#13 Boston Via Germany - September 3, 2004
Guten Tag meine Freunde!
I am hailing from Germany, where I am trying to adjust to a German keyboard (z and y are in different locations, and it is littered with Umlauts - the only good thing is that Oscar is not here to run around on the keyboard while I type). I arrived here yesterday after a circuitous jouney that involved two airplane rides, several types of trains and taxis. More on that later.
The past week had been extremely busy, Boston experienced a scorcher of a weekend, hot temperatures combined with insane humidity (my guess is around 300 percent). Friday night I met up with my friends for Linda and Roger for a late night drink at the Sheraton Hotel where we were surrounded by a convention contingent of postal workers (ooiiiiee, men in uniform!). On Saturday I hung around Quincy Market, Boston's prime tourist hangout - I attended a movie festival called "Zoink" which featured experimental films, shorts and documentaries. Pretty interesting and strangely weird work, among them a film "Dinner" where the hostess kept inviting men for a meal only to devour them later (not the way you are thinking now - mind out of the gutter please!), and a moody picture called "The Winter People" by John Stimpson, which was a story about a haunted house on Cape Cod. I won two tickets for The Comedy Connection in their raffle - Boston friends if you want to go with me - now is the time to suck up!
I explored Quincy Market some more to hunt for gifts for my relative - it is also featuring every sort of food you can imagine, from a nice cup of Chowda to oysters and any kind of pizza imaginable. Only in the US can you go to a food stand in Boston and eat a Philly Steak from an Algerian guy who speaks fluent German. In a moment of culinary uncertainty (which proved to be fatal) I also tried Bubble Tea - an Asian concoction with giant black Tapioca pearls in them. My particular choice also had Taro root in it. To say it bluntly - the stuff was gross - the Tapioca pearls kept coming up through the straw (too big) and the whole drink just tasted awful. Yowza! I headed home to cool off (not without buying some bottled water from a very business-savvy kid named Max who sits out there every weekend on the corner of Merrimack and New Chardon street).
Saturday evening I met my friends Stephanie and her husband Dan in the North End for yet another Italian feast, this time to honor St. Anthony, who is apparently not only the patron of the poor but also the finder of lost things. This particular feast was begun by Italian immigrants from Montefalcione, Italy in 1919 and has become the largest Italian religious festival in New England. Food booths line the streets in the very Italian North End and the streets are chock full of people. The booths sell great gnocchi and pasta dishes, fried calamari, and another East Coast favorite, Fried Dough, also known as the triple bypass special. You can also buy a t-shirt that says "Kiss me, I am Italian". St. Anthony himself resides in a shrine where you can pin money on him and you receive a button with his picture. I pinned a dollar on him in the hope to find my lost make-up bag, but so far Antonio here has not come through for me. Interestingly enough, if you do not have a dollar, they use the money on the statue to make change. Meanwhile two marching bands and a whole bunch of strapping Italian guys, who have some sort of medal ribbon pinned to their chest, roam the streets, play music and are fronted by a boy dressed in a brown monk robe carrying a miniature St. Anthony statue.
The North End is unbelievable with its great food, very Italian stores, and old ladies sitting in front of their houses chatting, and Saturday night I felt as if I were in a Soprano's episode. An Italian guy standing on a street corner was talking on a cell phone in an agitated fashion, when all of a sudden a car with three other young Italians pulled up, and they opened the trunk, which had about 12 boxes (brand new, unopened) with garbage disposals just as if they "had fallen off the truck" – hmmmmh? We finally escaped from the heat into a pub called "Clarke's" and ended the day on a cool note.
On Sunday I met up with Linda and Roger and we headed toward Quabbin Reservoir (http://www.mass.gov/dfwele/dfw/dfw_quabbin.htm), where you drive past Garner, the furniture capital of New England (I knew that would be of interest to all of you) and signs pointing to the Jonny Appleseed trail (most of you know the tale of Jonny Appleseed, whose real name was John Chapman and who is also known as the Apple Tree Man http://www.millville.org/Workshops_f/Dich_FOLKLORE/WACKED/story.html). We hiked along the reservoir, saw a loon in the water and were keeping our eye out for porcupines (did you know that they eat pine needles, even tree bark in winter?). We also met up with a snake and giant ants! Quabbin Reservoir provides the water supply for Boston a large part of Eastern Massachusetts.
We then headed to the quaint and cute college town of Amherst, which has the homestead of poet Emily Dickinson (http://www.poets.org/poets/poets.cfm?45442B7C000C07000F)and also features the motto "Amherst, where reality is an option". We stopped at the Amherst brewing company for some grub, and I can highly recommend this place. Their "Uncle John's homemade root beer" is absolutely phenomenal and has a real nice peppery kick at the end - they sell it in a "growler". Their German-style Monster Pretzel really is huge and comes with Massaatuky Brown Ale Mustard. The interior features some interesting decor with wrought-iron arms holding out lamps and some sort of disco equipment.
And now I am here in my hometown of Neuenburg, Germany (www.neuenburg.de), where my brother is firing up the BBQ as we speak. The trip over here was exhausting, but I had nice company on the plane by Barry, a New Hampshire college student who was heading for a semester abroad in Florence. The Lufthansa entertainment program (while high-tech) did not feature the greatest selection of movies (some of them quite old actually, maybe it was 70s week with the airline), so we amused ourselves by doing play-by-play with a Wallace and Gromit-like movie that encouraged people to stretch during flying. In our version, the little man in the movie was definitely on drugs, having seizures and in the end got abducted by an Alien spaceship. Some other movies from a German film school showed documentaries on warthogs - go figure.
More on my Germany experience in next week's update. The BBQ awaits!
Mixed Bag:
While the Bostonians are great with picking restaurant names, the variety does not extend to people's names - as mentioned I have three friends named Linda, two Karas, two Taras, and at work everyone is named Bob. Found some more restaurant names though: The Salty Dog, and the Pushcart Pub in Boston, the Loose Goose in Amherst.
Last week also was Restaurant Week in Boston, where you can go to a selection of absolutely great restaurants and for 30 dollars get a stellar five-course meal (lunch is 20 for 3 courses).
Traffic Signs that say "Squeeze" mean that the road is narrowing, you are not required to squeeze anything while driving by.
New food experience: Pulled Pork.
Contest Announcement: Karli Grigsby wins the big prize! She came closest to guessing the exorbitant fee for my hair-coloring job. Congrats! Gift is on the way!
All my love to you from a nice warm summer night in Southern Germany.
Auf Wiedersehn!
Petra
I am hailing from Germany, where I am trying to adjust to a German keyboard (z and y are in different locations, and it is littered with Umlauts - the only good thing is that Oscar is not here to run around on the keyboard while I type). I arrived here yesterday after a circuitous jouney that involved two airplane rides, several types of trains and taxis. More on that later.
The past week had been extremely busy, Boston experienced a scorcher of a weekend, hot temperatures combined with insane humidity (my guess is around 300 percent). Friday night I met up with my friends for Linda and Roger for a late night drink at the Sheraton Hotel where we were surrounded by a convention contingent of postal workers (ooiiiiee, men in uniform!). On Saturday I hung around Quincy Market, Boston's prime tourist hangout - I attended a movie festival called "Zoink" which featured experimental films, shorts and documentaries. Pretty interesting and strangely weird work, among them a film "Dinner" where the hostess kept inviting men for a meal only to devour them later (not the way you are thinking now - mind out of the gutter please!), and a moody picture called "The Winter People" by John Stimpson, which was a story about a haunted house on Cape Cod. I won two tickets for The Comedy Connection in their raffle - Boston friends if you want to go with me - now is the time to suck up!
I explored Quincy Market some more to hunt for gifts for my relative - it is also featuring every sort of food you can imagine, from a nice cup of Chowda to oysters and any kind of pizza imaginable. Only in the US can you go to a food stand in Boston and eat a Philly Steak from an Algerian guy who speaks fluent German. In a moment of culinary uncertainty (which proved to be fatal) I also tried Bubble Tea - an Asian concoction with giant black Tapioca pearls in them. My particular choice also had Taro root in it. To say it bluntly - the stuff was gross - the Tapioca pearls kept coming up through the straw (too big) and the whole drink just tasted awful. Yowza! I headed home to cool off (not without buying some bottled water from a very business-savvy kid named Max who sits out there every weekend on the corner of Merrimack and New Chardon street).
Saturday evening I met my friends Stephanie and her husband Dan in the North End for yet another Italian feast, this time to honor St. Anthony, who is apparently not only the patron of the poor but also the finder of lost things. This particular feast was begun by Italian immigrants from Montefalcione, Italy in 1919 and has become the largest Italian religious festival in New England. Food booths line the streets in the very Italian North End and the streets are chock full of people. The booths sell great gnocchi and pasta dishes, fried calamari, and another East Coast favorite, Fried Dough, also known as the triple bypass special. You can also buy a t-shirt that says "Kiss me, I am Italian". St. Anthony himself resides in a shrine where you can pin money on him and you receive a button with his picture. I pinned a dollar on him in the hope to find my lost make-up bag, but so far Antonio here has not come through for me. Interestingly enough, if you do not have a dollar, they use the money on the statue to make change. Meanwhile two marching bands and a whole bunch of strapping Italian guys, who have some sort of medal ribbon pinned to their chest, roam the streets, play music and are fronted by a boy dressed in a brown monk robe carrying a miniature St. Anthony statue.
The North End is unbelievable with its great food, very Italian stores, and old ladies sitting in front of their houses chatting, and Saturday night I felt as if I were in a Soprano's episode. An Italian guy standing on a street corner was talking on a cell phone in an agitated fashion, when all of a sudden a car with three other young Italians pulled up, and they opened the trunk, which had about 12 boxes (brand new, unopened) with garbage disposals just as if they "had fallen off the truck" – hmmmmh? We finally escaped from the heat into a pub called "Clarke's" and ended the day on a cool note.
On Sunday I met up with Linda and Roger and we headed toward Quabbin Reservoir (http://www.mass.gov/dfwele/dfw/dfw_quabbin.htm), where you drive past Garner, the furniture capital of New England (I knew that would be of interest to all of you) and signs pointing to the Jonny Appleseed trail (most of you know the tale of Jonny Appleseed, whose real name was John Chapman and who is also known as the Apple Tree Man http://www.millville.org/Workshops_f/Dich_FOLKLORE/WACKED/story.html). We hiked along the reservoir, saw a loon in the water and were keeping our eye out for porcupines (did you know that they eat pine needles, even tree bark in winter?). We also met up with a snake and giant ants! Quabbin Reservoir provides the water supply for Boston a large part of Eastern Massachusetts.
We then headed to the quaint and cute college town of Amherst, which has the homestead of poet Emily Dickinson (http://www.poets.org/poets/poets.cfm?45442B7C000C07000F)and also features the motto "Amherst, where reality is an option". We stopped at the Amherst brewing company for some grub, and I can highly recommend this place. Their "Uncle John's homemade root beer" is absolutely phenomenal and has a real nice peppery kick at the end - they sell it in a "growler". Their German-style Monster Pretzel really is huge and comes with Massaatuky Brown Ale Mustard. The interior features some interesting decor with wrought-iron arms holding out lamps and some sort of disco equipment.
And now I am here in my hometown of Neuenburg, Germany (www.neuenburg.de), where my brother is firing up the BBQ as we speak. The trip over here was exhausting, but I had nice company on the plane by Barry, a New Hampshire college student who was heading for a semester abroad in Florence. The Lufthansa entertainment program (while high-tech) did not feature the greatest selection of movies (some of them quite old actually, maybe it was 70s week with the airline), so we amused ourselves by doing play-by-play with a Wallace and Gromit-like movie that encouraged people to stretch during flying. In our version, the little man in the movie was definitely on drugs, having seizures and in the end got abducted by an Alien spaceship. Some other movies from a German film school showed documentaries on warthogs - go figure.
More on my Germany experience in next week's update. The BBQ awaits!
Mixed Bag:
While the Bostonians are great with picking restaurant names, the variety does not extend to people's names - as mentioned I have three friends named Linda, two Karas, two Taras, and at work everyone is named Bob. Found some more restaurant names though: The Salty Dog, and the Pushcart Pub in Boston, the Loose Goose in Amherst.
Last week also was Restaurant Week in Boston, where you can go to a selection of absolutely great restaurants and for 30 dollars get a stellar five-course meal (lunch is 20 for 3 courses).
Traffic Signs that say "Squeeze" mean that the road is narrowing, you are not required to squeeze anything while driving by.
New food experience: Pulled Pork.
Contest Announcement: Karli Grigsby wins the big prize! She came closest to guessing the exorbitant fee for my hair-coloring job. Congrats! Gift is on the way!
All my love to you from a nice warm summer night in Southern Germany.
Auf Wiedersehn!
Petra
posted by My Boston at
2:25 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home