Brownstone buildings, quiet streets, tiny low-fenced gardens with wisterias and greens just like in small European towns, and people playing soccer in the park. Brooklyn is more like Europe than any other American place I have visited. And yet it is just a bridge away from the most American of them all: Manhattan.But here, among the tulips and the hipster cafés and people walking dogs, I forget I am in the USA. If only for a brief while. Brooklyn, as an old Dutch colony, even still has a Dutch slogan on its city arms.

I am not friends with Manhattan. But I think Brooklyn and I became buddies during just one day. (Brooklyn, NYC, USA; April 2019)