Road Trip!

The last three weeks have been really busy. The following two weeks after my last post were dominated by International Accounting and Finance. The class was pretty challenging. We spent most of the class learning how to translate financial statements between different currencies and accounting standards. I was prepared in two ways for this class: the first is thanks to the accounting genes that my mom gave me, and the second is thanks to two of my good friends, Jessie and Lisa, in the class who are grade A accounting majors. One of them, Jessie, is not only destined to be a great accountant, but also has the best birthday ever..May 5th, 1989. Just like me! So on our birthday we had a joint pizza party at a little ''mom and pop shop'' pizzeria down the street from where I live. Quite a few Americans, along with a good showing of our German friends, came and we had a lot of fun. My German study buddies even made me a cute little cake.

The birthday kids!

My cake

After the two week course in International Accounting and Finance, we were scheduled to take a week long class that we had already received credit for through a different class back in Corvallis. So we were told that we would not be required to take the class, in other words, we had a week off to see Europe! After some thought, we decided that we wanted to head to the Normandy region of France and tour the D-Day assault beaches and visit the American Cemetery at Omaha Beach. Train tickets to where we wanted to stay were incredibly expensive, so after pricing it out, we found that renting a car and driving there would be about a third of the cost of taking the train. So that's what we did and it worked out great. With the car we were able to set our own schedule every day and it also allowed us to drive out to Le Mont St. Michel and to also stop in Paris on our way back to Germany.

  Our ride for the week

 So Travis, Will, Jeremy and I packed our bags and piled into a Ford Fiesta, and arguably the world's greatest road trip was born. The drive took about 9 hours, but that didn't seem to bother us too much as we winded through the French countryside listening to our favorite country music artists in our Ford. Our hotel for the week was in Ouistreham, which is a quiet town that sits on Sword Beach. The task of assaulting and capturing Sword Beach on D-Day was given the British army who invaded with about 29,000 men that day. From Ouistreham, we drove up the coast line and visited eight museums, the American Cemetery at Omaha Beach, and multiple sections of the Atlantic Wall. All in two days. I was like kid in a candy shop. There were at least twenty more points of D-Day interest that we did not have time go to, but everywhere we went was great. We saw more World War II artifacts in those two days than I have ever seen in my life. Every museum was loaded with them. We saw tanks, trucks, landing craft, helmets, guns and much more. We read stories written by the men who were there. We walked through the bunkers and trenches of Hitler's Atlantic Wall. History almost became real to us as we overlooked peaceful beaches and tried to imagine what they were like almost 70 years ago.

 Original landing craft that was restored and used in the movie

'Saving Private Ryan'

 Artillery bunker at Point du Hoc

Ranger Memorial at Point du Hoc. Built in 1984 by Reagan.

 

 Sword Beach. Where we were staying.

The American Cemetery at Omaha Beach consists of 9,387 graves. The majority of these graves are of servicemen who lost their lives during the landings on D-Day and the ensuing inland assault on the Normandy region. Two of the graves belong to sons of President Theodor Roosevelt.

"Here rests in Honored Glory

A Comrade in Arms

Known but to God"

 

Towards the end of our time in Normandy, we took a day trip to Le Mont St. Michel. St. Michel is an island/castle stronghold a little ways west from the D-Day beaches. It is very cool. It sits on a rocky protrusion/island on the beach, and when the tide comes in, it is almost completely surrounded by water. That also means, that you have to have your car out of the parking lot before the tide comes in. Construction on Le Mont St. Michel is said to have begun around the year 708 when the Archangel Michel instructed Bishop of Avranches, St. Aubert to build it. It started out as a small monastery, and tool hundreds of years to be build up to what it is today. Fun fact: the island has never been taken by an invading army.

Le Mont St. Michel. Photo courtesy of Travis Harper.

We drove through Paris on our way back to Germany and decided that we wanted to stop and take a look at the Eiffel Tower. Thank the Lord for a GPS. Paris was crazy confusing and the people there drive like lunatics.