Big Apple Greeter: Discover New York City with insiders

Who better to guide you through New York City than locals from your own neighborhood? A new book introduces the New York guides, who show their neighborhood with tours – with passion and free of charge.

By Thomas Joussen

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With just over 300 volunteers, the Big Apple Greeters welcome visitors from all over the world to the Five Boroughs of their city of New York. The amazing thing is that most visitors have only made it to Manhattan before, and with a bit of luck even to Brooklyn. In this way, the greeters broaden the horizons of most of their guests with their broader range.

It works quite simply: the visitors register on the Website der Big Apple Greeter their wishes regarding place, time, language and focus of interest. They will then be confirmed by their greeter, who will meet them at a prominent point, usually in the lobby of the hotel where the guests are staying.

In around three to four hour tours, they then experience the respective part of the city alongside their volunteer guide. Individual, personal and mixed with a lot of biographical information. If you like, you can also visit the classic sights; but the real idea is to discover places that you would hardly have found on your own. You see New York through the eyes of a local, you experience the city first-hand and suddenly it’s completely different.

The book “New York to go – Der Insider-City-Guide” presents the organization and its idea using the example of 20 walks with volunteer greeters. These people with very different biographies all have one thing in common: they invest their free time free of charge in order to meet other people and give them a good start in New York What drives them is the fascination that the mega-city New York exerts on them.

But there is also genuine, warm-hearted hospitality and the joy of meeting other people. All of our 20 greeters made it credible that they receive more gifts during the walks than we, the people with whom they share their time and experiences.

Incidentally, the mayors of NYC are so fond of the greeters’ concept that they have supported the work for more than two decades by providing the organization with office space in City Hall. A nice sign.

It would be great if the reports of our walks outlined in the book trigger anticipation while reading, whet the appetite for the extraordinary city and encourage people to discover New York for themselves with a New Yorker.

In conversation on the streets of the city, what makes the idea of ​​the Big Apple Greeter so great could emerge: authentic personal encounters and friendly closeness between people who just didn’t know each other.

+++ Also read: “Art action by Chen Dongfan – artist puts New York street in a frenzy of color” +++

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