The Saga of Not Being from New York City

For these five+ years I've lived abroad, I've sighed whenever anyone asks, "So, where in the U.S. are you from?" and resigned myself to the misunderstanding to come.

"I'm from New York State," I say. "The state, not the city. Far from the city, actually. No, further than that. Not just a suburb. About 400 kilometers away." [Watch Europeans' eyes bug out at this concept of distance.]

(New York City in bottom right corner. Ithaca in lower middle.)

Occasionally, people have heard of one or two other upstate cities (Rochester, Buffalo), so then that's okay. Even more occasionally, they've even heard of Ithaca, usually in the context of Cornell University. But mostly they think I'm from a suburb of NYC.

Sometimes I've half-seriously contemplated just lying and saying I'm from Ohio (where I went to college, and do have close friends and emotional ties), for the complications it would save me. But for better or worse, I'm not a good liar.

I'm not sure why it took me until just a week or two ago to hit on the solution: Simply say, "I'm from a small city called Ithaca."

Germans don't care about states. The states here are political constructs slapped on top of far longer-standing regional identities. There is no sense of state pride, and identity is tied to region (Swabia, the Rhineland, Bavaria...) not to federal state.

I tried out my new solution recently ("I'm from a small city called Ithaca") but for some reason my sense of honesty still compels me to tack "...in New York State" onto the end. Oh well, I'll keep practicing. Maybe I could say, "I'm from a small city called Ithaca, in the northeast"? (Most people only want to know in any case whether it's east coast or west coast.)