Should have known something was up when my parents were getting my brother a passport. They shipped him and me off to Europe for 10 days after I graduated from college. Made it back OK. I attempted to acclimate myself to European time by waking myself up at 3:30 in the morning and going to sleep around 8. I don’t know if that worked at all since I got no sleep on the plane. I can’t sleep on planes or cars and anticipated finding a Red Bull or something like that at Gatwick. Nope. I hit the wall near the Tower of London and that was about it for me. On the plus side I got to watch rugby on TV! The Tri-Nations were on, Australia vs. South Africa and I was drinking a South African beer. It was a Castle Lager and I found it in the train station just up the street from the hotel. Went in there looking for cheaper food and walked out with beer.
D-Day to Berlin 2005
London
The day we arrived was the day after a shooting on the Tube. A Brazillian man who was in the country illegally was pursued by police who thought he might be a terrorist. Remember their bombing (7-7) was less than a month before and they were on edge. The man ran and was shot dead. It turned out he was just an illegal alien and not a terrorist. Guess the moral of the story is don’t run from the police. I have a copy of the paper with the story in it that I saved. This was late July but it was not warm there and I wore a jacket and remember getting stares from the Metropolitan Police.
Rode the Tube around trying to keep moving so I could stay awake since I got at most 30 minutes of sleep on the flight. I had attempted to acclimate myself to the time zone change by waking up earlier in the morning and going to sleep earlier. I don’t know if that worked or not. We saw the sites (and saw some of them on a bus tour the following day too) but I hit the wall at the Tower of London. The line to go in was huge and I was done. Since we had a free evening the following night I planned on doing it then. Nope. I do regret that after the fact as well as not going on the HMS Belfast across the Thames.
Portsmouth
There was more here than I expected, particularly with the Royal Navy Museum. And hey, the sun came out! Also saw the Mary Rose but it was inside and dark so my pictures did not turn out very well.
We arrived in a drenching rain storm. I saw the highway exit for Twickenham on the way here but didn’t see the stadium. In the evening the sun came out! It figures, the sun was shining when I landed at Gatwick and when I was about to leave. Typical England.
Normandy
Rode the ferry from Portsmouth to Le Havre. Hit four of the five landing zones. Weather was not the best but what can you do? One of the people on the trip had actually landed on Omaha and another had flown a bomber during Overlord. He had said that this was the first time he was seeing it from the ground.
I would have liked to see the Pegasus Bridge too but it was just a bit too far away. Also had visits to the American and German cemeteries.
Paris
A visit to Paris was not on the itinerary but traffic was light so the driver took the bus through the city. I sat on one side of the bus, my brother on the other and we just snapped away.
Rheims
Nice city, some old Roman ruins too. I realized I knew enough French from high school that I could read the sign on the Surrender Museum. Ate at a French restaurant, I had raw salmon and my brother had raw shrimp. We ate it so haha. Then we went for a walk and found a McDonald’s and had a burger or three. At least there was nice weather here.
Bastogne
Had a great uncle that was in the 3rd Army during the Battle of the Bulge, he survived. Of course Bastogne was made famous for other reasons. It was a small town and easy to see the sights with most of them either out at the American Memorial and in the town square. There’s a few other sights to see but it wasn’t on the tour itinerary.
Luxembourg
Despite what Crow T. Robot may think about Luxembourg I liked it here. The modern part reminded me of Harrisburg and the older parts were like any other European city. The hotel had a beer vending machine and I paid my two Euros to say that I have bought beer from a vending machine.
Remagen
The famous Ludendorf Bridge across the Rhine that the Allies were able to take giving them a bridgehead across the river.
Cologne
An mix of old and modern and the largest Gothic cathedral in Europe. Very impressive. Walked around town and picked up a quite a few new bottles for my bottle collection at a small store near the hotel. A nasty thunderstorm went through that night, the pictures of the cathedral in the storm did not come out well.
Driving to Berlin
Crossed the Elbe River where American and Soviet troops met (not at that exact point as far as I know) and stopped at a highway rest area on the Autobahn. It was the old Checkpoint Alpha where you entered East Germany and they still had the border checkpoint. You would be timed between when you entered there and went to Checkpoint Bravo at the border with Berlin. If you came in with a time that did not seem reasonable you could and probably would be arrested.
Berlin
This is a city that is somewhat trying to move on from the past but with reminders all around, whether it is the bombed out church or the Soviet Memorial near the Brandenburg Gate or the nearby Holocaust Memorial. I did find it satisfying that there was an ad for jewelry in the spot where the picture of Stalin or the hammer and sickle used to occupy.
Of course we had a bus tour of the city and we also had a post day here I guess because of flight arrangements so I walked around the city for a bit.
Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp
With an afternoon free we hopped on the train and went out to Oranienburg to visit the concentration camp here. It was about a 1 mile walk from the station. The Germans held skilled Jewish prisoners here and attempted to counterfeit the British pound and flood the British economy with them. There was a crematorium there but it was used for prisoners that died as this was not an extermination camp. Still, this was something I will never forget. It was used after the war to hold German prisoners.