Tourists
inundate New York Apple stores: The upside of a weak dollar.
Die Zeit, Germany
'Poor' Germans
Invade New York
"New York has been overrun by
German tourists stocking up on the essentials of survival: Levi jeans,
Abercrombie & Fitch T-shirts, North Face jackets, Nike sneakers and iPods. Above all iPods. And MacBooks. ... Sometimes I wonderwhat New Yorkers must think when they see
hordes of Europeans at Apple and Abercrombie & Fitch?
Thrilled, I think not."
German tourists are
flocking to the Big Apple - but it's another Apple they're really
interested in ...
Those who,
like me, live far from our homeland, enjoy reading German newspapers to learn
of what's happening at home.
There it seems, a wave of poverty has erupted. This didn't really surprise me
since New York has been overrun by German tourists stocking up on the
essentials of survival: Levi Jeans, Abercrombie & Fitch T-Shirts, North
Face jackets, Nike sneakers and iPods. Above all iPods. And MacBooks.
MacBooks and iPods are paid
for in dollars here, whereas in Germany one pays more in euros, so Apple stores
have had to extend their hours. Apple has four stores in Manhattan, and they
are besieged by tourists like Troy by the Greeks or, for younger readers, like
the planet Coruscant by the powers of the Dark Side
[from Star Wars ]. And of course
there aren't only Germans, but Swiss, French, Italians and Scandinavians as
well.
Recently I had to spend
half an hour at the check-out at Apple's SoHo store
just to pay for my headphones - this is the impact that Germany's grinding
poverty has had on me. This has made it increasingly difficult to sell stories
of everyday New York life to German newspapers, since editors aren't interested
in reading accounts of how Bose headphones are three times as expensive as
those from Sony, despite being much better, or that fresh lobster is best
purchased on Grand Street.
To be sure, tourism from
overseas has dropped in spite of a dollar that - if the German mark [Deutsche
Mark] still existed - would be worth 1.27 Deutsche Mark. But that doesn't apply
to New York. About 40 million tourists a year visit the city - a fifth of them
from overseas. According to our mayor Michael Bloomberg, this is because New
York is tolerant and cosmopolitan and not xenophobic, unlike for example, Utah.
He doesn't say this of course, he only thinks it.
I
believe that Apple stores play a major role in this. Although the tourists, at
least the German ones, don't only go shopping. They saunter up and down
Broadway, walk across the Brooklyn Bridge, sit in Central Park and populate the
Metropolitan Museum. Recently I met two tourists at a lecture on urban planning
at a tiny gallery in Chinatown owned by the Goethe Institute. Tourists! They were here for three
weeks and didn't want to limit themselves to the usual sights. I sent them to
the Bronx, to Arthur Avenue, where Robert de Niro's
mafia movie A Bronx Tale was filmed.
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Mind you, even the Bronx
is safe for tourists - the worst that could happen there would be to receive a
$300-fine for littering the street or drinking beer in public. But most
tourists want of course to see Manhattan - Greenwich Village, where Carrie,
Miranda, Charlotte and Samantha buy their ManoloBlahnik's [shoes ]
and have lunch. At the weekend I was at the Magnolia Café in the Village, where
the four friends from Sex and the City eat their cupcakes. The line of
people outside was about half a block long. And many spoke German.
The transport of goods
also goes in the opposite direction by the way; those who live here and commute
to Germany are only too happy to bring back Chocolate, Champagne, coffee
filters, tampons and detergent. Genuine Swabian
housewives like myselftend to
haul even their towels back to Germany twice a year because there we have real
washing machines. Plenty of Germans live in New York and work for companies like
Bertelsmann, Dow Jones or Mercedes. Some start their own companies or work as
journalists, while others work at universities or the Goethe Institute .
The Count of Tilly,
Johann Tserclaes: Commanded Imperial and Holy Roman Empire forces in the
Thirty Years' War. He and his forces laid siege to the hapless city of
Magdeburg in 1631.
Some of them live legally in
the comfort zone of the German welfare system, similar to an American who, as
head of Coca-Cola, moves to Abu Dhabi: Some are still paid in euros, while
others live in New York on dollars just like the locals. What unites them all
though, is their disapproval of Germany's culture of whining on the one hand,
and astonishment over America's complete lack of a social safety net on the
other. A beneficiary onHartz-IV[a German welfare benefit, in part for rent ] receives more
than a New Yorker living on minimum wage, whereas rents are three times as
high. But despite this, it sometimes sounds as if Germany stands close to the
famine of the Thirty Years' War [1618 to
1648], during the siege of the
[Count] of Tilly at Magdeburg (for our younger readers, imagine Homer
Simpson running out of his pizza supply).
Posted by WORLDMEETS.US
However, it's not unusual for
a New Yorker to barely manage to get his or her salary to last to the end of
the month - the next paycheck arriving just before the three day grace period
on their banking accounts expire, and two weeks before all of their credit
cards are maxed-out. Six weeks of annual leave; parental leave and paid sick
leave are unknown here.
Sometimes I wonder about what
they may be thinking when they see hordes of European tourists at Apple and
Abercrombie & Fitch? Thrilled, I think not. Perhaps tourism may not always
result in better understanding - despite what Michael Bloomberg would like to
believe.
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