So here we are in New York, which Jenny and I haven't seen for 12 years but which seems much the same. Skyscrapers hustle and bustle, tiny hotel rooms, pizza, art galore, baseball, skinny women in weeny shorts, overpaid city slickers and underpaid grafters.The major change is of course the huge vacant lot where the World Trade Center used to be - and whose roof we stood on the last time we visited. Construction of the new buildings is now well under way.
Like Chicago, people from all over the world are mingling and working together. We went to the Immigration Museum on Ellis Island to learn how immigrants once applied for citizenship, the restrictions and prejudice they faced, and how they got by in this unfamiliar country. There are many sad and tragic stories. Some didn't even survive the dreadful conditions on the overcrowded boats.
To complement that, we revisited the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, which shows how typical families lived in an Orchard Street tenement at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. They had to contend with grasping landlords, contaminated food, lethal infections and uncleared refuse.
Naturally we looked in at the revamped Museum of Modern Art and the brilliant Dali exhibition, complete with some of his movies. We also had a peek at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, and Pawel Althamer's strange human figures.
But my conclusion after several days here - I prefer Chicago. It seems to be going places while New York is standing still or even going backwards. The gap between rich and poor is very visible, with ragged hobos outside opulent office blocks. Air pollution is severe as is traffic congestion. The sewers always overflow after heavy rain. It feels like a city struggling to cope with limited resources. Still a Big Apple, but a Bruised one.
Photo: Ellis Island, just south of Manhattan, where more than 12 million immigrants entered the USA.
