LLWorldTour

The first time I traveled around the world, I really wasn’t running away from anything. It was more like I was running toward something - a dream; doing something I had always wanted to do, but just never could. But then a small window opened and I slipped out into the world and never looked back.

That was two years ago now. Starting October 2006, I left the comforts of my well-appointed home in Chicago and traveled, literally, around the world - staying with friends, meeting strangers who became friends, and having the time of my life. Fifteen months later, I returned to the US. For eight months I bopped between coasts from New York City to Chicago to Los Angeles and back to New York again. And now I actually think I am running away - away from having to ‘root’ myself in an ordinary life; away from having to make a decision about where to live; away from having to work full time again; away from having to pay actual bills and away from the reality of the fact that eventually I will have to give up this vagabond lifestyle and someday buy a bed of my own again.   Or maybe I figure I should just keep traveling until I just can’t stand it anymore. But I think that is highly unlikely.

I am sitting in seat 21D on a Swiss Air flight headed to Europe.  This time around it didn’t seem as monumental leaving the US and all; sort of anti-climatic actually.  No goodbye parties. No big farewells. No major life changes.  I just hopped the subway to JFK in New York City and blew a kiss goodbye to one of my favorite cities.

And soon I will be in Berlin, perhaps my favorite city from my last trip. I am returning for several meetings/interviews for some possible freelance opportunities. Then I will be heading to France and Italy for a few months. I’ve been to these popular destinations a few times before, but not on my last trip. Paris was the first city I had ever set foot in in Europe more than 10 years ago and it had me at ‘bon jour.’ And Italy, oh Italia, I’ve been three times and am anxious to return to see if I still love it like I did every time I was there in the past.

Then I’m not sure where my wanderings will take me. As any traveler knows, my list has not gotten any shorter. In fact the more you travel, the longer it gets. This trip is currently looking something like this:

• Berlin
• France (Paris, Normandy, Lyon, Swiss Border towns, Provence, Bordeaux ?)
• Italy (some of these: Turino, Verona, Assisi, Gubio, Orevieto, Bologna, Perugia, Arezzo, Lucca, Roma, Sicily)
• Malta
• Cyprus ?
• Egypt
• Israel
• Jordan
• Istanbul
• St. Petersburg
• The Baltics (Latvia, Lithuania)
• Denmark
• and eventually back to Berlin and Paris again.

As always, if you know anyone - friend, family, animal, mineral - in any of these locales, please let me know. I would really appreciate it. I love to meet new people and have new friends when I get to a new town.

Unlike the last trip, this time I do have a return ticket. For two reasons: one, I’m taking advantage of all my racked up frequent flyer miles and flying for free to and from Europe therefore needing to book an actual roundtrip ticket and, two, I have a ‘save the date’ in New Jersey in the Spring.  I will return home for my father’s wedding. After thirty odd years of bachelorhood, dear old dad is tying the knot and my tiny family is getting just a bit bigger. Mazel Tov!

I touched down in New York City with a slight feeling of sadness and worry. I was returning to my grandmother’s nearly empty apartment. But it wasn’t the stuff missing that was bothering me. It was that she was missing.

I worried if New York would ever be the same for me since this is the place I always came to be with her. And she was truly the glue that held New York City together for me. I never had to find a hotel when I came here. I never needed to search for some good bagels and lox…she already had it waiting for me.

So, after a four month stint in the sun and easy-life of LA, I was back in harried, frenetic New York City for ten days. I shouldn’t have worried. I loved it all over again and more.

In just my first five minutes walking on the crammed sidewalk amongst the people it hit me all at once how great this city is and what a contrast it is to Los Angeles. Even though they are two huge cities, New York really is a true city inside and out, uptown and downtown, down below in the subterranean jungle of the subways and high up above in the posh financial offices scraping the sky. I know this has been said before a zillion times. But I can’t help saying it again: it’s the stew, the pot pourri, that good old melting pot. I don’t think I ever saw it as clear as I did now after being in LA. You can’t help notice it as you walk down the crammed sidewalk. New York is a true coming together of all races, all classes, and all kinds - young and old, sane and crazy, filthy rich and broke and homeless, every race, every gender, ever class. People are walking alone and yet altogether in one massive sea of life. Wall Street tycoons in Armani suits ride the public bus next to Hispanic moms with three kids in tow next to gussied up teenage girls on their way for some cappuccinos.

I had just come in from a five hour flight from LAX and I was tired and famished. I thought I’d start my stay off here with a New York ‘must:’ a greasy, floppy, delicious slice of New York pizza. But unlike the old days when you could just stand in one place and do a 360 spin to spot the nearest pizza joint, now my view was crowded with Starbucks, CVS, and other chains. Then I spotted a guy sitting on a bench with the package I sought: a white paper bag, a white paper place, and that famous gooey slice. I walked up to him and asked where he got it. He answered in a garbled voice and I realized I was talking to a homeless man. I asked him again. And he said, “I don’t know. Someone gave it to me.”

It couldn’t have been more perfect. New York strikes again. Although often misunderstood, it’s not uncommon that New Yorkers are friendly and generous and very tolerant of one another. Many people chat up their local bums everyday and when going for a bite, often get a little something extra for that ‘guy’ they pass on the way home. Whenever My friend Mark would go buy himself a hamburger at his local fast food establishment he would get two and hand one to the guy that stood outside on the sidewalk holding the door open for customers. Better that then handing him a dollar he’d drop on liquor or worse. Although…perhaps the McDonalds’ burger was just as bad?

After I walked away from my new pizza-eating friend, he called after me and yelled out that he thought the place was just around the corner. I followed his gesture up 8^th Avenue and around to 23^rd street. There it was – the classic New York pizzeria. It’s nothing fancy – just a few tables, that glass counter which gives you a view of the pies on offer – cheese, pepperoni, sausage, mushroom, and a calzone or two – a soft drink fountain, a brick oven and big, white cardboard pizza boxes stacked up ceiling high. I ordered a simple cheese slice and sat down to enjoy the delicacy. And here I saw it just like I had walking around outside. Every kind of citizen was coming in for a slice – the construction worker, the student, the ladies discussing interior design, the lawyer in a suit, and a mother and son. Here everyone eats a slice. Here everyone rides the bus.

It was New York…always there and always accepting. It was the same as it’s always been – except the slice was now $2.75, not $1.00 like it was when I was a kid. So I picked it up, folded it in half and took that first fabulous bite.

Most of you know, I have spent a good part of the last two years traveling the world. The one worry in the back of my head during my travels was what if something were to happen to my 94-year-old grandmother while I was thousands of miles away on the other side of the globe. She and I made a pact before I left that she would ‘wait’ for me until I returned. We were both quite logical direct gals and I guess, weren’t exactly afraid to discuss the inevitable. But, true to her word as always, she waited for me to return. Since I have quit working full-time I have been able to do some things that would obviously not have been possible with a full time job. One of these things was being able to live with my grandma for two months in her apartment in New York City,

Unfortunately, during the last few weeks I was there she started to feel bad. The very day I flew back to Chicago she checked herself into a hospital. About a month later, I called her the day before I was to fly to Belize. She had literally just walked in the door of her apartment and was so happy to be home after several weeks in the hospital. A week later, while I was still out of the country without phone or internet access, she died.

Esta Saltzman Lubin 1914-2008

I flew home early and my family came together in Manhattan for her memorial service. She would have been so happy we were all together. She lived a long and amazing life. She was a very strong and independent woman who never complained - not once. She was feisty and sharp, but also extremely generous and selfless. All I can say is how lucky I was to have her in my life this long and how lucky I was to return from my travels when I did to spend those two months with her. Miss you G-ma.

• Obituary in Jewish Forward
• Obituary in New York Times
• Obituary New York Times #2
• Miliken Archive Interview
• Ladies of Yiddish Theatre & Film
• Internet Broadway Database
• Internet Movie Database - IMDB

It’s almost impossible to walk around this vibrant city and not mix with people from all over the globe. From the filthy rich to the just plain filthy it is this veritably chunky stew that makes this tapestry complete. Just like the streets and avenues weaving through Manhattan in their symmetrical pattern, the inhabitants of New York City are like threads coming together to make up the rich fabric of one of my favorite places in the world.

Since I grew up just through the Lincoln Tunnel on the other side of the Hudson River in hills of North Central New Jersey, I have visited New York dozens of times and even lived here for about a year back in my university days when I was an intern at “Late Night with David Letterman.” But never have I really explored the city as much as I did during the two months that I stayed with my grandmother right after my world tour. Perhaps it was because I was still happily in traveler mode; I was more than content to wander the streets like the modern-day vagabond that I’d become.

The island of Manhattan is undeniably walkable. Every time I went out to explore a new neighborhood I would walk there and back oftentimes covering several miles during my journeys. But there was just so much filling my view, so much tickling all my senses, that I barely notice how far I’d gone.

One day I strolled from my grandmother’s Chelsea apartment on 24^th Street and 9^th Avenue to get a very overpriced haircut on the Upper East Side at 73^rd Street and Lexington Avenue. That’s 50 short blocks north and 7 long blocks east coming out to about three and a half miles one way. Another day, after experiencing one of New York’s best tourist deals—a free round trip aboard the Staten Island Ferry which passes our nicest gift from France, the Statue of Liberty, I walked home from the southern tip of Manhattan and Battery Park City. It was amazing and also a good way to try and ‘walk off’ all the food and desserts my grandma was forcing me to eat. Well, force is a bit dramatic…she offered me chocolate and I said ‘yes.’ She offered me ice cream and I said ‘yes.’ You get the idea.

It’s funny, when I was in my early twenties my favorite neighborhood was the Upper West Side—it was clean, trendy, and well, just plain ‘neighborhoody.’ And although it is still very nice, it’s become a bit too plastic and ‘chain-store’ saturated for me. I think it’s like the biggest fear of gentrification—well, simply-put: over-gentrification where there’s no longer any personality or independent thought or design to the Starbucks frothed area. This go-around, I got to know some other neighborhoods better and really became smitten with them. Like the old warehouse-lined streets of the Meatpacking District (officially known as the Gansevoort Market) just south of Chelsea with its velvet-roped nightclubs and obscenely expensive shops sprinkled throughout the industrial zone’s hulking structures where cows once hung in its 250+ slaughterhouses in the early 1900s. Now high-end boutiques like Christian Louboutin and Stella McCartney, and restaurants such as Pasti’s and Buddha Bar, all have recently opened in order to cater to yuppies and hipsters. In 2004, New York magazine called the Meatpacking District “New York’s most fashionable neighborhood.”

I can’t think of a neighborhood more charming than the West Village. Its leafy cobblestone side streets are lined with super-expensive and painstakingly renovated brownstone apartment homes with freshly painted shiny black banisters, polished brass door knockers and charming wooden shutters. On a stroll through Greenwich Village I realized how much I liked it now. Back in the 80s and 90s, I think it was still a bit too hippie-slash-grungy for me. Today it’s teeming with trend-setting students from NYU, cute coffee shops, hip bars, and still a few hippie holdouts that add a dash of grime and grunge to give it just the right flavor.

While wandering around, I satisfied my craving for some tasty New York street food with a $3 juicy, drippy Gyro in a pita with tzatziki and hot sauce. I indulged in this fatty delight while sitting on a bench next to someone you find in every park in Manhattan—a pigeon-person. This man was feeding dozens of his fine feathered friends right out of his hands in the Village’s famous Washington Square Park. While I munched on my lunch, I also watched dogs of all sizes gleefully playing in a fenced off ‘dog park’ where a posted sign summed up the whole ‘hood:’ No people without dogs, no dogs without people.

My third new favorite new ‘hood is the Lower East Side. It was formerly home to thousands of Jewish immigrants at the turn of the century. It was here where my grandma, Esta Saltzman, performed in Yiddish plays and musicals in some of the biggest venues of their time. Of course nowadays, these theatres are gone, with new funky shops and trendy eateries in their place. In fact, the theatre on the corner of Second Avenue and Houston was formerly know as the National Theatre where she performed, but now in its place is a new cultural icon of our generation: a 60,000 square foot Whole Foods.

But there are still some old Jewish holdouts that I can’t ever miss when I’m in town: Russ and Daughters Deli and THE one and only, Katz’s Delicatessen—made famous by its orgasm-inducing pastrami sandwiches—well, at least the one Meg Ryan was having in When Harry Met Sally (really the best rom-com of all time). Nowadays, this area is gentrifying fast with the most written-about hip and trendy restaurants opening up next door to Laundromats, convenience stores, and even a retro skateboard repair shop all up and down the great, lively streets: Ludlow, Rivington, Orchard, Stanton, and Clinton. This was once home to family-filled tenement buildings of lower class workers. Now it’s a trendy mix of hipsters, artists, and rich-folk wanting to be in the neighborhood of the moment. One night I met up with my new Swedish friend Erik—we were actually supposed to meet in London a couple months ago, but he moved here to New York before we got the chance. He took me and a friend to the lower East Side for dinner. We were walking down Rivington Street when suddenly, he just turned a corner and headed down a dark alley that oddly had a street sign. Oooo-kay. At the dead-end of the alley was a little shack of a place called Freeman’s that looked to be the back side of a building. But its million-dollar rustic-chic interior was packed to the gills with the trendy-set drinking cocktails and nibbling on tuna tartare. Needless to say it was at least a two hour wait (and it was a Tuesday night) and we didn’t stay. A wait that equals the time it would take us to fly to Chicago for dinner was a bit too long even if it was THE in place to be of the second (this is new York after all, by the time you read this—it may have closed already).

New York City. It’s more easy-going and friendlier than most think. I hear hellos and how you doins’ all the time. The people walk with a purpose and are a direct lot, but really do smile and say hello probably more than any other city I’ve been in (ok, even if most of the ones saying hello are the construction workers).

Just on my subway ride to the airport I experienced this New York friendliness that I’m talking about. First I asked some of New York’s finest of the NYPD about which train to take to JFK. Not only did they point me in the right direction, they waited for me to board the train and told me which stop to get off at. Another man helped me with my suitcase as the wheels got stuck in the door while I was hoisting it onto the train car. And once onboard and riding through Brooklyn another friendly local who knew I was heading to the airport, thanks to my bags, told me I’d be getting off in just a few stops…and I didn’t even ask him. And you can be anyone and meet anyone here. One day I walked past beautiful actress Anne Hathaway on the sidewalk in Chelsea. And then the next day I was passed by an old lady pushing a stroller…with a cat in it. Yep—only in New York.

While I was traveling around the world I really didn’t have much to worry about except Dr. Seussical things like: ‘where will I find a bed? Where can I lay my head? Where can I go to be fed?’ But one thing I worried about back home was my grandmother still being there when I returned. She’s a fiercely strong, independent woman and the older I get the more I realize I am a lot like her. We made a pact before I left that she would wait for me to come home… And she’s a woman of her word. Just this past weekend she turned a young 94-years-old. I am staying with her in her apartment in Manhattan. She’s phenomenal. She was an actress in the Yiddish theater in New York and traveling shows for about sixty years of her life. She started on stage when she was six-years-old and didn’t stop singing and dancing until she hit eighty.

And today she lives alone and is still taking care of business. Her mind is amazingly sharp, but thanks to emphysema (she used to smoke, oh, roughly fifty years ago when it was très chic and oh so healthy) she’s slowed down a bit. She gets around fine though by zipping around Manhattan in what she calls her Lexus, a snappy red electric scooter. I can’t even keep up with her when she’s cruising down the sidewalk plowing down the fine citizens of New York left and right. Watch out, or she’ll take you down.

And believe it or not, just the other day, she motivated me to get on her treadmill. That’s right, not only does she own a treadmill, she uses it three to four times a week. She walks on it for about fifteen minutes and seeing her on it made me think to myself, ‘Okay, if my grandma is on there, I better step it up and start running again.’ Nothing like your 94-year-old granny to kick your ass into gear. I can only hope to be like her when I’m old and wrinkly.

Now that I am back in my homeland of majestic purple mountains, fruited plains, and good ol’ amber waves of grain, I am amidst my American brothers and sisters–sometimes loud, sometimes big, but almost always smiley and friendly. After more than one year on the road, I feel I have taken a very unscientific measure of foreigners’ views of Americans and America. Many statements have some truth to them—although, of course, they are all generalizations.

Here are some of the most common things I heard about us from foreigners.

1. Americans are very confident.
2. Americans are all rich.
3. Americans don’t know much about the rest of the world.
4. ‘I like Americans but I do not like American politics or foreign policy.’
5. How come every American traveler I meet tells me they don’t like George Bush? How did he become president…twice??”
6. I traveled to the United States and was pleasantly surprised at how friendly and welcoming they were (I honestly heard this at least ten different times).
7. You are thin for an American (this was really said to me in Madrid by a British guy).
8. You’re American, and you know how to drive a stick shift (standard transmission)??
9. You’re American…so you have a gun, right?
10. I don’t meet many Americans—they don’t travel as much as others.

This last one is a much discussed topic amongst travelers. Roughly 20-25% of Americans have their passports and those that do are more likely to be liberal-minded, left leaning individuals. But even though I do travel and think it is a great experience, education and investment for me personally, I do not feel the need to ‘wear my passport’ as a badge or look down on others who choose not to. I also know there are many reasons why some Americans do not or can not travel outside the country:

• The US is very big and one can spend a lifetime just seeing the fifty states inside its borders. North America has just about every climate and landscape known to man and a wide variety of culture, cuisine and lifestyles. A lifetime isn’t enough to see everything.
• Unlike European countries, the US is very far from most other countries making it very expensive to travel abroad. A New Yorker may go all the way to Florida on holiday while the same thing for a Brit may be to fly to the Costa del Sol of Spain—probably the same distance but because of the small size of European countries, crossing borders is just more common.
• And in relation to the above, since the distance is so great, the flights are therefore very expensive and many, many people in the US can not afford to travel abroad.
• The unfortunate lack of vacation time given by the majority employers in the US.

The United States is a vast nation. With a total land mass area (exclusive of waters) of 3,536,294 sq mi (9,158,960 km²) the U.S.A. is the world’s third largest country, following Russia and China. Stretching more than three thousand miles across with nearly fifty states and nearly 300 million people in between, this is one diverse land. Like all nations in the world some people are good and some bad. Some are the nicest you would ever meet and some are complete morons. One of my biggest pet peeves is generalizations.

In the beginning of my trip, I was slightly excited to be thought of as a ‘cool’ or ‘good’ American. People said I was ‘different’ because I was traveling and seeing the world and not just holed up in my country watching one of 300+ channels on my TV or driving my big, gas-guzzling SUV on some big highway somewhere (these are obviously more stereotypes). By the way, I sold the only car I’d ever owned, a 1989 Honda Prelude, before my trip began. I only drove about once a month and hope to not buy another one since I normally use public transport anyway. I was happy to also defend and explain to people that all Americans are not created equal and we are all different just like the rest of the world. But, I have to admit, as time went on I began to get sick and tired of trying to make sense of it all and either defending or renouncing other Americans. I grew weary of debunking the negative stereotypes that I really can’t do much about.

A few times I did encounter the stereotypical “ugly Americans” (as well as other English-speaking nationalities that shall remain nameless) during my travels giving us all a bad name, but I still tried to give them the benefit of the doubt because of the fact that they still made the decision to travel and see other parts of the world in the first place. But I also met and know wonderfully kind and open Americans. Just remember also that the Americans who are traveling abroad are there to open up to new experiences and engrossing themselves in new cultures, but by making comments about these very visitors to your countries that open-mindedness can quickly turn to defensiveness. After all I’ve seen and done I am still an American and I like myself and most of my American friends. I was proud to represent my country as I toured the world. I’m not proud of all Americans or everything my country does but who said it was all or nothing? Now shut up before I shoot you…and then sue you.

Many asked if coming ‘home’ would be bittersweet for me. I don’t know if ‘bittersweet’ is the right word. I’m certainly not bitter and life is still sticky sweet. I’m certainly not saying that my journey is over…in fact far from it—it’s only just begun (hum your version of the Carpenters tune here). Here in bustling New York I am continuing to meet new people giving me that same positive rush I now crave that I felt during my worldly travels. I’ve caught up with old friends and new ones that I met online through this very website–some were inspired and asking me for advice on their own upcoming adventures, some were getting back in touch after reading about my trip in the local paper, and others were trying to sell me some kind of ‘enlargement.’ I’ve been told I already have big ‘cojones’ for doing a trip like this…so I guess I don’t need that now. But it goes to show you how traveling is a great way to meet people–even if you are meeting New Yorkers or Chicagoans while you are in Istanbul.  Even when I’m not sure what to do next or feel flashes of confusion, I find it hard to stay that way because I keep coming back to the fact that I’ve been so extremely lucky and fortunate to see what I’ve seen, not just in the last 15 months, but during my entire life.

I am now back in the land between the two shining seas, the United States, but the only plan I have now is to stay in New York for about a month, then go to Chicago for another month or two, and then cross the country to Los Angeles for a few months to stay with my friend Mark, try to publish some more of my writing and/or photos, do some freelance PR work for Pueblo Ingles that I picked up in Spain, and most importantly lay at the pool.

Many have warned me about the very tough re-entry after a trip like this and that returning back to the US could be the biggest culture shock of all. I think like a good (or bad) movie, I heard so much about this ‘reverse culture shock’ that the hype was a bit more than the real deal. But I also feel like flying from London to New York made things so much easier. It was quite a seamless transition to go in between possibly the world’s two greatest, most diverse cities. I guess I’m doing what you would call not ripping the band-aid off quickly by creepingly slowly transitioning back to life in the US. As you can presume, I have never been away this long. So I wanted to try and see things differently here in the ‘US of A.’ You can see, do, and experience just about anything and everything in London, but nevertheless, New York City was still a bit of sensory overload. There are just so many things for your brain to absorb—no wonder people are stressed. A multitude of signs are everywhere you look, telling you something: ‘Stop!’ ‘Sale,’ ‘Barack wins this primary’, ‘Hilary wins that primary,’ ‘Hot Pizza’, ‘Cold Drinks’, ‘Buy this’, ‘Eat here,’ ‘Walk,’ ‘Don’t Walk,’ ‘Don’t Shoot!’, ‘Run for your life…,’ etc. There are so many, too many choices for everything. I mean it’s nice to live in a land where things are plentiful, but sometimes it seems a bit ridiculous. I now realized how simple my life had been for the last fifteen months. I only had a few pairs of pants (that’s trousers for the Brits–I did have a week supply of underwear, fyi) to choose from each day, I had no bills to pay, and my only worries were finding a new place to stay every few weeks, booking some form of transport, and avoiding most insects. I had avoided most media while I was away. It was a really nice break from being force fed lots of information, most of which is not 100% true, and a lot of which I frankly just don’t need to know. For the most important world news, I could scan the headlines on the internet or watch the BBC News and get a really nice five minute (that’s long by US news standards) update on the latest scuttlebutt of the US Presidential Race. I really didn’t need to know about any traffic-causing car crashes on the Kennedy Expressway in Chicago or old warehouse fires in the South Loop or another sad missing child story.

And speaking of the media—there is also an overabundance of television channels (do we really need 300?), magazines and tabloid newspapers being flashed in your face all day long. And then there are the stores. I went in to a drugstore (of which there are a multitude—practically one on every corner—just like the now omnipresent Starbucks) just to buy a simple tube of toothpaste. It was intense. First I had to sort through all the brands on offer. Once I settled on one name, I had to study each package for the various differences—gel, paste, tartar control, whitening, whitening with baking soda, all natural, all chemical, 4 out of 5 dentists recommend it, with fluoride, with crystals, for sensitive gums, for gums of steel, plaque control, with scope mouthwash, minty fresh, orangey goodness, or a swirly combination of everything. Aaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh…my brain hurt. Do we really need all this?

I was also confronted with a plethora of unguents, emollients, moisturizers, creams and lotions that claimed to firm, tighten, buff, polish, darken, shine, and improve my life, or at least the life of my skin. For more than one year I have done without nearly all of this and thanks to good marketing—now I just had to have some.  It was too easy to get sucked in–in fact I think they have a lotion for that–so I just have to avoid going in these stores at all.

The day I returned to our fair country, I flew into JFK International in New York City.  It was weird to go through immigration and not be a “visitor” for once and actually be around more American citizens than I’ve seen all together in more than a year. I have heard a few horror stories from my ‘foreign’ friends about their experiences being grilled by US immigration officers and I have to say I was a bit disappointed with my experience. I was sure hoping for a little stern interrogation or maybe just a comment about me being gone for so long. But nope. The white, stocky, grey-haired officer barely glanced at my customs card (on which I had to list where I’d been on my visit out of the country–twenty some-odd countries took up more space than allotted of course), took a cursory flip through my stamp-laden, well-worn passport, stamped me in and said, ‘welcome home.’ There was no ‘what were your dealings in the Middle East?’ ‘Why were you in Turkey so long?’ Not even a ‘Wow, gosh, gee, 15 months is a really long time!’ Oh well. Very soon it will be like I never even left.

Most that know me today probably think of me as a city girl and rightly so. I love living in the ‘hoods of Chicago—very diverse and brimming with ethnic eateries of all kinds (if you also know me, you know it’s all about the food!). But for the first Eighteen years of my life I grew up in quite a rural, wooded suburb of New Jersey. Yes, NJ has its rural woody side! We lived on the edge of the woods, with tall leafy oaks and elms, where we would often go play and literally swing from the vines. There were no street lights on our hilly street and I would sometimes gaze up at the night sky full of twinkling stars while crickets chirped happily all around. The trees and stars are probably what I miss most about living away from a city.

Manhattan was only forty-five minutes to the east of our house, but we rarely went there. The times we did it was mostly to visit the grandparents. My mom’s parents lived in Brooklyn so we’d drive over the double-decker George Washington Bridge, pass what my brother, David, and I called the tower of “Dr. Shrinker,” which was an ABC TV show in 1976, (the tower itself was actually the High Bridge Water Tower, built in 1872, for the Croton Aqueduct), and through the borough of Brooklyn to the neighborhood of Canarsie. Or we’d be visiting my other Grandma, Esta, who then lived in ritzy Grammercy Park and now in, the ‘it neighborhood of the moment,’ Chelsea. We’d drive through the engineering marvel that is the Lincoln Tunnel where our radio would die out and David and I would shout out when we whizzed by the “New Jersey/New York” border line painted on the white tiled walls of the tunnel. After eight thousand feet of riding under the Hudson River, we’d shoot out into the stinging daylight of New York City to be welcomed by the ubiquitous and grungy ‘squeegee guys.’ These ‘working men’ would just start cleaning your windshield whether you wanted it or not with a filthy rag (anything for a buck!), which would usually make the glass dirtier than it was when you arrived in the Big Apple just moments earlier. Like many things that have been ‘cleaned up’ in NYC, those squeegee guys are no longer there. At least the nuisance is gone, although, maybe now they’ve resorted to something more illegal, yet more profitable, like selling crack.

We would head straight to my grandmother’s apartment building without passing ‘Go’ or ever stopping for some good New York pizza (the best!). So I really wasn’t a city girl at all. And of course the New York City I saw of the 1980’s is not the same city it is today. Even though I was only ten years old or so, it really was a scary place back then—graffiti everywhere, sirens wailing at all hours, and some of the worst crime in the world. But all that has really changed. Times Square, once a nasty home of drugs and ‘triple-x’ peep show houses, is now the center of entertainment and is a shiny mini-Disney World. Like many areas, the 80’s were a rough time, in large part to the cheap drug, crack. And, like many cities now, downtowns and old warehouse districts are being rebuilt, refurbished and rehabbed.

It wasn’t until I was in college and landed a few internships in New York City at WCBS-TV News and “Late Night with David Letterman,” that I began to appreciate the ‘city that never sleeps’ for some its finer offerings. I discovered it had neighborhoods—virtual villages where people could feel part of a smaller community. And I started discovering some of the best food I’d ever had. Growing up, we rarely went out to eat except for the occasional Chinese Food take out (a favorite food of Jews everywhere), the rare pizza slice, or a grilled cheese and bacon sandwich at diners like “Bud’s Family Restaurant” with my mom for our weekly ‘Wednesday-night-divorce-court-approved-dinner.’ So when I first tried Penne with a tomato cream vodka sauce, or sun dried tomatoes, capers, and pesto or some amazing spice infused mashed potatoes from Union Square Café, I was amazed and delighted at the enormous food world that awaited me (and my stomach!). Even just something simple like fresh basil was new and so lovely to me. Of course I also had some great street food too—juicy gyros, falafel pitas with tzatziki sauce, and lest I forget, the best hot dogs, pepperoni pizza, and bagels known to man.

I continued my city love affair when I moved to Chicago six years later…and here more new foods revealed themselves to me—Japanese Sushi with fresh morsels of maguro, flavorful Indian rice biryani and samosas, Middle Eastern cous cous, and the amazing saganaki, spanakopita, and charcoal grilled octopus of Greektown.

Melbourne, Australia is also an epicureans dreamland. It has the third largest Greek population after Athens and Thessaloniki in Greece. Over half of the city dwellers here have a parent that was born somewhere else in the world. Waves of immigrants have brought major cultural influences from Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. The city sits on and around the banks of the Yarra River and is chock full of different ethnic neighborhoods. In one night in Melbourne you could dine on cuisine from any corner of the globe.

My first week here I had a cold Australian beer at Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream outdoors in the Botanic Gardens, shopped the rows and rows of colorful stalls of fruits, cheeses, and knick knacks at the huge Victoria Market and strolled through Fitzroy, the city’s bohemian enclave where every other establishment on happening Brunswick Street is a café. And, of course, I ate—Malaysian Penang Curry in ethnically diverse Fitzroy, rich Italian gnocchi on Lygon Street in Carlton, the thriving Little Italy neighborhood, sizzling Turkish lamb souvlaki, and Indonesian Nasi Goreng (fried rice) in St. Kilda. It’s a good thing I was walking so much or I’d be as big as a house. Melbourne already seemed to have a friendlier, down to earth vibe that was missing in Sydney and as a former suburbanite turned city gal–I knew I was going to like this lively, colorful, and tasty town.