Fifth Avenue

Just you. Just you sitting in that car rolling down Fifth Avenue, through the twilight of the beginning evening. You have arrived. Mabe. For the first time you feel that it is real, nice, true that you are here. Here in America. That feeling blends into the relaxation of the evening, the serenity accompanying the beginning weekend.

Your first week at school, in Pittsburgh, in the States, lies behind you. And now you drive off into the rest of the day that it is just yours. Driving off into that feeling. Into your year here, your own year. You are just overcome with that feeling while picking up a friend.
Just a few miles down the main road that connects your part of the city, Shadyside, with the city center. Luckily, Pittsburgh was largely built before the invention of the car, with only a few highways dissecting the city. Competing land owner magnates prevented a grid system during the booming years. Turbocapitalism versus urban planning. Due to that, the Fifth Avenue meanders reluctantly through the Eastern parts of the town, far away from the patch of numbered streets downtown, between skyscrapers and among companion roads.

The Fifth Avenue has forgotten the chaos of the evening rush hour, as you are gliding towards the center in your car, passing sleepy, historicistic villas and neo-gothic churches. They bear testimony that there used to be a lot of money in this steel and coal city. Tired by weather and pollution, they look to you the passerby, still grand and attention-attracting.
The jazz and rock tunes of an American band fill the inside of the car. The voice of the singer, gentle and still striking. And you feel that something connects you to this land, this language, these people here.

One of those is Cem, a guy with black, curly hair, who is originally from Istanbul. Co-students with less linguistic talent can call him “Jim”. Just because [djem] is not available. Like a missing product on a supermarket shelve. One can easily grab the product next to the empty spot. That should work as well, shouldn’t it? And this Cem lives in one of those lofty and a bit creepy apartment houses. They are taller than their neighbor houses without actually being high-rises. A lot of them show a brick exterior, some with pillar decorated entrances that give a hint concerning their age. With well-sounding names like “The Fairfax”, “The Kenmawr”. But using monarchs for naming the buildings was obviously also popular. And so Cem lives in the “King Edward”. Actually, not too far away from Walnut Street, a street with shops, cafés and bars, where people from your school often meet. But the unreliability of the public bus system, which increases dramatically with the start of each weekend, gives you the chance to give him the favor of picking him up. How American.