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My last few weeks at the house have been very nice-- busy but nice. The students finished up their work and left without a hitch, pretty much.

My parents arrived in the UK at the beginning of May, and we spent a delightful two weeks traveling around different parts of England and Scotland that we had never before visited. We started with a few days in London (I showed them the Denis Severs House, which is something to check out—it’s really unique). We then headed to York where we met up with my mom’s sister and my uncle. I really liked York. The Minster is just incredible, and the (walled) city itself is very quaint. Then we headed to Edinburgh for a few days. We took a day trip to Loch Lomond, which was nice, and I really enjoyed Edinburgh castle. Then we headed down by train to Bath for a few days, which was gorgeous. I loved the Roman excavations and the cathedral and the architecture there.

After Bath, we headed back to London. I said goodbye to my parents and started off on my own journey in continental Europe. Again, my aim was to follow the route that my paternal grandparents had taken through WWII. They were both part of the same evacuation hospital (they had met in California during training and got married in Paris). I started out by taking the Eurostar to Paris, then rented a car, drove out of Paris (which was somewhat stressful given that it was a French bank holiday weekend, but not as bad as I had anticipated), and headed for Normandy. I spent three days going to museums, memorials, and I visited the Utah beaches on which my grandparents first set foot six days after D-day to set up their hospital. I was so surprised at how much remains standing from the war. All along the beach are pillboxes and gun turrets and concrete bunkers that are still standing (some of which you can go in and take a look around)—right next to family vacation spots. It’s a really unusual sight. The WWII museum that is in the city of Caen was fantastic. In addition to World War II sights, I also got to see the Bayeux tapestry, a 2 football field long tapestry depicting the preparation for and the action of the Battle of Hastings in 1066, as well as the monastery Mont Saint Michele, which was pretty but very touristy.

After Normandy, I had planned to journey to Belgium to visit the sights of the Battle of the Bulge. I left Normandy at 7:00am to drive to Paris catch a 2:00pm train. I thought that 7 hours would be enough leeway to make the journey which took me 4 hours on the way up. How silly of me to tempt fate. Not only did I get stuck in a huge traffic jam in Paris for an hour, I also got stuck in several small ones on the way to Paris. In the end, it took me 6 hours to get to the rental car depot from my starting point, leaving me one hour to get to the station and collect my ticket to Luxembourg (where I planned to pick up another rental car and drive to Belgium). I arrived at the correct train station with 30 minutes to spare. And then I had an epic battle with the ticket machine. And I lost. And I had to stand in line while the French ticket clerks one by one closed their windows for their afternoon coffee break leaving 10 people line in front of me, one person to serve all of us, and me with 8 minutes to spare before my train left. A part of me died as the clock ticked past 2:00pm. I missed my train, I was frazzled from driving in traffic and cutting it so close at the station, and I wanted to hit someone because of the overall ineptitude of the French bureaucratic system. However, I kept my composure and bought a new ticket to Luxembourg. I would arrive 20 minutes too late to pick up my car in Luxembourg, so I worked with my parents back home to find a hotel at which to stay overnight, then I planned to pick up my car in the morning. The TGV trip was fine, and I relaxed a bit once I arrived in the Grand Duchy. “Of course things will be ok from now on,” I chuckled to myself as I browsed the internet in my Luxembourg hotel looking for nearby places to eat dinner. “Oh,” I thought, “that Indian restaurant which gets a five star rating on tripadvisor.com from 205 customers looks like an interesting place to have dinner. Let’s have some exotic food to cheer you up.”

How I regret my decision to eat at that restaurant that night. I woke up at 3:00am the following morning with food poisoning. The food I ate was spicy, and the whole experience was incredibly painful. I didn’t sleep all, of course, and I ended up not being able to hold down any water. I was losing so much fluid that by the following afternoon, I was extremely dehydrated. I ended up having to take a taxi to the hospital where I waited for two hours before a doctor was able to see me. He gave me some medicine, and I went back to my hotel and slept for the rest of the afternoon and evening despite constant jack hammering across the street. The next day, I felt a bit better, and I moved to another hotel away from the noise. That afternoon, I felt well enough to go out and have a bit of a walk around Luxembourg, which is a nice historical city. It reminds me a bit of Edinburgh.

The next day, I was feeling much better (although I was still really weak and felt consistently a little nauseated). I decided to press on and follow the final leg of my journey to Germany. The train to Weimar was nice. We passed through the Rhineland to get there, as well as some beautiful fields in the countryside with tons of birds of prey circling around. I spent the evening in Weimar taking a walk around the quaint little town where Goethe had his country house and where the relatively big and influential university has attracted a generally academic population to the area over the centuries. The next day, I went to Buchenwald concentration camp, which was a very interesting experience. There is not much left of the camp itself, save the crematorium, the front gate, the delousing station, the depot where the prisoners’ belongings were stored, and a few watchtowers. There is a very large museum in the complex which was good, although the descriptions of artifacts were mostly in German, which I do not understand very well. The most emotionally moving of the buildings in the camp was the crematorium. The ovens are still there, as well as a cellar where they used to strangle people and a mock-examination room where they shot 8,000-10,000 Soviet soldiers.

That evening, I participated in a special event in the town where all of the museums of Weimar were open late. I visited the Bauhaus Architecture and Design Museum, the Ducal Palace of Thuringia/Saxony (I think it’s Saxony…), and a few of the local art museums. They were all really good.

When I left Weimar, I headed to Cologne for one day to explore the cathedral, the city, and the German-Roman museum which tracked the history of the Romans in that area of the empire. Apparently, the people around there were very famous for glass blowing, and they had a ton of stunning artifacts taken from tombs around the city. There were also heaps of monuments, a collection of ancient jewelry, and an impressive number of mosaic floor decorations of great size and quality in the museum. It was really well put together. I liked the city of Cologne enough, although it was a bit less impressive architecturally than I expected It turns out that 95% of the city was bombed in the war, so there are lots of 60’s and 70’s style buildings around which look dated and not very aesthetically pleasing. And because I was still getting over my food poisoning while I was there, I couldn't really eat anything nice. But the attractions were interesting. And when I left for London, I was ready to go, ready to head back home to continue life where I left off. I enjoyed the trip, and I have some good material to use for my book as a result.