Impromptu Vist to New Ulm, MN....
May. 5th, 2018 03:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lydamorehouse So, I'm talking about this today, but Mason and I actually took an unscheduled day off school (aka "played hooky") on Thursday to go on a road trip.
New Ulm is a smallish town in southwest Minnesota. From our guidebook ODDBALL MINNESOTA: A Guide to Some Really Strange Places by Jerome Pohlen, we knew that one of the main attractions of this town (which was founded in 1854 by the German Land Society) was the statue of "Hermann the German."
Alas, the stairs leading up to the balcony were closed for the season. If we'd come after Memorial Day, we'd have been able to pay $2.75 to ascend the spiral staircase to get a view of New Ulm. The view from the hill was plenty spectacular, anyway.
We actually started our morning having breakfast at Ulmer Cafe. I had been hoping for something more traditionally German, but they had decent enough breakfast. A lot of people stopping by seemed to be having Chow Mien, which was the day's lunch special (???). I overheard a conversation between two women of a certain age discussing various social media. One of them said, "Oh, I'm on Twitter because I discovered I was political." I waited, half-expecting to be reminded that outer Minnesota is very red, but from what i could determine, she was actually some kind of animal rights activist and left-leaning. So, good on you, Twitter granny!
This cafe was on the street that is clearly the tourist trap section. All the buildings had very 1890s-looks to them and they had names like the "Guten Tag House," etc. Tourist season not yet started, however, we didn't really stop in any of them. There was a used bookstore/coffeeshop next called Bookshelves & Coffeecups. We had lovely Italian sodas there. The book selection was okay. Mason had, as he put it, read the teen section. But, it's a used store, so it would be worth checking back into it.
Our Oddball book also suggested we watch the glockenspiel, which has a creepy little animatronic show at noon, 3 pm, and 5 pm. I'd show you the photos I took of the show, but it's offensively racist to anyone who knows that maybe the Dakota people didn't exactly (as the guidebook suggests) "relinquish" their lands (see: Battles of New Ulm).
New Ulm has a lot of fascinatingly problematic history, as they clung tightly to their German heritage throughout BOTH World Wars. They had an interesting exhibit at the Brown County Historical Society, which we stopped in to look at, about divided loyalties during the first world war. Among the thing they had, I loved this poster because it's just so... RIGHT THERE.
The attic of the historical society had an exhibit about the Dakota War that was... um... cringe-worthy? I can't even begin to describe it because there was a lot of "What?" and "Uh..." since the focus was almost entirely on settler suffering (nothing about how the Dakota were starved and told to "eat grass"). Despite that fact that an early map clearly shows the reservation line and New Ulm on the wrong side... clear encroachment.
So much wrong.
But that put us in the mood to move on, so we took a detour further south to visit the 55-foot statue of the Jolly Green Giant.
New Ulm is a smallish town in southwest Minnesota. From our guidebook ODDBALL MINNESOTA: A Guide to Some Really Strange Places by Jerome Pohlen, we knew that one of the main attractions of this town (which was founded in 1854 by the German Land Society) was the statue of "Hermann the German."
Alas, the stairs leading up to the balcony were closed for the season. If we'd come after Memorial Day, we'd have been able to pay $2.75 to ascend the spiral staircase to get a view of New Ulm. The view from the hill was plenty spectacular, anyway.
We actually started our morning having breakfast at Ulmer Cafe. I had been hoping for something more traditionally German, but they had decent enough breakfast. A lot of people stopping by seemed to be having Chow Mien, which was the day's lunch special (???). I overheard a conversation between two women of a certain age discussing various social media. One of them said, "Oh, I'm on Twitter because I discovered I was political." I waited, half-expecting to be reminded that outer Minnesota is very red, but from what i could determine, she was actually some kind of animal rights activist and left-leaning. So, good on you, Twitter granny!
This cafe was on the street that is clearly the tourist trap section. All the buildings had very 1890s-looks to them and they had names like the "Guten Tag House," etc. Tourist season not yet started, however, we didn't really stop in any of them. There was a used bookstore/coffeeshop next called Bookshelves & Coffeecups. We had lovely Italian sodas there. The book selection was okay. Mason had, as he put it, read the teen section. But, it's a used store, so it would be worth checking back into it.
Our Oddball book also suggested we watch the glockenspiel, which has a creepy little animatronic show at noon, 3 pm, and 5 pm. I'd show you the photos I took of the show, but it's offensively racist to anyone who knows that maybe the Dakota people didn't exactly (as the guidebook suggests) "relinquish" their lands (see: Battles of New Ulm).
New Ulm has a lot of fascinatingly problematic history, as they clung tightly to their German heritage throughout BOTH World Wars. They had an interesting exhibit at the Brown County Historical Society, which we stopped in to look at, about divided loyalties during the first world war. Among the thing they had, I loved this poster because it's just so... RIGHT THERE.
The attic of the historical society had an exhibit about the Dakota War that was... um... cringe-worthy? I can't even begin to describe it because there was a lot of "What?" and "Uh..." since the focus was almost entirely on settler suffering (nothing about how the Dakota were starved and told to "eat grass"). Despite that fact that an early map clearly shows the reservation line and New Ulm on the wrong side... clear encroachment.
So much wrong.
But that put us in the mood to move on, so we took a detour further south to visit the 55-foot statue of the Jolly Green Giant.