Atlanta, New York & Philadelphia
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November 3-14, 2005, the United States
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| While I have been to New York many times by now, there are numerous sights that I have not seen yet. However, now I can finally cross Colombia University off my list. Ranked as one of the best universities in the United States, studying in the middle of New York City must be an extraordinary experience. Now, if only I can convince the admission fools to let me in, I am willing to study just about anything. | Another place I had not been in New York was Harlem, and on the way there I randomly stumbled across this pair of abandoned high heels in a park. Tokyo is an interesting city in many ways, but New York is definitively more of a madhouse. I would love to find out why someone would place a pair of shoes in some park stairs, but I am sure there is an interesting story behind it. |
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| I did not take any good pictures in Harlem. Instead, here is a picture of Dan's care with a flat tire on the New Jersey Turnpike. Some people in cars passing stuck their heads out and pointed at our vehicle while making scary faces, thus we quickly realized that something was wrong. We had to wait a few hours before getting help to replace the tire. That, of course, made us feel very masculine. | In Philadelphia, I joined homecoming at the University of Pennsylvania. While I met up with my good wanna-be Indian friend Ireen, I could not really recognize anyone from my exchange year at Penn. One sign of progress was that the new Wharton business school building has escalators, thus the aspiring investment banking students do not need to walk up staircases anymore. |
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| After one night in Philadelphia, I returned back to New York for a night out with my friends from years gone by. Earlier in the evening, I met with some other friends for dinner, then Adam took me out clubbing in some club downtown. Dancing with Adam in the above picture are former Sophia exchange students Ted and Tanya. | At this club, I was also to smoke hookah, a kind of Middle-Eastern water pipe. It did not make me want to go suicide bombing, but it was an interesting experience anyway. Apart from that, I was yet again able to confirm that New York is a great city to party in. I will definitely try to make it a tradition to visit New York at least once a year. |
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| After staying on the east cost for three days, I traveled on to Atlanta, Georgia. I stayed in Stone Mountain Park for a few days, which main attraction is Stone Mountain, the world's largest exposed piece of granite. Only 513 meters high, it is more of a rock than it is a mountain, but it still provides for amazing sunrises as the surrounding area is virtually flat. | Granite quarrying took place on the mountain for a long time, and Wikipedia interestingly informs that granite from the Stone Mountain was used to build the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. The world's largest bas-relief (a method of sculpting which entails carving or etching away the surface of a flat piece of stone or metal) is found on the north face of the Stone Mountain, more on this in part 2. |