Milwaukee Wisconsin

Journey to a Land of Water Wind and Fire

Epilogue 3: Milwaukee

A “Hot Time” in the “Old Town” That Night

Well, after our magnificent sunset in the Columbia River Gorge, I was in hopes that the weather would hold for our eastbound trip on The Empire Builder. Alas, it was not to be. After a promising start the next morning, promising, but not as pretty as it was on the trip I made Eastbound on the Empire Builder in 2004, the weather steadily deteriorated.

However, we arrived on time the next morning in the Twin Cities. Unfortunately, we were there on Monday September1, 2008, just as the 2008 Republican Convention was getting started. Anyway, the Republicans (warning, the site may load slowly, due to political philosophy no doubt), you remember them, the ones with all those big Amtrak supporters such as John McCain and all that (oh, I’m sorry, I forgot, I thought this was a site devoted to fiction), . . . well, anyway, there were so many private rail cars in the yards that our train could not leave using the normal route. We had to back out of the station and take an alternate. The end result of this maneuver was that we lost 30 minutes. We spent another 30 minutes just east of Winona MN waiting on a drawbridge across the Mississippi to be lowered.

Thus, we pulled into Milwaukee 1 hour late (still not bad considering the distance we had traveled since Portland OR). I had scheduled a stop-over in Milwaukee because I knew that there was not much time between the Empire Builder’s arrival time in Chicago and the Cardinal’s departure. So rather then run the risk and worry about “Will I make it or not?” all across the upper mid-West (and also maybe hold up fellow passengers on the Cardinal), I had intentionally scheduled a stop-over in Milwaukee and had tickets for one of the Hiawatha runs for the next day.

Besides, even though I had been through Milwaukee now several times, I had never stopped there. Even more specifically, I had never spent time in Wisconsin before, just ridden through on the train.

The first item of business upon our arrival was dinner. I had wanted a good German meal (I remembered that Milwaukee had a good German heritage) and a fellow passenger on the Empire Builder absolutely insisted the only restaurant to even consider for German Food in Milwaukee is Mader’s. Well, obviously in one night we couldn’t sample them all, but I must say Mader’s was a fine restaurant and yes, I would like to go there again (but no, I am not including pictures of my meal, recipes etc., those of you, all 1 or 2, who regularly read this space know that this is not that type of blog).

After our meal we walked through a little bit of the city, and were awed with what we saw. Those of you with long memories will remember, we had started off on this trip with an architectural tour of Chicago, some old buildings such as Marshall Fields for sure, but mostly new ones with curves, spikes, angles, glass reflections and all. Well, here in Milwaukee we did sort of a mini-tour. And what we saw amazed us.

I had seen a building in the Second Empire style of architecture on the short cab ride from the station to our hotel. This amazed me. I had not seen a structure like this since the Philadelphia (PA) City Hall or the Executive Office Building west of the White House in DC. So, not surprisingly, on our walk we took a closer look at this French Empire Building, and at its neighbor, a fine specimen of the Richardson Romanesque design. Both of them were not “public” buildings, but had been built as office buildings. We assumed they were still fulfilling this function in elegant fashion.

In our meanderings, we walked along the Milwaukee River several times. I knew, from what I had read before starting on our trip, that at one time the river front was a “heavy” industry area (the industry being mostly beer or beer-related concerns of course). But I also knew that most of that industry was gone, and in its place Milwaukee was trying to make over its river front. They even have an citizens organization, Milwaukee Riverkeeper, involved in their efforts.

Well, at least from what we saw they seem to have done a fine job. Of course, we were there on the shank end of the day, and the lighting was great for picture taking!

Our Sleeping Car Attendant on the Empire Builder lived in Milwaukee and he strongly recommended that we get over to the lakefront to check out the Milwaukee Art Museum’s building. He mentioned that it had movable wings (I understand the technical term is “brise soleil”) on it. So, the next morning, we set out to do just that. We knew we didn’t have time to take a look inside, but the building alone promised to make our efforts worthwhile. Indeed it did. As you can see from the picture, during the period of time we were there the wings appeared to be spread. According to the web-site the position of the wings is dictated in part by the winds, obviously a vital concern for a Lake Michigan site. The structure, really only a part of the entire Milwaukee Art Museum, was designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava.

We would have liked to have tarried a bit longer, but we had “a train (actually 2) to catch.” So, too soon, our short stay was over. Milwaukee, you were a nice closing to a wonderful trip.