This weather...

... is really tricking us again and again. For the third time we postponed a Friday day-trip to a close by national park due to the weather forecast just to see the blue skies and sun all the day. Next week, we will go for sure! Here are some nice pictures from Dennis, who enjoyed a rivercruise during the week. We also went to a concert of the London Royal Philharmonic Orchestra playing Beethoven's second and third synphonie. A friend of a friend works in the Philharmony and could get tickets for free (normally $100). It was a perfect experience! We had a little box on the first level and really enjoyed the music. What a pity that the day was ruined by Alonso winning the Japanese Grand Prix later that night! ;-)

Strange feeling...

... when the plane crashed into the building on Thursday. I was sitting in my restructuring class and just saw the headline on CNN ten minutes after the plane crashed. I haven't heard about a plane crashing into a building within 5 years now and it is really strange that this happened in New York again. The first thoughts were clearly circling around terrorism and you could sense the tension and curiosness in the whole class. Nobody was listening to the professor who hadn't heard of anything. Everybody was just staring at the Laptop, clicking "refresh" every now and then to see the latest development. It was clear that it was not terror even before the class was over but nevertheless, people seemed to be very worried and sad.

Many Visitors...

... these days! Many friends paid me a visit and I am not talking about those imaginary people telling me always to buy more pizza and read cases, but real ones ;-). First, as i wrote on the blog last week, Daniel and David came over for a few days. Then Anne from Frankfurt had a stay-over with Lufthansa here in New York. And now, Dennis from Valencia is here just before Denis from North Carolina will arrive in two days. Further, the work load at NYU increased exponentially and everybody requires assignments, mid-terms and essays to be written. This week I have been to the Natural History Museum which was probably the best museum I have seen so far here in New York. The only disadvantage is its size. It is HUGE! There is no way you can read and see everything interesting within one day. I was a little bit puzzled by their extrapolation of world population growth in the next 50 years. If there numbers are right, there will be very little room for people on this planet in a cpuple of decades, when population numbers will pass 10, 20 and supposedly even 50 billion. Investments in real estate sound like a clever idea. I only saw a third of the museum and definitely have to go back soon. One very convenient fact is that they do not have a predefined entrance fee but a suggested contribution to their foundation. Theoretically you could just donate one cent to see the museum. Cheap education!

The Empire...

… State Building is where we went yesterday. We had the day off for the Jom Kippur weekend and the weather was once more beautiful for early October. So we lined up at 9:30 am at the tallest building in New York. Built in 1930 in just 14 months, the skyscraper consists of 10 million bricks, 500 miles of steel and 1,100 miles of telephone cables. The organizational flow was organized such that the steel came directly from the mill and was placed at its destiny while it was still warm. 73 elevators transport the 18,000 daily workers and 3.8 million annual tourists up the building. A weird feeling to go the first 80 floors in just one minute. It feels like a plane is starting. It takes three months for a team to clean all the windows. Though there was no students rebate, the 16 dollars were well invested! The view is amazing and all of a sudden New York seems to be much more under- standable and much smaller. We spent more than an hour up there and just then the wind started to get a little bit chilly and we started our descent. I wonder whether there is a seven summit club for the worlds highest buildings? ;-)

MoMA...

… was the program for Sunday. A little bit hangover, we lined up at the museum Sunday morning. Besides the other 2 million people who wanted to get in there at the same time, it were my two German friends, Daniel and David who went there with me. After seeing Reina Sofia, the Prado and Thyssen Bornemisza just a couple of months ago, I have to admit that the MoMA is definitely the best of the four. The “modern” is what I like about it. What is only one floor Reina Sofia, is basically the whole theme in the MoMA, the art starting in the late 19th century going until video installations and a light switch turning on and off the lights constantly. One of my favorites was definitely a tiny (real) helicopter hanging in the museum, some industrial “art” and design of the 60s and 70s and some pictures from Magritte and Klimt. For the third time, I was very, very impressed by the pictures of Yves Klein. Even though it is just monochrome blue for example, these picture seem to have so much energy! The four hours there were well invested and maybe I’ll come back here with some later visitors!

First visitors…

… Daniel and David, two of my friends from Solingen are just staying in New York for a five day short trip. They found a really cool offer putting them in a four start hotel at the cost of a youth hostel! I will spend some days with them exploring the city and talking about old times ;-). After a rainy walk to the museum, the sun came out later that day and gave us some pretty nice hours walking through Central Park, the Upper West Side and the Hudson River Park.