and again I’m talking 500 miles long of that. Is all of America this poor?
I had been 5 times to Vegas before, and sure Vegas is gorgeous as long as you don’t leave the Strip. Downtown is OK - and only that, but once you leave that area you’re in poverty stricken neighborhoods. And I did notice that before, but I had thought to myself, ok it’s Vegas, they built this city 80 years ago in a dessert, I can’t expect much outside the Strip.
I saw some of Florida as well, which was nice, but not spectacular, a lot of poor people there too, I just didn’t pay too much attention at that time.
Anyway, we could not find a halfway decent restaurant along those 500 miles. Not a single one. My sugar dropped, I thought I was going to faint. Yes, you see those diners along the way, but the food there is so unhealthy and they didn’t have a single dish to my liking. A lot of trashy people everywhere. White trash, black trash, Latino trash, even Asian trash. You get the idea how bad it is when you see hordes of Asian trash.
And let me remind you, I don’t come from luxury, I’m not from Denmark, I come from a 3rd world country myself.
I’m used to seeing poor people in Serbia, Ukraine even CZ, but it’s just that they are poor and not trashy like they were on our way to Niagara Falls.
You know my MBA diploma is from RTI, which is in Rochester, NY. Their professors used to fly to Prague and teach us there and I always imagined Rochester to be a small university town, something like Cambridge, Leiden or Delft. So, I asked my friends to stop there - surely we must find something good to eat there. I literally expected avocado bars on every corner, raw food, vegan restaurants, organic meat, fresh vegetables and fruit everywhere, abundance of young people with smile on their faces, sun in their eyes, joy in their hearts and flowers in their hair.
I honestly expected all that and more.
I couldn’t be more wrong. It was probably the grayest fucking town I’ve ever seen. EVER. And let me remind you again: I am from Serbia and I go to Ukraine 5 times a year.
It was scary, surreal, it was a ghost town with a sporadic odd inhabitant every now and there. I was starving and all we could find was this terrible looking Chinese restaurant. I don’t like Chinese food, but we walked in and when we saw some of the dishes they were serving we had to leave. The only other place they served food was a Subway joint and my kid had a sandwich there.
Is this how America is? It sure looks a whole lot better in the movies. Even my son who is a total Americanophile was taken aback.
We saw Buffalo along the way, looked shabby from far, and we didn’t drive in. Is that where Rob is from? No wonder he’s always so tense.
Even Niagara Falls which should get a fair amount of tourists looks poor. I just don’t want to believe that whole America is like that. I will give it another chance soon and will go visit Cameron in Oregon and maybe check the West Coast. I’m hoping it’s a lot better there. I’m under the impression that if you didn’t take into account the top 5% (earners, houses etc.) in the NY state, what remained would be like 3rd world.
Maybe I’m wrong and maybe I went to all the wrong places, but I did see a lot of places and moved around a lot.
