America is everywhere: on my TV, on my radio, on my jokes. I know where Americans go to shop on a budget (Target), and I know that some of them pronounce it Targé to make it sound more expensive. I know that U.S. police officers are also called Rangers, and I know what their sirens sound like. I know more street names in Manhattan than in Munich. And even more tragically: I know more about America than about India, the country of my origin. If heritage were assigned based on cultural knowledge, I’d be wearing cowboy boots right now.
As we walked to our hotel in Chinatown and I looked around (Canal Street - yet another point against Munich), I felt something for the first time that I would feel many times over the next few days: I wasn’t discovering, I was recognizing. The dancing passenger on the subway, the busy and chatty cashiers behind the bagel counter - they all confirmed a detailed image of New York I had drawn over 28 years and that now looked more vivid than what was actually unfolding before my eyes. I watched yellow taxis honking and construction workers working, and I didn’t see them, but the image of them in my head - an image produced by Netflix, starring Adam Sandler or Jennifer Aniston.
Iven and I are sitting in a bar. In front of me is a quarter-filled glass of white wine that’s apparently worth fourteen dollars. Our table neighbors invite us to join them. I don’t know these people, and yet I feel like I’ve followed them through three seasons and a series finale: Sasha asks lots of questions and interrupts two sentences later, has been living in New York for four years, talks ironically about the city’s dating scene, and rolls a cigarette while doing so. Julie’s been here for two months, originally from a small town in Florida - “really not worth mentioning” - and she’s excited about everything, and everything is excited about her: the city, the evening, the wine, us, tomorrow, and the day after. Jacob was born and raised in New York, Italian American and proud of it. When Iven raves about our sandwich, he waves it off: “That place is good, but it used to be great.”
Can you truly experience something, be present here and now, if the here and now is constantly competing with your own expectations? If every moment is automatically categorized as “I know this” or “I saw that coming”? If every action feels like part of a game: Now go pay with a dollar bill. Now say you want a small coffee and get handed a liter.
How can you experience this country? Day two, and America feels like a video game—every American a mythical creature.
Maybe we’re not even here, I think on the way back to our hotel. I haven’t slept in 22 hours. Instead, someone strapped VR glasses on us, and now we’re wandering through a simulation—a visual average of every episode of Friends, Brooklyn 99, and Law & Order. Because maybe New York doesn’t exist, only the idea of New York. Because New York is fiction, a film set, a postcard image. Maybe there’s only Gießen, I say to Iven. Maybe only there’s only the Harz.
The views expressed in this text are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of the Goethe-Institut.