The Adventures of an Illegal Alien - part 1

The adventures of an illegal alien

NY NY; start spreading the news! I was singing the Frank Sinatra tune with my Burlesque group “Extremities” back in Hanover, Germany. 3000 eyes peeled on me, none of them knew that what I’m singing is more than just a tune. I am about to go to NYC. Can you imagine how great it felt to belt out that song? I add this day to one of the most exciting days in my life. My friend Sarah and I were ready for a big change, in a big way, heading to the big apple. We had planned it for a while and were ready for the big times.

We had plenty of motivation and reason for our major move. We were both bored of Germany, the scene, our jobs. But the biggest of them all was love. We both fell in love. Our guys lived in the USA and to make our dreams come true we had to follow our heart. There was no doubt in our mind.

The minute I stepped foot onto NYC ground, I knew I was home. The traffic, the city lights, the energy, the vastness, I can’t even put it into words. I grew up in a small town in East Germany. I escaped East Germany before the Berlin wall came down and ended up moving to Hannover. Hannover is a beautiful town and seemed big at first but the longer I lived there, the smaller it became. I always dreamed about the big world. I knew it existed. And here I was.

It’s like a little kid going to the biggest toy store in the world.

Of course, being adventurous and fearless we decided to stay in the heart of it all. 42nd street.

Back than in the mid 90’s, it was still a dirty and somewhat dangerous place to be. But where’s the fun if we don’t experience this? I only knew of the Manhattan Streets from movies, the smoke coming out of the sewer. Now I was there, I could stand in the smoke, breathe in the air, get my coffee and donut anywhere on the street from one of those cool stands. I felt like being in a movie.

We checked into a Hotel right on 42nd, the elevator smelled like old carpet, a few very strange looking people were in it. NO not strange, just different. A transvestite and a business man to be correct. Still, we were clueless. We opened our room, a small, dirty room with all kinds of stains on the floor, roaches racing up and down the walls, just not what we expected. But it’s cool. We are in NYC; we didn’t come here to sleep anyway. We changed our clothes, left our luggage on the bed hoping the roaches wouldn’t bother crawling up the bed.

Off we went, exploring the big apple. All I felt was happiness and excitement. I’ve never seen a city like it, so big at the time. I had never seen so many people of so many cultures in one place.
It was like a dream come true. We had a few friends in the city and let them know we had arrived. John was one of them. A big shot Manager for some big shot bands. He invited us over to his house and we were happy to go, anything was better than being in that filthy little shoebox called hotel room plus he’ll probably take us someplace cool. (so we hoped) It turned out that John had a slight crush on Sarah but neither Sarah nor I wanted to spend the first night in the big apple in his apartment. He was way older than us; she had no interest in being his little pet.

Off we went on our own, in our funky outfits, just the two of us and the big city, no idea where to go, we just walked all over the place, still better than sitting in some dirty old mans apartment.

After walking around for hours, exploring, we were exhausted enough to just crash out in that scary room and anxious to move onto the next one early in the morning. It turned out; the hotel we stayed in was a pay by the hour hotel or in plain English a whore house.

How funny is that? Well, to us it was.