about an Austrian living in NY City
Archive for April, 2008
my walk to work
Apr 23rd
When it is so sunny and warm outside like the last couple of days, I really enjoy my 20 minutes walk to the office in the morning from the LES through China town down to downtown. There is always a lot to see like the Asians doing their morning work out like Thai Chi in the park near my place, people waiting on the shuttle buses out of town and couples kissing under the blooming trees in City Hall Park. Yes, Spring is here! (and all the wonderful feeling it brings with it) 
Queens: Flushing Meadows and Tea House
Apr 20th
I spent another day in Queens today and since Max was complaining that I didn’t take a picture of the only known place of Flushing back in Europe, the US open tennis court called “Billie Jean King National Tennis Center”, I went there today. And here you go:
First you can see a picture of a couple of parked subways (those trains are really long if you ask me) with the Tennis Stadium in the back. And to prove that I was really there it’s me in front of the sign 
Those are some pictures taken in the park in front of the Tennis court and you can see on the flowers that it’s already spring in NYC
After the walk in the park we went to a nice Taiwanese Tea House called Rose House and I have to say that I had one of my best teas ever there. Ellen had fruit tea and I got some nice English Peach tea with milk. If you ever are going to Flushing this is a must to visit.
Walk over Brooklyn Bridge
Apr 19th
This afternoon I used the nice spring day (sunny and 25 degrees C) to walk along East River down to South Street Seeport and then walk over Brooklyn Bridge. Next week it will get a year – yeah, time flies – since I have moved over to NYC but I’ve never walked across the Brooklyn Bridge before. And I have to say it is a nice and surprisingly short walk and definitely worth for everyone who wants to get a nice view on Manhattan, Brooklyn, Manhattan Bridge and East River.
First some pictures of Brooklyn Bridge and South Street Seeport:
Obviously I wasn’t the only one who used the nice weather to walk over Brooklyn Bridge:
Downtown as seen from Brooklyn Bridge and Manhattan Bridge, my neighborhood LES and view on Midtown:
And here is the view on Brooklyn Bridge from the Brooklyn side:
And last but not least a picture of Manhattan Bridge where I walk by every day on my way to work and one from Lower East Side taken not far from my spot:
Playstation 3
Apr 17th
Finally I got it. After Toshiba made the decision to discontinue their HD DVD program it was just a matter of time for me until I’ll buy a PS3. For me its more for watching Blue Ray movies and utilizing my big TV but I have to admit that I couldn’t resist to buy Gran Tursimo Prologue 5. I have played the predecessors on my PS2 and the way to drive hasn’t changed much in their new version. The physic engine of Polyphony seems to be pretty much the same as in GT4 but the graphics of this game are amazing…..WOW!
I was also watching 2 Blue Ray movies yesterday and had to experience that HD isn’t always HD. The first movie I tried to watch was “300” but it looked more like the normal DVD version blown up to HD and the quality of the picture wasn’t that good. But then I tried the Blue Ray version of “The 5th Element” and this movie was much better and had sharp high quality pictures. Now my big TV really makes sense
Sunday in Queens
Apr 16th
Last Sunday I took a long train ride to Queens (the part is called Flushing) and spent the whole day there drinking my first “bubble tea” and eating my first frozen yogurt from Pinkberry. Bubble tea or also called “boba” is originated in Taiwan and is some nice sweetened hot tea with milk and jellies and tasted pretty good. When you first try bubble tea it is kind of weird because you drink it with a straw and the little gummy balls come through the straw and you have to try not to swallow them. It’s definitely nothing for children. Also the frozen yogurt was pretty awesome, I got it with mangoes and raspberries. Here is a picture of it:
Walking around in Flushing there is not much to see except a Macy’s and some other stores. Here is how the main street looks like:
And this is what you can get in Queens: win the big bucks and have a beer
For the way back from Queens we took the shuttle bus (run by Chinese) which was a much easier and faster ride than with the train and the nice part of it is that it directly stops in Lower East Side near my place.
Mir kaunst nu a Weissbier bringa!
Apr 11th
You could use the above sentence at the German place I’ve been yesterday to order more beer as all the waiters there are Germans and will understand what you’re saying. Since it has been such a nice sunny day yesterday (75 F/24 C) we decided to hit a beer garden in East Village and went to “Zum Schneider” which is a nice Bavarian Biergarten. For me it was a nice one hour walk to get there from the office and I met up there with 2 beautiful girls. Beer (”Hofbraeuhaus Lager”) and Weisswurst were really tasting great and I bet this will be one of the places to go with visitors coming over from Europe. Whenever you are in the city and you like German beer and food you should check out this spot. For myself I can’t await to go there again.
This is how it looks inside:
Weisswurst, Brezen and Beer mmmhhmmm
too much beer obviously
This entry is for you, Jockel, as you were asking for more entries about pubs/bars/diners/restaurants
to all my readers out there
Apr 8th
Looking at the access statistic of my blog I can see that there are a lot of continuous readers out there and with this entry I want to say thank you for your interest, for your support and for your comments. There are readers all over the world but most of them are from my home country Austria of course. Being back there for the last two weeks and talking to my family and friends I recognized that there are a lot more different kinds of people interested in what I have to write than I thought there would be. For example my parents told me that even friends of them are reading my blog and I never would have imagined that.
My blog is now already over one year old and I’ve always treated it like my personal diary but of course not to personal since it is public. It is fun to write about experiences and your daily life in a different country and it’s also interesting for yourself to go through the history and read what you’ve done for the last couple of months.
I think it is about time now to ask my dear readers what they like and don’t like about my blog and what kind of stories YOU would be interested in. Let me know what you would like to read about in one of the next entries! Just post a comment to this entry (don’t be afraid ) or send me an email to pumstigoesnyc@gmail.com
on my way back to NYC
Apr 6th
My short visit to Austria is over and I’m currently sitting at the airport in Vienna waiting on my connection flight to JFK. It did good to meet with family and friends and I want to thank you all for our nice chats, for your support and for your time. It feels good to know that there is still someone left in my home country that cares about me and is there whenever I need someone to talk to. This is unfortunately nothing you can take for granted as due to the long distance it is tough to keep up friendships. Of course using current technologies it became much easier but it is still harder to keep up contact. Although I’m happy to go back to NYC (I feel already kind of homesick) I’m looking forward to coming back to Austria and meet up with all of you again and some of you I’ll see in NYC this year anyways