Author: Jalo

On this exact day, two months ago, I  did……… nothing. Because it didn’t exist. But the two days before, I spent with an amazing – but far from complete – sightseeing stroll through the city, full of innocent excitement and positivity for the time to come. Now, two months into this adventure, I realized that even living in New York City has its ups and downs. But the fact that I am writing this article while relaxing on the grass of sunny Central Park (pen on paper, later typed) shows that overall it is a great oppurtunity for me.

Without further ado, let me report to you, what I learned in these 62 days:

The US (architectural) working culture differs a lot from the European

This might have been the biggest one of the “downs” on the list. Though experiencing this also was the reason why I started this journey in the first place. Working hours here are just insane. During the week I don’t have any free minute. I basically work from getting up to going to bed. And then, on the weekends, I am out of energy, so that apart from cleaning chores and grocery shopping I hardly achieve anything. But it’s getting better a bit now and I’m starting to adapt to this lifestyle. I will talk about this issue in greater detail in another article soon.

It is really hard to meet new people (but not impossible)

In Helsinki I was lucky to have a lot of fellow interns and colleagues with similar ages and interests like me. That’s not the case here. Which resulted in some lonely evenings. I guess many people have been in a comparable situation in a new city. But I learned that you have to get out of your comfort zone from time to time and talk to people. Starting to share NYC moments with new friends is making this experience even better!

I need to do more weekend-trips

Three weeks ago I spontaneously took a bus and travelled to Washington DC (and still didn’t manage to finish the blog article about this – sorry!). It truly is an interesting (beautiful ?!) city and it was an  amazing trip! An article about it will follow – hopefully soon.

Visitors are very welcome

Like in Helsinki, my family used my internship here as an excuse to do a New York vacation. Also two friends of mine happened to have passed by here already. Sharing time with them brightened up the little free time I’ve had besides work. Also this way I was able to cross out many points from the sightseeing to-do list together with them.

Sometimes what it needs is a “Tapetenwechsel” (change of scenery)

I had booked my room here from Germany already. It is nicely located, but over my budget. Though that wasn’t the only thing bothering me about it. Over time I just felt like that isn’t the place where I want to stay for 6 months. I hesitated, but then went back to online searching and found myself a new room, to which I will move tomorrow already as a start of a new chapter. Unfortunately I can only stay there for two months, but I’m optimistic that I will find another place after that time. It’s a chance to get to know about another part of the city.

All in all I am enjoying my time here. As you can see, there are more ups than down-moments. And I will continue working on turning all the new downs into ups as well. And an open-eyed walk through a new area of this urban bag of surprises makes up for everything else!

One of the biggest ups was receiving a confirmation for the next stop of this journey. Stay tuned to read soon where that will be…

Two weeks ago today, at this exact time, I was sitting on an airplane somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean, anticipating an exciting new adventure. Now I have already dived into it entirely. On Friday my boss asked me “When did you start again?”, and after telling him he replied: “Man, it feels like 2 days ago!”. I could not agree more.

As I showed you in the pictures, I have already done a lot of sightseeing, but there is so much more left! I already feel like I don’t have enough time. But this article shall not focus on sightseeing, but on the new experiences and little things that I have noticed.

They use feet and inch!

Of course I knew that, but before starting to work here, I had never reflected on how much this would affect me. As an architect, basically all you do is typing dimensions into a CAD-program. Boy, I had a hard time on the first day, and I still have! What kind of system is this, where 5’6 and 5.5 are exactly the same? And how much is actually 1/32 ?

The New York grid is clever!

As a European I am not used to numbered streets, so I never took a closer look at New York’s  system of naming streets. But after doing so, it is super easy to navigate yourself through the city without a map – brilliant! (Just sometimes when you’re deep in your thoughts, you blindly walk out of a subway station and go several blocks and maybe even do the turns you needed to do, before you realize that you started completely in the wrong direction and have to go all the way back)

US toilets are terrible!

I don’t know how to explain this without disgusting anybody. But not only that most toilets here seem to be children-sized, they’re also gross. Who’s idea was it to fill them up entirely with water? I won’t say more, just look at Bart’s and Lisa’s bathroom product race here, and imagine the rest:

Groceries are super expensive!

…or maybe they’re just cheap in Germany. I went to buy a loaf of bread, some bananas, one package of turkey slices and another one of cheese and I paid 18,50$! That’s double the German price and even more than it was in Finland. A package of “product of ham and water” with 35% added ingredients, basically the cheapest stuff they have, still costs 2$. For 2€ you can already find great “Schwarzwälder Schinken” in Germany – without added water at all.

The customer service isn’t as good as it’s praised!

With all the political and social problems they have, when there is one positive thing that Europeans have in mind about the US, then it is the great customer service. Well… during my short time here, I came across employees who were rude to me, rushed me or didn’t take me serious. When my SIM card wouldn’t activate I waited for over 20min in a hotline until I gave up without being attended at all. Of course, in other situations I have also been spilled with the US-stereotypic exagerated kindness. I would say, it is how it is everywhere: Some employees do great service, others don’t.

The weather here is crazy!

I am a person who just can’t be bothered to check the weather forecast. I simply dress for the weather of yesterday, it’ll do. Bad mistake here. New York City is definitely not the place to do that. One day we could go for lunch in a shirt, the next day I leave the house and it is SNOWING! I didn’t trust my eyes. The temperature dropped from over 15°C (that’s around “go google it yourself” in Fahrenheit) to under 0°C (“another random number that totally gives no sense at all” Fahrenheit).

This is it for today – hopefully this list of insignifant details didn’t bore anybody. I am still really enjoying my time here and I’m sure I will come back soon to report even more. Until then: Have a good one!

On Sunday evening, I have finally arrived in New York City, but I still can’t believe that I will actually be living here for half a year! It simply feels like being on vacation.

But let’s start from the beginning:

The night before leaving Germany, I didn’t get much sleep. It was the birthday of a friend of mine and I hadn’t finished packing before. So when I walked downstairs to the bus stop at 8:30 in the morning, I was excited and tired at the same time. Unfortunately the journey took longer than expected due to a snow storm in Iceland (“A snow storm in Iceland??? How does this affect a flight to New York?”, you might wonder… Well, I took a cheap flight with a budget airline from Iceland, resulting in a layover in Reykjavík. So a snow storm in Iceland in fact had a huge influence on my schedule, as it delayed every single of their flights that day), but after 19 exhausting hours of travelling, I could finally sit down on my very own comfortable bed in New York City and relax.

The next two days I still had free time, as my internship starts on March 1st. I used this time to do some sightseeing: I’ve been to the Central Park, visited the 9/11 Memorial, the Freedom Tower and the Oculus station, watched the Statue of Liberty from the Battery Park, walked over the Brooklyn Bridge, strolled over Times Square and along the High Line Park. Meanwhile I saw starchitecture from Santiago Calatrava, Zaha Hadid, Jean Nouvel, Frank Gehry, Norman Foster and Sanaa, but also so many more beautiful buildings.

So these two days I essentially did the “basic-tourist-program”, including having my camera out, snapping every single thing, and keeping my head up towards the sky(scrapers) the whole time. But from time to time I had a silly smile one my face when that one thought stroke me again, and I had to tell myself once more, what I still can’t believe: “You will be LIVING here!” (Maybe, I am over-dramatizing this, but I have always been a fan of NYC, but had never been here. So this is actually a huge thing to me.)

Today I have also passed by the office where I will be working the next couple of months and I met my colleagues and my boss. They are super-kind and I am looking forward to joining them tomorrow.