The tale of our journey to Epinal this past weekend with our North Carolina crew is really best told in two parts. To provide a bit of context, our day trip out of Paris on Saturday was organized by our visitors from NC, who planned to visit the grave of a relative who had fought and died in WWII, and was buried at the Epinal American Cemetery in France. None of the family had ever had a chance to visit the grave, so this was a very special occasion. They graciously invited us to join, which we were of course thrilled and honored to do. As a point of reference, here's where we were headed: Part 1 : Fancy Nancy France-y It's always fun to show up to a place you know nothing about. We had a bit over an hour layover in Nancy on our train ride to Epinal on Saturday morning, when Michael suggested we take a walk to pass the time. Without so much as an iota of a sliver of a clue about Nancy, we headed out for a stroll. Ducking through a promising looking archway, we were soon lured by the siren song of a 1,000+ voice choir into a magnificent square that was ridiculously, and opulently gilded. With mouths agape, we wandered into the Place Stanislas and then onto one of the most beautiful churches I've ever seen. And while it's not every day that you wonder in to UNESCO world heritage site without any idea where you're going (sound familiar, Jo? ;), we managed to do it this weekend in Nancy. Michael and I are already scheming a return visit. Part 2 : Epinal American Cemetery For as much as we didn't know what we were getting into at Nancy, we had a good idea of what to expect in Epinal - and were still blown away. After arriving in Epinal by train and enjoying lunch al fresco, we loaded into a few taxis to travel the remaining four miles to the cemetery. The grounds are incredibly peaceful, in such stark contrast to how the men buried there lived their final days. Both of my grandfathers fought in WWII - one in Europe and one in the Pacific - and I couldn't help but think of them both when we arrived, and how different our lives would have been had things turned out differently. As we were walking over to the grave to place flowers, the cemetery's superintendent came over to greet us. Instead of a quick "hello and thanks for coming", he proceeded to give us a 3+ hour tour of the cemetery. So in addition to a brief history of what was going in the war on during the time when many of the men buried there had died (in early 1945), we got to hear personal stories about many of the men who were brothers, friends, husbands, sons and fathers when they made the ultimate sacrifice.
It was a totally unexpected highlight of our trip, and one that made the place come alive with people in the place of marble. With the upcoming anniversary of the D-Day invasion on Friday, it was a perfect moment to pause and reflect on what happened in this country 70 years ago.
2 Comments
Jo
6/4/2014 02:31:43 pm
Yes! Turns out there's a cathedral in Cologne, who knew?!
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Kelsey
6/4/2014 02:36:44 pm
We sure didn't!! That is still one of my favorite memories from our trip ;)
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