MARTINA'S WORLD TRIP

UNITED STATES: September 26 - December 3, 2004
Your Dictionary

(Übersetzungshilfe)

Saturday, October 23rd, 2004 - North Conway, New Hampshire
New Hampshire (NH) was named for Hampshire, England, by explorer Captain John Mason in 1629. Fifty years later the region became a royal colony of the British crown, governed jointly with Massachusetts by Boston’s governor-general. Only in 1741 did New Hampshire get its own royal governor. By the mid-1750s, lumbering, flax and linen production kept the colonists busy. In June 1788, New Hampshire ratified the US Constitution and joined as the 9th state of the new union. During the 19th century, industrialisation boomed. Today agriculture, some manufacturing and tourism are the major industries of the 5th smallest state in the USA, which bears the official motto “Live free or die”.

Mountainous, politically conservative and naturally beautiful, New Hampshire – like most of New England – boasts thick forests of oak (Eiche), maple (Ahorn), hemlock (heisst auf deutsch Schierling, aber frag mich nicht, was das für’n Baum ist!), beech (Buche), pine (Kiefer) and spruce (Fichte). Groves of sugar maple trees produce maple syrup and are busy with moose, white-tailed deer, wild turkeys, racoons and squirrels. New England’s agricultural products include apples, blueberries, cranberries, peaches, plums, rhubarb and strawberries as well as notable dairy products, including milk, yoghurt, cheese and the famous Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, invented and first sold in Vermont. I’m basically telling you all this to put you in the right mindset of my New Hampshire experience: nature, fall foliage, and countryside style is what best describes the atmosphere here...

Aaron and I got up late and first were surprised with a great pancake breakfast prepared by Aaron’s uncle. Classic American pancakes are obviously served with maple syrup and this one tasted as if it almost came directly from the woods outside. Around 11 am, we were finally ready to drive towards Mount Washington, one of the peaks forming the so-called Presidential Range, a mountain chain in the White Mountains. Standing 1917 m above sea level, Mt Washington is the highest point of New Hampshire and actually the highest mountain in the north-eastern USA. We had been warned about the unpredictable weather at its top and were well prepared for the cold. The road up the mountain was closed during this time of year, so we had to take the only other means of transport to get up: the Mount Washington Cog Railway. Powered entirely by coal-fired steam locomotives, it is the first and oldest cog railway in the world. A ‘cog railway’ implies a rack (sowas wie eine schmale liegende Leiter) that runs between the regular rails. A cog gear (Zahnradgetriebe) underneath the train is turned by the engine of the locomotive and engages into the rack, so that the train climbs upwards tooth by tooth.

Started in 1866, the 4,5 km-long railway was completed to the summit of Mt Washington in 1869. There are seven sets of trains that go up the mountain, each consisting of an engine (the locomotive) and a passenger coach. The outward appearance of the locomotives and coaches has changed little over the years, so they still look pretty much as they did 135 years ago. It takes three people to operate a train: an engineer, a fireman who is responsible for the fire and steam, and a brakeman, who rides in the coach with the passengers and brakes the train on the way down. For safety reasons, the locomotive pushes the car up the track and remains in the same position for the trip down. It was interesting to learn that the locomotive and passenger coach are at no time coupled to each other. The coach is braked separately and in fact does not even touch the locomotive on the way down!

When we arrived at the mountain base at a quarter to twelve, we had to wait for the next train to leave at 1 pm. We spent the time around the station where some discarded engines and train parts were exposed. One of them was “Peppersass”, the very first mountain climbing cog railway engine in the world, built in 1866 by its inventor Sylvester Marsh. A small museum inside the station informed about the history and mechanics behind the railway and its locomotives. The items on exhibition also included a authentic “Devil’s Shingle”. Born out of need, the Devil’s Shingle or slideboard came into existence during the early days of the railway’s construction. These simple home-made devices allowed workers to descend the mountain rapidly after a days work. Made of wood and hand forged iron, the slideboards fit over the rack and had enough room for a worker and his tools. To compare it with anything modern, I would describe it as a downhill skateboard on tracks with a handbrake. Common times for the descent of the mountain were about 15 minutes. However, one (obviously very crazy) fellow established a record of descending in just over 2 minutes 30 seconds – which made him fly down at almost 100 km/h!!! Slideboards were officially used until 1906 when the death of an employee led to the banning of the Devil’s Shingle.

Once we were on the coach and the train started moving upwards, its sneaking “speed” and loud steaming noise revealed what type of adventure it was to take this railway. After a while I got used to the bucking movements of the coach and could focus on the landscape outside. It was cold and the air was fresh. Most trees of the forest in this area had lost their leaves already and the higher we climbed, the emptier it got. By the way, the average inclination of the train moving upwards was 25% with the steepest bit (called “Jacob’s Ladder”) inclining by 37%. As the brakeman told us this meant that people in the upper part of the coach were 14 feet (4,27 m) above the people in the back! The ride took about 60 minutes before we arrived at the top of Mount Washington. The trees had given way to plain fields of grass or scattered rocks covered by snow around the peak. It was bloody chilly up here. Aaron’s estimation of the temperature was 20-25 degrees Fahrenheit which roughly equals minus 5 degrees Celsius. We had 20 minutes to spend on the mountain before the train would go back down.

From a signboard posted up here, I learned that Mount Washington was part of the Appalachian Mountains which are among the oldest mountains on earth reaching back more than 500 million years into time. The chain once may have been higher than the Alps or the Rocky Mountains but weather and erosion have sculptured the mountains and left them as they are today. We had a beautiful view over the smaller mountains of the Presidential Range and the valleys surrounding the White Mountains. The weather was good, so we could see really far. First I was disappointed that we only had 20 minutes to spend up here but soon I figured out why: Just smiling for photos froze my teeth, so I doubt anyone could spend much more time in these temperatures! Actually, Mt Washington is famous for its dangerous and especially unpredictable weather conditions. Since 1849, 134 climbers, hikers and skiers have died up here, which makes Mt Washington America’s deadliest peak. It is also the place where, during a great storm on April 12, 1934, the instruments of the mountain’s observatory measured the highest wind ever observed by man: 372 km/h. Temperatures here can go down to the point where they freeze human eyeballs... Well, I guess compared to that, we still had a “warm” day. Riding down was as adventurous as coming up and although it was an expensive trip (49 US dollars per person for roughly three hours in total), it was a worthy once-in-a-lifetime experience.

On our way back towards North Conway we stopped at The Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods. Before 1944, the sleepy town of Bretton Woods was known primarily among locals and wealthy summer visitors who patronised the grand Mt Washington Hotel since it opened in 1902. When President Roosevelt chose the hotel for the historic conference to establish a new post-World War II economic order, it introduced the town to the world. We briefly went inside to get an idea of this historic place that looks like a huge white castle, surrounded by thousands of acres of grounds, 12 tennis courts, heated pools, and naturally, a golf course. Some pictures in the lobby and corridors documented the famous Conference of Bretton Woods and we spent some time looking around and checking out the place.

After Bretton Woods we returned to North Conway. It was close to 6 pm and started to get dark. We thought we could spend some time shopping but most places closed around this time, so in the end we went back home. Aaron’s family had prepared a gorgeous dinner and afterwards, we were invited to use their ‘hot tub’ in the basement. The whirlpool was filled with water slightly above body temperature and I can’t even explain the relaxing sensation of hanging in the divan-shaped seats with hot twirling water streams massaging every part of your body... After an hour in the hot tub, however, I almost fainted when I got out. But how should I know that the recommended bathing time was only 20 minutes?! Still weak from the hot water experience, we joined Aaron’s family in the living room who was watching a baseball game on TV. This game was the first out of a so-called “best-of-seven” series (in which a team has to win four games out of maximum seven) and the St. Louis Cardinals were competing against the Boston Red Sox to win the World Series championship. As you can guess, people so close to Massachusetts were die-hard Red Sox fans and it was already a big deal that the Sox had even made it this far into the World Series. In fact, just a few days ago they had beat their arch-enemy, the New York Yankees, in a spectacular best-of-seven series: At a score of 3:0 against them, the Red Sox won the following four consecutive games – something that has never happened before in over a hundred years of American Baseball history. So here they were now, playing for the title, which the Boston team hadn’t won since 1918. No big deal, you may think but if you learn that the Yankees have won 26 World Series titles since then, you might understand how important this game was to the all-American baseball fan... Well, the Red Sox won tonight, so ideally, there were only three more games to go.
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