A Big Apple Greeter’s Pandemic Story
I met Ulrike Mißfeldt on March 9, 2020, five days before New York City was shut down by the COVID-19 pandemic.
She was visiting from Germany, and at first I wasn't sure where to take her. She'd already seen all the places I usually take my greets: DUMBO, the Brooklyn Bridge, Chinatown, Harlem. Finally I said, "Would you like to spend some time with me in Brooklyn, just doing what I would normally do on a Sunday?" She said yes.
We started with brunch at a Middle Eastern cafe, sharing a plate of dips and pita bread. Then we walked the 3 1/2-mile loop around Prospect Park. I'd planned to go to a Woody Guthrie concert that afternoon at the Old Stone House in Park Slope, and she was eager to join me. She even knew "This Land Is Your Land." The concert was very crowded, in fact it was standing room only. At one point, someone raised a hand and said, "You know, there's this virus going around -- can we open a window?" But the organizers said the windows in the old building were sealed shut.
I was heading that evening to a singalong at Jalopy Tavern in Red Hook, and Ulrike said that sounded like fun. We had a quick bite in the bar, then sat with a few dozen others as folks took turns singing favorite folk songs acapella. I walked her back to the train, and we nervously hugged, joking about "the virus." We had no idea that within a week, borders would close and people would be dying by the thousands. In retrospect, we were incredibly lucky that neither of us got sick that day. She flew home to Germany just as New York City shut down on March 13, 2020.
In the dark weeks that followed, as sirens screamed down my Brooklyn block 24 hours a day to the local hospital, I came to look back on that wonderful greet with Ulrike as the last normal day before the pandemic hit.
Ulrike reached out to me a few times over the next two years to see how I was doing, and then came the news: She was returning to New York in March 2022, exactly two years since we'd met. She was my last greet before shutdown. And she would be my first greet now that the pandemic seemed to be in retreat.
Needless to say, our reunion was a wonderful day. We saw the incredible show at the New Museum featuring work by the legendary African American artist Faith Ringgold, then made our way back to Brooklyn to spend a few hours wandering around Bed-Stuy eating, shopping, and looking at street art. We met up for a beer with a friend of mine from the neighborhood who'd lived in Germany, and we clinked glasses with a German toast: "Prost!"
We put 17,000 steps on our phones, and our smiling selfies show how much fun we had.
But it was also a great reminder that we had both survived and come full circle:
First meeting just before COVID blew up, and now reuniting as the pandemic waned. We were both incredibly grateful, and we couldn’t help but rejoice in the simple fact that it was good to be alive.