story10217.xml

story10217.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2003-11-29

In September 2001, I went to the U.S. on holiday (I am from Germany). First, we went to see Niagara Falls, and on September 6, we flew to New York. We, that is two other young women and myself. I would describe our relationship as a loose friendship, and we had had the first arguments at the airport already. The squabbles continued throughout the trip.

On September 10, we stayed out very late at night, as we went to see a performance at Madison Square Garden. I was back at the hotel at about 3 a.m., tired and still a bit jet-lagged on top of that, shivering in my thin evening dress, wet from the rain and in a bad mood. For a number of reasons, the evening had not been much to my satisfaction.

The next day, we slept late, then I went to have a shower and one of my friends got breakfast to go for all of us from a little shop next door. And the minute she came back up, she turned on the TV. We had had arguments about this already - I had been dead tired and wanted to sleep, while she wanted to watch some TV. And now, it was about 10:30 in the morning. Couldn't she even have breakfast without TV? (Turning on the TV for breakfast may seem like the most normal thing in the world to you, but in Germany for many years TV programs did not begin until 4:00 p.m. so, among ?my generation? there is still some feeling in the back of the head that watching TV is something one only does in the evening.)

I also have to say that I am definitely not a morning person. Before I have had my first cup of tea, it is not very much good talking to me.

I came out of the shower, sat down on the bed to see what she was watching and right at that moment I saw how the second plane was crashing into the South Tower. Of course, then I didn't know yet that this was what I saw. I remember being intellectually aware of it being a newscast and non-fictional, but I didn't really take it in. For the moment, those were just pictures on TV and I wanted my breakfast. I mean, there was no introduction, no preliminary comment, nothing. The first thing I saw was the plane crashing into the building. It took me a while to really take in what had happened.

Then, I thought it would be a good idea to call my parents back home. But I couldn't get through right away, so my plan was to send them an e-mail first and try calling them again later. I had seen an internet cafe some blocks from our hotel. My friends thought about sending their e-mails home from the U.S. subsidiary of the bank one of them was working for. She only knew these people from the phone, so far, and she didn't even remember exactly where the bank was but only had a vague idea. So we decided to go to the internet cafe together, but when we left the hotel, she simply started walking in the other direction. I asked her what this was about, and she said that her bank was in that direction. I doubted that she?d really find it, though, and I didn?t much appreciate her attitude either.

So I went to find the internet caf?. It was a 24/7 place, but when I arrived there, they had posted a handwritten sign saying that they were closed, due to the recent events. Now, what was I to do? Maybe I still wasn't thinking straight, because I thought that my parents wouldn't learn what had happened until 2:00 p.m. local time, which is when they show the evening news in Germany. Only, I had forgotten that my grandmother watched TV almost all day, and of course they interrupted all other programs with the news.

Maybe to you, this sounds like a stupid thing to say, but I do not place much trust in the press any more after seeing the way they handled the 1993 allegations against Michael Jackson. We, that is at least 20 European fans that I personally know and many others who I only know by sight or not at all, had travelled to New York to see his performances, which were on September 7 and 10. Now I do not want to discuss his person or the allegations here, that would be out of place. But I would like to briefly define my position. I followed the case closely in 1993, wrote my diploma thesis on the subject, and am following the 2003 case. During my research, I have uncovered so much sloppy research and deliberate misinformation that my trust in the media in general has greatly suffered as a result.

This is why I wanted to see this with my own eyes. I was not thinking, it was just instinct. I needed to see what had happened. So I started walking downtown, starting at 42nd street and just walking, walking, downtown all the way. The subways were, to my knowledge, not running at that time, I had no idea which bus to take and where to find it, and I did not want to take a taxi either. Maybe I wanted to walk.

This was not about sensationalism, or trying to ?see something?. It was not as if I was staring at the scene of a mere car accident. This was something much larger, and maybe it was too large to be seen on a TV screen. I needed to see it with my own eyes. Now, I am saying ?it? ? well, at that time, I expected to find some skyscrapers with the tops of them missing, and a lot of rubble, and a lot of other people staring at it. I had not spent enough time watching TV to learn that the WTC had actually collapsed. Somewhere around 20th street, two men passed me by, walking uptown, and one of them said to the other ?no more twin towers?. I thought he was talking nonsense, and that they would certainly repair the towers, I don?t know, rebuild the missing bit or something like that.

The streets were eerily quiet. I had not noticed that I had been passing a certain line, but suddenly (I think somewhere south of 20th street), there was no more car traffic. Quiet. A lot of pedestrians and many, many people on bicycles were still circulating, but no motor traffic.
And still, I couldn?t see anything of the World Trade Center.

Suddenly, at a street whose name I can?t remember now, my walk was at an end. (It might have been Franklin Street.) The rest of the streets was blocked off. That was it. There was nothing to see, because nothing was there any more. Clouds of black and grey smoke were rising up from the ground some streets down. It looked a bit like a really bad thunderstorm was brewing, only the clouds were on the ground. I saw a traffic light that was still changing from red to green and from green to red, but no cars were there, the road was blocked off and in the background there were black clouds. I took a photo of the now useless traffic light.

So, I had not really seen anything, but I had had time to think and to take in the atmosphere, the eerie quiet. I walked back, all the way to 42nd street, where we had found a cheap hotel. Many shop owners had put their TV sets on the sidewalk, and people were gathering round, watching.

On the way back, I tried again to call my parents. I had a handful of quarters, but the public phones spit them right back out after I had fed them some 5 or 6 of the coins. And it was the same at every phone I tried. Many phones were occupied, with people waiting in line. Slowly, I was beginning to get worried. I had to call my parents before 2 p.m.! I went back to the hotel, tried the public phone there ? same result, it didn?t like my quarters. Why? What should I do? I tried calling an operator, but she told me that I couldn?t make a collect call from a public phone. So I asked that lady at the reception whether I could use her phone to make a collect call. It was behind a wall of plate glass, though, and as I said, it was a cheap hotel, not one of those places that make you feel welcome and where they would probably simply have handed me the receiver over a desk with no plate glass around it. She asked me how I had tried to make the call, and I told her that I had used quarters. She said that I would never get through with quarters, and advised me to buy a $5 phone card at the shop next door. Now, I had no idea what difference that would make and why it had to be a $5 one, but I thought that living in the country, she probably knew best and bought the phone card. When I was back at the hotel, some other European tourists were calling home, and I had to wait for them to finish. Then I could finally call my parents, who were audibly relieved and told me that my grandmother had told them what had happened. How could I forget that she was watching TV all day, I was now asking myself.

By the way, I now have a mobile phone which works in the U.S. too.

So now I had made my phone call. I decided to walk to Michael?s hotel next. For those of you who are not so familiar with being a fan: Throughout Europe, wherever Michael is, sometimes dozens, sometimes hundreds of fans are gathering at his hotel. Some even sleep on the pavement there. It is not always in the hope of seeing Michael or being close to him that the fans go there, but his hotel is a meeting point in a foreign city. This is what it was to me now: a meeting point. Of course I did not expect so see Michael, or even think about him. It was quite clear to me that I would not be seeing him again on this trip. If I went to his hotel, it was to see whether some of the other fans were there. We were a large, loosely connected group and stayed in several hotels all over Manhattan. Some stayed at 42nd street, some at 67th street, some in Chinatown ? this is how we usually travel when following Michael, and it is how it was then, too. Usually we have mobiles, but now we didn?t because most European mobiles don?t work in the U.S.

When I arrived there, one of Michael?s staff came out and asked us whether we were all ok. He was asking specifically whether we all still had hotel rooms and whether anybody was running out of money. (He knew that Michael?s fans often travel on a very tight budget.) While it is usually necessary to get to Michael?s people quickly before they vanish again, this time, there was no need to hurry. He asked us again and again, making absolutely sure that we were all ok. Those present at that time declined the offer; we do have credit cards and we can take responsibility of our own lives, although it was sweet to offer us help. However, I later learned that some fans had taken on the offer, so I know it was not just talk.

We were all worrying a bit about how to get home. Nobody knew what was going to happen next. All air traffic had been blocked, and this was not because of something like bad weather which would disappear after a while. It had been a conscious decision to block air traffic, and we did at that time have absolutely no idea for how long we would be stranded here. I was thinking about my financial situation. How long could I hold out in such an expensive city as this? I did of course not have a U.S. bank account; I only had a credit card and did not even have the secret number with me to get cash on it. Staying a week longer than planned should not be a problem, but what would I do if this attack disturbed air traffic for several weeks? Some of the other fans were talking about going home by ship. They had seen a travel agency somewhere and wanted to ask how much it would cost to go back by ship. But that was out of the question to me. I get seasick very easily, even on a very short trip such as from Calais to Dover, which is how one reached England before the tunnel was built. So I was thinking more along the lines of taking a one-way rental car to Canada or Mexico and fly back from there. (I guessed that if the worst came to the worst, I could always fly back maybe not from Mexico, but from some of the many countries in South America.)

I do not know what I imagined to happen next. Maybe I could best describe it by saying that I was prepared for everything. I was beginning to think about how I could earn a living if I was stranded here for longer. That was a hard question since I have no work permit for the U.S., but I thought that I would approach a colleague from the U.S. who had been in Munich a couple of times and was not only quite a nice person, but also a senior employee in a multinational company. If I could not get home, maybe he would help me and give me some sort of job as a secretary. I knew that companies could sort out the immigration formalities if they really wanted a candidate from abroad, and I was sure he would understand my situation.

Since I had told people at work about my plans to go to New York for my holidays, of course I had to let them know that I was alright as well. On September 12, the internet caf? hat opened again and I could send them an e-mail. But who should I send it to? To my boss? He might not see it for quite a while as he is very busy. Maybe it was best to send it to his secretary, which is what I did. She forwarded it to everyone who knew I was in New York, and sent me a very nice answer. My boss had asked her to give me the contact information of the U.S. colleague I was talking about, and she told me not to worry if I couldn?t fly back home on Saturday as planned. Now as I am writing this, it sounds like no big deal, but then, it really meant a lot to me.

Manhattan may not be the worst place in the world to be stranded, but this was definitely not a holiday any longer. People had been asked to ?stay at home? through the media, and most of them did. But I couldn?t do this, as I had no home here. At 2 p.m. the streets of Manhattan were as empty as they normally are at 2 a.m. Needless to say that most, maybe all tourist places had closed, shops had closed, and we were not really in any mood to enjoy a holiday only a day after something like this had happened within walking distance of our hotel, anyway.

A few days ago, I had been on a holiday in New York, and now I felt as if I had suddenly been transported to some place in the Middle East that you normally only see on TV. There were helicopters flying around all the times. Police cars or ambulances (I couldn?t tell the difference unless I actually saw them) were driving around with their sirens on all the time. Military planes were flying over the city. Now, I am very used to the sound of military planes, as I grew up in the country. On a clear and sunny summer day ? such as September 11 ? they would be flying around quite a lot. I don?t know if they do this as much in the U.S., but Germany is a densely settled country and there are no wide open spaces where they could practice. So normally, I associate the sound of these planes to nice summer days and have come to like it. But this was different. It was not right. These planes should not be flying over a city, and especially not over this city.

I did not really know what to do, so I went to Central Park, sat in the sun for a while and bought a stupid book at one of the bookstalls. I didn?t really do much else on the following days either. Some walking around in the city, some talk at ?Michael?s? hotel (he was no longer there, of course), a little shopping. I noticed a lot of little details and in my mind they all form my picture of September 11. I saw signs posted somewhere in the streets where people where looking for their friends. And this was two or three days after the attack and you knew that these people would not be coming back. I saw a McDonalds near Times Square, proudly announcing on a sign at the door ?we never close?. Next to this sign, a hand-written note had now been posted: ?sorry, we are closed?. To this day, I regret not having taken a photo of this. It was very symbolic to me; it made the impact of the terrorist attack on everyday life so visible.

There also were the newspapers of September 11. Nobody bought them any more. What people did buy were postcards with the World Trade Center on them. By the evening, they were completely sold out everywhere I looked.

Of course we also watched TV a lot. In our cheap hotel, we had three channels. Two of them were in Spanish, which only I could understand, but not my friends, and the third one was in English, but it was in very bad quality. This one English channel is what we watched now, for hours.

On Thursday, September 13, the first fans were due to fly back home and went to the airport. I had by now changed hotels and stayed with a different group of people, as I had had enough of my friend?s attitude. Those who had left came back after a few hours. Their flight had been cancelled, and they were now due to fly back on Tuesday. On Friday, some more fans left for the airport, but they came back as well. Their flight was now on Wednesday or Thursday. So, if my flight was cancelled as well, I would not be going back home before next Friday, I thought. This would be almost a week later than planned, and I was not enjoying myself here any longer.

In the evening, we went shopping and I saw a German paper in one of the shops. I wondered how it could have come here when there were no flights and picked it up: it was from Tuesday (and had of course been printed before the attacks). This made it once more clear to me that we were stranded. Not even a newspaper could get through any more. The paper I usually read put their print edition on their website, though, which I found very thoughtful of them. I wonder who gave them the idea. Maybe people mailed them asking them to do this?
I mean, normally I would never think of reading a German paper, or any newspaper at all, when on holiday. But it made me sad that this paper was three days old.

On Saturday evening, I was to fly back. And on Saturday morning, the Empire State Building opened again. The timing was uncomfortably tight (passengers were advised to arrive at the airport several hours prior to their flight, and I certainly did not want to miss this one), but still I decided to visit the Empire State Building.

There were two reasons for this. First, I still had not seen with my own eyes what had happened. It is hard to explain, but I needed to see in order to understand. Second, I had decided to look down from atop a skyscraper even before actually booking this holiday. And I would not let some stupid terrorists keep me from doing so.

So I went to the Empire State Building at 10:00 a.m., as I wanted to lose as little time as possible. A couple of people were lining up, but not too many. At the entrance, they had metal detectors, and I would at that moment not have gone up if there hadn?t been any. Of course I was afraid. This was not something I was doing to have fun, I was going up because I wanted to see.

Somewhere in the middle of the building, we had to change elevators, and I remembered that this was as it had been in the World Trade Center in 1991, when I had visited it. (At that time, the elevator had been out of order, and we had had to walk down a couple of stairs. Those same stairs that later saved the lives of so many people ? I feel very fortunate to have had the opportunity to use that staircase. It is a long time ago, but I still remember dimly what it looked like. Somehow unfinished. It reminded me a bit of a staircase in a multi-storey car park.)

Finally, I could see Ground Zero. There were two or three cranes standing around there, and even after four days, there was still smoke coming up from the ground. Everyone was standing on the south side of the building. It was as if I was looking down upon a grave. That is exactly the feeling I had, as if I was visiting a cemetery and standing at the grave. I did not stay very long, as I was not comfortable on the now highest building of the city. Walking back in, I passed the souvenir shops that one finds in such places. That day, they could not have been more out of place. (I guess they did not sell much except a few rolls of film maybe.) When I came back down and left the building, an employee said ?thank you for visiting the Empire State Building today?. I don?t know what these people must have been thinking of those who went up that day. (My friends clearly thought that I was crazy to do that.) It is a sight that I will not easily forget.

Now I left for the airport. I fly quite a lot and have come to like airports with their busy people, walking and often running in every direction. Today, there was nothing of the kind. Everyone was solemnly and silently standing in line at the check-in counters. There was one long line for check-in, and I stood in it for two hours! Everyone, including the crew, was nervous on the flight back.

I had asked for a window seat on the right-hand side. Of course I did not know it then, but from this seat, I had a perfect view on Ground Zero. I was sitting in a starting plane (I have never liked starts, especially that one moment when the plane does no longer climb that sharply and you feel as if you are about to fall down now) and was looking down on the site of a plane crash that had been no accident ? and all this was only a couple of miles away. The sun was setting and black smoke was rising from the ground.

On the way back, I had a lot of time to think about what it was that I wanted out of my life, and what I would regret if, for instance, this plane was to crash now. It was a very spiritual experience.

Normally, I do not really like going back home. I usually have the feeling that Munich is a dull and boring place. But this time, it was different. I did not feel I was returning to a dull place, but to a safe place.

The next day, I went back to work and I really enjoyed it. The company I was working for was then located in a small and indistinct building which no-one would be able to hit with an airplane even if they tried. I went to say hello to my boss, but he was on the phone, so I went back to my place. When he had finished his call, he came to greet me. Everyone was nice to me that day, asking things like where I had been when it had happened, and how I had heard the news. I learned how people at the office had reacted to the events: They had taken the rest of the day off when they had heard the news. (When the news had arrived, there had only been two hours of work left anyway.)

I was looking out of the window, at the perfect sunshine outside. The same perfect sunshine as in New York ? only that sense of danger in the air was no longer there. It was good to be back home again.