Things are starting to wrap up fast in France. The last two weeks I've been traveling with my friend Erin and now I have 8 more days 'til classes are done and 7 days 'til Rachel comes to France. I am starting to wonder how to fit all my accumulated books into my suitcase.
More on the trip:
First I went to a B and B on Guernsey, a British island that is closer to France than the UK. We took the ferry and spent the next five days wandering the loveliest rocky beaches, looking at wildflowers and biking cow path/ country lanes. They have perfected the hedgerow in Guernsey despite Normandy's claims. There were acres of blue bells, ramps ( I sniffed those out quick), bachelors' buttons, pinky things, yellowy things, daisies. Said hedgerows were ablaze with color. There were plenty of gentle Guernsey cows and because I was not in France I drank a lot of milk. We also had peanut butter which elicited comment from the owner of the B and B who was cleaning the algae
(pronounced hard g) out of his pool. " Oh God what are you doing to that poor piece of bread?" I threatened to seal his mouth shut with said gummy deliciousness. I haven't had peanut butter since December. I really enjoyed bantering with people on Guernsey. I can get pretty much whatever I want information or material wise in French, but I never think to joke. On Guernsey, people razzed me to death and it was hilarious, in English, and even more interesting because it was not American humor. We must have been jolly amongst the retirees. Even the customs people were jokey.
Next we followed the poppies down the train tracks south to Nice and a different kind of ocean. I went swimming in the north Atlantic on Easter in Guernsey so I decided to brave the Mediterranean. The water is cold there too and comes in at an angle to the shore. Rocks pound your ankles and there is a lot of foam. The little boys on the beach seemed to like it as well as some older ones in wetsuits, but everyone else was lying around letting the sun pound into their flesh. The people watching was great because everyone was putting on a show of some kind all while pretending they weren't. We tracked people's social goals and their progress for hours. Afterwords we got ice cream in bizarre flavors. We also spent a lovely evening with some Vancouverites and a Brazilian we met in our hostel. I met so many cool traveling Canadians this trip I think I will need to migrate up north more often once I get home.
From Nice we took the train up to Normandy and I decided that I am a northern France kind of girl. I like the big, sparkling green open spaces dotted with houses in dulled stone as apposed to red soil, stucco and azur sea. We looked at the cathedral in Bayeux, the Bayeux tapestry, the Caen Memorial museum, Omaha Beach, the American Cemetery and other D-Day cemeteries and memorials. We took the bus to Arromanches the tiny seaside village where the British installed an enormous pre-fab harbor to supply the allied invasion. We walked the shore, climbed the cliffs and visited a little museum about the harbor whose remnants you can still see poking out of the ocean. We also visited the British and her Commonwealths cemetery which I found very moving. Families were allowed to inscribe a few lines on the graves; there were a lot of Christ metaphores, Erin found one where someone had simply inscribed an address. The American Cemetery was very American in a sea of French things. Big parking lot with those barriers planted with roses, airport style security, a very formal mall ( not shopping, like Washington D.C) with manicured grass and somber pavillions and then there were the graves which must have been lined up with a laser they were so unnervingly straight. The attached museum documented the countdown to the invasion, highlighted the service of specific soldiers and showed their equipment relavent to the task they were carrying out. I have seen a lot of WWII museums and I thought this one was really well done. It forcefully carried across how much organization it took to invade France. I was flabbergasted and for the first time understood why armies need heirarchy to operate sucessfully. A bunch of guys running up on those beaches under machine gun fire could have been an utter chaos and in many ways it was. This museum showed how the soldiers had trained for that chaos and their generals had planned a million ways to control it. Fighting yes, but in many ways an intellectual triumph something I was not at all expecting to think. Imagine Eisenhower's laundry list! There must have been some brilliant and highly organized minds behind all this ( and behind a museum that has me convinced). It helped put those 10,000 naked crosses and stars of David in perspective.
One other thing about visiting the American cemetary. I kept looking around for people visiting their friends'/relations'/ loved-ones graves and I didn't see any likely suspects. Then I realized it is basically too late for all that. At the time when I was born, there were old guys coming to Normandy laying flowers on their buddies graves and then going to lunch in the café with the "Welcome to our Liberators" signs in the windows. Most of this is gone now, passed within my life time, I was really aware that I am part of a new generation; the one who goes to experience a bit of the past and who theorectically carries on the sacred French duty of "mémoire." But why, I wonder? The school kids around were school kid-y, on a field-trip and abnoxious. WWII was something on their museum scavenger hunt list while I was thinking about army heirarchy and the military industrial complex. The oldest people there were seeing bits and peices of childhood and reminicing about playing in the bomb shelter. They were moved and so was I. The American Cemetary had the air of a place that will be maintained for ever ( in perpetuity as they say) but it is funny to see how people's relationships to the memorial change as time goes by even as the memorial itself demands no less of them.
If all this gets to be too much for you in Normandy, you can drink cidre, look at the scenery and think about William the Conqueror's neat little medieval war. He too was a formidable organizer: Mr. Doomsday Book. I checked out his castle and inadvertently ran across his grave in the church in Caen. A nice end to two weeks of gadding about.
