Wednesday was a day devoted to getting back to Paris. If we had driven it directly, it would have taken a bit over 3 hours. Since we had all day, we decided to not take the direct route, as you will see.
During our bus tour of the Verdun battlefield, we saw some places where we wanted to stop and walk around, but couldn't. So, on our way out of Verdun, we drove up to the area we were the day before (thank goodness for GPS!). Wandering around the forest was just amazing. The landscape, while completely reforested, still bear
s the scars of the trenches and the bombs. In this picture you get some idea. Imagine this landscape 90 years ago just after bombing--no trees, no grass, just bomb craters and trenches.
There were about 9 villages totally destroyed during the battle. In commemoration, the French have a Mayor for each town whose sole job is to ensure that the memory of the towns are preserved.
We wandered around to site of one of these towns where the streets have been marked and the locations of houses and business
have been identified. I have been in ghost towns in the American west where you felt a bit like you were invading someone's space. In this case, it felt like you were walking on their graves. They evacuated when the bombing started, but many of the locals were killed by the bombing or by resisting. All in all, Verdun is a very sobering place.
We were so close to to the border to Luxembourg and Belgium, that we decided to drive through the bottom edge of them to "bag a couple more countries". So we plugged in a city in
Luxembourg and the GPS took us through the countryside to get there. It was a pretty drive alternating between forested ridges an farmland. It reminded me a bit of Pennsylvania, or perhaps Eastern Kansas. We ate lunch in Luxembourg, and then drove through a bit of Belgium. Since the border controls have been removed, and we think they speak a common language, there is essentially no difference between the three countries that we could see. I am sure there are some cultural differences, perhaps major ones, but those will slowly disappear over time now that they can move freely from one country to another. When we entered each country, you could see the old guard stations.
We finished the day on the motorway driving back to a hotel near Charles de Gaulle where we will meet up with our friends Jon and Jeanne. Next stop is Sarlat in the south central part of France.
