Queen's Day

To help celebrate our 50th blog entry, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands threw an enormous party for us, known as Queen's day.

While the celebration is national, obviously the best party is in Amsterdam, starting the night before and running all day on the 30th of April.

The temporary amusement park in the Dam.

The next morning we started at Vondelpark where children sell their wares and exhibit their talents for a little extra pocket money. It was packed with people and was especially nice as the entire park was sponsor and corporation free.

Josh beat a little kid at table football (4-3 if you're interested).

We met up with our friend Chantal who has decided to join us for the next few blog entries.

To put it simply, we had a super fun orange day!!

As a bonus, here are a few photos from our day and night in Rotterdam. Clockwise from the big one: Het Park, the marina, a model of the port within the Maritime Museum, mother duck and ducklings, tasty Indonesisch food and the surprisingly good Museum Boijmans van Beuningen.

Last but not least is our friend Joe giving Yaz a lift on a bike. He was very excited to be in our blog but complained that Josh might embarrass him by wittily mentioning his excitement. Sorry Joe, but we didn't even bother to think of something witty.

Pass the Duchy

Our 15th country and 1st Grand Duchy was Luxembourg. We spent two days there and actually found the place really interesting and fun.

The capital city, also called Luxembourg, has two distinct parts. There's the old pretty part of town (pictured below) and the new one with ultra-modern office blocks which are home to over 150 banks. Due to the number of foreign workers in the country, during the week people speak French while on the weekend they speak Luxembourgish. 

We didn't spend long in the city but did visit the casemate. This is basically a fortress dug into the rock beneath a castle from which to defend against Burgundians, Habsburgs, Spaniards, Prussians, French or whoever else might be attacking.

We left the city on day 1 for the quiet mountain commune of Echternach.

From there we hiked through the forested area known as Little Switzerland.

We came across several animals that day including red squirrels, snails, loads of mice and even one fox. Amazingly however, the quick brown fox was too cunning to be photographed by Josh. (Pangram Alert!!!)

We also came across the red slug. Before us, no one had ever seen them in Luxembourg (since the country wasn't mentioned in their Wikipedia article). So being the great contributors to human knowledge that we are, we updated the article.

On day two we went to the quaint village of Vianden, home to the appropriately named Vianden Castle. 

In the afternoon we did a ropes course in the trees. It was fun but also surprisingly challenging. Yaz lost a contact on one obstacle which sadly could not be rescued. It wasn't all bad though, as from then on she couldn't see how high up she was.

Yaz

Josh

P.S. Some people have complained about the difficulty of leaving a comment about our blog. The easiest way is to press "comment", then choose "Name/URL" from the options, and then just leave your name. 

The War to End War

We spent a little over 24 hours in the region of Picardy for pretty much the sole purpose of visiting the battlefields of the 1916 Somme Offensive.

World War I is Josh's favourite war so he planned an extremely informative and respectfully sombre tour. While he studied it a few times at school, his interest in the Great War began with the 1990 computer game "Knights of the Sky" which looked a little something like this.

So we started the brilliant tour at the crash site of Manfred von Richthofen, a.k.a. the Red Baron. It was in this field (or one nearby) that the German ace with 80 official kills was fatally wounded.

A little history: For almost two years of the war, nothing the British or French had tried was able to break the stalemate of trench warfare. So in July 1916 they decided to try exactly the same thing but with more weapons and more men. Before the attack, artillery fired on the German trenches with the idea that afterwards the troops would simply walk across no-mans land and take the enemy positions. Unfortunately, due to inadequate number of guns, poor accuracy and over-reliance on shrapnel the German trenches remained largely intact.

As soon as the barrage stopped, the Germans knew to man the machine guns and fire. On the first day of the attack. The British had suffered 19,240 dead, 35,493 wounded, 2,152 missing and 585 prisoners for a total loss of 57,470. The battle is a great example of the 20th century's greatest affliction, that technology was always two paces ahead of humanity.

To get acquainted with the strategies, weapons and general life in the trenches we visited the Somme museum in Albert.

The critically acclaimed tour continued at Beaumont-Hamel. The site is a memorial to those who fought and died in the Newfoundland Regiment. Newly formed for the war, on 1 July 1916 the regiment lined up in the St. John's Road trench (pictured below) and at 8:45am marched towards the enemy. Due to confusion of orders, good positioning of German guns and carrying of 30kg of equipment, within 20 minutes most had been killed. Of the 780 men who went forward only about 110 survived unscathed, of whom only 68 were available for roll call the following day. 

The bronze statue of a bold caribou faces the enemy.

Another site on Josh's unforgettable tour was the town of Poziers. It was at this site where the Australians made their greatest contribution/sacrifice. Repeated and pointless attacks against one of the best defended positions in the area led to the Australians suffering more casualties in six weeks than in the eight months at Gallipoli.

At the highest point of the battleground is the Thiepval Memorial which lists the names of 72,191 missing British and South African soldiers. For the soldiers, there was an anxiety towards being killed by explosives or becoming lost in the dense mud. The idea of having no peaceful burial site or even a body to bury was just one of many psychological challenges faced.

This memorial is perhaps more bitter when you consider the wives, mothers, fathers and children who waited years only to lose hope and accept that missing of course meant killed.

Before the battle started, mines were set off under the German trenches. Engineers had tunnelled underneath to place explosives. The explosion of 27,000kg of ammonal at La Boiselle launched debris 1.2km into the air. That crater, seen below, is 91m across and 21m deep. Josh is the brown spot.

At the end of the day we concluded the insightful tour at the Fricourt German War Cemetery. The tragedy of WWI is that the soldiers were used as cannon fodder in order to improve the economic and imperial interests of their respective aristocracies. It is important to remember the losses on both sides as an equal part of that tragedy.

The next morning we rose early for the Anzac Day dawn service at Villers-Brettoneux. For those of you who don't know, the 25th April is the national day of remembrance in Australia and New Zealand. The service was a perfect way to conclude and reflect.

The last photo is from the Department of Veteran's Affairs as it better shows the size of the event. There were approximately 5,000 people at the service.

Norman & Mandy

If Norman Bates and Mandy Patinkin were a Hollywood couple, they'd be known as Normandy. But since they are not, Normandy is best known for being a region in the north of France.

We travelled from west to east starting with the iconic Mont Saint-Michel. Here is the view of the island, and it's towering abbey as we approached from the south.

With a population of only 41, the tidal island receives an average of over 8,000 tourists per day.

We took a tour around the abbey, which dates back to the 11th century. The most amazing feature is that it sits atop four crypts so that it doesn't need to balance on the peak of the mountain.

The bay also has the biggest tidal variance in Europe, 14m. During low tide you can walk around the island, but you risk getting stuck in the mud and drowned by the sea which moves at 60m/s. These people survived.

Normandy is very pretty.

Often when we visit ancient sites, it seems like much of the knowledge is pretty much guessed by archaeologists. So it was really nice to finally see an historic document that tells a very clear story, and yet find that no one knows where it comes from, who made it, or if it's reliable. This is of course the Bayeux tapestry.

After learning of the French invasion of Britain in 1066, we learned of the British invasion of France in 1944. The link to the past is best expressed by an epitaph at the Bayeux Commonwealth War Cemetery which states "We, once conquered by William, have now set free the Conqueror’s native land."

Of course, the D-Day invasions (or Jour-J in French) were carried out by several countries, not just the British. All across the region are memorials, museums and flags to honour and remember the liberation.

We visited Omaha Beach, where the US 29th Infantry division successfully landed on the 6th of June 1944.

Above the beach is the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial which has 9,387 graves.

Further along the coast we stopped at Arromanches which still bares the remnants of the artificial harbour used by the Allies. It was used to land over 2.5 million men, 500,000 vehicles, and 4 million tonnes of supplies.

Late in the day we made it to Juno Beach where Yasmin's grandfather landed with the Dutch Princess Irene Brigade.

The following morning we toured the Normandy countryside along the Route du Cidre.

We tasted cider, calvados and pommeau which are made in pretty little breweries...

and enjoyed in pretty little villages.

Étretat is the French version of Dover but with three arches.

We tried to relax on the beach but it wasn't quite as nice as Bondi used to be. Maybe we miss home just a little bit.

OK, it was a little like Bondi

The last stop was Rouen.

Monet painted the cathedral several times so we thought we'd check it out. He didn't paint the inside though so we chose not to go in.