We got up early the next morning so that we could have a quick breakfast as soon as the continental breakfast opened, and then caught the train to Oostende. From there, we took the tram to Lombardsijde, where we attended a church service at the church where I had helped out a number of years previous. Most of the people I remember remembered me, so it was a happy time where people were thankful for what had been done. It was also great to see the place virtually completed, as it was not so when I was there last. Sam, the pastor, let us have the top floor of the church for a room to sleep for the next couple days, and the run of the church. Some of the elderly people had us for lunch, and they gave us all their leftovers, which fed us for two days straight. Many thanks to them.
That afternoon, we travelled to nearby Brugge, and wandered around. For those who don’t know, it’s a city that has been in existence since at least the medieval times, and is particularly noteworthy for being virtually untouched in the World Wars. As such, it is in an excellent state of preservation, and the old part of the city is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Perhaps you can see why. It has a bit of history. Brugge is a canal city, so it’s sometimes called “the Venice of the North”.
And it’s got some churches too. With big organs.
We headed back to the church, and, for part of the trip, walked along the beach of the North Sea. It certainly wasn’t swimming weather, but the sea was beautiful, and Ruth-Anne enjoyed this time immensely. We collected some seashells and saw a number of jellyfish.
That night we did some laundry in the church, and headed to bed.
The next morning, we woke up early to catch the 6:39 tram back to Oostende. From there, we took a train to Brussels, then another train to the nearby airport, where we picked up our rental car. It was a manual-transmission Skoda Fabia. I loved it.
What I didn’t love was the fact that the previous person had obviously been a heavy smoker. Ah well.
Navigating the roads with unfamiliar signs in a different country might seem simple, but they’re not. We headed out onto the obvious road out of the airport and it took us three tries on their version of a 400-series freeway to get going the right direction. I really can’t blame my navigator, since the aforementioned road signs were admittedly confusing, and some ramps were closed due to construction. I wasn’t much of a help because I was a little busy not hitting the other cars. Man, if you think we speed here in Canada, drive in Europe in a small car!
Once we found our way out of Brussels, we headed for the French border. After a bit of meandering in a small town looking for gas, we got ourselves an intricately detailed map of northern France, and some lunch. Our next stop was Vimy Ridge.
We saw the memorial monument, went into the preserved trench lines, and the supply tunnels, and walked through a war cemetery. Visiting a place such as this and seeing the names of the thousands and thousands of dead certainly gives you a new understanding of what was going on over there less than a hundred years ago.
The numbers we hear in the text books—11 000 dead here, 15 000 dead there—don’t seem to make an impression, but when you see all their names inscribed at the base of a monument, it really drives it home that that is a lot of killed people.
The weather in Europe is funny compared to here. It typically rains once a day, but only for five or ten minutes. Rain comes up very quickly, and when walking around (by the way, it’s actually Canadian soil—the French government ceded 100 hectares of the battle site to Canada, hence the Canadian flags), we got absolutely drenched. We dried out a bit in the interpretive centre, and then left when the site closed. From there, we travelled to Ypres in order to attend the daily 8pm memorial service.
Ever since the end of the First World War, there has been a remembrance service. It takes place under the Meninpoorte in Ypres, on which is inscribed the nearly 55 000 names of those who were killed in the area around Ypres, but, for whatever reason, “denied the known and honoured burial given to their comrades in death.”
Afterwards, we visited the Essex Farm Cemetery, which is situated at the forward dressing station where John McRae wrote the famous poem, “In Flanders Fields”.
We drove back to Lombardsijde and went to bed.
3 Comments
Great pictures! The picture of the Vimy memorial is at such a contrast with the cows in front.
Must have been a powerful and thought-provoking day!
Actually Laura, they’re sheep! That’s how they cut the grass around the whole site because there are still undetonated munitions from the war in the ground. They see sheep as slightly more expendable in case something explodes. I tend to agree with them.
I thought they were strange looking cows.