We met Anett at a pub on the lower east side called the Loreley, on a beautiful spring day in late April.
AskaNewYorker: Hello Anett! How was your day? Your hair looks so nice and thick!
Anett: Thanks. I just washed it! I have a lot of hair.
AskaNewYorker: What products do you use? It looks great! Prell? Colored or natural?
Anett: What’s natural anyway (she says with a laugh)? I use Bed-Head products.
AskaNewYorker: Do you know that you’re our second German uberchic? We had one in January from Frankfurt. What does “uber” mean in German again?
Anett : It means over or above, just a normal word in German, very common. Freud had the uber-ego.
AskaNewYorker: Why did you move to New York City from Dresden?
Anett: It might sound cliche, but I was always looking for the extreme and New York is supposed to be the uber-city! When I was about twenty years old I was an au-pair in Washington DC. The proximity of New York to Washington made me think of the possibility of New York. The suburb of Washington DC where I was living reminded me of the neighborhood in the movie “American Beauty”, with the clean lifestyle and new rich families, and it was the opposite of what I was looking for, and drove me further towards New York. I finally got an internship in New York, and that was the beginning of my stay here.
AskaNewYorker: OK, if New York is extreme, how do you describe Washington DC?
Anett: Standard.
AskaNewYorker: Tell us about the ouchie on your arm.
Anett: The official story, the story I tell my work colleagues, is that it happened while roller-blading along the Hudson River. But the truth is, it happened at a party I was at in Brooklyn recently. I was dancing on a ledge in front of someone’s house, and well, open bars are always dangerous. It wasn’t even that high! I just fell!
AskaNewYorker: I’m a “picker”. I love picking at scabs. Have you picked or peeled, or is this a first generation scab?
Anett: I haven’t picked it. I’m no picker. Scars give one personality. Want to know about my belly-button piercing?
AskaNewYorker: Yes please!
Anett : I got it done in Scotland. It was right after my university exams and I just needed something to give me pleasure, some freedom! It goes back to my desire for the extreme, but with consciousness of what’s standard….I didn’t do the nose or tongue, you know!
AskaNewYorker: Can you tell us about romance in the city?
Anett : I thought there was no time for romance.
AskaNewYorker: Intimacy?
Anett : Well, of course, it is the need of every human being, but romance? I don’t know if it fits here.
AskaNewYorker: What’s your definition of romance?
Anett : New York is my only love affair right now! I don’t really care about romance at the moment. I’m into going out, being with friends, and action! I’m here to pursue my career, to make money, and to meet people with stories to tell. The most interesting people to listen to are taxi drivers, I find, but there are many many beautiful men in New York.
AskaNewYorker: Where do you find these beautiful men? Where are your three favorite places to go clubbing?
Anett : Well, hotspots are always changing, but you can’t go wrong with Lotus or Sielo, and I think that the hippest, best DJs are at Crobar.
AskaNewYorker: So, we’re here at the Loreley. Isn’t there a poem by Mark Twain with the same name?
Anett : Yes. It starts out “I cannot divine what it meaneth, this haunting nameless pain, a tale of the bygone ages weeps brooding through my brain, the faint air cools in the gloaming, and peaceful flows the Rhine, the thristy summits are drinking the sunset’s flooding wine”….OK, enough.
AskaNewYorker: Thanks for chatting with us, Anett. And Happy Birthday!
