Jeff's Journal of Europeaness

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Normandy WWII Sites

1) Pegasus Bridge, British airborne objective, paratroopers held off armoured divisions
2) Sword Beach, British Commonwealth landings
3) Canadian Memorial, guys look like flying squirrels
4) Center of Canadian landings, memorial
5) Juno Beach, Canadians
6) Gold Beach, British
7) German shore guns at Longues sur Mer
8) German bunker at Longues sur Mer
9) Omaha Beach as seen from the bluffs, US landings
10 & 11) American Cemetary at Omaha Beach
12) Omaha Beach from the waterline at approximately low tide, the same distance a soldier would have had to run encumbered by gear while getting shot at
13) Omaha beach at Vierville sur Mer, some of the heaviest fighting
14) Pointe du Hoc cliffs, Army Rangers scaled these on the morning of the landings
15) Pointe du Hoc is preserved as it was after WWII, with bomb craters and flame thrower scorching still visible
16) German, French and British dead who were not repatriated, usually were just buried in municipal cemetaries. This cemetray had dead from all three countries.
17) Utah Beach, US landings
18) Utah Beach memorial to all lost US troops
19) Airborne memorial near St. Marie Eglise
20) La Fierre bridge, 82nd Airborne obective to take and hold the night before the landings to prevent reinforcements

Normandy

The second part of the spring break trip was the Normandy countryside (WWII sites next post). Normandy is a beautiful place, seaside on the English Channel. People are very friendly, its a very nice place to visit. Oh, and their cheese is good. Real good, world famous good. Same goes for their seafood, and their sparkling cider and calvados, which you all get to try, assuming the bottles dont break in my bag again. But anyways, heres the pics:

1) Pont du Normandie cable stay bridge

2) Cottage on the English Channel

3) Sheep

4) Lion sur Mer at night

5) Country church

6) St. Pierre Cathedral in Caen

7) Random town

8) Church at Longues sur Mer

9) Carentan

10) Michigan???

11) Caen castle

12) Caen guard tower

13) Cherbourg harbor

14) Cherbourg fishing fleet

15) Holy Trinity church in Cherbourg

16) Ecoquenaville

17) Norman bocage

18) Garvay

Sorry....

Jake distracted me from finishing my trip summary, then another trip set me back more. So, heres the rest of my Spring Break. The Vienna and Budapest trip pics probably wont be up until after I get back from Italy next week.

Oh, and no pics of the CZ plant, its on the other side of the country, and I'm not going that far, considering that they don't offer plant tours.

Monday, March 31, 2008

Jake is here!

And not into any trouble, yet. We went to a hockey game tonite, Prague beat Liberic 2-1 in game 7 of the playoff semi-finals, so I get a few more weeks of hockey in Prague :)

Sunday, March 30, 2008

The Palace of Versailles

So heres the plan. I can't get lots of pictures online all at once, so spring break will be described to you over the next few days, a little at a time.

The first place we stopped was the Palace of Versailles. This building served as the house of the Royal Family and the site of the French government from 1682 until 1789. More importantly, it was where the peace talks were held and the treaties signed that ended WWI. It is still used for special state functions today. Anyways, if you want to know more history, Wikipedia exsts for a reason. I'll tell you more when we get to the Normandy and WWII stuff. For now, I'll just share pretty pictures with you.

Oh, and the pics didnt come out good, but I brought snow with me to Versailles, not that you can tell looking at these pics. It was snowing pretty good for about 10 min while I was inside, meaning I have had snow in ever country I've been to so far.