Belgium - Part 4

So in the morning we took off to go to France – the city of Love, Maybe I’ll get even luckier this time around… Well to my horror, I realised that where we were staying in france (Cherbourg) was much further south than paris, and the museum was about 5 minutes from a town we must pass through… So I roused the guys as soon as I found this out.  

We left late – again and took off towards Ypres, a town very famous in the 1^st world war. We arrived there shortly and had a look first at the Canadian monument. It was good, not as big as the American one in Batonge, but good nevertheless. Although we weren’t Canadian – so it didn’t have that sentimental value that comes with it. What was good was the trenches that have been preserved just under the hill – Hill 60 I think. The germans held the high ground and the allies held it for years – they were fighting over about 2kms of gournd for 4 years.. Good work boys… - So pointless. But lets go and do it again… Idiots.. Anyway, we left there with a short stop at a war cemetery, and then onto the Australian war museum. Why the war museum again?  Well I figured that the guys would enjoy it. What was strange was seeing it the second time I didn’t seem to remember any of the information. I knew I had read it all, but even reading it a second time it was almost new. Didn’t have the same impact this time around. We saw the Australian monument, and met some people that were riding their bikes around Europe. Nice to hear some “normal” accents again.  I assume that you know that they were austrailan by now, they came from rosedale – down Gippsland way. We then expressed it down to Cherbourg. Met our next couchsurfing hosts. They were a group of 5 that live together in a house on the coast. Seemed nice – were tired when we got there about 9pm. We talked for a bit and went to bed.

Trying to organise things is a little hard when internet is limited.. but…  did I mention that I hate faebook? Stupid thing. Ok, I thought about not doing a rant on FB, which also has another deserved meaning. But I am going to. I would say I am reasonably uptodate with IT issues, or technology if you may. FB has some uses, mine was to keep in touch with Cuth. Cuth should get skype, then I wouldn’t have much use for FB. But for people to be telling all their “friends” that they are tired, depressed (which it is proven that internet addicts have a higher rate of suicide and depression) or that they are hungry is just ridiculous. I am sure that people just sit on this facing book trying to think of things to say so that their 1000 friends can click “like”. I understand and ‘get the use for social networks and the like and I think that the message function of facebook has it’s uses, but the chat is not in the same ballpark as skype, demonstrated by the fact that they are designing a new app that can perform video calls. Many people use facebook to share photos, but there are clearly better photo organising programs out there, such as flickr. Don’t even get me started on the privacy issues associated with FB. – Fun fact ;) did you know that everything you put on facebook is the property of facebook. So when you become the new face of old spice’ (I’m on a rant) and you don’t get a cent then don’t come crying to me.

I understand that I have a FB account and my pictures are already on a horse somewhere in American office earning money, but doesn’t mean I have to like it. (oh yeah, try deleting your account too – see how long it takes you)

Sorry about that….

So today we went the DD beaches – not that impressed. It is difficult to gauge what has happened at these sites – even though films like saving private ryan and band of brothers has come out.

An interesting and sad story;  We were going into the Omaha beach museum and we roll up to some angry looking French police complete with American attitudes and metal detectors. What world are we preparing for the next generation when we are scanning people when they are going into a war museum/memorial. The French one didn’t have it, the Australian one either, are people really that worried? Or are they working on some sort of credible threat? *sigh*… But there is about 9-10,000 graves at the Normandy American cemetery – all the white crosses are in a row with almost laser accuracy. After that we went down to the beach at Normandy which was just a beach with a statue. We were almost over war things by then. Over saturated I think. Then it was tour de france time. We took to the road, with only a TV guide telling me what time the tour started, the plan was to intercept it – which was about 45 minutes away – A few messages and we realised that we would have to race the tour to the finish to even see it – but that was another 30 minutes on top of the 45… 2 hours away from our home. We had already been 30 minutes, so we kept going.. We just made it, ran to the race and saw the riders for about…. 10 seconds.. my goodness. Not that I expected anything more. We walked to try and get to the finish line and see the presentation, but we couldn’t see it anywhere – we assumed that it had finished. Even my video didn’t come out, and tarks missed the photo shots.. so we got nothing, we didn’t even know who had won – I still don’t! but we saw the tour... (I am thinking that the TV with phill leggit is a much easier and better view). Tonight we are going to a band in the town we are at – The events that we continue to run into…  There has only been 1 country we hadn’t had something random on that we could see.

Carnival in boxmeer

Ice cream run in random town near boxmeer (ran into day festival there)

Germany – Australia Vs Germany football game
Freisland – Festival for something (circus and stalls)

Holland – Queens day
Switzerland – Tour de swiss stage 1
Luxembourg – Dunno, but the roads were closed for something
Belgium – Prince Concert
France – the tour just happened to going past close to where we were staying.

We will see what else comes our way.