A really meaningful day out

When I'm on the road, I do like to catch a really good museum, especially one that challenges and informs. It was therefore a great pleasure to find that Cincinnati hosts the National Underground Railroad Museum, dedicated to recording the history of those who aided runaway slaves to find freedom in the North, and of slavery itself. It would be very easy to just airbrush this shameful episode in American history out of the picture but, in fairness, Cincinnati has made a real effort by building an excellent exhibition space and putting it in a prominent location, right on the riverfront between the new Paul Brown Stadium (Cincinnati Bengals football - gridiron for my British audience) and the new Great American Ballpark (Cincinnati Reds baseball).

The exhibit includes an actual slave pen, interactive exhibits, animated films on themes related to freedom and enough historical information to keep anyone with a conscience busy for hours. Most interesting of all, is the evidence that simply making it to a free state was not good enough. The 1850 Fugitive Slave Act allowed those hunting runaway slaves to enter the free states, recapture fugitives, and return them to the South in chains. It even led to the kidnapping of hitherto free citizens in places as far north as New York.

Another piece of information that I had not been previously aware of was that women had been given voting rights in some states after independence, and that this right was gradually taken away from them in the early years of the nineteenth century. All in all, a really good exhibit and, if you're ever in the Cincinnati area, I would strongly recommend a visit.

Next, to the Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame. I spent a number of years watching the Reds play baseball, trying to catch a game most years and I discovered that the game I saw in 1999 in Denver against the Colorado Rockies was the game in which the Reds scored their highest number of runs on the road since 1900 (the game ended 24-12). And I was there... The Cincinnati Red Stockings were America's very first professional baseball team (1869) and have a key place in the history of the sport. Given my fondness for numbers, it won't surprise you to know that I find baseball statistics fascinating...

Finally, back to the Hofbrauhaus for more beer and schnitzel. The beer is brewed according to the German purity laws under licence and supervision of the Staatliches Hofbrauhaus in Munich. So, real beer, great schnitzel and men singing German drinking songs in German. Weird...