International Express
Want to see the largest borough in New York City? Fuggetabout Manhattan! Take the 7 train into Queens and you know you’ve arrived when you burst out of the subway tunnel high onto elevated tracks built mostly by immigrant laborers in the early 1900s. Extending seven miles from Times Square to Flushing, you’ll traverse what first appears to be unremarkable industrial urban scene. But hidden beneath the tracks of this “The International Express”, the streets brim with over 150 nationalities. Get off in Sunnyside and visit a Romanian grocery store or spend an evening at a Latin theater; get off in Woodside and eat fresh Thai noodles or listen to traditional music at an Irish pub; get off in Jackson Heights where you can visit an Indian sari shop or a Peruvian discothèque; exit in Corona to buy fresh tortillas at a Mexican bakery; or hop off in Flushing and visit New York’s largest China Town. Even if you don’t get off anywhere and simply enjoy the ride, you’ll get a good idea of what makes this country so great. I’m confident that all these cultures jumbled together yet still retaining their ethnic roots while striving to make it in the US of A yield a cultural collage you’d be hard pressed to find anywhere else in the world!
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