Culture instead of nature

Don't be surprised, there's a bit of culture here too 😂. We took advantage of that and it was really good. First, we were in Bismarck, the capital of North Dakota. Due to the many German immigrants, this city was eventually renamed Bismarck - Yes, after the Chancellor of the German Empire, not after the herring 😂. There's a great museum there, the State Museum of Heritage. Relatively new, large, modern, and really well done. Admission is also free, so there were actually a lot of people there. Even children and teenagers, since it’s currently vacation time. I'm always glad to see that there are still people here who are interested in these things.

There are different rooms you can visit. Prehistory with dinosaurs (I felt a bit like at the Senckenberg Museum in Frankfurt 😊), the history and way of life of the Native American population, the history of North Dakota (which is currently closed) and life in North Dakota in general, past and present. There was really a lot to see, and again, it's really well done.

At the entrance, we were greeted by a retiree, as often happens in North America. The usual question, where we're from. Of course, we said Germany. Normally, many people then say, oh, I've been there too or something like that. He grinned and said something similar very kindly: "I was shot down in a plane during the war there!" Then he explained to us what we would find where in the museum. We were a bit speechless at that point.

Culture is also about eating and drinking. On the recommendation of Jutta's sorority sister Eileen, we went to a brewery run by the parents of one of her friends. The beer was good, the food was Americanized but very tasty. We had bratwurst with sauerkraut ... of course, it came as a hot dog with cold kraut in the bread and Jäger Schnitzel with - also cold - red cabbage and spätzle. The sauce was a caper-mustard sauce. Very tasty, I like that kind of thing, but I don't understand what it has to do with hunting. So much for culture when it comes to food 😂😂😂.

In the evening, there was also sports culture. Baseball - THE American sport par excellence. It was something like the third league, after Major and Minor comes this one. They're college students looking for a place in the two higher leagues. The Bismarck Larks won against Waterloo. I mean, if you come from this city, you can only lose, right? 😂😂😂

It was okay in terms of sports, but maybe we should still watch a Major League game on our trip, just for comparison. Our seat neighbor, a former teacher with a German great-grandmother who spent his exchange year in Austria and still spoke a few words of German, immediately took us to his heart. We talked for hours about many topics (a baseball game has no time limit, and this one lasted almost four hours) and among other things, I learned a lot about baseball. It was a very nice evening and he gave us the tip to visit the Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg on our way.

And that's what we did. But first, we went to the government building. Winnipeg is the capital of Manitoba in Canada. We arrived just in time to join the tour, and it was really worth it. The tour was entertaining, interesting, and sprinkled with some funny stories. So we learned all about the Golden Boy (the statue on the roof), the bison in the entrance area (huge statues that were delivered long after the completion of the building. They were too heavy to carry, so they took the Canadian way.... the animals were placed on ice blocks from the neighboring lake and then pushed into the building) and about the architect who took materials and incorporated them into his own house, a few blocks below the building. On the one hand, this naturally delayed the construction time of the government building, and on the other hand, it also became much more expensive than planned. It was noticed when the seven pillars for the front hall appeared outside (!) his villa. It couldn't have been more noticeable. So he ended up in jail for two years and then was quickly transported across the border to his American homeland. However, the pillars could no longer be dismantled, so they still adorn the facade of the property, even though there's now another building standing there. The pillars were preserved.

The Museum for Human Rights was worth every minute. We were lucky because it was the first Wednesday of the month, and admission is free after 5 pm. Good for us, but again, I was very surprised to see how many people were there. There are different sections for different forms of discrimination. I won't write much about the contents of the exhibition. Just this: It was interesting, instructive, factual, and once again makes you think. And not only because of the complexity of this topic, humanity is far from finished.

Otherwise, Winnipeg doesn't really have much to offer, so we continued driving. After so much culture and information, we needed a vacation. We spent a week in a small vacation home right on a lake in Nestor Falls. Not driving around and constantly receiving new impressions for a week felt really good. We sat in the garden by the lake, read, watched the animals and seaplanes, grilled, and simply relaxed.