Over breakfast, I chatted with a Finnish guy named Nikko, who was also traveling alone and for pleasure. I finally got the chance to ask a real Finnish person if the coffee consumption in Finland was as extremely high as I had heard, and he confirmed it for me. And judging by the way Nikko wolfed down his unwhitened, unsweetened black stuff over breakfast, it must be true.
I arranged to meet Amir in DUMBO, the area Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass (and subject of Jerry Seinfeld’s joke: “They only added the ‘Overpass’ bit so they wouldn’t have to call it ‘DUMB’.”) Apparently it was so named in the ‘70s to deter potential developers from moving in and gentrifying. Typically, it didn’t work, and signs of development are rife, though there’s still enough of the ‘unpolished gem’ in it to remind visitors of its glory days as the backdrop for a number of hard-boiled crime films.
We ate at a popular little patisserie named Almondine then took a walk under the Manhattan Bridge through to the Brooklyn Bridge, which remains a truly impressive engineering and architectural achievement. We strolled along the waterfront to Brooklyn Heights, one of the trendier neighborhoods in New York and, according to Amir, former home to Heath Ledger and Michelle Williams. I could certainly see why an Australian might want to settle there. Its small-scale feel and pleasant, unpretentious shopping strip did recall something of home for me, though I couldn’t say exactly what.
We took the Metro north almost the entire length of Manhattan to Fort George (which took the best part of an hour) where Amir had proposed we visit The Cloisters, a collection of art and artefacts from the Middle Ages housed in an imposing purpose-built museum with medieval architectural elements, such as columns, lintels, corbels and fountains, integrated into the design.
It was yet another wonderful museum with ethically murky origins. The bulk of the collection once belonged to a man name George Grey Barnard who, according to the brochure, “purchased medieval sculpture and architectural elements primarily from French farmers and…local magistrates who had incorporated into their properties works of art abandoned in the aftermath of the French Revolution.” Not being an expert on the matter I’ll leave it at this: such articles that sat harmoniously in the Musee de Cluny in Paris sat here a little incongruously.
Still, this was a thrilling collection, more beautiful than the aforementioned Cluny, but less comprehensive. In many ways, the two complement each other: as you’d expect, many of the tapestries, altarpieces and stained glass windows are very similar. The Cluny has the Lady With the Unicorn tapestries, and the Cloisters has a collection of tapestries narrating the hunt and capture of the Unicorn. All are beautiful and it’s wonderful to have them on display in sympathetic settings anywhere in the world.
The Cloisters, as their name suggests, have something that sets them apart: a series of four cloister gardens, the most impressive of which, the Bonnefont Cloister, overlooks the Hudson River and the George Washington Bridge. In this garden are espaliered trees the likes of which I have never seen, recalling the formal design of a Jewish menorah, and 250 herb species cultivated in the Middle Ages. Like the Gardner Museum in Boston, it inspired a sacred kind of awe.
We caught the train back to Williamsburg and had a couple of quiet tequila chasers at a bar where the surly (but deceptively sweet-looking) bargirl let down her guard enough to compliment Amir on his homemade metal bracelets. Fortunately, chasing shots of tequila with pots of beer makes me love everyone, so I just kept saying how sweet she was.
We walked on through trendy Williamsburg (which evoked a tidied-up Brunswick Street) and browsed around a great DVD store. Unfortunately, the DVDs were only for hire, and neither of us was a member. Still, it gave me an opportunity to prove to Amir that many of the movies I’d made reference to during the week were real and of interest to people other than myself.
It was a longish walk to our evening meal at Moto in South Williamsburg, one of Amir’s favourite restaurants. It was packed when we arrived but the very friendly doorlady told us we could wait at the bar. Fine by me. Only fifteen or so minutes (and a couple beers) later, we had a table – clearly one of the best in a very cramped and popular joint.
The menu added trendy elements to American favourites and the prices were very reasonable. I had a great manchego for starters with delicious quince paste to help it go down. For mains (or in backwards US lingo, ‘entrée’) I had macaroni cheese (or in backwoods US lingo ‘mac and cheese’). It was described verbatim in the menu as ‘aepler macronnen: swiss alps mac and cheese with bundnerkase cheese and homemade apple sauce,’ but it was macaroni cheese. Having once declared on national television that macaroni cheese was my culinary speciality, it had a lot to live up to. It was very nice, but not as good as mine. (Note: this may be five-and-a-half weeks of restaurant dining speaking. By this stage I would have given any number of limbs for a home-cooked meal, even if I had cooked it.)
Soon the live music started up, a whimsical trio of bass, clarinet and piano accordion. It was perfectly pitched, both musically and to the mood of the restaurant. I so enjoyed it I decided to take a photo but, in my lightly inebriated state, forgot to turn off the flash and was promptly rebuked by a passing waiter.
Having gone most of my trip without ever really becoming an ugly tourist, I took this very personally. Such was my disappointment in myself at having broken the unwritten rules of my hosts, who had been nothing but welcoming, I became a little teary. Despite Amir’s reassurances that I had done nothing wrong, my angst soon combined with the after-effects of tequila and beer, and the thought that my trip was almost at an end, to sink me into a deep depression. I started saying things to Amir like, ‘I don’t know if I’ll ever feel this kind of freedom again.’ I then continued to weep silently the whole way home.
To an extent, the feeling of impending loss felt true. The trip had given me a sense of freedom and self-reliance I had never experienced, and knowing that there were only a few days left made me feel like that sense was about to die, never to be resurrected. I’d had such an atypically high number of encounters with perfection and I didn’t want them to stop.
Of course, this was totally irrational. I knew well and good that perfection was where one found it and I had plenty of it back home. And anyway, there was no reason I couldn’t attempt the same kind of trip in the future if I wanted to, and I would stay in touch with many of the great people I’d met. I had no reason to mourn them.
Whatever the reason, the feeling of loss stayed with me, albeit in a less acute form, for at least the next couple of days.
I woke on Saturday with the feeling that I just wanted to go easy on myself and get myself in order before flying out on Sunday. I ate breakfast with a Belgian couple – Sylvie and Michael – who, by the sounds of it, had been far more active than I had, even walking the length of the Brooklyn Bridge (while I just walked under it). I was in no shape to be attempting anything like that, so I resolved just to do one thing at a time.
First: my washing, which only took an hour or so at the laundromat on Flatbush. After that, I decided to take myself into Manhattan and just walk around. There was a market in Union Square, which I overheard someone say was mostly for tourists, but it was nice nonetheless, lending a small-town feel to part of a very big town. I happened to stumble across one of the biggest used CD stores in New York (okay, maybe I had checked the address before I left…) and purchased a few very cheap soundtracks. I could have bought more, but was feeling disciplined.
I walked around 14th, 15th and 16th Streets looking for some lunch and eventually settled on a pretentious-looking sushi place. I ate a bento box, and a woman with a decidedly nervous energy, dining alone, sat down next to me. She seemed keen to engage with me for some reason but waited a long time before saying anything. Finally she blurted out, “What did you order?” as if we’d already been chatting for some time. I told her it was the vegetarian bento box, which disappointed her; she wanted the chicken, so she said no more. That was it. I left.
I took the train to the Brooklyn Flea (Market) in Williamsburg, where Amir and a friend of his sold their wares on weekends. The market was housed in the lavish, re-purposed Williamsburg Savings Bank (pictured below) and was densely populated with irritating hipsters, desperate to show off just how alternative they could be. At least in Melbourne the hipsters have the decency to be a little bit cowed and gloomy. These hipsters all seemed to be laughing and having a jolly hip time. I, meanwhile, could not locate Amir for the life of me. I did about four laps of the market before I gave up and went for a walk around the shopping mall across the road – an infinitely more familiar and comforting experience, recalling the worst of Werribee Plaza, only darker and dirtier.
After one final lap of the flea market, on which I purchased some handmade chocolates for Zenobia, I resolved to sit outside in the freezing cold until closing time, assuming Amir would materialise, but he didn’t. My hands and face thoroughly benumbed, I headed home to check my email and found an angry (well, mock-angry) message from Amir wondering where I had gotten to. He had headed home early from the market feeling tired and exhausted. We arranged to meet up for a final dinner and were dining a short time later in Park Slope, only one station away from my B&B.
We chose a very nice Thai restaurant called Long Tan. One of the offerings on the menu was a kangaroo teriyaki salad, which Amir was very keen to try, but the friendly waitress told us they’d had some trouble getting the kangaroo in that week. Fortunately, the green papaya salad was sensational – crisp and tangy – and the satays were great. For mains we had a juicy, tender pan-seared duck breast with tamarind sauce, and downed it all with a fantastic South African Chardonnay. It was a great last New York meal, and I managed to just relax and enjoy it.
We headed to a nearby bar and I upset the doorman by trying to enter without offering my ID. Amir graciously explained that I was from Australia and the situation was defused, but I couldn’t help remarking inside on just how ridiculous it was that I should need to be asked for ID when Blind Freddy could tell you I’m over 21. Amir ordered some closing night Scotches for us, and we took up pole positions at one end of the boules court (?!). I tried to finish my Scotch but it was wasted on me, and I didn’t want to drink too much anyway, knowing I would have to navigate JFK Airport the next day (a decision that ultimately paid off). Amir was very good about it.
He walked me back to the station and we said our farewells. The last five days had been so much fun, and we’d developed such a bond that it was hard to say goodbye. He had been my compass, my personal assistant, my tour guide, my stylist, my drinking buddy, my confidante, and a kindred spirit in what could otherwise have been an alienating town. I knew I had made a friend for life, and I just tried to be grateful for it.
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