Alright, so after my slightly deep ramblings on the Battle of Normandy, let’s shift to battles the Normans have been in: the Battle of Hasting, the 1066 invasion of England, and the most recent time England was successfully overtaken by a foreign power. We saw the Bayeux Tapestry, a football-field long tapestry illustrating the lead-up to and the actual battle of Hastings. I hadn’t known much about it before hand, but the audio tours we took while looking at it, piece by piece, really pulled the whole thing together. It was a lot cooler than I thought it would be, and I should also note that it’s not actually a tapestry but rather a hell of a lot of embroidery. We also made a quick stop in a grocery store, to get some drinks for the night, which leads to all sorts of disaster later. But imagine me now walking through a small French city with two bottles of wine in my purse. Not enjoyable.

Okay, back onto the bus! To Arromanches, a shore town closer to the British and Canadian beaches. We saw a pretty cool 360 degree movie, with a lot of still shots and video from the invasion juxtaposed with modern day scenes of the area. We then visited Mulberry harbor, which was created just for the supplies needed after the invasion. By now we were all pretty burnt out, so we got some ice cream and sat on the promenade for a while.

Now to Bayeux again, where we’ll be staying for the next few nights. So, a run-down of this place. It’s kind of shitty—we have a bathroom in our room, but the sink is the only part that works. In fact, the toilet flushes once and then continues to run for the next 3 days, without flushing ever again. There are only 4 toilets we found in the whole place, which complicates things. It’s mostly our group in the hostel, but there are others. We’re eating dinner there in a weird family-style restaurant…thing. There a giant chess board in courtyard. Oh, and the group before us forgot to turn in their keys and are in Germany now, so we can’t have our rooms for a few hours. Say whaaaaat?

Our dinner was pretty good, and we got to drink some of our professor’s wine, which was nice of him to share. Shortly after this, we all wound up in the courtyard for some chess and wine. Followed by a run to a durum shop for some beers. The night went in much the same way, with people wandering in, contributing liquor, playing chess, starting arguments sometimes. We were out there till about 2, and all pretty far gone—I mean a friend walked into a glass door that was closed and I thought we were on a boat. Craaaazy. To some up these bad decisions, one friend has the quote of the weekend from the next day: “Taylor, your gin makes me hate myself.”

The next morning, many of us woke up still under the influence, which led to really badly timed hangovers later. However, we pushed onward and went to Mont St. Michel, a 13^th century abbey on an island; it doesn’t seem like an island, until the tide comes in. It’s this amazing mix of castle and museum and tourist town, and it was wonderful. I don’t think I’m doing it justice…

The tide comes in from 18 km away and you can no longer just walk up to it then; it's pretty crazy.

After our time there, we went to an apple orchard, which might not sound too exciting, except them make a TON of stuff there--cider, alcoholic cider, this liquor called Calvados, native to the region, and a weird apple spread. The tour was fun, and the cider was really good, but I couldn't even stomach the alcohol after the previous night. It was really acidic too, and I didn't enjoy it, but others apparently did since a ton of people bought stuff to take home. We returned to our hostel for dinner and a much calmer night, which for me included some wanderings around town and chitchat.

Our last day in Normandy was a pretty busy one. We left the hostel that morning and drove to Caen, a city in France that was liberated after Normandy. We went to the Peace Memorial, which was pretty incredible--great exhibits on the build-up to World War II, a lot of cultural stuff on the occupation, and the Cold War. We also saw a great film using a lot of old footage, and it was really moving. I also saw a wedding dress made out of a parachute--like I said, a lot of interesting stuff.

We stopped at the Abbaye aux Hommes church, founded by William the Conqueror; he is, in fact, buried there. The tour guide didn't know English, so his basic French tour coupled with our professor's translation was pretty good. It was really interesting, but we were all exhausted by then.

I won't get into the next few hours, as they're just a horrible traffic jam because the French loves tolls yet don't know how to do them right. There were also awful movies, though there was a parking lot picnic which was pretty sweet.

In the end, the trip was amazing and I'm so glad I went! Now to enjoy my final week in Belgium!

Norman Conquests

By which, of course, I mean our tour group sufficiently overran Normandy and emerged victorious. This wasn’t one of our normal excursions—it was a trip for my history class which we had to pay for ourselves, and though they took good care of us, this was not to be the three-course dinners and bottomless wine bottle to which I’d grown accustomed. It was a four day trip—we had Thursday and Friday the 1^st and 2^nd off for a public holiday—and believe me, there was still more to see even after that time! I have to cheat and look at our itinerary now just to try to write these chronologically…here goes!

Thursday was an early departure, and, as we boarded the bus, it became clear this was not our usual group. Our professor and his professor wife had organized the trip; there were a dozen kids from our program, a few other study abroads, some full time VeCo students, and a ton of graduate students, who ranged from really annoying to mostly good people. It was to be an odd, multilingual group for us. The grad students were all in their 30s and were pretty good for accidentally making you feel bad, since they had disposable income and refined tastes, and we did not. But I’ll get to that.

Normandy is itself a large region of France; its 525 km from Brussels to Bayeux, where our hotel was. I’m not exactly sure what that means in miles, but believe me when I tell you it was a very, very long ride. We stopped at Beauvais, in France, to look at the St. Peter Cathedral—all that’s left of the original structure is its choir. It’s also the tallest gothic structure, I guess in the world—it was even taller, but when it fell apart, the townspeople assumed they had gone as high as God would let them. So the giant choir area has been converted to a church; unfortunately, we entered during services, and apparently Ascension Thursday is a big deal here. Feeling awkward, dozens of us left and engaged in an elaborate coffee-buying scheme to get access to free bathrooms (free refills and free toilets, two of my most missed loves of America!)

From here, we went to Chateau-Gaillard, the ruins of an old French castle. I haven’t gotten pictures up, but you need to see this place; it was obviously well defended in its past, and it was quite a hike to get too. Plus, we were pretty high and could SEE the rain clouds approaching our gathering. We also had a picnic there for the whole group, which had a strange combination of homemade sandwiches (the joys of traveling with someone else’s parents!), vegetables, boxed wine, and fruit. Yummy. We didn’t have much time there, though we encountered our first terrible bathroom of the weekend, a trend which would sadly haunt us our entire trip.

A few hours later, and we’re disembarking at Rouen. You may know Rouen for being the place where Joan of Arc was burned at the stake. It was a pretty nice city, and had great crepes, but was marred by that rain storm finally catching up with us. At this point, we were supposed to drive to Bayeux; unfortunately, our hostel couldn’t accommodate us, so they worked something out with a pseudo-motel in a small town along the Channel. It was weird being in a legit hotel, with other guests and functioning facilities. Our goal was to get some beer and sit out by the docks, just taking it all in. Instead, every store was closed for the holiday! Think Jersey shore in the off-season. After paying 6 euro for giant beers, we just walked along the pier, which included a few friends climbing up in a makeshift lighthouse—I was terrified of the French Coast Guard finding us and arresting us for reasons I couldn’t translate. After this, we scaled a really muddy hill in the dark to explore an old fortress structure and check out the view of the city. This trek was very worth it, though I could without so many near-death incidents in one night. We left this town in the morning, though we should have stayed—a lot better than the hostel we wound up in later!

Friday was also a really busy day, and really varied in terms of the sights we saw. First we stopped at a German cemetery; of course, allied casualties were not the only ones in the battle of Normandy, and over 21,500 Germans were buried at cemetery de La Cambe. I can’t remember if it was a world war I or II edict, but German soldiers cannot be buried under white crosses; it’s a weird part of the guilt clause. So these headstones were all very dark, in sharp contrast to the American cemetery I had seen earlier, and the one we would see later that day. This was a very brief stop, and from there we went to Isigny-Sainte-Mere, a dairy production…place. Normandy is not just the site of bloody conflicts, but also of dairy products, and Normandy cows are a pretty big deal. I’m not a big fan of gourmet cheese (I live in Europe and still buy their equivalent of kraft singles for all my grilled cheese needs…), but I learned a lot and enjoyed the experience. I had to stop myself from buying a can of whipped cream for the ride; the deliciousness of it would not cancel out the digestive havoc it would wreak. However, a number of people bought cheese with the coupons they gave us and some, stupidly, put them in our overhead compartments on the bus. This was forgotten for about 6 hours, when we all boarded the bus for dinner and couldn’t stand the smell any longer…

We then drove to the actual beaches of Normandy, specifically to the American cemetery, which is built on the grassy land adjacent to Omaha Beach. I’m sure we all know Omaha Beach and Utah Beach were the American beaches of the Normandy invasions; the Brits and Canadians split Sword, Juno, and Gold. Utah had these huge cliffs to scale, but Omaha had the most casualties due to a few logistical failures. Their floating tanks were destroying by the currents, leaving the infantry without artillery cover; on other beaches, this strategy worked fine. Also, bombs were supposed to be dropped on the beach the night before to leave large holes to use for cover, like giant foxholes; sadly, these were misdirected and dropped in fields inland. I hadn’t know any of this before the trip, and after hearing all this, it makes the thousands of deaths all the more sad; however, it also made me wonder how anyone survived it at all. Any family members reading this know Grandpa was discharged from the army before WWII started; I don’t have a personal connection to these events, which in many ways is fine. However, a few of the kids we were traveling with had grandfathers who landed at Normandy; Eric’s grandfather was artillery who landed at Omaha in the second wave of the invasion. I pretty much lived vicariously through his families stories for the weekend. Having seen the American cemetery in Luxembourg, I didn’t spend too much time touring this one; instead, a few of us wandered on the actual beach, which is gorgeous beyond words. The tide was very low then, so we had to go out pretty far to dip our feet in. It’s one of those painful ironies I’ve experienced while being in Europe; so much of the countryside, and the coast, is absolutely beautiful, and you just can’t reconcile it with the horrors that occurred there. During the summer, these beaches are recreational just like all the others; but how many men, from whatever country, died here? Though Omaha doesn’t have the cliffs of Utah, there’s still marshland and a large hill to scale even after surviving the trip across the sound and the landing on the beach. I have so much more respect for the men involved in that invasion, and even the tactical maneuvering behind it. It’s the most well-orchestrated large-scale invasion in history, and its hard to imagine anything else after claiming that title.

[I’m going to leave you guys hanging here—something to mull over. As you can see, this is going to be an extremely long post, so it’s best to do it in sections. Plus, I’m having friends over for dinner and need to get into the kitchen. The weather is incredible here in Brussels, classes are over, and exams haven’t started yet, so it definitely calls for a celebration of sorts.]