Through my eye

A sometimes caustic view of things.

Sunday, July 15, 2007

Belgium

From one Gare to another

We left Caen and Normandy heading to Brussels by way of Paris on July 6 2007, a Friday. So far, we have been staying in Ibis hotels, except for the youth hostel in Derry. On our first trip together to Brussels we stayed at the Ibis Grand Place, close to the famous square of that name. This time we were at an Ibis near the Bourse.

In our travel, we discovered that sometimes a taxi is better than trying to fit our two rolling cases on narrow public transport. Dragging them between Gare St. Lazare and Gare du Nord by RERin Paris, then around Gare Midi to a tram in Brussels that let us off ten minutes walk from the hotel, we wised up. When we left, we took a cab.

But Brussels is another place that one could come to love. Great food and drink everywhere. Good museums like the Maison du Roi, where all the history of the city is kept, plus all the costume sent from around the world for the Manniekin Pis to wear. Of course, we passed by the little boy again as we looked for the gender-balancing Jannekin Pis statue, supposedly in an alley off the Rue de Boucher. We finally found it by asking a waiter at one of the many mussels restaurants that line the street. Coming from the Galleria shopping street it is the second alley on the right, not the little cross street that goes to another road.

Where the little boy is often clothed due to his standing position, the little girl is squatting and I really don’t see how they could put clothes on her. You really can’t put pictures of the statue up anywhere on the internet these days because the statue is anatomically correct and you’d probably violate some child protection laws. We did not find it but there is also a dog pis statue somewhere in Brussels.

We had the chance to meet another member of the Jurgita web site, the entertainer, Rima Fauzi, who was helping to host a Brunei booth at a ASEAN open house at the Indonesian embassy. We ate a couple of sweets from that booth and lunch from the Laotian Booth.

All in all, we seemed to spend most of our time eating and drinking, including fresh-made waffles with chocolate and whipped cream and fruit. It seemed too soon to move on. There were things we still hadn’t seen or done, so we’ll have to come back someday.

But before we left Belgium, we had to do a Rick Steves tourist must and visit Bruges. As usual it rained like hell while we were there. In a way it was good, because we took a horse and carriage ride around the historic center under the protection of a large umbrella. We took in a cathedral with a Madonna and child by Michelangelo, it also had other good art. And we managed to find a couple of preserved windmills on the edge of town. Then, it was back to Brussels, our tourist must done.

The next stop would be the Arnhem area in the Netherlands.

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Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Transiting France

Normandy, France

Arrived by Irish Ferries at Cherbourg on July 2nd, after the proverbial dark and stormy night. The seas before the English channel were very heavy. The boat did some rockin’ and rollin’ that left many passengers too sick to move or sleep.

Not the Iron Stomach—Connie ate a big meal with pork and gravy, whilst I kept very moderate with fruit, cheese and bread. As a consequence I didn’t suffer and was able to sleep in my bunk, despite the feeling that the ship was on the verge of capsizing at any moment. I didn’t say anything to Connie, but she thought of that on her own and stayed awake most of the night—the difference between a fatalist and a worrier.

As we arrived at the harbor, many families with small children looked as if they were at death’s door. Sometimes the kids were OK but the parents looked even worse than the others, because they had to keep the kids under control, even though they were sick. We saw at least one set of kids, the oldest a girl of about 12, who had heelies and would gather at the side of the ship in the lounge and wait until the ship was tilted as high as possible on that side and they would race on their wheels to the far side before the ship tilted back. Every once in a while I’d hear a weak “stop that” from a parent lying down in a lounge seat.

They we trained to Caen, pronounced as if you started to cough a derogatory term for a female part: Cuhn! We rented a car because I wanted to tour the seaside beaches that were the focal point of D-Day in WWII.

Caen, itself, is a great town. Extensively damaged in the days after D-Day, it is so repaired that you would think it had always looked as it does now. Apparently the French do not want to destroy the look of their town centers every few years, but rebuild to be as solid as they look and as if they had never been blasted to bits. If it was that way in 1910, they want it to look that way now.

There is a castle in the center of Caen that was used as a depot by the Germans. From the front it looks as it did when William the Conqueror left to invade England more than a thousand years ago (except the moat is gone). If you go inside where the museums showcase the history and art of the area, you can see restoration work still going on at the rear of the castle. In this case they want it to look like 1066.

What a comparison to how we tear down our old durable buildings to put up pre-fab garbage with a 20 year life-span.

We saw Pegasus Bridge where the first British glider troops landed. We stopped at Arromanches, where remains of one of the two artificial harbors still exists. We visited Omaha beach and the American cemetery. We also toured Point du Hoc and St Mere Eglise.

You can read the history books and see all the movies about it that you want, but the scale of the invasion doesn’t hit you quite like seeing the sites with your own eyes.

Gliders smashed down to pinpoint landings with feet of the Orne river bridge the troops had to capture. When the bridge was replaced (fairly recently) they moved the old bridge intact a short distance away and built a museum around it—so you can still walk the bridge and count the bullet scars. It is forever named after the unit emblem of the men who captured it and held it against all odds—the Pegasus bridge.

Arromanches was one of two artificial harbors made with concrete barriers code-named Mulberries that were floated across the channel and sunk in place. A storm destroyed the one in the American sector, but Arromanches remained and encompasses two separate small harbors that were miles apart and divided by a huge highland. Each had their own feeder roads and allowed for simultaneous unloadings and loadings.

The way we saw Omaha beach was to find our way down to the beach and see how high it was to the top and how steep the way, then we went to the cemetery with its excellent museum and memorials and saw the sight of all those headstones that appear to stretch down to the beach that most of the men lying there had to cross.

Point du Hoc is another headland. At the axis of Omaha and Utah beaches, it gave the Germans a superb defensive position where sited artillery could fire on either beach. The Germans had moved their big guns or not installed them, but the D-Day command didn’t know that and sent 225 Rangers to take the heights from the sea—a 300 meter climb straight up against a defended position. Surprise lasted as long as the first shot, then it was hand to hand and the Rangers won. Then they had to defend the position from counterattack and cut the nearby coast road so the Germans couldn’t bring reserves and supplies in either direction. When it was over, after three days of intense fighting, only 90 survived. Some of the bunkers still exist and the giant shell craters from bombing and naval bombardment and German attempts to destroy the Rangers are still there, as well. The whole area is more than a historical site, it is a grave site because both German and Americans were blasted to bits and their remains covered by the rubble where they remain to this day.

St. Mere Eglise has a museum dedicated to the American Airborne who liberated the town on the night of June 5th and morning of June 6th. They keep a parachute with mannequin trooper hanging from the steeple in memory of the trooper who survived by pretending to be dead while all his buddies were being shot by the Germans in the town square. They built their museum around a C-47 airplane and a Waco glider.

Normandy is a land of solid old homes, farms, pastures—the bocage country—and good food and drink, especially apple cider and calvados, an apple brandy.

The hotel we stayed in was the Ibis at Herouville Saint Clair, by the outer highway ring of Caen. It was the prettiest such hotel we’ve yet seen. Greenery all around in a quiet location. Rabbits in the flower beds. Birds chirping away every day. Not easy to get to without a car, but we were prepared for that. Altogether a lovely place well worth returning to someday.

Ireland--conclusion

From one end to the other Ireland is as long advertised, the Emerald Isle. Where Scotland seemed to have more sheep than cattle and Ulster had a more equal mix, the Republic had many more cattle and some rather healthy horses.

If anyone, except the Irish who live there, thought that the country was backward or economically challenged, they are wrong. Eire seems to be thriving and growing, not always in a way that everyone appreciates. We heard complaints about the new straight roads and transport systems as if they took away some of the uniqueness of the land.

We had a chance to see for ourselves by touring tourist sites such as the Boyne valley and the Newgrange tumulus or ceremonial tomb equal in age to the Egyptian pyramids, as well as passing through Sligo and staying in Dublin for six days.

Old Ireland had some disjointed roads that wandered from point a to point c before lurching to point b. I kid you not. But European Union Euros have paid for bridges, better roads and other transport. Dublin has everything, including the challenge that James Joyce suggested—to transverse the city without passing a pub—it also had some of the worse of a city of nearly two million. There was crime and drunkenness. And still the occasional firebomb thrown.

I almost hate to mention it, because my people came from Ireland. Toilet maintenance is not high on anyone’s list of things to do. As soon as we crossed into the Republic, the cleanliness of restrooms dropped remarkably. I don’t know how to account for this as all other types of hygiene seemed followed normally.

The Irish are friendly, helpful, humorous and ready to chat on any subject at any time. Unfortunately, the newspapers and TV seem to be more interested in political scandals than politics and entertainers more than either. Still everyone seems to claim to be very knowledgeable about world politics and the US specifically. For instance, the US is only in Iraq to control the oil, so they say. It must be us who makes the Irish pay the equivalent of $8.00 a gallon. No wonder the Irish have a minimum wage that is twice the average in the US, they have to pay for the high priced beer and petrol.

When we planned this trip, the dollar was worth more, so we notice how much things cost us. The surprising thing is that the same item purchased in the US, say a pair of New Balance shoes, will be half the price of what it is in Pounds or Euros. So a simple item that costs $79.00 at home will cost me $140.00 purchased in Pounds or Euros. I’d think that was to the US economic advantage, but it is true of stuff we import to the US. The VAT or value added tax causes some of that, but is not the whole difference.

We saw the Book of Kells, and the Brazen Head Pub (one of the oldest pubs in Ireland and definitely the oldest in Dublin) and three of the four national museums. We discovered that Irish clotted cream is really like a whipped cream but richer and thicker than any commercial product in the US. The food was marvelous, but baked goods were my favorite so far along with the local beef.

We left on July 1st, to Roslare and the ferry to Cherbourg in France. The overnight crossing was through heavy seas until we reached the English channel. People were seasick everywhere. I ate a light meal of fruit and cheese and diet Coke, while Connie chowed down on Pork and gravy and whatever she wanted—the iron stomach!

But I slept better because, even though it felt like the ship would capsize at times, I didn’t let it worry me. Little things like that worry Connie and cause her to lose sleep.

Next, Normandy and Caen.