LCC Trips - 2nd Installment

So, I'm in this class called LCC 4813: Gateway to Metz and we basically get to take free trips all over the Lorraine region and some of Germany with the French professor (Madame Serafin, who is VERY similar to Ms. Frizzle) to learn about the history of Europe and how the EU was developed.  This post will be dedicated to the second installment of trips.  To read about the first three trips go here.

Fort de Queuleu

This Fort was a holding camp for Jewish prisoners in WWII.  A local group is in charge of the upkeep and exhibits so our tour was in French and Madame Serafin translated.  It was pretty depressing, but I'm sure that a real concentration camp would have been much more sad.  The prisoners were forced to sit on benches along the ends of their bunks for the entire day.  They were only allowed 1 bathroom (a pail in the room in front of everyone else) break per day and the barracks room was mixed-gender.  Only 4 prisoners ever escaped from Fort de Queuleu and they got together every year on the anniversary of their escape (a few of them have died, but the remaining men still meet up).  There is a painting of these young men escaping.  They were all my age at the time of their imprisonment and escape. 

Click here for pictures of this LCC trip.

Maginot Line and Lorraine American Cemetery

We visited the Maginot Line and the Lorraine American Cemetery on the same cold, rainy day.

The Maginot Line is an underground fortress complete with turrets outfitted with machine guns that rise up from the ground and attack any enemies.  The French were paranoid of a German attack in between WWI and WWII so they began construction on this Maginot Line that is located along the border of France and Germany.  There are forts located along the Maginot Line and the forts surrounding a particular fort are responsible for the first attack if that particular fort is invaded.  The fort we visited was attacked by the Germans and eventually taken over by the Germans during WWII.  Today it is used to educate tourists and locals about the entire Maginot Line.  We got to ride a train around a lot of the fort.  It was very cold inside because it was several meters underground.  Our guide for this particular trip was great and her English was awesome which made the trip a lot more comprehensive.

All over Europe there are cemeteries dedicated to the American soldiers that were killed in WWII.  We visited the cemetery that houses all of the soldiers that died in the Lorraine region during the war.  The groundskeeper for the cemetery lives in a house right beside the cemetery and he is American!!  It was so great to hear an American after several months of French accents!!!  He was really into the cemetery too and knew a lot of specific facts about several of the soldiers buried there.  I really liked that he was patriotic in a reserved way.  He wasn't over the top like some people are and he didn't try to bring religion into any of his presentation, even when we had a moment of silence for the soldiers.  He was a military guy too, so his ability to be reserved and respectfully patriotic was really admirable to me and made me enjoy the visit even more.  We started in the cathedral which was complete with a bell tower that would play Taps if requested by a soldier's family or for special holidays.  Taps played once while we were on our tour and our guide stopped and saluted the entire time, which was very powerful to watch because then right when it finished he resumed the tour without any irritating lecture about patriotism or religion.  We stopped at several pairs of graves that were brothers that had both died in the war.  One pair of graves that we stopped at were twins that had died a day apart and I had to step away because I got choked up thinking about my brothers and how hard it would be for myself and my parents to deal with the tragedy of losing  Paul and Will within a day of each other.  It was very fitting that it was rainy and overcast the day of our tour.  It really added to the somberness of our visit and made the experience very memorable.

Click here for pictures of this LCC trip.

Court d'Or Museum

 This museum was dedicated to the history of the Metz area.  There were lots of Roman artifacts like pieces of stone from Roman baths, tools, pottery, and artwork.  There was a lot more of the museum that we didn't get to see, so I might have to go back sometime when I'm downtown or here for a weekend, but I'm honestly pretty Roman ruins-ed out.  The coolest thing I remember seeing in this museum was a grave marker for a female doctor.  Our tour guide pointed out that in the middle ages a woman with medical or scientific knowledge would have been considered a witch, but in Roman times it was acceptable for a woman to be a doctor.


-JChamp

Weekend #4: Stuttgart and Oktoberfest

I was really excited for this weekend because we got to go to the 200th anniversary of the Oktoberfest Festival (aka something to tell the grandkids)!  The planning for this trip was a little complicated because we didn't want to spend the night in Munich since the hostel prices were well into the 100 euros/night bracket.  We decided to visit Stuttgart on the way to Munich and spend the night in a hostel there instead, which was much cheaper!  We left Metz very early in the morning on Friday and spent the whole day and night in Stuttgart.  Early Saturday morning, we trained to Munich and spent the entire day and part of the night at Oktoberfest before taking the couchette back to Metz.

Stuttgart is the home to the Porsche and Mercedes-Benz empires.  We visited the Porsche museum on Friday.  For someone who doesn't like cars that much, I enjoyed the museum.  We made our way back to the main shopping area and grabbed some much missed Starbucks.  The Starbucks we went to asked if you wanted your drink for here or to-go because drinks that weren't to-go were served in a REAL mug.  Crazy!  Next, we visited the museum of modern art.  Unfortunately, we just missed the new exhibit about food and art by one day, so I felt like there wasn't that much to see.  There were still some really interesting pieces and I enjoyed the museum.  We headed back to our hostel (Inter-Hostel)  to ask where a good place to grab dinner was and they directed us down the street to a typical German restaurant.  I've never been a big fan of German food and let's just say that I'm still not, haha.  That evening, we took the train up to the observatory tower and got to ride the elevator all the way up (130+ floors) and see all of Stuttgart at night.  The path to get to the tower was a lot of fun because it was not lit well and through a creepy forest.  We had a lot of fun scaring each other (playfully, of course!)  We were exhausted by the time we got back to our hostel and all went to bed.

Early the next morning, we walked to the train station to catch our train to Munich.  Once we got on board, we realized that our seats we in a compartment (much like the ones from the Harry Potter movies!)  We excitedly took a lot of pictures of our home for the next few hours.  We arrived in Munich around noon and immediately set out for Oktoberfest.  After walking around for awhile, we realized that we should go back to the train station and ask for directions or a map.  The tourism office was really helpful and we purchased tickets for the S train and made it to the festival, finally!

Arrival at Oktoberfest!

We took awhile to get beers because it was too crowded to find a table to sit down and order.  Eventually, someone yelled over at us and asked if we were from Canada because one of us (Curtis) had a Canada shirt on.  The group that yelled was a hockey team from Italy, but most of the players were from all over the world...including Canada.  The team let us borrow their table to order beers and the drinking funtimes commenced!  It was pretty awesome that we got beer because of Curtis' Canada shirt because he made a point to wear it on that particular day so people wouldn't think he was American.

After 2 L of beer and a few trips to the bathroom, we went to the carnival area and paid way too much money to ride some of the rides.  We ran into some other GTL-ers at the Ferris wheel and we hung out with them for the rest of the night before catching an S train to the main train station to get our couchette back to Metz.

I'd say that Oktoberfest was a little overrated, but it was definitely an experience to be there and I had a lot of fun regardless!

Click here for pictures from this trip.

-JChamp