Heroes of America

They officially call it Inflation Viewing but people just refer to it as 'blowing up the balloons'. This is the big event preceding Thanksgiving in New York that all you newcomers absolutely have to go and see. So I decided to be an obedient foreigner and went and patiently queued and rolled with the crowd to see the gigantic colourful balloons being blown up for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Now that I have made the pilgrimage and paid tribute to Snoopy, Ronald Mcdonald and Kermit the Frog, I can reveal to you, rational Europeans, that this ritual has totally no sense or meaning to it whatsoever. Children have fun trying to identify the massive cartoon figures lying face down on the ground but why adults go is beyond me. Thousands and thousands of people wait patiently for their turn to take a look. The atmosphere is jovial, could be described as pre-Christmasy, and they even play seasonal songs to keep the crowd entertained in the freezing cold. But what the balloons - or the whole parade for that matter - have to do with Thanksgiving itself is a mystery. But then we in Britain drive on the left side...

Winds

November came with icy wind that lay in wait in side streets and attacked as you turned the corner. It's typical of New York they say, with its tall buildings and surrounding rivers, this biting wind. It brought to an abrupt end the days of running outdoors. The skies were still bright blue but the women walking their dogs were now wearing long down coats and ear muffs, the city's winter uniform.

On Tuesday 4 November all the women from my class went to vote. In my country we never vote on a weekday. They had to get up early to make it in time to the polling station. In my country, we vote with a pen and piece of paper, ticking boxes. Here, they say, they vote on machines. No human mistakes, no cheating, and immediate results. If everything goes according to plan, an hour or two after all stations have closed you know who the new president is.
We were all watching it on big screens in the pub: the German journalists, the delegation from Finland, the Lebanese interfaith expert and the group of young Jewish professionals called Access who organized the event. As the distance between the candidates steadily grew, I knew America was writing history. A history where it was no longer fantasy for a black man to win the elections. Many of us had been sceptical whether it could really happen - but in this country of freedom and endless opportunities the principle that nothing was impossible had proved true again. And we rejoiced, not because we all agreed that he was the better man for the job, but because we knew that the day this could happen was a day of triumph for democracy and progress. And now I'm hoping there is a Jack Bauer out there, looking after our President Elect, watching his every step.