After a few seconds of momentary shock, I understood that she isn’t an Israeli cop and I told her that we are brothers. “In that case, you can beat him all day,” she answered immediately.
It is probably not the treatment an Israeli will receive from average Israeli cop, but when you are in the United States of America, all the rules are changing.
We arrived at the train station, the mall, the museum, and nobody searches in your bag. What happened in this place? Since when does my bag have privacy? Instead of digging in my personal stuff, the cops in America just laugh all day and issue me an official confirmation to slap my brother’s neck. It is just inconceivable for the average Israeli.
After a few days of adaptation, I caught on to the trick and I understood the cop’s real job in the big city is to direct me to the nearest McDonald’s dollar menu.
We enter McDonald’s and look right on—at what else—the dollar menu. Why the dollar menu? Because, we are Israelis. Why do people buy a five dollar meal when they can eat five McChicken sandwiches instead? Or three McChicken sandwiches, a soft drink and some ice cream for the same price.
Besides that, let’s talk about the “soft drink cup.” We didn’t believe our ears when we heard the nice lady sing the Israeli dream, that in an unbelievable way exists in the country of endless opportunity (as it called in Israel). She told us what made the Israeli dream fulfilled: “In McDonalds, we have a free refill!”
We don’t get it. You can buy a small cup and refill it over and over again with whatever drink you want. And it’s free! Why do people still buy the big, expensive cup? If you can pay less and drink without any limit, any average Israeli would jump on this offer without hesitation. But not American people. They want a bigger cup that costs more. It’s the same as buying a pan set when all you need to do is to make a small pancake.
An even weirder case is the coffee. We entered a coffee house, and were surprised to find that the small iced coffee cup cost about two dollars, half the price of a small cup in the Tel Aviv bus station. So, we jumped on the “sale” and waited in line, but we were surprised—it is a black coffee without sugar!
It’s just black coffee with ice. What’s the point? Why? Where is the milk? Where is the blended coffee? Where is the sugar? The American taste just doesn’t make any sense. Our perspective changed. It seems that the coffee in the central bus station in Tel Aviv is a high class, first-rate coffee that we just didn’t appreciate enough.
So why do people come to visit the U.S.? Israelis especially like to visit New York, maybe because we believe that we will be lucky enough to see everything you can see in the movies—Spiderman, Godzilla, and what’s left of the Empire State Building after aliens blew it up in Will Smith’s movie.
You can say the situation is similar in Israel. When you see worldwide news about Israeli people, you assume that people in Israel cannot turn their head without something blowing up. Well, we can’t totally deny it … but you can actually turn your head halfway without something special happening.
Once again, our expectations were not fulfilled. New York is pretty calm. Nothing special really happens. Nothing explodes, Spiderman isn’t coming and Bruce Willis isn’t crossing Central Park in a cab shooting in every direction. Definitely, pretty calm.
The streets of Manhattan are really similar to Israel’s big city, Tel Aviv. Not everything is shining, there’s a lot of construction, traffic, shops, and even Falafel and pita bread are offered. Only that the street cats looks very odd around here. They are smaller, with a little head jumping around and they eat nuts. Later, people explained to us that these are squirrels.
We came to the “Big Apple” to work as reporters for The Epoch Times. But there is nothing to write about. No national security alerts, no big “area peace” declarations. Also on this issue, all our Israeli concepts must change if we want to succeed writing articles for the local mainstream newspaper.
In New York, one can write about a special bakery, a different style of dining, or just walk down the street and find a unique story. All you need to do is to talk with people.
There are so many different people from different races, and of different beliefs. It seems everybody is looking for something, and you can make an interesting story from anyone. We are sure that as long as we spend more time in New York we will become accustomed to the atmosphere of the city.
But what we are also sure about is that without bitter coffee, there is no sweet, and without the dollar menu in New York, there is no McChicken sandwich.
