My first encounter with New York came at the most enchanting time of year, during Advent. I have long been convinced that Americans invented Christmas as we know it today: bright and cheerful, shimmering with lights, alive with the rustle of wrapping paper, the frenzy of festive shopping, and countless variations of Christmas songs. That Advent, I flew straight into the very heart of this fairy tale and was forever infected by its angelic vibrations.
First Arrival in the City at Christmas
I landed in the early evening on a December day at John F. Kennedy Airport, and memories of my previous arrival on American soil came flooding back. In Chicago, I had found myself in a dimly lit hall, standing in endless queues, listening to the commanding voice of a policewoman barking orders to line up at once. Then, as now, I was gripped by the same fear: that something might go wrong and I would be sent straight back home. That anxiety was fuelled not only by earlier visa refusals, but also by the iconic scene from The Godfather in which young Vito is marked with chalk and detained in quarantine before being allowed to step onto the soil of the New World.
None of that happened. Cheerful immigration officers asked light-hearted questions and waved me through with a warm “Welcome” to the city that never sleeps. My delight was boundless. As my stay was short, there was no time for experimentation, so I took a taxi directly from the airport to Manhattan. New York taxis operate on a flat fare of around seventy dollars, and if the traffic behaves itself, in just under an hour you find yourself at the very centre of the world. A blessed jet lag kept me alert and buoyant even after the exhausting nine-hour flight, and once I had dropped my belongings in my room at The Frederick Hotel in Tribeca, I went straight back out into the clamour of the city. It was seven in the evening, there was no snow, and the air was sharp with cold. More than once that winter, some higher power seemed to guide me in the right direction, even when I was convinced I was wandering without purpose.
Of Bookshops, Food, and Small Urban Sanctuaries
My steps led me past a Whole Foods store, a place where, for a relatively modest sum, one can find a decent, hot and healthy meal. This proved to be useful information for the days ahead, for it is unwise to be struck by “monstrous hunger” in the middle of Fifth Avenue, where even a light meal can cost a small fortune. On the same block there once stood my favourite bookshop, Barnes & Noble, which closed in 2014, much to my sorrow. I first discovered this bookshop on a visit to Chicago and had been looking forward to returning to it in New York. Sadly, it had vanished from this address near my hotel. There are, however, still three branches on Manhattan, and I resolved to visit at least one of them in the days to come. In these havens, a passing traveller can drink coffee, eat cake and lose themselves in an endless sea of titles, sustaining the comforting illusion that publishing has not, after all, collapsed.
The nearest branch lies north of Union Square on East 17th Street and remains open until nine in the evening, so I decide that the journey can wait. Instead, I opt for a short walk towards the western edge of Manhattan, facing New Jersey. After just five minutes along Warren Street, I reach the Hudson River. I breathe in the cold New York smog by the riverbank and, with a gentle glance to the left, catch sight of a glowing torch in the distance…
The First Gift of the Big Apple
For someone who has not spent a lifetime dreaming, even fleetingly, of coming to America, the moment of encountering the Statue of Liberty may mean very little. For me, however, the Statue is a symbol of a utopia I dreamed of throughout almost my entire youth, perhaps because relatives arrived from that land of “unlimited possibilities” bearing stories of their own successes. Naturally, adulthood has stripped away much of that illusion, but some inscriptions on the heart are difficult to erase. Standing there on the banks of the Hudson, on American soil for the second time, I felt for the first time that I had truly arrived where I was meant to be.
A friend back home in Europe had advised me not to waste time visiting the Statue of Liberty: the ticket is expensive, the queues interminable, an entire day is lost, and my stay was short. I had written off the idea, convinced I would see the Statue on another occasion. Yet that December evening, my very first in the Big Apple, immediately unwrapped its first gift. Filled with a sense of blessing, with the feeling that someone or something was accompanying me, with a strange energy, vibration and rhythm, I returned to the hotel and slept the sleep of the just.
Finding Rhythm in the New York Subway
The second day was reserved for the unavoidable highlights of the journey. The red subway line, number 1, a cult setting in countless crime dramas, carried me north, uptown. Its rhythm, thundering past steel pillars, felt oddly familiar, as though the entire city pulsed in time with it. I had heard it in the opening credits of the once popular series NYPD Blue, and in many other films besides. I stepped off to that rhythm three stops before the maddest square in the world, Times Square, delaying my entry into its adrenaline-fuelled chaos just a little longer.
Here, on West 28th Street, I once again attempt to work out where east and west lie. It is curious that I find my way easily in cities all over the world, except American ones, where I regularly get everything wrong. Still, New York is a city ruled by man, as Hercule Poirot once observed, and its right-angled, neatly numbered streets make navigation mercifully straightforward. What I am searching for, once again, is a postcard from the parallel world of my memories. Stored there are countless images from films I have watched. Now it feels as though I am stepping onto their sets, and at every corner I half expect to see Audrey Hepburn, Al Pacino, Meg Ryan, or the amazing Sarah Jessica Parker.
Rizzoli, Christmas Music, and the Spirit of the City
One of the most beautiful love stories committed to film in 1984, Falling in Love, left us with a memorable scene of Robert De Niro and Meryl Streep meeting in the Rizzoli bookshop just before Christmas. It lies only a few blocks away, at the junction of Broadway and 26th Street, and is truly a special place. Its classical façade gives way to an elegant interior, vaulted with arches and crowned by lavish chandeliers that softly illuminate shelves of exquisitely crafted, carved wood. The shop specialises in monographs and books on architecture, design, fashion and photography, and is refreshingly free of what we like to call “pulp fiction”. The upper floor also houses sound recordings, and here I manage to find a handful of audio CDs I was convinced no longer existed.
As for music, Christmas songs play everywhere: in bookshops, shops and cafés alike. What amazed me during those days was the sheer number of different versions of old favourites, alongside countless new compositions. It may sound unbelievable, but not a single song was repeated over the course of six days. And I did not hear “Last Christmas” even once. As I have already suggested, the Christmas we celebrate today is very much an American export.
I confess to having two great weaknesses. One I have already admitted to: bookshops. The other is cathedrals. I shamelessly step into every church of every denomination wherever I am allowed. I adore the stillness of cathedrals, their architecture, the small niches where candles burn before the saints. This, too, is part of a culture deeply embedded in me, much like the dream of life in America itself, or the idea of owning my own bookshop – a world that no longer exists, that is fading away, or perhaps never existed in the form I imagined. That Advent, however, for a few fleeting days, it was entirely alive before me, in all its colours and lights, sustained by the good vibrations of countless enthusiastic people who had brought their hearts with them to New York.
Once you walk those streets, if you are even slightly sensitive and have not embraced the fashionable avant-garde European stance that everything American is inherently worthless, you cannot help but feel that surge of goodwill and positive energy. The day was filled with precisely such impressions: books, churches, small shops brimming with charming trinkets, a coffee here, a slice of cake there…
Times Square, Angels, and the Energy of New York
And then, in the evening, around seven, the great moment arrives. I emerge onto Times Square. A place ablaze with thousands of illuminated advertisements, most of them promoting the Broadway musicals playing nearby. Close at hand is the tourist centre, where visitors can write their wishes on colourful slips of paper. On New Year’s Eve, millions of these papers flutter across the square at the exact moment the ball drops and midnight strikes. Millions of wishes – what an extraordinary concentration of energy. I write mine down and, buoyed by a childlike hope that it might somehow matter, step back out and push my way through the dense crowd of tourists: clicking cameras, shouting, singing, rushing, or simply standing frozen in disbelief. I feel like dancing.
After a good forty-five minutes, I finally manage to tear myself away from this matrix, afraid that the lights might hypnotise me and send me running down 47th Street towards Sixth, then Fifth Avenue. I turn left. There is no need to get my bearings; the river of people flows in that direction. If I were filming a movie – and those days truly felt like moving through scenes from countless films – I would now switch to slow motion, letting only the sound of my heart be heard, beating in time with the subway. Five more steps, two more, one more… there they are. Angels.
Twelve angels made of wire, decorated with lights and holding raised trumpets, have adorned the space in front of Rockefeller Center every Christmas since 1954. They were created by the sculptor Valerie Clarebout. Yet they are more than mere wire angels. All the energy gathered around them – the astonished gazes, the music, the night hinting at a few snowflakes – forms part of a larger whole, a great sphere of energy filled solely with delight, joy, love, sighs and smiles.
This was an evening steeped in rapture, and I imagine everyone around me was thinking much the same as I was: what happens in New York stays in New York. Overwhelmed, I could easily have shed a tear; tomorrow, I would tell everyone back home that I had been perfectly cool, a proper tourist of intellectual, left-wing pedigree, immune to capitalist and consumerist temptations. Incidentally, nothing here costs a penny. You simply stand before the angels and may remain there for as long as you wish. And if you do stay all night, others will stay too; there is no moment when the place is deserted. Here, the city truly never sleeps. And how could it, confronted with such a sight?
Once again, fearful that the dream might claim me entirely, I wrench myself away with great effort from the magnetic spectacle and move on. Directly opposite, on the other side of the street, stands the department store Saks, itself a bearer of Christmas tradition. Its window displays always tell a story, and people queue patiently to approach them, then wander slowly from window to window, reading this year’s snowy fairy tale.
Silence and Sacred Moments in St Patrick’s Cathedral
A little further along Fifth Avenue, hemmed in by tall steel-and-glass buildings, rises a neo-Gothic structure, like a remnant of some long-vanished civilisation: St Patrick’s Cathedral, built at the end of the nineteenth century. True to my habit of slipping into churches wherever possible, I seek refuge here too from the noise of the city. Once again, I have the sense that some higher power has guided me. For at that very moment, a concert is taking place inside: a young woman with a guitar, seemingly of Latin American origin, whose astonishingly pure, crystalline voice echoes through the cathedral, rising all the way to the highest reaches of the vaults. People stand utterly still, held by the beauty of the sound. That is not something one experiences every day. Only once before had I “frozen” in such a way, and that was at a concert by Teresa Salgueiro. There is only one conclusion to draw: this evening is sacred. It has remained so in my heart to this day. I feel that I will forever be infected by the belief that angels are always present, helping and guiding me through life.
Why New York Always Calls You Back
I would visit Fifth Avenue once more during my stay in New York, this time by day, harbouring the hope of seeing one more angel – Audrey – perhaps catching her eating a doughnut and drinking coffee, impeccably elegant as ever, hair in a bun, in front of Tiffany’s window.
A child who knew neither colour cartoons nor lavish dolls or gadgets, for whom the height of Christmas indulgence was a jute sack filled with walnuts, mandarins and sweets, now adorned her memories with opulent Christmases – all in that parallel world of dreams which is, in truth, the only real one – while watching the Christmas Spectacular at Radio City Hall. There, I swear, presents flew through the air, and countless tin soldiers, princesses and Santas danced as one.
My departure from New York resembled the tantrum of a child being dragged away from a fairground. Fortunately, New York has no fountain into which you must throw a coin in order to return; instead, it casually and persistently calls you back. And you do return, again and again and again.