Our town maintains its ability to surprise. Is Charlotte NC Real Estate is a big city or small town. It all depends on where you're moving van started its journey. It's just under the radar enough to have the ability to surprise.

I learned something new every day I traveled here from New York. There, I was one of those Big Apple Commuters who ventured into the city every day and returned home to my New Jersey existence when the sun went down sort of a suburban vampire. But my frame of reference was New York, home to lots of folks who couldn't imagine living anywhere else. My roadmap might be familiar to the typical newcomer of Charlotte Home Ownership. I grew up in Baltimore, and followed the Gypsy journalist life in Hartford, Conn., Tuscon, Ariz., where my son was born and a return to my hometown before moving close to my husband’s family in the New York area. Though I thought we were ready for a slower pace, hotter weather and moved to a new South city I wasn't sure what to expect. I subscribed to the Charlotte Observer, the paper that would be my employer while I was packing boxes and got my first surprise when I read a letter to the editor. Blacks in America, it said, should get down on their knees each night and thank your African ancestors for selling them into slavery and most of all for making sure that I got on the boat. This was 1994. Tell me again, how this city of sparkling bank towers was as welcoming as its positive public relations made it to be. Instead of telling the movers never mind, my husband, son and I ventured into unfamiliar territory to see if there were pleasant surprises in store. At first, when friends in cities I had left asked me about my new home, I cautiously defend Charlotte by what it wasn't. It wasn't at least in 1994 a city of traffic jams. I could walk to my car and be home in 15 minutes. A nice perk, but hardly a knockout plus. Certainly the art scene couldn't compete with what I had left. Surprise. Jean Pierre Bonnefoux and Patricia McBride New York City ballet legends was dictating troupe of gifted dancer’s too adventurous programs at North Carolina Dance Theater. In New York City, I got as close as the nosebleed section. At the Charlotte Performing Arts Center I could sit close enough to see the dancers sweat. The Levine Museum of the New South celebrated its region's legacy, including the evolving racial relations, by challenging assumptions and asking questions. Not bad at all. While the Panthers and Bobcats are now my teams, I've been to only one NASCAR race. And I've never acquired a taste for grits and barbecue. I didn’t have to. The biggest surprise is that Charlotte, while straddling the big-city small-town line, has absorbed an increasing number of newcomers, their lifestyles and their taste. I still get the occasional letter too much like the one that almost scared me away. But I get many more from those who believe the city can grow stronger if it embraces what its residents old and new have to offer. More than ever I appreciate the 15 minute ride home. I can sit in the home I could never have afforded in New York, enjoy the quiet and a glass of wine and prepare for surprises yet to come. This article comes to us via Mary C. Curtis on September 26, 2008.