A Dose of Reality: Past and Present

Normally, these types of blogs tell tales of one's travels and the general excitement that occurs while studying abroad. That is why I'm going to be a buzzkill and tell you about my misfortunes to start because I want pity. The last week of January started off with me getting sick on the previous Thursday. Apparently 3 solid weeks of trying to sample as much Belgian beer as possible catches up with you, who knew? So while a large number of people in my program spent the weekend in Amsterdam I stayed home and barely got out of bed, and probably sneezed out my weight in mucus. Oh man isn't that a lovely image, yum. My housemate Cesar also came down with a flu or something worse and was bedridden as well, so our house was a whole lot of fun that weekend. Luckily, I was pretty much recovered by Wednesday.

Anyways, with that depressing tale of sorrow out of the way, we can move on to the good stuff that happened this past weekend. For the second straight Thursday, we celebrated the 21st birthday of a member of our program (Happy birthday, Natalie and Eamon). So yes, another night of more 1 euro Stellas than I would like to admit ended in roaring success, with me doing Karaoke for the first time. I helped some friends with a rendition of Mr. Brightside by The Killers that brought the house down. I'm not sure if it actually brought the house down, but you weren't there and can't prove me wrong so HA! I took Friday easy, watched the Grand Budapest Hotel and went to bed early as CIEE had a scheduled trip to the Battle of the Bulge battle site Saturday morning and the bus was leaving at 730.

Saturday morning, I woke up at 815. Now you may ask, Bo, didn't the bus leave at 730? And the answer is of course yes. I tend to have a history of waking up in the morning, snoozing my alarms and going back to sleep, which is a bad habit I seemed to have brought to Europe. So, What do I do now? Well, luckily Michelangelo had told us that if we missed the bus, we could take a train to Bastogne and meet up with the group during the day, so that's what I did. Somehow (thanks to specific instructions from Michelangelo), I managed to book a ticket, take a 2 hour train ride to Libramont and then a 30 minute bus ride to Bastogne and was able to meet up with the group for lunch around 1:30 where I arrived during the meal and had this beer  in a horn glass immediately ordered for me by the CIEE intern Elliot:

La Corne

So due to my problems waking up, I missed out on the screening of one Band of Brothers episode on the bus and the morning visit to Luxembourg to see the American War Cemetery and Memorial, including General Patton's grave. I was pretty bummed about this to say the least, but luckily our day included several more visits that more than made up for my inability to get out of bed.

After lunch, we were shown around Bastogne, the town that transferred between Allied And Nazi control during WWII and encircled by the Battle of the Bulge. Our guide, Mr. Mignon grew up in Bastogne during the war and witnessed the events of the area when he was just 8 years old. Mignon went on to join the Belgian Armed Forces and nows serves a tour guide for the area. He has assisted many veterans of the battle and the war and has collected many stories from survivors that complement his own personal experiences and together he is able to provide a series of anecdotes that furthered our tour and experience of the area.

Our next stop was the Bastogne Barracks, the headquarters of the famous 101st Airborne Division during the battle and now a museum. The first thing that struck me at the Barracks was the use of historical photographs positioned at the exact spots they were taken during the battle.

This is Didier. He liked to swing his arms around and point at things

We toured the premises, which included a warehouse full of restored vehicles, tanks, and artillery weapons that were used in the battle. Seeing a Sherman tank for the first time, man, that thing is massive.

The Sheer size of this place

One of the Shermans

This one is just a repurposed Duck Boat

Not just Tanks

It was amazing to see just how little space there was inside these tanks, most of which were operated by 4 to 6 men crammed into these tiny quarters.

Could not fit in there

Next we toured the basement of the building that held the offices for Generals Patton and McAuliffe. There were these life size dummies in all the rooms that proved quite freaky but also telling of just how the daily operations would look in this building's basement.

There is some context to this photo

The museum part of the Barracks included a series of artifacts from the battle that included personal toiletries, knives, radio equipment, and weapons.

casual Nazi stuff

A GPS apparently

From there, we traveled to the Mardasson Memorial, a monument honoring the Americans soldiers wounded and killed during the Battle of the Bulge. It is quite a large monument sitauted on a hill outside Bastogne. It is very similar to the WWII memorial in DC in that it includes the names of all 50 US states inscribed on the monument.

Oh look it's me and the state I'm from

There was about a foot of snow on the ground when we visited, but being how this is Europe and not the United States and you can't sue someone for being stupid,  we were able to climb to the top of the monument despite the icy stairs, and saw some incredible views of the surrounding areas.

The memorial also featured a crypt housing separate pieces dedicated to the Christian, Protestant and Jewish soldiers.

Into the Crypt

We visited Bastogne on January 31st, which was in fact the 70th anniversery of the ending of the Battle of the Bulge, which made the experience all the more surreal. The cold and snowy weather we experienced was pretty much identical to that experienced by the soldiers fighting during the battle. This became truly eye opening during our final stop of the day, which was a trek into the woods to see the remnants of the foxholes used by soldiers during the battle. With the sun set, we ventured into the woods with snow falling and no natural light. It was an eery feeling, as you realize this is pretty much the exact conditions that the men who fought here were dealing with as they had to dig their foxholes out in these woods and stay the night there.

I honestly cant think of a better word to describe the experience than "chilling", both literally and figuratively.

We closed our time in Bastogne with a program dinner at a local restaurant. It wasn't that great of a restaurant. From there we took the bus back to Brussels, on which we watched another episode of the Band of Brothers, one that focused on the soldiers experience in the foxholes outside Bastogne. The episode made the day's experience all the more impactful, bringing to light just how terrifying of a battlefield those woods proved to be and how many men were injured or lost there lives there.

I've always been more of a history student. World War II has always and will forever continue to be a fascinating topic to learn about. Being able to visit the site where a major battle of WWII occurred and see the area firsthand is an experience I will never forget. If you ever get the chance, do travel to Bastogne and visit the various sites and memorials dedicated to the Battle of the Bulge. It is an eye-opening experience and truly worth your time. Till next time. Cheers


Oh and by the way, if you want to give me a free ride on uber, enter this code into your own: brendano195