New York, New York

On the last weekend, I traveled to New York with three friends. The trip was wonderful. I loved New York, except for the cold. It was 4-5 degrees Fahrenheit, which is equal to -15 degrees Celsius. I have never, in my whole life, felt that cold. We visited lots of museums, places and stores, walked during the whole day and took a lots of pictures. I also saw a friend of mine that she was working there during the winter.

With the little that I could see, people weren’t, not even close, as polite and friendly as they are in Austin. At the contrary, they were very unkind to me. The first person that we met when we arrived at the airport was a woman, who was an employee at the subway. She might have not been in a good day, but she treated us extremely bad with no reasons. We didn’t know how to buy metro tickets and we just asked her to help us. She not only answered us with bad manners, but didn’t explain much about how the system worked, so we were still pretty lost.

All this shocked us because we have been in Austin for several weeks and people are just the opposite. They are very lovely, polite and sympathetic. I can say, for sure, with all the people that I got in touch, none of them have treated me so bad.

Besides she was the first person we came across in New York, there were not many differences between that woman and the rest of the people that we met, except for a few. We always felt as if we were bothering them. And, in my opinion, in such a big touristic city, as New York is, that must not happen. The funny thing, and worrying at the same time, was that we got surprised when people were kind to us. For example, a garbage collector, who asked for a photograph while he was driving the truck and we were taking pictures of the city. Another example was a hospital worker who join us in the subway. He not only explained us how to go to a museum, but he also went along with us.

I know that I’m doing a generalization and maybe I am wrong with what I am saying, but this is what happened to us.

People are always making generalizations. It can be about other people, situations, places or activities. When they talk about something specific, they tend to adjudge what they think to all the similar things. For example, how the people in one city, place or country are. They usually talk about how it is the whole community, with just knowing a few people who live there.

I think, maybe, is a cultural thing that people in Texas are more friendly that in other places, but everyone has the right to be well treated.

Despite this, the trip was amazing. Knowing all the places where lots of movies have been filmed was incredible. We have walked so many that, at the last, our feet were hurt. To say the truth, it was really worth it.