So, back to spring break, and what happened after Vienna. From the Austrian capital I flew to Hanover, Germany. From there I took a train to Braunschweig, home to my good old friend Lena and her boyfriend Lars, who kindly agreed to host me (and my one little backpack of by now very stinky and climate inappropriate attire) for the weekend. They live in an adorable attic apartment in the very charming but reconstructed (post-WWII) city of Braunschweig, which doesn't have many tourists but does have many parks and many cobbled, pedestrian-only streets. That weekend was spent idling away hours talking in those leafy parks, eating ice cream in the town squares, canoeing!! (really Lars canoed and Lena and I provided moral support), and strolling through the city marveling at the half-timbered houses. The city's castle (because every European town must have one - obviously) is actually a big, fancy shopping mall, but you'd hardly know it from the outside. It feels very quiet, although there are almost 250,000 residents. We also went to the beautiful Braunschweiger Dom (cathedral), which was built in the 12th century by Henry the Lion, the town hero. The tombs of Henry and lots of other famous Saxons are there. Last but certainly not least, Lena and Lars cooked up some amazing meals: one night we had a magnificent homemade lasagna and the other we had German pancakes with applesauce. Then, on Sunday night, it was time once again to continue my nocturnal rambles, this time on a red-eye bus back to Paris. That was, in itself, quite the experience -- from the enormous Russian woman who saw fit to wake me up in the middle of the night wanting me to plaster myself against the glass even more to the 3am calls for Antwerp. The bond with the other passengers on nighttime transportation is odd: you feel like you're operating in some sort of kooky alternate universe that dissolves as soon as daylight hits and you reach your destination.
Canoeing with Lena
Back in Paris, it was time to hit the JP books for a few days as the deadline loomed large. Then, on Thursday, my parents arrived for the last leg of my multinational spring break adventure. We departed immediately via the Gare St-Lazare for Bayeux, in Normandy. Our motel room looked out on a pasture full of cows, something I had, in fact, missed in Paris. Fittingly, our Norman escapades began with the greatest of Normans, William the Conqueror: that is, a viewing of the Bayeux Tapestry. We followed in detail the machinations of Harold, followed by the Norman Conquest, and all the seemingly unrelated obscene images embroidered along the borders. We also visited the Bayeux Cathedral, surrounded by the tranquil winding streets lined with old stone houses that one expects to find in Normandy. Bayeux was lucky in that it was spared by WWII: many of the nearby cities like Caen and Saint-Lo were all but wiped out.
We rented a car, so the following day we spent the afternoon at Mont Saint-Michel, one of the places in the world I have most wanted to see. It is surrounded by marshy plains that flood and leave the monastery jutting out dramatically from the water. Even coming by car instead of donkey and passing by strips of chintzy hotels tourist traps, it wasn't hard to imagine how breathtaking would be the site for religious pilgrims when, some miles away, they first spotted their destination.
With dad at Mont Saint-Michel
The monastery and the other connected buildings crammed onto this tiny rocky outcropping were built and rebuilt over a long period of time, beginning in the 8th century. Because of this there are many different architectural styles melded together (not to mention the tourist kitsch around the base). Because it endured so many changes and tumultuous periods of French history, including vandalism of religious symbols during the French Revolution (traces of which are still evident) and use as a prison through the 19th century, little is left in the interior. This is compensated for by the drama of the setting, especially as the sun dips and the tides come in. We hiked the winding path to the top and explored every room, many of which were slapped onto the sides of older ones, whose walls may have been oddly hacked off to accommodate the new use.
Back in Bayeux, we dined two consecutive nights at a cozy place right by the cathedral that served Norman specialties. The second night, as we left dinner close to midnight, it was the eve of Easter. Suddenly the bells started tolling and the congregation burst from the doors bearing torches and incense, illuminating the quiet darkness with their jubilant celebration of Easter.
It reminded me of an evening earlier that week, back in Paris, when I was sitting outside Notre Dame gnawing a crepe. The bells had begun clanging wildly and a parade of thousands of priests in white robes poured forth from the cathedral, beginning with the young priests-in-training and ending with the bishops. I think every priest in France must have been there for Holy Week.
Our final day in Normandy was devoted to more recent history - les plages de débarquement (the D-Day beaches). We started from the chronological beginning with Pegasus Bridge, where the first British paratroopers landed on the eve of Operation Overlord. A sign outside the nearest house said it was the first house in France to be liberated on D-Day. There was a very good little museum nearby where the original drawbridge (it was recently replaced) was found. We had already gotten the full story of the invasion at Bayeux's D-Day museum and we felt historically well-equipped thereafter to tackle all the beaches in succession from east to west. First the British Sword, then the Canadian Juno, the British Gold, the American Omaha & Utah beaches. Omaha Beach is of course the most famous to us: it was where the Allies struggled the hardest to get ashore and endured the most casualties. Lots went wrong, as opposed to Utah Beach, where few Americans were lost and the terrain was much less difficult. Today, there are monuments to the fallen soldiers, but also sunbathers stretched out on Omaha Beach. We also stopped at the American Cemetery, which is filled with row upon row of pristine white crosses. (Of course we had to go through metal detectors to get in. Welcome back to America!) The cemetery, too, overlooks the water, and it is an eminently calm place. There are German gun emplacements here and there still in several locations along the coast, and sometimes still the big guns themselves, overgrown. It's strange to see ruins - for that's really what they seem like - that are not even 70 years old. The most striking place to see this is Pointe du Hoc, a cliff 4mi west of Omaha Beach where American rangers heroically but unnecessarily landed as part of the invasion. A high, windy point jutting out into the ocean, it is dramatically ravaged with craters as a result of air strikes - in fact, there is no flat surface. From beach to beach we drove, passing through sleepy Norman towns -- some, like Ouistreham, home to chic seaside resorts, others that have seen little change since the 1940s. And between the towns were endless fields of blinding yellow flowers. My dad insisted it was just grass. Whatever. When I close my eyes now and think of Normandy, I think of those yellow fields, gray stone cottages, and the blue of the Channel.
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