Boston: Adams National Park and Farm Tour

On Sunday, we got up early and battled rush hour traffic to go to the Adams National Park and tour the birthplaces of 2nd U.S. President John Adams and 6th U.S. President John Quincy Adams, as well as the “Old House,” home to four generations of the Adams family.

We arrived just in time to take the trolley to the birthplaces with about ten other people. We rode through the sleepy town of Quincy on the trolley and enjoyed the scenery for a few minutes.

When we got off, the two birthplaces were 75 feet away from each other on zero land among modern houses, roads, and parked cars.

We toured the houses (no pictures inside), which were bare but included some period relics like hearth tools. We learned about the history of the houses. They are the oldest presidential birthplaces in the United States. It was here that John Adams, Samuel Adams, and James Bowdoin wrote the Massachusetts Constitution. This document, still in use today, influenced writing of the United States Constitution.

We then took the trolley back to the Old House. This stately mansion, built in 1731, was packed to the brim with historical objects spanning the time of the Adams family for four generations from 1788 to 1927: Presidents John Adams and John Quincy Adams, First Ladies Abigail and Louisa Catherine Adams, Civil War Minister to Great Britain Charles Francis Adams, and literary historians Henry and Brooks Adams. The family certainly had a long, strong legacy of service to their nation. We were all impressed by their collective accomplishments. What an amazing family!

My favorite part was touring the Stone Library, built in 1873. It contains more than 14,000 books that belonged to the Adamses. I walked in and felt the words whispering to me. It was a stone (fireproof) structure crammed with books two- and three-deep from floor to ceiling. We also enjoyed the 18th-century style formal garden, containing thousands of flowers.

When we left, we started our farm tour. This was something I developed using the Massachusetts state agriculture website. Our first stop was in the city of Sharon. We went to Ward’s Berry Farm where we looked at pumpkins, gourds, mums, and other fall produce before standing in a long line to order veggie wraps, smoothies, and hot pumpkin bisque for lunch.

Once we ate, we piled in the car again and went to Millis to visit Tangerini’s Spring Street Farm, where we skipped the hay ride but had to go through the corn maze. It was situated on a couple acres and really well done. The three of us split up and I only won because I ran the last ten feet.

Next up was OutPost Farm in Holliston, where I was disappointed not to see the turkeys but enjoyed the yummy turkey pot pie.

Then we went to Dowse Orchards in Sherborn, where we were greeted with beautiful piles of every kind of apple you can imagine. We bought a couple apples and a gallon of cider to be enjoyed at the hotel.

Our last stop was Sunshine Farm, also in Sherborn, where we looked at more fall produce.

We weren’t hungry for dinner yet, so we looked at the GPS until we saw the ocean. None of us can stand to be near the ocean but not experience it. We went back to Quincy and parked right on the ocean and walked up and down the beach, feeding oyster crackers to seagulls and collecting shells. We watched the sun set and spill red over the distant skyline of Boston across the water. We just enjoyed each other’s company.

When we got hungry, we drove to Taunton and ate at Benjamin’s Restaurant, where I had my first-ever whole lobster. It was stuffed and baked and very tasty, though way too much food for me. Mom had the filet and Michael had a seafood explosion (I don’t recall what menu item it was) plus an appetizer of escargot, which I wasn't too fond of watching him eat. Everything was absolutely terrific. I have my Boston native friends to thank for the restaurant suggestion.

In all, it was a wonderful day. The day was warm and sunny, with a blue, blue sky that slowly seeped to red at the end of the day. We talked and laughed and loved life.

Boston: the Top of the Hub

On the eighth of October 2011, we flew to Boston, Massachusetts for a week’s vacation. My mom joined us on the trip.

We arrived in the late afternoon and by the time we got our rental car squared away, the sunlight was turning butter yellow outside. We decided to drive around and do some sight-seeing. Unfortunately, the first thing we encountered was an unavoidable toll road and very confusing streets. We drove in circles for a while and decided it just wasn’t the day for us to go sight-seeing after all. So we drove to Norwood, Mass, to check into our hotel.

We got changed and headed out to Boston as the sun set. We took side streets the entire half-hour drive there and when we crested a hill, the metropolis spread out glittering before us. Excitement rose.

We found a place to park at the Prudential building and took the elevator up to the lobby of the Top of the Hub restaurant. When I told them my name and reservation time, they stared at me blankly. Some research ensued, and we eventually discovered they’d put my name down for the wrong date! They seated us by a window anyway.

The Top of the Hub is on the 52nd floor of a skyscraper in Boston, and the view was incredible. I ordered Michael to get his camera out. He did… and realized he had no batteries. So there’re only a couple crummy cell phone photos of our experience at the Top of the Hub.

I ordered from the Three Course Prix-Fixe menu. My first course was a creamy spicy lobster soup with Riesling. My next course was the Vermont Misty Knolls chicken with roasted fingerling potatoes, bacon lardons, and braised Swiss chard. This was served with a red zinfandel. My last course was a maple crème brûlée with a small glass of moscato. Everything was great, but it wasn’t as fancy and gourmet as I expected. Mom and Michael said the same about their meals.

We left the restaurant considerably tipsier than we had entered, and we went to the Skywalk Observatory on the 50th floor. This offered a panoramic view of Boston… that is, if half the floor hadn’t been shut down for a special event. Ah, well.

We enjoyed what view we did have and ultimately left. We went back to the hotel and crashed. We had an early Sunday ahead of us.

Christmas in Germany: Berlin and Oranienburg's Concentration Camp: The Last Day

On December 28, we toured Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp, just 35 kilometers north of Berlin in Oranienburg. It was bitterly cold; the temperature was thirteen degrees below zero Celsius and dropping. Those are dangerous temperatures. We wore two pairs of socks, two pairs of pants, two sweaters, coats, face masks, and hats, and we were still so cold we couldn’t stop shaking even for a moment. But once we were there, we felt like we had to go through with it, as an act of solidarity. I mean, the prisoners there often didn’t have shoes, and their clothing was most often just a thin linen shirt and trousers, so how could I complain about the cold with all my clothing?

Sachsenhausen was a Nazi concentration camp used primarily for political prisoners from 1936 to the end of the Third Reich in 1945. Due to its location so close to Berlin, it became the administrative center of all concentration camps and a training center for Schutzstaffel (SS) officers.

The "green monster" was an SS casino, where they ate and socialized. It was so called because if you were unlucky enough to have to serve SS officers there and got noticed, you were likely to be brutalized or murdered the next day.

The famous Nazi slogan, Work Makes Free. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbeit_macht_frei

The suicide zone. Anyone stepping outside the sign was shot without warning.

Mass burials under the snow

Trenches for mass executions

To say life was hard on prisoners here would be the understatement of the year. They were often worked to death in the brick works or the counterfeiting operations. Our tour guide told a story of an SS officer who asked two men, “Why are you here?” The Soviet said meekly, “I am here because I am a Communist, sir.” But the Jew begged the officer, “Please, sir, I haven’t done anything. Please, there must be a mistake.” The SS officer reared back and slapped him across the face with his massive keyring. Blood and skin splattered everywhere. The Jew collapsed to the ground. He was ordered to clean up his mess. “I don’t have a rag, sir,” the Jew protested. For this he was severely beaten and kicked. The SS officer ordered him to take off all his clothes and clean up his own blood with the rags he had worn. This story stuck with me.

This memorial building was burned in a demonstration by Neo-Nazis. It was left in its ruined state as a warning of extremism.

Someone left a rose

Although it was intended as a labor camp, mass executions took place at Sachsenhausen. At first, the executions were done in a trench, either by shooting or by hanging. These trenches were filled with deep, untouched snow on our visit. It was hard to imagine lining up and knowing that you were headed to death. Later, a gas chamber was constructed. We toured the remains of that evil building, referred to as Station Zed. The chamber used liquid Zyklon B, which was placed in small glass bottles near the ventilation system by the door. The bottle was broken with a spike and the gas mixed with air and was forced into the chamber.

Near the end of the war, 13,000 Red Army POWs arrived at Sachsenhausen. Over 10,000 were executed in the camp by being shot in the back of the neck through a hidden hole in a wall while being “measured for a uniform.” Their bodies were then burnt in a crematorium.

The crematorium and some roses

The room closest to the front of the frame was where prisoners were shot through a hole in the wall

In the spring of 1945, Sachsenhausen was evacuated under the threat of the advancing Red Army. The SS ordered 33,000 inmates on a forced march northeast. Thousands did not survive this death march; those who collapsed were summarily shot by the SS. On April 22, 1945, the remaining 3,000 inmates were liberated by the Red Army. Many of these only survived a few days and died of starvation or disease.

I was too cold to do much more than listen numbly, but when we reached Station Zed, the foundations of the building that contained the gas chamber, the shooting chamber, and the crematorium, I felt creepy, as if I could see the prisoners if I just closed my eyes. It was a place of great evil.

We got on the bus, crammed with over 100 people, and made our way back to the train station. Our tour guide recommended a restaurant, and since we hadn’t eaten anything but a donut all day, we happily followed his directions and walked several blocks in the bitter cold only to discover that the kitchen wasn’t open for another hour. So I led us back to a different restaurant I’d seen, crunching thorough the foot-deep snow.

Our last real German meal was at Oranium in Berlin. Michael had sausages and goulash, and I had roast beef in a red wine sauce with roasted potato wedges and almond broccoli. It was terrific.

We stopped for one last glühwein at the Gesundbrunnen train stop and then headed back to the hotel.

The next morning, we were fortunate to discover that Frankfurt had cleared all its days-long delays from the massive snowstorms and the Great European Freeze that had gripped the continent. We arrived at the airport well before dawn. We had a 1.25-hour flight from Berlin to Frankfurt, a two-hour layover which turned into a 3.5-hour layover, and a 9-hour flight to Philadelphia, in which we watched several movies and drank caffeinated beverages to stay awake. After another 3 hour layover, in which an hour was spent waiting for our bag (the plane was frozen solid and they couldn't get the door open), we had another 2.5-hour flight to Nashville. I struggled mightily to keep my eyes open. From there we had a 30-minute drive after getting our bags and shuttling around the parking lot. In all, we were awake for almost 23 hours. But we went to sleep at nighttime and woke in the morning, and we completely beat jet lag on the way home.

Germany was an awe-inspiring trip. The people, the history, the food, and the scenery were all fantastic. I’d go again in a heartbeat.