9/11 Memorial Museum, Central Park and Beer Brewing in Harlem

First off, New York is big! It is one huge city that cannot expand anymore, so that rents have become so expensive, that formerly "dodgy" neighbourhoods have been declared "hip" and all sorts of folk live there now. Strange place, but rent is a big thing here. On the metro every second poster is about teaching tenants how to "freeze" their rent, i.e. keep it at the current price for at least a year.

With the weather being sunny and nice, we decided to go back to where we started off yesterday and get all depressed by entering the 9/11 Memorial Museum. On a serious note, however, this museum is a tear-jerker and a half. It depicts the events of this horrible incident to the minutest detail with graphic pictures to make people aware of what had happened.

An image of the sky line of Manhattan shortly after the two planes hit the Twin Towers

The purpose of this memorial museum is obviously to commemorate those who have lost their lives in the attacks, but they tried to go one step further in this case. Because the attack was so recent (I was 19), the digital age caught most of it on camera. There were interviews of the relatives of victims and of the firemen and policemen who lost their lives trying to save people from the collapsing buildings. In addition, videos of how the second plane crashed right into the second tower and a wall with a picture of most of the almost 3000 victims.

These stairs saved many lives as they remained a stable way out of WTC 1

Only a small portion of the wall that showed pictures of the victims

A fire truck that was salvaged from the wreckage

The final message of the memorial was, however, to be an uplifting one. The architects of the rebuilding of Ground Zero did not want to leave the site as a barren reminder, but they wanted to give a message of hope and renewal. They did this, for example, by having a wall with a quote by the Roman poet Virgil as you can see in the images below. They also left one steel beam of the old building standing with positive messages from survivors and accounts by relatives of loved ones that they lost.

Here you can see the so-called "Last Column", the last steel beam left standing from the old WTC

To be honest, I had mixed feelings when I went out of the memorial, for several reasons. For once, I saw two people a mother and her daughter silently crying next to me while I was going through the footage. Regardless of whether they lost a loved one in the attacks (they were only 16 years ago) or were just overwhelmed by the evidence, is not important. It made all this a little too close for comfort.
Also, I do not think that the architects achieved their goal. I did not feel hopeful at the end of the tour. I felt a little depressed. So much anger and hatred. I know what they tried to do and they talk about all the projects that they did to help and all... Just did not work for me.

To get that downer out of our system, we decided to use the sunshine and walk a little through the famous Central Park, before we made our way to Harlem, where we would be brewing some beer with our host, Celeste.

I am not sure what I expected from Central Park. The film industry made it out to be this green jungle of an oasis hybridised with a fair ground and the ocean... or something like that. In the end, it is "just" a massive park. When I say massive, I mean "massive". I think it is probably bigger than the entire city center of Würzburg and then some. Let's say it like this, we entered somewhere in the middle, walked for about 30 minutes and managed to walk maybe an eights of the length of it.
There are lakes there, lots of people doing sports, horses riding around, you name it, it was there.







I can understand why Central Park is so important for New York. Whichever direction you go, it'll take you a fair bit of time to get anywhere near resembling greenery. I believe to get to upstate New York you have to take a train for 2-3 hours to be out of the city. When the plane was landing, there was only city, as far as the eye could see.

After a leisurely stroll through the park it was time to get ourselves to Harlem, which was yet another 20 minutes by metro northward (from Brooklyn, you need to go northwesterly). A former African American / Carribean neighbourhood, it is now pretty much mixed. Still mostly African American with a strong of hispanic and some Caucasian / Asian sprinkles, it actually felt very residential.

Via AirBnB, we found an offer by Celeste, our host, to brew some beer with her. Celeste started to make Crafts beers out of Harlem 17 years ago first as a hobby, because she likes cooking and after awhile it turned into a veritable trade which keeps her well afloat.

During the next 3 hours, we sat down with her, an Ohioan TC pre-producer, a tennis coach from NY, a Brazilian Marketeer and a British engineer and made the first steps of beer. The idea was simple, she told us how it is done and what ingredients are possible and we would just make choices.

So we crushed some barley so that the starch could be dissolved in water, we added it to boiling water, then we added oats... because we could and then added varying versions of hops. Spice-wise, we knowingly navigated away from the German law of purity and added coriander and cumin to our mix. All the while we had an easy chat.

At the end of it, she would put it in the fermenter and in 4 weeks time or so, she will send us our beer. In her words "I cannot guarantee that it will taste good, but it is beer." I gotta say, this was a really cool experience. So cool in fact, that Isi and I may buy a home brew kit and do that at some point at home with friends, as well :D