From one extreme to another

Today’s post brought to you by: some incredibly gifted people who are quite good with a paintbrush

Grateful for: being inside

Trying hard to accept: 17 hours on train coming up. And that’s not even my longest trip.

I’ve been here, done this, got the Pearson’s Salted Nut Roll before.

This ain’t my first rodeo. But my god has my memory been selective since I last braved a Minnesota winter.

It’s cold. Damn cold. Fr-fr-freezing cold. Whack you in the face cold.

But here’s the thing. It’s beautiful. Minneapolis and St Paul are old enough to have magnificent ornate stone buildings on every corner but young enough to have pockets of stunningly simple arts and crafts and mid-century architecture.

Cover it all in a blanket of white, add a bit of moody late afternoon fog, a few (squillion) Christmas lights and you’re in a winter wonderland.

Here’s the other thing. Minneapolis has Ben. Ben who saved my skin in Florida hospital.

Final bill arrived today. Multiply it by 1.7 and you get NZ dollars. I’m too scared to. Never been so glad to see those 8 words at the bottom.

Ben who is also the most welcoming, generous person you could ever stay with. Where you emerge from your long peaceful sleep under feather duvets to a cooked breakfast and gifts galore.

It’s out of the freezer and into the sauna going from the cold grey streets to Ben’s house.

Plus she has the nicest friends. Who we had lunch with at her telecommunications company’s annual Christmas lunch. I met so many interesting, accomplished and welcoming people. Some of who we then spent the evening with at Jim’s place.

Newsflash: am at Union Station (cripes Amtrak, think of a different name would ya?) in St Paul killing time at a bar (mainly to escape the thousands of over-excited kids going for rides on the Polar Express) and the server just came by to tell me my Earl Grey tea is complimentary. I’m guessing she feels sorry for me laden down with all my bags. Or maybe she thinks I’m a man and wants a date.

Now Jim is another story. I first met him on my last visit and was taken by him then. He hasn’t changed.

He went progressively blind in mid-adulthood but despite that has raised three kids, held down a managerial job in the telecommunications business, been to NZ (and not on the tourist express – he actually spent days on fishing boats and sheep farms), founded a charity to pay for aids for low-income blind people, and lives in a 6,000 sq ft 1960s masterpiece on the banks of the Mississippi and cooks all his meals and cleans the house and negotiates these stairs, which scared the crap out of me. They are very steep and there’s lots of them.

I got to Minneapolis at I’m-so-tired-I-don’t-care-anymore-o’clock two nights ago. For some reason only known to sadistic Amtrak it took them 1.5 extra hours to move the train from the Union Station (snap!) in Chicago to the platform so we could all get on it.

I know every inch of that station. Including the waiting room that you, your heavy bags and 659 other passengers are forced to queue in after you walk the 15 minutes to the gate.

Just as you’re about to collapse from boredom, broken shoulders, headache (would you tell your kids to shut up?!) and caffeine overload they finally let you board.

Except that the aptly-named Empire Builder train is so freakin’ enormous that it takes you, your heavy bags, your aching body and your expired patience another 15 minutes to walk along the platform to your allocated boarding door.

Then … yes there is more to this monologue. Suck it up.

The train seems to be the Amish Express because you cannot get anywhere near your seat to dump your bag because the aisles are blocked by blank-looking old men with long beards who just stand there and watch while Ma and Laura Ingalls haul all the bags and blankets and thermos flasks onto the luggage racks.

Those same men then queue up in the train café to demand – in English-when-it-suits-them – endless cups of hot water (free) and ice (also free) while paying customers are forced to wait and practise shooting filthy looks.

Finally managed to escape them and set myself up in the lounge car, where Amtrak had obviously decided we all needed the full winter experience and turned the heating down so low I looked like an Antarctic explorer lying in my tent as I sprawled across the banquette seat in a (rare act of) piss-off-and-leave-me-alone-Ms-Conductor defiance.

All whinging aside, there was a beautiful golden glow over the world as we left Chicago. The setting sun was casting its orange light out one window and the full moon was following suit out the other one.

All the way to Milwaukee we passed iced-over lakes, geese flying in formation and silhouetted sticky trees. Wish I’d had a half-decent camera to capture it all.

No wonder Richie and Joanie Cunningham were so pasty-looking, and Howard spent his life practising secret handshakes down at the Lodge. It gets dark in Milwaukee at 4.30. 4.30!!

All we could see as we rolled into town was the smoke billowing out of the massive Victorian brick chimneys. The place is one big brewery, and they eat lots of cheese, so probably best I didn’t get off the train.

The best thing about riding the train in winter in December in middle-of-nowhereville is that all the homeowners along the rail track make special efforts to put on elaborate displays of Christmas lights. You’re going along in pitch black when all of a sudden the whole nativity scene and more is lit up like a Christmas tree (ha ha).

Me, my backpack (x 2) and my breakfast, lunch and dinner are all now waiting to get on the 10.30pm train to one-horse-town Havre, Montana. Where it’s colder than Minneapolis. Hotel better have at least 56 cable TV channels, central heating controls, endless hot water and triple glazing.

You all appreciate art don’t you? Good, because I spent a wonderful and overwhelming 3 hours in the Minneapolis Institute of Art today.

For your viewing pleasure, here are some of the highlights.

Close-up of some 17th C floral thing to show you the detail. I could stare at oil paintings for hours taking in the thousands of minute brush strokes. These guys could clearly see things the rest of us can’t.

Believe it or not this is a portrait of a woman. Clearly that guy couldn’t see things the rest of us can.

Living room – as in the actual living room – from a posh house in Minneapolis, c 1904. Those are Tiffany fireplace tiles. Nice.

Frank Lloyd Wright weed vase. Even I’d stick a bit of my gardening arch-rival fennel in there if I had one of his vases. Those are his doors too.

And this is a dining room set he designed. And that’s a man in the background. Who is not Frank Lloyd Wright.

And this Ben, is evidence you can find beauty in South Dakota. My favourite piece of the 3,786 I looked at.

Through the glass at the art institute. With St Paul yonder. The city, not the person. Duh.

Rembrandt’s painting of a young woman who’s about to stab herself to save her husband’s honour after she was raped.

The saddest face I’ve ever seen on a gallery wall. What you can’t see is how Rembrandt painted pearly white spots on her lower eye so they look like glistening tears.

Probably what Ikea got its ideas from. This kitchen was so very cool. And not just the fridge. There was a bit of a housing crisis in Germany after WWI – probably the least of their worries – so the immer-efficient government knocked up 10,000 apartments and mass-produced these amazing kitchens. All designed down to the last Formica millimeter to maximise the Hausfrau’s efficiency: dish-drying racks that go left to right, fold-down ironing boards, stool to sit at while she worked, built-in compost bins in benches, rubbish shoots, labelled aluminium bins for food staples, drawers for pots and lids, movable lights, pass-through to dining room etc etc. Now remember this was 1926. They were better working and better looking that what you can get today. Mein Gott, that’s a long Kaption!

Tatra sedan, 1936. Made in the same country that brought us the Skoda. Clearly a mass exodus of half-decent car designers in the intervening 40 years.

Glass. Obvs.

This was one of my favourite photos of all. By a woman called Gail Wilson. Stunning huh?

Funnily enough all the cafe-goers give up smoking in St Paul in winter. First day of spring they’re all back again hogging the outside tables.