Aaaa… N’awlins…

New Orleans was not on the list of cities I wanted to visit in US. Probably because I was convinced that hurricane Katrina kidnapped all its charm, and everything that worth being admired was forever gone. I admit it, I was ignorant, but I abhor disaster tourism. I can see poverty and dirt anywhere! Any city in this world has a marginal hood, unhealthily, pity and indignation worthy! To waste my time eye dropping to other people’s misery it doesn't seam fare, nonetheless ethical. In conclusion, I didn't see any attraction in organizing a trip there.

So, when I found, through an online social network, that some of my former colleagues from college were flying over US this summer, I pitched in. We all decided in an instant to synchronize our calendars in the hope of a reunion. We got all our minds, schedules, days off and vacations, finances, nevertheless air schedules and fares together, and this is what came out: a Finish friend flew to Mexico for a backpack vacation, only to come back to EU through Washington DC, where she met a German friend and, coincidentally, another Norwegian friend (who was just passing through DC). In the same time, two friends from Austria decided to take a road trip down the US East Coast along with a buddy from Vermont – from New York to New Orleans, where they were to meet another American friend who lives in NOLA. In the end, in one weekend we were all in two great US cities, which if they wouldn’t be so far a distance, they would have brought us closer. I..., I waited too long, I messed up my flight deals and I missed the DC meeting…, but I managed to get to the New Orleans, LA one!

As soon as I've got the invitation of visiting the city I jumped on a tour guide. Ah! Jazz, Blues, Creole French, colorful balconies, voodoo, fleur de lis, jambalaya, etouffée, buildings with flowery balconies, Louis Armstrong!!!... I was feeling like hundreds of bubbles with images I refused to think of were popping in my head at an alarming rate. Overwhelmed, I understood I will inevitably fall in love with this place. So I stopped, thinking not to expect anything but delicious typical food, great music, traditional drinks and wonderful people.

When the day finally came, I flew with my heart fluttering to Houston, TX, where I changed planes and where, for the first time in my life, I had seat 1A. Well, it wasn't First Class(!), but the first seat given in the smallest regional airplane I ever flew. It was literally behind the pilots' door. However, the window offered an extraordinary view! From Houston to New Orleans you fly only on the coast, above the Gulf of Mexico, which has a wonderful nocturne view. I think is even better then the one seen between Romania and Spain, when you fly over Croatia and Italy, where you can make the boot’s shape as on the map due to the millions of lights in the night, only to be welcomed by the light explosion in the port of Barcelona. In the same way I could distinguish the South American coast, and when we've got over NOLA I could even see how neighborhoods are mapped, how the Katrina affected area is still in the dark, how Lake Pontchartrain lays in the north, and how the Mississippi river snakes to the gulf.

In the Louis Armstrong airport, his music was waving slowly from speakers, making my steps much lighter. The announcements transmitted usually in English and Spanish, were this time tripled in a beautiful and sweet Creole French, which made me smile instantly when I surprised myself trying to understand the words. Outside, I met the humid, subtropical heat, which opened my pores and allowed me to breathe and relax my muscles. Twenty minutes later I noticed that the mute cabdriver was taking me with the meter off through some empty streets, in some untrustworthy neighborhoods, where I couldn’t read the streets numbers nor names.

Exactly before I was about to panic we finally reached the destination – my friends' house, which seamed to be at the right address, but sunk in dark. The entrance door was open. I went in. Still in the dark, I could see the stairs that went on the next floor. I stepped without thinking where I could end up. Reaching the top of the stairs I saw another door. So, I approached it. Only in front of it I realized I cannot make up anything on the other side, and it hit me that I could trespass a private property. Shockingly, I was not scared I could get shot. I was freaked a wild dog might attack me! However! The moment I touched the doorknob the lights went on and I saw my friends, again, after four years. It was well after midnight, we were all tired, but still had the strength to chat happily about the passed time.

... The starting point of our exploration was St. Charles Avenue. We stepped into an old streetcar, with opened windows which ventilated the humid air, drove by a black machinist, with a soft voice, always nice and polite with tourists. When I met his smiley face I remembered New Orleans actually represents the heavy history of slavery, and I smiled. I didn't smile to the brutal images from "Uncle Tom's cabin"(!), but to the glamorous ones from "Interview with a vampire". Yeah, I know! you can't have one without the other, but I have a twisted selective memory and a curly mind! …In a Proustian way I started to remember the imagined charm of that time, while my imagination was fueled with a row of wonderful colonial houses rolling on both sides of the tram lines. One next to another and one more beautiful than the other, white houses with two floors, built in the old plantation houses style, displaying iron balconies, tall columns, French doors, swings or rocking chairs and mostly very green gardens. They all seamed suspended in time, and nothing of their appearance breathe modernism. I felt transported in the tale past where nothing was to surprise on a negative note.

... The tram named wish took us on Canal St. – where to its left was laying the French Quarter with its impressive charm, and to its right the small financial quarter with modern buildings. It wasn't totally disproportionate, but we still choose the touristy part of the city, where worth getting lost on its colorful and animated streets. This is exactly what we did, even if we were aiming to Bourbon St., famous for its annual Mardi Gras parades. In the French Quarter we met the same colonial architecture, but more urban than St. Charles Avenue. We saw balconies decorated with flowing flowers, classic, elegant souvenir stores, as well as kitschy ones, carnival masks shops, colorful beads, jazz musicians playing in the middle of the road, voodoo workshops and prostitutes. Yap! the French Quarter is obviously the "red quarter" of New Orleans, and a very impressing one, I might say. Crossing it to the south the streets will take you to Jackson Square with the beautiful St. Louis Cathedral in the middle, built in 1720, and bordered by the docks of the great Mississippi river.

… On the river's banks leis the French market where can be purchased alluring typical condiments. The Creole (Cajun) cuisine was born out of necessity and mainly from the slaves’ homesickness. The women forced to adapt to a new life tried to keep with them the smallest piece of their old life, and tried any possible culinary combination that could bring back the smell and taste of home. This is how the Louisiana Creole cuisine emerged – in the absence of refrigeration facilities and by combining any available ingredients –, a mix of fish, seafood, oysters, crawfish or shrimp, along with meat, sausage or game, rice and plenty vegetables, which in the end take you through the African, European and also Asian cuisine.

Another element of the Creole cuisine are the delicious beignets and café au lait served in the place that made them famous – Cafe du Mond. What are they? and why are they famous?... Well, “beignets” is the general term used for any type of fried dough. In other words home made mama’s donuts!! The same type as the Hawaiian malasada introduced in the islands by the Portuguese. This only proves one thing: the European provenience donuts are something else compared too the American ones, with a whole in the middle and sunken in icing.

On the local drinks topic though, New Orleans is famous for hurricanes. Aha! Hurricanes are frequent in the gulf area and the locals decided to adopt them. If they couldn't get rid of them, at least they were able to integrate them to the daily life. I have no idea what is mixed in this drink, but I know that it looks like a cocktail with some Grenadine and pineapple juice in it. And I also know that it’s served in overwhelming quantities, on a background of jazz... The jazz bars on Bourbon St., no matter how commercial could be enchant the ears and souls, with the warmth of the southern accent, with the local songs, with the images they awake in your mind, with people's relaxation when they listen to the artists, with the typical sound that makes its way through glasses and applause.

New Orleans made me smile from the first moment this trip started to get shaped and it still makes me smile thinking that I will go back one day. As I anticipated, I felt in love with the city before arriving there. For sure living in such a place wouldn't be bad. Wouldn't be bad at all!... Only if we wouldn't be so affected by this brutal economy...