HUBBERS DOT COM BLOG

In America my name is Kyle. A typical exchange goes like this:

YANK: Name please?

CARL: Carl.

YANK: Kyle?CARL: No, Carl.

YANK: Kyle??

CARL: C A R L

YANK: K Y L E ???

KYLE: Yes Kyle that’s right.

One night we went to the original Hoffbrau Haus in – wait for it – Cincinnati. It was a reasonable copy of the one in Munchen. Because I was on my best behaviour I only had one beer with dinner. Thankfully that one beer came in a 1 litre stein just like at Oktoberfest.

We also visited a chain called Fudruckers where I demolished a one pound ‘works burger’. Was so meatyliscious that I even had mad man meat dreams later on that I was being chased by an Indian web developer.

One of my colleagues has a puppy that goes to ‘puppy crèche’ every day while she is at work. The day after I left Dayton she had to take it to a dog psychologist because it suffers from ‘separation anxiety’ and ‘floor phobias’.

Here is something that will surprise you all. American’s are far politer than the English. Let me clarify that so there is no confusion. The people I met in New York and Ohio were on the whole considerably more polite that the people I meet every day in London. Everywhere I went people often said things that you almost never hear in the UK like ‘thank you’, ‘excuse me’ and ‘sorry’. People in shops and restaurants (many who don’t receive tips) often smiled at me when they said hello. Maybe they are just afraid of being shot as one cynical friend pointed out or maybe common every day politeness to strangers is still alive and well in American culture. Good for them.

I’m not knocking the English but personally I think it is a sign of a poor mental state of a society when the accepted behaviour after kicking a six foot four skinhead is to sneer at him.

Flew out for another Friday night in NY. A stewardess who could barely fit down the isle said to me “snack bastard”. After briefly wondering ‘but how does she know’ she gave me a snack basket. The snack basket may have only had three or four mouthfuls of food but it had more calories than a wedding in Somalia.

Today we walked from 32nd street to 92nd street right up through Central Park. One of the coolest places for cool kids to get some threads in NY is Abercrombie and Fitch on 5th Avenue. This shop had a louder sound system than most clubs and is a place where the impossibly good looking sell clothes to the improbably good looking. Against all the odds I actually managed to get some combat pants.

Nu Yoik is great. Well I say Nu Yoik but I really mean Manhattan Island where Central Perk is. The streets are laid out in a grid system that makes it very easy to find your way around. My hotel is on 32nd street which is roughly 32 streets up from the bottom of Manhattan Island where Mike and I walked this morning. On the way I saw, Ground Zero, the Wall Street bull and had a bagel.

We caught the ferry to Liberty Island where the Statue of Liberty is and then to Ellis Island where 13 million immigrants first arrived in the US of A looking for a better life. The Ellis Island audio tour is one of the best I have ever done and has recorded recollections of actual immigrants who made the long journey often wearing everything they owned in the world.

I have to say that BA are loads better than AA and that is even before I found a whole case of Red Wine bottles left unattended by the toilets. Got into Nu Yoik in time for a big fat steak and some wine and Smith and Wilenskis. Left clutching stomach and crashed early after a couple more beers.

The good news is that in the next two months I am going to York, New York (which used to be called New Amsterdam) and Amsterdam. If only Amsterdam was once called New Kiev and Kiev was once called New Ohio all my travel would be linked by their names.

The bad news is that I am moving out of my flash South London flat as our lease is up and my flatmates want to find somewhere cheaper. So if anyone knows of a really sheltered bridge somewhere near a cardboard box factory please drop me a line.