New England in All Its Glory

Salem

We arrived in Manchester, New Hampshire on September 29 after an uneventful and on-time flight from Phoenix, thanks to Southwest Airlines. We rented a car and drove south to Salem, Massachusetts.  

The bed and breakfast where we stayed, the Amelia Payson House, was built in 1845 and we had a beautiful upper floor bedroom with a canopy bed--decorated completely in the period--except for a TV. The owners, Ada and Bob were gracious hosts. We had wonderful fresh-baked scones for breakfast the next morning and decided to drive into Concord, MA, a beautiful New England town noted for its writers--Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau.,

Outside of Concord, we visited the Minute Man National Historic Site where American rebels fired the first shot in the Revolutionary War. The exhibit had an interactive diorama that beautifully explained the fight with the British. We also saw Waldon Pond, where Thoreau, probably America's first naturalist, wrote Walden, the story of his two years living in simple, natural surroundings. The above photo does not do Walden Pond justice because it is definitely not a pond--it is quite a large lake.





Salem is a charming city, and very ready to celebrate Halloween. Decorations were everywhere--corn stalks tied with bows to lamp posts and Halloween decorations in the streets and on buildings. Since Salem is called the Witch City of America, the merchants do their best to live up to the title.



The photo to the left is the House of Seven Gables, the actual house that was written about in the 1851 novel of the same name by Nathaniel Hawthorne. During the time period of 1692 when the actual witch trials took place, the house actually had seven gables. Hawthorne's wealthy cousin owned the home in the 1800's and he visited it often, thus using it as the backdrop for his famous novel.  

Boston
A few days later, we took the commuter train into Boston. Our first stop was the USS Constitution. Called Old Ironsides, the sailing ship was commissioned in 1797 and she never lost a battle. She is still an active sailing ship in the US Navy and the sailors dress in uniforms of the late 1700s.

It was a gorgeous, sunny day and Bostonians were out in full measure.They were everywhere--on the Boston Common (a beautiful park now but originally a place to keep the village cows during the 1600s), marching by the hundreds through the city in a major protest of some sort, and eating all the junk food imaginable at dozens of food counters at Quincy Market.

We jumped on the Red Bean Town Trolley and saw glimpses (and I do mean glimpses) of Cambridge, MIT, where the original Tea Party happened, the venerable Fenway Park (on the day the Boston Red Socks beat the New York Yankees), and the gorgeous Prudential Tower.

This is the Old North Church (see the tower peaking between the old apartments) where Paul Revere saw the signal that the British were coming--one if by land and two if by sea.

Portsmouth, New Hampshire

After four nights in Salem, we drove to Portsmouth, New Hampshire by way of Vermont. Joe wanted me to see as many states as I could. It was a beautiful drive, with the trees changing color more every day and clapboard houses decorated for fall with mums and pumpkins on front steps and leaves falling in the wind. Every nursery we passed was decorated like the one pictured below.

In Portsmouth, we stayed for nine nights at the Martin Hill Inn, another older home right in downtown Portsmouth near charming shops and restaurants. We chose this place for two reasons--it was a good spot because we could do lots of different day trips into Maine and northern New Hampshire. It also was where Joe was stationed forty-four years ago at Pease Air Force Base. The base is closed now but it has been converted into an air park where international freight comes into the US. We had a lovely closed in porch at Martin Hill Inn with a view of the garden and one night when the weather was warmer than it had been, we ate on the porch. We bought take-out Chinese food from a local grocery store where you picked out the fresh vegetables, noodles or rice, and in the deli section they stir-fried the beef, chicken or pork into the mixture. Every morning, the owner of the inn, Margot, managed to serve us a completely different breakfast (nine in all!)--delicious fruit compotes, various kinds of pancakes, waffles, and egg dishes. Along with the delightful food was the invigorating conversation among the people at the breakfast table, ranging from politics to economics to movies. The table was set beautifully by Margot and she was a charming hostess.

The White Mountains
The day after we arrived, we drove far into New Hampshire to visit Lake Winnipesaukee. Joe has long talked about this area, having been there with his late wife, Joyce, and his four children when he was stationed in Portsmouth. It was on that trip that he took a treasured photo of his children in front of a beautiful tree that was bright yellow. I have listened to this story for eighteen years and finally saw the countryside he so fondly remembers. We could have taken hundreds of photos on this trip, but photos simply don't catch the iridescence of the leaves that range from red to pink to magenta and no painter's palette can mix the right color of the orange and yellow.

At Lake Winnipesaukee, we had a fried clam lunch at the old restaurant on the lake. There was a photograph on the wall of the restaurant that showed the lake completely frozen and small planes with skis that had landed on the ice.

Further into the White Mountains, we drove along the Swift River, and the sun finally came out in all its glory. At last, we could really see the color of the trees. Mother Nature is beyond description when she wants to flaunt her glorious colors.

Maine
Every day we traveled to a different spot. Along the Maine coastline to Portland, inland to Augusta to see the capitol, to Freeport to see the "mother ship" of LL Bean, the sportswear and sports catalogue outfitter. There in Freeport were huge warehouses stocked with everything from LL Bean sheets, clothing, and couches to guns and hiking boots. The entire town of Freeport is in the employ of LL Bean! Finally, we went to the State Fair in Fryeburg, Maine where we saw livestock that seemed unreal because they were so huge. We saw draft horses that were seven feet to the hip, a hog that was immense and incredibly beautiful white steers from Italy that came from stock Caesar used to build the Colosseum. 

While in Kennebunkport, we shared the view of the Atlantic Ocean with the Bush family.

York Beach, Maine, not far from Kennebunkport.

Joe talks to the young woman who owned the beautiful team of oxen that we saw at the Maine State Fair. She was feeding him pieces of apple, and when I reached out, he licked my hand like a gentle dog.

The best thing about any fair, I think, are the pigs. This young and energetic farmer was trying his best to round up this unconcerned piggy.



This is truly the picture of New England that I will remember the most--leaves everywhere.

A final story. While in Augusta, Joe and I climbed the steps to the state capitol. There was no one around but us, even though it was a Thursday afternoon at 4 p.m. We tried the door into the rotunda but it was locked. We were about to walk around the huge building to find another entrance when someone inside noticed us and opened the door, then he disappeared into a nearby office. We stood looking at the various governor portraits hanging on the walls when a guard suddenly appeared from nowhere, wanting to know how we got into the building. We told him someone let us in. He was a bit incredulous because no one was around except us, but after several questions, he finally left. Later, when we went down to another level of the building, we saw him and he explained we had set off a silent alarm. The next morning, at the breakfast table, there was a couple from Bangor, Maine. When we told the story of setting off the alarm in the capitol building, the husband quipped, "We don't have much news in Maine, so I can imagine the headline of the newspaper this morning said: "Sedona couple set off alarm at Capitol."

A tree in full color on the grounds of the capitol in August, Maine. Its beauty is a reminder of a wonderful trip to New England.

Braubach on the Rhine

Our last few days in Germany was spent on the Rhine River. We knew we wanted to see it, but to be truthful, we did not have any idea how beautiful it was. By luck, we happened upon the wonderful little town of Braubach which looks like a picture post card.

We stayed in a charming small hotel which was connected to a German bakery. Every morning, we could smell, beginning at about 4 a.m., the baker cooking his strudels, bread, and wonderful, fattening things to eat!

While there, we visited Marksburg Castle. It is the only castle in Germany (there are about 80) that has never been rebuilt. When Napoleon went through the area in the early 1800's, he sacked all of the castles but Marksburg--and that was because the lord of Marksburg had an alliance with Napoleon. It was remarkable to go through this castle which was built in the early 1400's. We even saw the torture chamber with its "rack". Holy cats!

This is my last blog. Our trip ended really in Braubach on the Rhine, and what a wonderful way to end it.

Meyer-Werft Shipyard & Bremen

Once we left Cuxhaven, we traveled west, close to the border of the Netherlands, to Papenburg, the home of Meyer-Werft, the maker of the largest cruise ships in the world.

The shipbuilding takesplace inside a huge shed, about 12-stories high. We were in a corridor next to the shed looking through a long window at about the fifth-story level. The men who were working on the ship looked like ants, they were so dwarfed by the ship they were working on.

True to form, as we had thoughout our wonderful trip, we found someone who spoke English. Although the entire tour was in German, Joe struck up a conversation with a fellow named Hans, a financial officer for NATO. He was born in Papenburg, and comes home regularly to see the launching of the ships from Meyer-Werft.

It was an amazing tour. We were viewing the new Norwegian Gem. The next ship is going to be a new Disney ship which will be so big that the company will have to finance changes to a large bridge on the Ems River that leads to the North Sea just to get the ship launched.

After visiting the shipyard, we traveled to beautiful Bremen, the home of my central character. Bremen is a beautiful city, with a central market place and city hall dating to 1409. There we saw the statue of Roland, which dates from 1404, and represents civic freedom. We had lunch in the Bremer Ratskeller, a celebrated wine cellar and restaurant in the city hall basement that also dated to 1409.

Seeing these places makes one pause about history. America is only 231 years old. We saw barns that were older than our country!

U-boat History

At the U-boat Archive in Cuxhaven, I had the opportunity to work with Jak Showell, a well-known published author on U-boats and their history. After two days of going through files, holding the great coat of Admiral Karl Doenitz (my gosh, it was so heavy!) who was the head of the U-boat arm of the German Kriegsmarine and later commander-in-chief of the entire German Navy, and sitting in a chair that Hitler once sat in, we took a field trip to Wilhelmshaven on the North Sea with Jak.

Our first stop was a German Naval base, at Sengwarden, the command center of German communications with its ships at sea. Historically, this is where Doenitz' headquarters was located in the early days of WW II before he moved his headquarters to France. A German commander, Admiral-Armin-Zimmermann-Kaserne, who wrote a history of the base met us, showed us where Doenitz' office was (historically important because this is where all U-boat commanders personally received their orders), and then he took us into a bunker to see how the German Navy today stays in communication with its ships. Holy cow, it was like being admitted into NORAD or the center of Cheyenne Mountain in the U.S.!

This is also the base that was used after the war to house refugees and it is where Jewish refugees boarded a boat to go to Palestine in 1947 and they were not allowed to get off the ship and were sent back to this base. The movie "Exodus" with Paul Newman was about this episode.

Our next stop was the old U-boat naval school. It sits right on the Wilhelmshaven bay and it is where U-boats docked while crews were going through training. A bit of a scary place with buildings showing many years of age, including a bunker for crewman to go to during allied bombing. We also saw the water tower building where U-boat crewman were trained to escape from their ship.

Finally, at the end of a long day, we went to visit a beautiful shoe shop in a housing suburb of Wilhelmshaven. In 1947, the building was purchased by a shoemaker. Previous to that, it was where the German's housed their communications center with U-boats before the base was built at Sengwarden in 1939. We were taken to the building's basement and saw that it was built like a bunker, with very thick walls and windows. Very old stuff here! We were told by the owner of the building that we were the first Americans to visit it.

The photos are top from left to right: the pre-war communications bunker, the old U-boat naval school (with a skateboard ramp in the foreground), , bottom left to right are the water tower where crewman were trained to escape their boat, and me standing in front of a bunker on the grounds of the old U-boat naval school.

Kiel, Germany

We finally met up with Volkmar Koenig, the German U-boat officer of U-99, which was a famous U-boat, having sunk 35 ships during WW II. He was captured along with 40 other men on the ship on March 17, 1941 and spent almost 4 years in a Canadian POW camp.

He is 87 years old and a real firebrand, driving us at over 100 miles an hour in his Audi as he took us to various places in and around Kiel on the Baltic Sea. Our first stop was the U-995, which is only one of two U-boats that can be visited, the other being the U-505 which is at the Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry. Volkmar is so well known at the U-995 memorial that all he did was say hello to the people who run the memorial and we were graciously let in without having to pay an entry fee. Once inside, he explained all kinds of things to us, and as German visitors to the site began to perceive he was a former U-boat officer, they began listening to his explanations of about the boat, realizing what a historic treasure he is.

For those of you who might have seen the famous U-boat movie "Das Boot," Volkmar said the movie was very close to what life was like on a U-boat, except for all the noise. When things got bad, no one was yelling and screaming...all was quiet.

Later the same day, he took us to see the U-boat memorial which commemorates the 30,000 U-boat crewmen who died during WW II--almost 700 boats in all. It was a lovely memorial with each of the the boats engraved in a wall and the name and birthdate of each man lost at sea.

Volkmar admitted to being very political when he was a young man. He was a member of the Hitler Youth and supported National Socialism. His wife, who is 75 years old, is a delight. Both were very gracious to us, inviting us to their home for dinner, and then they took us out in Kiel Harbor in a beautiful excursion boat along with many of their friends to see the dozens of sailing ships in Kiel for the celebrated Kiel Week, the largest sailing event in the world. It was an incredible treat.

The pictures show Joe and Volkmar examining the periscope, the U-boat memorial, and me standing in front of U-995.

Here is Knut

My gosh, I figured out how to get the site in English! Here is a couple of photos. This is Knut with his trainer. The second photo is of the area where the giraffes are housed. Look at how beautifully the Berlin Zoo has managed to make a yard for the giraffes look so exotic.

Berlin

We arrived at 10 a.m. and got to our hotel, the Hotel Berlin at 11 a.m. It is a beautiful, big hotel right in the heart of the city. We felt very lucky to be able to check in at 11 a.m. and get our room and to also find that we are connected to wi-fi here in the room.

We walked to the Berlin Zoo and stood in line for a long time to see the star of the city, little Knut, the polar bear that was born here several months ago. He is no little bear and in no time, he will be too big for the trainers to play with. I would have included a photo I took of him, however, somehow my blog has shown up in German and I can't figure out how to translate attaching a photo to the blog.

I spoke to my U-boat officer who lives in Kiel. He is anxiously awaiting our visit. He is so funny...calling himself Mr. King which is German for his real last name of Konig.

Tomorrow we are off to visit other sites in Berlin.