The stillness. That’s what bleary-eyed expats remember when they first arrive in a strange land. The radio chatter in the car transporting Malkin through the winding green aisles of the highway became a sea breeze, a nothing. The jetlag became delirium. Trees and trees and trees and a warm bed. After a while the snaking road was swallowed up by a giant tube. Pale, blinking strobes and Soviet gray walls. And then it happened. Everyone remembers their first time. Malkin’s eyes flicker when he remembers his. “The lights,” Malkin smiles. “Wow.” They appeared small at first, gold and silver flecks at the end of a kaleidoscope. Then, as the tunnel yawned wider and wider and the car raced through its mouth, the Pittsburgh skyline exploded. Towers levitating on the shoulders of endless bridges. A ghost of the city reflecting in the waters below. “I never been so surprised when I see all the lights,” Malkin says. “So many lights! And the bridges, the most I have ever seen. Downtown looked so amazing. Not bad place to be for a new home, I think.”
Geno, Pittsburgh magazine interview (via screamingtobesolved)
