We spent this week at our Educational Field Trip in Normandy, France. We flew out of Geneva to Paris (I saw the Eiffel Tower on the skyline!) and took a bus into Caen, where we stayed for the first 3 nights. Our hotel was great, we each had apartments with full kitchens, nice bathrooms, great breakfast... except the beds were hard as rock. Oh well, I managed to sleep anyway. It's a beautiful city, almost all new buildings (since it was completely destroyed in WWII) with a big river flowing through it all. We got dinner at a local restaurant (my first actual 3 course meal) and wandered around town afterwards. There's a small castle close to where we stayed, and we could get on the ramparts, so we spent some time up there looking over the city. I didn't get any good pictures, sorry!
We spent Tuesday at Mt. St. Michel, an enormous castle jutting from a rock/island (depending on the tide) in the endless plains of Normandy. I can't recall the exact history, but the fortress grew as it evolved from a monastery to a castle to a prison during the Reign of Terror following the French Revolution. Unfortunately we didn't get to see it at high tide, when it becomes an island. Nonetheless, it was a magnificent monument to see. Now it's got some bustling little shops on its single, windy, steep and narrow road. Though it's turned into a tourist attraction, they still have monks living there.
Wednesday was the day we visited Omaha Beach, the American Cemetery, and the D-Day Museum. The first stop was Omaha Beach. I'm sorry to say that it was horribly disappointing. They only gave us 15 minutes once we got off the bus to look around. Never would I have recognized the beach--since it was high tide, it was only about 20 feet (the Allies landed 1 hour after low tide on 6.6.1944) which obscured the scene. The concrete bunkers were replaced with tourist shops, and any sign of a battle is long grown-over by greenery. Honestly, I wasn't even sure if that was the beach that the invasion took place at at the time, since they gave us so little time/information and it was so unrecognizable.
Then we went to the American Cemetery. An American Vietnam Vet gave us a little history of the cemetery and some stories about D-Day. When you walk in, the first thing you see is a large arched wall with the names of each person buried on it. There's a large statue past that, in a different courtyard area, with some diagrams of how the Normandy invasion was carried out. They played the National Anthem, followed by Taps, and they gave each of us a rose. We were encouraged to find the grave of someone from our state and place the rose on it. The graves seemed to stretch for miles; they seemed to curve off in the distance straight into the sea. I wandered off by myself among the graves of these men-boys, really-who were probably not much older than me, perhaps even younger. Eventually I stopped at the grave of George T. Castro, a draftee from California. He died on July 6th, 1944. It's a strange feeling, thinking about the life he had, cut so short, and the life he could have had, how he probably wasn't much different than myself, how he was probably going through basic training at the same age that I was getting ready to move to Malibu for college. He didn't ask to be there, but he went anyway and gave his life to fight for a cause greater than himself. It adds an entire perspective to how incomprehensibly blessed I am. I put my rose in front of George's headstone. I don't plan on forgetting him any time soon.
After leaving the cemetery, we ate an awful lunch (some terrible horseradish/noodle concoction, followed by fish and rice, and tiramisu for dessert, which was great until I discovered the liquor-soaked cake at the bottom). As we took the bus from the lunch place to the museum, our tour guide pointed out some old concrete remaining from the bunkers on the cliffs. It was still very hard to see. Anyway, the museum was great. They had a number of WWII weapons on display (including a few folding-stock M1 Carbines, which I took a picture of for Dad) as well as uniforms, equipment, etc. The section of the beach that the museum was on was used for the artificial harbor the Allies constructed after the beaches were cleared, and so they focused on that during the tour. There are still some containers sitting in the ocean. I had never learned anything about the harbor, which was an unbelievably massive engineering feat. They also showed us a brief movie, narrated by an officer days after D-Day. It was all very interesting and I highly recommend that my family visits this museum if they make it to Normandy!
Our last stop on the way back was at these German artillery bunkers. They were incredibly impressive (and spooky) to see. But I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.
Thursday was our last morning in Caen. We left and stopped in a few cities on the way to Rouen, where our hotel was that night. We spent an hour in Honfleur, where I wandered by myself. It's a very cool, small port city. They've got a large church there made entirely out of wood, like the Nords would make. We stopped for lunch in Deauville, a resort city, but didn't get to explore. We showed up in Rouen and got a short tour. One of the cathedrals there has (I think) the second highest spire in Europe. It was enormous, no picture I could take could really do it justice. We saw the church where Joan of Arc was killed ("And she deserved it," as a few British men told us at the pub that night). The city is pretty big (the biggest in Normandy I think) and the downtown area had a lot of activity. I spent some time looking around and getting food, but I ended up at our hotel lobby with some friends watching fencing on TV (apparently some big championship tournament was going on). We ended up going to an Irish Pub a little bit later. It was quiet when we showed up, but within a half hour or so the place exploded. We spent some time people watching, which wasn't a disappointing venture. On our way out, we ended up in conversation with a few local students (the outside of the place was also packed). One, probably a little extra enthusiastic because of what he had to drink that night, told us how much the French love Americans. We didn't get to talk too much, but I was glad I had an opportunity to practice my French.
We left this morning (Friday) after visiting Claude Monet's house. His Japanese garden is incredible. He has some flowers I've never even seen before, and I'm sure he drew some inspiration from them. His house was filled with Japanese art, which I learned influenced him heavily. It was all interesting to see, but it was a fairly short visit, and we headed back to Paris for our flight shortly after.
And here I am now, safe and sound in Lausanne again. This past week was outstanding, but now I've got to catch up on all my homework (we've got a research paper due this week and midterms coming up after), so forgive me if I don't post for a while. Next weekend I'm trying to go to Germany and visit Pepperdine's program there, and the week after I'll be seeing Sonny Rollins play in Tourcoing, France. Wish me luck with everything! Hope things are well in the states, and I look forward to hearing from you all!
