If It's Tuesday, I'm in Zurich/Munich/Saarbrucken/Luxembourg

So as you may have heard elsewhere, I'm in Luxembourg this week for work. As you may have also heard, I missed a connection in Zurich and thus extended by travel day by another 8 hours or so, with layovers in both Zurich & Munich. The Munich-Luxembourg flight actually made a 15-minute whistle-stop in Saarbrucken, so five take-offs and landings in 24 hours - the last time I had so many flights that close together was Airborne school!

Despite being in Switzerland, I couldn't see any mountains in Zurich:


But onward we pressed, my three fellow strandees and I (two musicians enroute to a short tour in Luxembourg and Germany and a young lady headed to see her Italian banker boyfriend). Pulled into the hotel about 6 PM; got settled, took a shower and then headed out to locate dinner.

My land navigation skills must be really rusty, but fortunately Luxembourg is a small city, and the "Old Town" section I'm in has pretty clearly defined boundaries - it's set atop a rocky hill, with a promontory jutting out over a river. (It was originally a fortress and I'm hoping to see what's left of the fortifications over the weekend.) However, serendipitously I stumbled across Place d'Theater, which had this nifty sculpture in the middle:


I eventually made my way over to Place d'Armes, which these days is full of chain restaraunts and cafes. I passed up the McDonalds, Chi-Chi's (yes, the American Chi-Chi's!) and after a narrow internal vote, La Boucherie (a French chain we discovered in Normdany last year) and settled down at an outdoor cafe. What does the weary cyber-warrior need at the end of a journey like this?


Warm, crusty fresh-baked French bread with local (Luxembourgish) butter and a local beer, followed by one of the "Menu Brasserie" fixed menus (an interesting salad with deviled eggs, followed by wiener schnitzel with green beans and 'frittes', finished with a small creme caramel).

Unfortunately, no opportunities for sightseeing today as I wound up working until shortly after 9 PM local.

I've discovered that it's a mixed blessing to start out speaking to waiters here in French, even with my pronounciation and accent - or maybe I sound more fluent than I think - because they fairly rapidly shift into higher-speed French that's beyond my feeble kenning! I'll try to work on something more than "merci" and "l'addition, si vous plat".

Other Things That Didn't make the Blog but I don't Want to Forget

Today's post is a random collection of things I don't want to forget but am afraid I will if I don't journal it...

- I loved the way Euros are different sizes (including the paper ones) for different denominations. It was very handy to just look in my wallet and pull a small one if I needed a small bill, etc.

- I loved croque moiseur sandwiches - a grilled ham and cheese with cheese on top

- It is funny how different pizza can be in a different country, taking on the culture, even. In France a 'margherita' pizza (which you would think would be plain cheese) comes randomly with olives and sometimes even ham. We frequently had to ask for the pizza 'sans' something (usually olives). The pizzas were all about the size of a dinner plate and arrived totally uncut, as they expected you to just cut and eat with a knife and fork, similar to what you would do for a piece of meat.

- The French always have both hands visible when eating, usually holding both a knife and fork. Its actually considered rude to have you hands on your lap. This is amazingly easy to adapt to and in fact a very useful way of eating.

- People speak far more quietly in France. This was harder to adjust to, but incredibly pleasant in restaurants. John and I were in a restaurant in Severna Park, MD last night and it was really noisy (last night was our Anniversary, so that's why we were out - woot on 16 years).

- Light switches are not like typical US ones - they are more like the flat flippy ones - fun to figure out where they are too.

- Fixed price menus all over the place and desserts assumed.

- Appel (to call) and rappel (warning, we think) all over the place... so fun to see our names everywhere.

- The Holocaust section of the Caen Memorial - made both Alexa and I gasp and then tear up - a room full of electric candles.

- The roosters at Monet's garden in Giverny - fun and crowing

- The Texan family we met in the train station and then bumped into again in Bayeux - so nice and fun and sent us on an Oddessey for a wooden sword for Ben.

- The lovely pharmacists who were so helpful, and 'bon marche!'

- Frederick, my new friend, who is the manager at the hotel in Bayeux and was the most helpful host.

- The fabulous sense of relaxation that comes from slowing down at meals and just chatting as a family. And how amazingly easy it is to fall into the routine of having a drink at lunch (its sooo much cheaper to have cider than Coca-light - same price for a bottle that served both John and I).

Pictures from the last night in Paris

I'm finally getting the last photos loaded, so here are a couple from the last night.

As an aside, it would appear that we took about 2,000 photos in our two weeks... I'm thinking I have a large task ahead of me in deciding which to print and use for a scrapbook...

Twinkling lights, Jet lag, reintegrating, etc.

Just to fill in the last few details that John didn't get to -

Alexa got to pick the restaurant for our final dinner in France (Ben had picked lunch, and John had selected the last night in Bayeux - I had gotten my 'last pick' the day we were at Point Du Hoc - I wanted one last omlette mixte (a ham and cheese omlette). She wanted Italian (her favorite) and when the hotel receptionist told us there was a restaurant nearby called "Arlechinno" that sealed the deal for her - she loves Comedia Del Arte and Arlechinno is the clown-like character with a diamond costume. Anyway, we had a nice dinner and the waiter and Ben had lots of fun together - the waiter made faces with him, joked around with him, and gave both he and lollipops (actually, my favorite kind of lollipop - cherry flavored and cherry-like in appearance - two lollipops, one each on the end of a bent green plasic 'stem' - I actually ask for them every time I go to farmers market in Annapolis, only to be out of luck each time - I was soooo jealous that my kids got them).

In the end, John and Alexa had the twinkly night on the town, using up the last of our Metro tickets (and closing down the Metro at 12:30 am, followed by a cab back to the hotel). Ben and I were both tired and opted to stay home and go to bed - we watched Wimbledon in French and read stories from the Nicholas series (about a French schoolboy) that Ben has become quite fond of - he was turned onto them by the librarian at his elementary school. John and Alexa watched the Eiffel Tower twinkle (it does that for the first 10 minutes of each hour - they turn off the floodlights and let the twinkly lights), then saw the floodlit Arch d'Triomphe, headed over to the Louvre (for the lit pyramide), and eventually ended up back in our neighborhood near the Bastille monuments.

Saturday was exhausting, for a day that we just sat around (on the plane, in the airport). John mentioned that there was a national slowdown (apparently referred to as an escargot) which impacted our movement through security. There were only two security lines open for all of the international travel, as best as I could tell. We waited in line for an hour (luckily we had gotten to the airport 3 hours early on the advice of the hotel clerk) and then all of a sudden we were whisked to the front of the line. Apparently someone saw John's cane and decided we needed out of the line. Given that Alexa was just moments short of a meltdown (of the 'its loud, its hot, and there are too many people and I can't pace' variety), I was more than willing to have the temporary disability that was visible help us out of a worse situation caused by the one that's not visible.

Once we got on our way, things were rather uneventful. We flew Continental and had a nice flight (with an ice cream break, even, as well as a hot meal and a hot sandwich during the 10 hour stretch). We had to go through Houston (its a Continental hub, and it meant that we could get tickets for the four of us for under 6K), where we came in through immigration and customs and were once again pulled out of a line and sent to the front because of the cane. Our flight had several other injured folks - must have been a bad week for sprains in France as there was a young woman with a sprained ankle and another with a knee injury close to us - and Continental went out of their way to help folks. Several of the other injured people on the plane were given rides on carts - there must have been at least 5 wheelchairs waiting for our plane. It was kind of funny to see as we walked out.

As we were re-checking our bags (you have to claim your baggage to get through customs and then they re-check them immediately), I bumped into another person from the University of Maryland. It was very funny to just look up and see Bob Infantino (an Associate Dean in one of the colleges with whom I've worked on several committees, for those of you who are not from Maryland). We had a nice chat as we went back through security - he and his family were returning from Honduras. We bumped into them again as our kids were asking for Auntie Anne's and they were there already with their son - apparently kids miss 'American' food no matter what country they've been visitng.

We arrived home at about midnight, eastern time (which was 6 am France time, for those not keeping track). We all took melatonin and headed for bed...

This morning we were all up by 8 (our bodies thought it was 2 in the afternoon) and I headed out for Ben's favorite Sunday breakfast - Einstein's bagels. I didn't make it far as my neighbor greeted me and told me not to use my car as it had a flat she could see. Apparently there was a rash of tire slashings in the neighborhood - she said she had seen at least 20 flat tires. On the bright side, this is better car luck than we've had after other major vacations. After our last major vacations we've bought new cars out of necessity (John had overheaded cars on the beltway leading to cracked heads and then trashed cars after both our Colorado and Disney vacations).

So I spent part of my day waiting for two new tires to be installed. It is rather frightening to re-integrate into the US state of mind in a Super Wal Mart (the closest place open and selling tires today). I don't really recommend it. I thought I was going to cry in the middle of a grocery aisle at one point (I did use some time to get shopping done). But I now have two new tires (and I'm pulling my car into the driveway before I go to bed).

We had a little 'birthday dinner' for Alexa tonight with an ice cream cake (her fave). John's mother and brother came over to join us and I think Alexa felt a bit more satisfied that her day was fully celebrated... I think it had been bugging her that she was cheated out of a 'real' birthday...

Its now 10:30 and everyone else is asleep.... I go back to work tomorrow and Alexa goes with me to Shakespeare camp. John has one more day off and Ben will hang out with him (they are going to build a model they got in Normandy and look at Pegasus Bridge maps... geeky bliss as Alexa would say).

When we finally manage to get readjusted we'll post the pictures from the nighttime tour, but I doubt John or I will post much more in terms of text.

Thanks for letting us share our trip with you.

Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity-Jig

Just a quick note to say we're all back home as of a little after midnight Saturday night, thanks to my mom & Greg (whose porter services were invaluable). It was a long, tiring day starting at about 1 AM US Eastern time and ending about 24 hours later. Turns out a national strike (well, a slow-down) kicked off in France on Saturday, so things moved verrrry slowly at Charles De Galle.

Now to plow through our work e-mail boxes, the mail at the house, do a ton of laundry and deal with a flat tire on Michelle's car. But first, Einstein Bagels!

D-Day part 3; Down and Out to an Ending

John again. We're now settled in at our last lodging in Paris, a hotel in the Canal-St. Martin district. Today has mostly been either downtime or travel time, riding the train from Bayeux back to Paris. (We got a lesson in the importance of reserving seats on the train, though - we got displaced from our original seats in Caen and the conductor had to locate space for us in one of the private berths, which caused some frustration mid-way.) The kids and I did take a quick pass through the Battle of Normandy Museum in Bayeux (not bad for it's size, but not up to the standards of either the Caen Memorial or either the British or American Airborne Museums). All or some of us may be going out to see some of the major sights lit up at night, though, if stamina holds out. I'm still wrapping my ankle and using the cane occasionally, but at least it doesn't feel like someone's shoving a red-hot poker through my ankle at every step, as on Wednesday.

Yesterday, though - no museums, just the raw places - or as raw as they are today.

Michelle described our first stop at the massive German cemetary at La Cambe, west of Bayeux and almost due south 8 kilometers from Point du Hoc. The site used to house one of the temporary American cemetaries, but in the late 40s through the 1950s many of the American dead were repatriated - families were given the choice to have their loved ones returned home or left in the ground they'd purchased with their lives. (The British & Commonwealth dead almost all remain in Normandy in a number of cemetaries, the one just outside Bayeux holding 4100 of the fallen, along with a few hundred German dead.)

La Cambe holds over 21,000 German dead, and even on a sunny morning it's a quiet, somewhat somber place. There's a large mound in the center with three large, dark crosses, surrounded by the burial blocks holding 3-5 German soldiers, many unknown, in each grave. On one wall inside the gatehouse is engraved in both German and French, "Here lie soldiers of Germany, forever at peace."

(By the way, our Battlebus guide Dale mentioned that each year about a dozen war dead, almost all German, are uncovered. Given the number of missing soldiers of both sides, Normandy looks to yield this crop for many years yet.)

Next we crossed over the N13, the major highway through this part of Normandy, and struck north to Point du Hoc. This was the site of a German battery capable of hitting both Utah & Omaha beaches. The USAF tried to destroy it from the air, and the Navy made a few tries from the sea, but as is always the case it took a bunch of young men with rifles and guts to do the job - US Army Rangers in one of their most celebrated exploits.

Picture this: you've spent the last 6 hours in a landing craft, bucking 5-foot waves while you & everyone else gets seasick, bailing out the craft with your helmets from time to time as the pumps can't keep up. Your mission - nothing much. Just land on a tiny sliver of beach, scale a 70-80 foot cliff, under fire, and clean the Germans out of their foritifications at the top. To do the job, there's 225 or so of you, equipped with rocket-fired grappling hooks, rope ladders, and extension ladders borrowed from the London fire department. Cake, right?

The Rangers did the job, even found the relocated guns inland and destroyed them, then held out for two days against repeated counterattacks until troops from Omaha Beach relieved them.

Point du Hoc was donated to the US by the French in 1979 and is officially US soil. Original bomb and shell craters cover much of the ground, and the original fortifications have been largely left intact. Ben had a great time scrambling around the gun casemates and bunkers.

Next we moved east to Vierville at the west end of Omaha Beach, and one of the bloodiest spots on D-Day. Another unit I served in, the 29th Infantry, originally a National Guard division Federalized at the beginning of the war, landed on this end of Omaha. The Vierville Draw saw some of the most horrific losses of the day for the Americans - if you've seen "Saving Private Ryan", this is where the real events took place. "SPR" compresses the time greatly, though - picture that lasting over three hours... one company of the 116th Infantry regiment ceased to exist on that stretch of beach, and one small town in Virigina lost 35 young men that morning.

There's not much left from 1944 there today: some sort of German fortification on the eastern wall of the draw, and the seawall down by the water. There are a number of monuments, though, including a very moving one paying tribute to the 29th Division, and another to the Rangers. This is the place where the Rangers got their motto - General Norman Cota of the 29th, moving up and down the beach spurring the men forward ("There's only two kinds of men on this beach, those who are dead and those who are gonna die, so move your asses inland!"), came across a group of Rangers and told them "Rangers, lead the way!" pointing up the draw. They did, with boys from Maryland and Virginia wearing blue & gray on their shoulders beside them (and troops from other units - one problem at Omaha was that landing craft kept putting men ashore in the wrong places).

After lunch overlooking the beach (indoors as the day was chilly & breezy), we drove eastward along Omaha beach and climbed back out at St. Laurent-sur-Mer, just west of the American Cemetary. This was another draw the 29th took, at high cost but not quite so dearly as Vierville.

We made our way back to Bayeux for a bit of snacking and souvenier shopping (Ben now has a wooden bow firing suction-cup arrows - how he pursuaded Michelle I have no idea!) and ended up at the hotel for some downtime and laundry.

I really wanted to eat at a place called "La Pommier", recommended by several guidebooks and the concierge of our hotel, but the kids were a bit leery. We did wind up there with a promise of pizza from the place across the street if we couldn't find something they could stand, but as Michelle said, the owner (who took our order, as well as everyone's) graciously made them chicken in cream sauce similar to what I've made for them before. The food was fantastic, every bit as good as advertised, and Dad got to scratch his itch to have some reasonably authentic Norman food (pork filets cooked in cider, yum!)

It's now time to decide on our plans for the evening - likely no more entries until we get home. Au revoir, and hope you've enjoyed peeking over our shoulders!

Why saying goodbye to Normandy will be hard

Tomorrow, we leave Normandy and though the children are happy (because this signals getting ready to head for the airport and home - we spend one night in Paris before the flight home on Saturday), I will be very sad to leave Normandy. We have had good weather, met delightful people, and seen some amazing sites. The blend of agriculture and beach is about as close to bliss as I can imagine.

Today, we fit in the few things we had been saying we 'need to do before we leave.' John will write that blog on the train tomorrow. The pictures are: the German cemetery (which they have worked hard to make a statement for peace and not to glorify the evil of the Third Reich - there were some young German volunteers there caring for it, scrubbing the markers, etc. while we were there - it was really touching), a peace statue along the road between the D Day sites, Ben climbing in a bunker at Point du Hoc, the awesome French sign to be referenced below, and a memorial at Omaha Beach.

Here are some of the reasons I love France:

1. The people love and enjoy children and go to great lengths for them. The hot dog from yesterday is a great example of them doing something for a child that they wouldn't otherwise do. Tonight at the rather upscale restaurant where we ate, they allowed the kids to order food from the mid-day menu. Museums (particularly those in Paris) are free for kids under 18, the Bayeux tapestry has a special recording just for kids... the list could go on.
2. Flowers and trees - the French are serious about their gardening, even in the city. There are flowers everywhere here in Bayeux (windowboxes and planters on the light poles etc.), and in Paris there were also plenty of flowers and gardens. I love that they take the time to just make things beautiful. As John said this morning about a lovely tree-lined (and well manicured at that) path to the German cemetery, you would never find this in the US because no one would want their tax money going to it and you can't make a profit off of it.
3. Appreciation for 'quality of life' - as noted above, the French don't impose the 'what does this do for me' standard when making decisions. And the pace of life, even in Paris, is generally much slower. They take time to greet each other, slow down meals, and generally worry about the pleasantries of life. Normandy is an excellent example of their desire to preserve history, do it in a lovely way, and not worry about the profits or taxes. There are miles of farm land right next to beaches that you would never see in the US ('why waste that space where we could make money?'). And the citizens of tiny towns have spent their own money erecting little monuments to ensure that the lessons of World War II do not get forgotten. It is clear that they care about things unrelated to the Euro.
4. Patisseries and amazing desserts - profiteroles will be tough to give up for Alexa; for me, it will be the amazing bread (particularly with butter, swiss cheese, and 'jambon' - ham - in yummy sandwiches) and pain chocolat (chocolate croissants), and for Ben... well lets just say we need to make sure we keep buying baguettes at home or else he might starve when we get back.

Here are some great ideas we could use, if you ask me:

1. Tasteful signs that depict (in shades of brown) the historic attractions at exits of the highway. One of these is pictured above. They were helpful and tasteful.
2. Marked 'spaces' in front of the gas pumps indicating where you should (and should not) park your car to fill up (it really cuts down on the people who block two pumps).
3. Little areas around grave markers that are filled with smooth, small gravel - gives families a place to put flowers and eliminates the need to trim around the markers... the mower can easily pass over these.
4. Dual flush toilets - almost every toilet here has had two push buttons - one for when you need to use less water.
5. Small cars - cute, easy to maneuver in the narrow streets, and economical

I'm sure I'll think of others, but I'm tired and its time for bed....