Second Dam City

"I amsterdam" letters

Sinterklaas and Zwarte Piet

Park near the museums

Some of the girls in the letters


WWII monument near the old Dam

The Crew at the Comedy club

Trolly and streets of Amsterdam

Leidseplein ice skating rink outside the Comedy Club

Up on stage

Canals of Amsterdam

Streetside view

The sign outside the Anne Frank Huis, we weren't allowed to take pictures inside the museum

Tim, Emily, Morgan on giant tiger swing in the park

I amsterdam

Me ontop of an "a"

Canal view

What happens when you date a photo minor for 2 years

Canal view

Momo inspired

The narrow staircase of our hotel

West Kerk

Weekend of 11/13 – 11/16

As we strolled out of Hotel Nadia, the morning mist rose steadily off of the canal – starting a hazy battle with the sunshine trying to fight its way through the clouds. The overcast was a fitting touch to the emotions that were running through my mind as the group meandered across the bridge and through the churchyard of the West Kerk. The walk from our hotel to the Anne Frank house was short, but it seemed even shorter because my mind was racing the entire time.

In the seventh grade, I had read a book for my English class called The Diary of Anne Frank, not knowing what I was getting myself in to. I remember distinctly staying up late at night pouring over the pages trying to make sense of what I was a reading. From my basic memory of the readings, all I remembered was how unfair it was that a teenage/pre-teen girl, trapped in hiding during WWII, was forced to live the way she did. I remembered the black and white pictures in the book of the “secret annex” – the bookshelf that concealed the doorway. The stories of her father’s impatience with the Allied forces and the idea that he still played a part in the factory business even after he went into hiding. I remember her stories about the boy named Peter, whom she loved, and her fights with her sister Margot and her mother Edith. However, what I never realized was the profound philosophical thoughts she had reflected at such a young age – she was just a girl.

“I know what I want, I have a goal, I have opinions, a religion, and love – April 9, 1944.” This excerpt from Anne Frank’s diary is scrawled across the wall next to three consecutive black and white photos of Anne laughing, in what is now the atrium to the modern museum. In 1944, it was in the basement of the building adjacent to her father’s factory. Anne wrote in her diary, almost daily, with ambitions of being a professional journalist and novelist after the war. She even planned on publishing a book called “My Secret Annex,” once the war was finished. As I wandered through the first floor of the museum, those thoughts bounced around my brain.

It hit me when I saw the bookcase. The bookcase was what I had a distinct visual of from my memories of the diary. Black and white in my mind, that same bookcase jumped to life – as most of my memories from the diary did – when I saw it firsthand. Who would have thought that such a simple bookcase could hide two families for so long?

I climbed through the hole behind the bookcase – and ascended the narrow, steep staircase into what was once the bedroom of Otto, Edith, and Margot in the “secret annex.” As my feet creaked across the floor boards, I was struck by the paranoia that those types of creaks and cracks must have caused 60 years before – the incessant anxiety that followed even the slightest bump, or the smallest bang. The rooms were coated in a dark green wall paper, but otherwise bare. On one wall there was a small pocket map where Otto Frank, Anne’s father, tracked the progress the allies were making across Europe. In Anne’s room there were newspaper and magazine clippings which she had pasted to the wall in order to make it “much more cheerful.”

Otherwise, they were empty, furniture removed and scraped to the bone. They appeared this way intentionally – Otto Frank, the only survivor from the family – wanted the rooms to appear the same way the Nazi’s left them after the family was taken (it was a common custom for them to divide the belongings of Jews among the officers in the group). The story of the Frank family is truly tragic. Having survived in hiding for almost 2 years, they were taken just weeks before the Allies broke through the lines and into Amsterdam. Then, having survived the concentration camp for a little over six months, Anne and Margot, both died of Typhus, just days before it was liberated in 1945.

The final and perhaps the most moving room in the museum lies in the top floor of the building adjacent to the annex. In a video designed specifically for the museum, Otto Frank discusses his hard fought decision making process in deciding whether or not to publish Anne’s diary. After having read through the pages slowly, which took Otto a number of years, he decided that the best way to honor his family’s memory, support his daughter’s wishes (Anne had always wanted to be a famous writer after the war) and to tell the story of the sufferings of Jews in WWII, was to have the diary published in its entirety. After having read through the diary he was surprised at the profound thoughts his daughter had. He had always had a loving relationship with Anne and he assumed he knew her well. Otto explained his decision making process in the video footage, and in the final scene, with tears in his eyes exclaimed, “I have come to the conclusion, that parents will never truly know their children.” Therefore, in order to give his daughter one last gift, he published her diary.

“One day this terrible war will be over. The time will come when we’ll be people again and not just Jews! We can never be just Dutch, or just English, or whatever, we will always be Jews as well. But then, we’ll want to be. April 9, 1944.”

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This past week, the gang took its final Loyola sponsored trip of the semester to Amsterdam for the weekend. Having already headed into the great Netherlands once, I was excited to compare my experience with Rotterdam to my second Dam city.

The name “Amsterdam” stems from a literal dam that was built on the Amstel river around 1250, in what is now the center of the city. The growing community that surrounded the dam eventually came to be known as Amsterdam. In addition, as a result of the dam and water flow through the city, there are more canals in Amsterdam than in any other city in Europe, including Venice. In turn, as a result of those canals, there are over 205,000 house boats that reside in the waters and 1,200 bridges – 500 of which are from the 1700’s.

The city has an interesting history which began to flourish in the 1300’s when it became a large fishing village. As people flocked to it, in 1323, it was also given the sole right to import beer from Hamburg – the largest brewing town in Europe at the time. Beer was essential not only for Amsterdam, but for most of Europe at the time because not all water was drinkable.

After some religious turmoil between the Protestant Reformation and the Spanish Inquisition in the 1500’s followed by the 80 years war, the independent Dutch Republic was formed. In the 16th century, the Netherlands really hit its stride as the Dutch East India Trading Company made Rotterdam and Amsterdam the center of the financial flow in Europe. However, the rise of England and France and the subsequent wars drained the Dutch economy.

In modern history, Amsterdam managed to escape damage in WWI and remained neutral throughout the duration of the war. However, in WWII, it was occupied by Nazi soldiers and, after various insurrections in the winter of 1944-45 the Nazi’s placed an embargo on the population as a punishment for its aid to the Allies. As a result of the harsh embargo nearly 10,000 people died, some surviving only by eating tulip bulbs. In addition, by the end of the war, the city’s Jewish population was decimated, going from 130,000 to 30,000.

Following the brutality of the 1940’s, Amsterdam became a hippie haven in the 1960’s. As a result, prostitution and drugs became legal. It became legal to smoke marijuana and do other soft core drugs in what are known as “Coffee Shops.” In these shops and subsequent “Smart Shops” mushrooms and various other herbal varieties of soft drugs are available and sold.

However, despite its popularity as the “most liberal place in Europe,” Amsterdam, as the largest and capital city in the Netherlands, is center of both Flemish history and art, thus making it a staple in the Loyola program since the programs founding.

The first night we arrived, we took a crisp walk over to the canals and took a nighttime tour of the city from the water. The arrival of both winter (the cold air biting our cheeks) and Christmas (the bright green and red lights throughout the city) were a welcomed sight to our group. The view from the water at night was magnificent: the lights of the city, dancing off the water top doubled the value of our boat tour. After touring the river, the group divided and a majority of us traveled over to an Improv comedy show that Matt had heard about. It turned out to be an American based company called Boom Chicago, who put on a show in English. We ended up receiving half price tickets to the 11:30 showing. The show was fantastic, especially when yours truly got called up on stage to perform – my big league debut. I’d say I batted about a buck fifty (having stumbled over the expression “Chimney Sweep” twice), but all in all I had a blast – and I got a free beer out of the deal.

Over the course of our trip to Amsterdam, we made spent a majority of our time in museums, visiting the Anne Frank Huis (mentioned above) the Rijk Museum, the Torture Museum, and the Van Gough Museum. The Rijk museum has famous Flemish painters from the medieval ages. We saw many paintings from Rembrant, Frans, Vermeer, and Hals, some of them using paintbrushes as thin as a single mule’s hair to define the details. Outside of the Rijk Museum are the famous red and white 8 feet tall “I Amsterdam” letters. We spent a majority of our time near the museum climbing those letters and taking pictures with them.

The Torture Museum, which we had seen advertised all over the city, wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be. We thought we would get a tutorial in medieval ages torture methods, the reality of the situation was that we ended up just reading yellowing pieces of paper describing random torture themes as we walked point to point throughout the museum. It most definitely was not worth the 7.50 Euro entrance fee.

On our last day in Amsterdam, we spent the morning at the Vincent Van Gough museum. The museum had just renovated its design to include a variety of letters that Vincent wrote to his brother Theodore over the course of the years he was painting. From his early days in the Dutch countryside painting peasants, to his years in Paris, to his eventual slip into mental atrophy in the south of France. The letters, combined with a brand new, high-tech audio guide, and the beautiful art work, helped to paint a more colorful (no pun intended – ok maybe a little) picture of Van Gough’s life. What struck me the most was his brother’s undoubted support of Vincent through his trial filled years, and his eventual slip into depression. In a tragic ending to his life, Van Gough shot himself in the chest with a rifle. His brother, having found out about the incident, traveled 2 days straight to see him, only to have Vincent die in his arms.

Before we hopped on the bus back to Leuven, Liam and I caught the very beginning of the Sinterklaas Parade in Amsterdam. The Dutch tradition of Sinterklaas is an interesting one to say the least. Sinterklaas, accompanied by his non-politically correct helper named Zwarte Piet (Black Piet) goes around every year delivering presents to Dutch children. Zwarte Piet’s job is to climb up the house, break in through the chimney, climb down through the soot (hence his “black” skin color), and unlock the door so that Sinterklaas can come in and deliver the presents. The children are supposed to leave something sweet for Sinterklaas, a carrot for his horse, and a beer for Zwarte Piet. Though I don’t think that this version of Santa would get by in the United States, it was an interesting one to experience nonetheless. Liam and I stood in a crowd of children all yelling “Piet” over and over again, until one of Sinterklaas’s helpers would arrive and distribute cinnamon flavored cookies to the crowd. The entire time, the children’s eyes were focused on what the man in red was going to do next.

Thus concludes the story of Sinterklaas and our time in Amsterdam. Tune in soon, hopefully by today or tomorrow, for my tales of Madrid, Toledo, and Alcala.

Historical Week, Political Ending

Bowling with Martin

One Happy Slovak

Matt giving it a whirl

Week of 11/8 – 11/13

It’s amazing how time slows when you’re falling. The second you start floating through air, it’s as if, for only a moment, the clock stops. The sky was blue, with graying clouds in the horizon, as the birds overhead screeched while migrating south. I was racing toward the gym, a little earlier than usual, but trying to get in a lifting session before the day was wasted away. Sitting atop of my 1960’s style bright orange bicycle, I cruised around the corner and prepared to take off down the hill. That was when I saw them: an elderly couple, stopping to read the historical signs on the side of the road, 12 o’clock. I jumped from the sidewalk over the curb and onto the cobblestone. I had assumed all had cleared - then I heard the grinding.

It only took a second, and then I was on the ground, in shock. I think the last time I fell of a bike was, well Tuesday, but before that, I can’t even remember. However, I’m pretty sure that my reaction was the same. The problem with accidents, or just things that hurt in general, is that you can usually see them coming about a split second before you feel the pain. In my case, the moment where the world stopped, I knew that I was in for an inevitable amount of pain, but that I also had no way to stop it. So, with my one leg trapped under my bike, and the other flailing through the air, I came crunching to the ground. I had successfully completed my first (and hopefully last) bike accident of the year.

Hello my loyal readers, and welcome to this week’s blog-oid. Unfortunately this week was pretty slow for me and I have fallen behind on most of my blogs, but I will try and put them together of the next couple of days this weekend.

Though I did no traveling this week/weekend, the last seven days have had a certain number of highlights that I wish to discuss. Last Saturday, we decided for the first time to try bowling abroad. We took Martin along for his first round of bowling. When I asked him if he’d ever done it before, he said, “On the Flintstones.” I smiled and thought about one American tradition teaching another. So we headed over to the small, 6 lane, Belgian bowling alley (which turned out to be an AMF lanes) that looked more like something on MTV cribs than a real bowling alley in the states. Martin took the spotlight that night, never winning a game, but also getting two strikes. I would have paid for the games alone just to see his ecstatic look again when he hit his first batch of pins.

The next highlight came on 11/11, Armistice Day (Veteran’s Day in the US), which is a national holiday in Belgium, and most of Europe, to commemorate the date that the Allies of WWI signed the peace treaty to end the war. Essentially, the entirety of Western Europe closes all of its shops, stores, post offices, and schools as a day to celebrate peace. As a result Leuven was dead, and being that we expected as much, none of us ventured out that day. Instead, our unit (our huis is divided into 6 different units, mine being unit 1) decided to host a unit game night. We gathered as a group and with a mild budget from Christel, were able to amply supply the 7 members of my unit with enough chips, snacks, and microwavable foods to have us bursting at the seams. We first played a couple of rounds of UNO, which was an interesting feat to try and explain to the Europeans who had never played it before – especially with the different rules about colors and numbers and skipping players. However, soon enough everyone caught on and the game got going.

That was until Martin decided to describe to us a native Slovakian game. Which essentially was a Slovakian version of UNO, except played with a deck of cards, and Martin was the only one who knew the rules. Essentially we would just drop the cards on the table and he would giggle then tell us what it meant – as you can imagine our confidence in this game quickly waned. Though I was very impressed with the Mighty Slovak’s new found confidence in English – it was encouraging to say the least.

Then the Belgians took their turn at describing a game called “Jungle Stick” which involved playing cards, with a specific deck that had a variety of shapes and colors on it. You go around the circle each person taking one card at a time. When the shape, or in some cases colors, of your card match those of another card, then you lunge for the “Jungle Stick” (a wooden object that is situated in the center of the table) and hope that you get it first, otherwise you have to take the other person’s cards. However, the Belgians added an appendix to this game that involved not just lunging to grab the stick, but also fighting over it. Now I’m not just talking your average go-of-the-mill yank back and forth. What I’m talking about is how two of the Belgians were fighting so hard back and forth that they completely dislodged the table, and one ended up biting the other for the glory of not losing the stick. Naturally, this game got particularly interesting when the two heavyweight champions (Martin and Matt) when at it, wrestling each other to the ground – and almost decapitating one of the more quiet Belgian girls in the process. Either way, it was a great way to spend Armistice Day.

Finally, the completion for this week, Howard W. Gutman, the US Ambassador to Belgium, visited KU Leuven this week to deliver a message of hope and peace to the upcoming “future of Europe.” The crowded auditorium rose to its feet as a flurry of camera’s preceded Ambassador Gutman into the Belgian auditorium. The room was warm and a steady fervor quieted as he took to the podium. The Ambassador brought with him the message of the new Obama administration, preaching to the students in the crowd hoping that they would be able to “grow old in a world that was more harmonious than the one you were born into.” After speaking for about 20 minutes on any issue from American leadership in world affairs, to the US Chinese Relationship, to healthcare, to terrorism to US – EU Relations, Gutman also took a series of question from the audience. Though he didn’t go in depth on any of his answers, he also didn’t shy away from the responses to his questions asking the audience to trust in Barack Obama and the United States.

Well that concludes one of my less event filled weeks, but nonetheless an entertaining one. Though it took me a while to get this blog out, I hope to have a pound out a couple more in the upcoming days, so keep posted for my tales of Amsterdam and Madrid.

Refreshingly Rotter-dam Good!

Trying on typical Netherland's Shoes

Fisherman in the Oude Haven

One of the many shopping streets in Rotterdam

The "Central Park" of Rotterdam


The "Cube" apartment complex


Matt harassing a statue of baby cubs


Self explanatory


The Erasmus Bridge

One of the many harbors

Me in the open air harbor musem

Rotter-dam!

Me hanging on the Erasmus Statue

Matt, Erin, and Allison outside the Oude Haven with the modern city in the background

Famous statue out front of city hall. Three generations (Child, Mother, Father, Grandfather) representing Rotterdam's past, present and future.

So excited to experience Rotter-dam!

Modern Skyscrapers of the city

Ahh finally back on track! First things first: HAPPY BIRTHDAY DADDEO! And now for the bloggerooney: This past weekend was Halloween and as a result a large portion of the gang headed out to Dublin to enjoy the festivities with a little Irish flair while another group took advantage of the long weekend to visit Stockholm. However, I was not a part of either of those groups. When the time came for booking the various trips, Matt and I both kind of dropped the ball on the visits. As a result we found that we had nearly the entire Nachbahrhuis to ourselves for three days. There were only three other Americans in the house, and the entire city felt a little quiet as most of the locals headed home to enjoy the long break.

However, deciding not to let the weekend go for naught, Matt, Erin, Allison, and I decided to do a little independent traveling of our own and see a relatively close city – Rotterdam, in the Holland district of the Netherlands (I learned on this trip that Holland was actually not its own country, but rather the lower two levels of the Netherlands). We left with the mentality that we had to make our day trip to this coastal Netherlands city, better than the other two Halloween trips combined. Armed with our backpacks and an extra layer of clothing – as the winter air has slowly begun to move in on Northwest Europe – we spitefully headed out to enjoy ourselves. Though we jokingly embarked on our adventure full of a jealous need to outdo the rest of the group, (often exclaiming "Rotterdam" to the Wayne's World theme song - hence the "Rotter-dam" that I have written several times during my blog) that sick/twisted/humorous mentality actually helped us overcome a lot of the difficulties on our trip whether it was the 3 hours of sleep we all had, the 5 hours of train rides we endured, and the various travel cancellations that left us stranded for a couple of hours at random train stations.

Rotterdam was a refreshingly modern city. It is the largest port in Europe, and as a result – like almost everything else prized in Europe, was a major target during WWII air raids. It was particularly demolished by the Germans when the Allies took the city. Rotterdam was razed to the ground. In a matter of a couple of years, the medieval style city was turned into rubble. The only two remaining structures from the past were the belfry tower of the Sint Laurenskerk (Saint Lauren’s Church), which was built in 1525, but had just undergone heavy reconstruction, adding cement floors (instead of wooden floors) which ultimately lead to its successful resistance of the German bombardment. The second monument was a 1622 statue (the oldest in the Netherlands) of the philosopher Erasmus - who was born in the city.

As a result of the heavy bombardment, Rotterdam is a modern day city of glass -- a stark contrast to the medieval stone cities that we typically visit. With sky scrapers cutting through the blue skies, splitting clouds apart, it felt like we had stepped into a US city as we exited the train station in Rotterdam. One of my favorite architectural designs was the cube apartments (see my picture above) which look like a bunch of dice sitting on point propped on the top of 3 story buildings. My other favorite item was the statue in front of the town hall of a young child holding the hand of her mother and the father with his hand on a grandfather. The statue was supposed to represent the city of Rotterdam rebulding after WWII - its past, present, and future.

It was a crowded and busy Saturday afternoon when we made the trip to the city with the most and largest skyscrapers in the Netherlands. We followed the tourists office’s recommended walking tour through the city. The tour guided us through Rotterdam, which is a shopper’s city with a number of different streets full of restaurants and shops. One of the most famous being the Beurstravere, which is an outdoor shopping center situated below street level. In addition to seeing the shopping sites of the city, we also were there on Saturday and participated in the street fair. The roads were packed as vendors enticed customers to purchase everything from fish to leather gloves and boots.

One of my favorite parts of the walking tour was the Oude Haven. The Oude Haven is a small shopping and restaurant area with a number of houseboats and giant fishing vessels, as well as floating restaurants. The old rickety boats slowly lapped against the posts they were shackled to with thick ropes and chains. A fisherman stood in the harbor making cast after cast from the shore, trying to get a bite on his rod. In some areas, captains of the vessels were making repairs to their boats in the safety of the inner harbor. Some of them were painting – their chins, cheeks, hands, and arms covered in the same color as their boats – others making repairs to doors, floors, bows, and roofs. Most of the old boats appeared to be wooden, some old and worn, while others were beautifully stained. However, there was one common theme – the tails of all the ships were engraved with female names – the names of mothers, daughters, lovers, and loved ones sit as a testament of the captains' affection, proudly painted into the boats beauty.

From there we made our way through the port to the outdoor open air museum of the inner harbor, where cranes and ships are on display, free for tourists to walk through. The possibility of a tour around the harbor is present, as various ship captains offer tours while walking through the harbor. After the open air museum, we headed down to the Erasmus Bridge, which was a beautiful tribute to modern architecture. The center of the bridge looks like a wish bone coated in wires hanging over the water. As we continued our tour of the waterside, we found another harbor area that was equally as beautiful as the one we had seen before. We stood looking at the beauty of the wooden sailboats with their masts jutted out into the sky and line after line of boats appeared to be a forest of ropes and wooden masts.

After the harbor, we headed over to a beautiful park just outside the harbor center. I was reminded of Central Park in autumn in the center of New York City. It was quiet, but cold in the late October air. The paths wind through the center of the green grass patches – like cement rivers cutting through a forest. In the center of the park, there was a restaurant, which reminded me of the spire tower I’ve seen in pictures of Seattle. The harbor by the park had a couple of restaurant boats that housed everything from Chinese restaurants to WWII museums to laser tag.

Before we ended the day, we grabbed a bite to eat, where I enjoyed a typical Dutch dish called Kipling, which translates into, wait for it, “Kipling” in English – at least that’s what my baby-faced waiter was informed of by the head cook. He then said, that the actual translation into English meant “to be in an argument”, but that had little relevance to our dinner. It was basically fish and chips chopped up into pieces.

Overall, Rotterdam was a beautiful modern city. It was refreshingly new from its restaurants to its skyscrapers to its train station. It was a worthwhile visit and I enjoyed my time there!

Whew! Now that I finally got over my writers block, I hope to get back on schedule, so as to not deprive you of my adventures. Until, next weekend, Tot Ziens!

Halloween and Hallowed Ground

Barbed Wire Fence looking out into Flemish Farmland

Trenches at Sanctuary Wood

Mennen Gate from outside the city looking in

Old Cloth Hall Rebuilt after WWI


Memorial to Christmas Truce


Saint Martin's Cathedral


Statue Commemorating Soldiers lost in WWI


Stefano, Francesco, Nick, Eva, Me, and Megan in the trenches


Cross outside the trench


Group walking around the trenches

Proof that I actually go to the places I write about

Vladslo Cemetery

Tyne Cot Cemetery

Tyne Cot Cemetery Tombstone

Vladslo Tomb Stone

Bonfire I created on Halloween

Belgians eating smores

Group of Halloween Participants

Martin, Matt, and I

Me and our Unit Pumpkin that I carved


I stumbled over a raised tree root and skidded in the mud as I lost my balance climbing out of the trenches at Sanctuary Wood. I was lucky – I had seen a kid earlier drenched in brown all up and down his back (that rhyme was unintended). The rain had subsided for the moment, but it didn’t make the current footing situation any better. Wet, thick, mud coated the ground – the bottoms of my sneakers and jeans were the same shade as the forest floor. Giant drops falling from the tree leaves - that were providing cover a moment ago - exploded erratically on the sleeves and shoulders of my sweat shirt.

The barbed wire on the fence at the end of the “outdoor museum” was about as high as my shoulder and rusted red. I walked up and rested my hand, holding my camera on the white cement post – coated in moss – that held the barbed wire up. I gazed out of the preserved WWI memorial, into the farmland that surrounded the site. Sweeping green hills and red barns and farm houses, dotted the scenery. That was when it hit me.

I sat there staring at the cows wandering across the open plains that were once a wretched warzone and I thought how ironic the use of barb wire was. It was created back in the States to restrain cattle in the Midwest plains. Then the animalistic twisted metal was brought to the battlefields of Europe to restrain human beings - essentially turning their lives into the cruel restricted lives of livestock. Now it was being used to keep cows out of the trenches. What an interesting twist of fate has lead to its purpose and usage.

Closing my eyes, I tried to envision what it must have been like nearly a hundred years before. I had seen the diagrams and the models, and the pictures, of the shattered tree stumps, the torn up dirt, the giant artillery divots, and the miles of trenched in lines – but I wanted to try and place the pictures to the landscape. It was hard to do, with the now roaming farmlands and greenery in front of me. The day we went, the trenches there was basically a giant puddle of mud water stretching from the first entranceway all the way to opposite end. I can’t imagine what the conditions must have been like for the soldier’s in a place where it rains 60% of the time, or during the bone chilling winter months.

The problem with WWI – and what led to the slaughter of some many men (8,538,315 killed – 21,219,452 wounded – 7,750,919 missing) was that it was a combination of old school techniques with new school technology. The development of trench warfare developed out of the need for soldiers to take cover because of the incessant machinegun fire. However, that same cause also had the effect of hundreds of thousands of soldiers being mowed down as a result of Generals trying to advance their armies based on will and might, and not on strategy and machinery. There are stories of 250,000 men dying on a day just to advance 25 meters. Countless lives were lost for meaningless gains of land.

This all sunk in when I was walking through the WWI museum in Ieper. On a wall, when you first walk into the recently renovated museum, is a quote by H.G. Wells, which sums up the effect of WWI on society: “Every intelligent person in the world knew that disaster was impending, and knew no way to avoid it.” In a way, this was a commentary on the political aspects of the impending conflict. However, if you look at the way the war was fought, it also a commentary on the direct effects of the physical battles. A drawn out stalemate, in which neither side was willing to concede, and as a result a disasterous amount of lives were lost in futile attempts to conquer “no man’s land.”

I always feel like WWI, the Great War, was also the forgotten war – at least to my generation. The horrors and atrocities and importance of WWII on Europe have always been more predominant than the events of WWI in every history class I’ve ever taken. I had learned of he political aspects that lead up to the war, and that there were trenches, and thats about it. It was almost as if the only thing important about WWI was how it set upt the field for WWII. But I think the numbers above with the amount of lives lost, if nothing else, speaks to the effect that WWI had on the world, on modern warfare, and on the lives (and loss of life) of young men around the world. The trenches at Sanctuary Wood (so named because it was where soldiers lost from there platoons would meet up, but became a largely inaccurate depiction of the events that occurred there from 1914-1918), were a commentary on those harrows.

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Well, this week, or should I say last week, I finally hit my first batch of writers block. I sat at my computer numerous times over the past week and a half with the little blog icon on the bottom of my screen, trying to just produce coherent sentences, and alas, it took me an extra week to produce a blog. So picking up where I left off: Welcome to week 10 of Andy’s adventures in Europe! Though I’m late (again for the second week in a row, I would apologize, but then I realized, it’s my blog and I’ll write it whenever I damn well please ; ) <-- that was a smiley not the end of my parenthesis, this is the end of my parenthesis.--> ) I will relay to you the event of two weekends ago, and hopefully in the next day or two will get back on track with the rest of my endeavors.

Two weekends ago, the Loyola crew headed out on a WWI adventure through Belgium. We headed out to four major historical landmarks for the Flemish fighters in WWI – Ieper, Sanctuary Wood, Tyne Cot British Cemetery, and Vladslo German Cemetery. These four sites, when compiled over the course of 7 hours, are a moving testament to the sacrifices made nearly a hundred years ago on the battlefields of Europe.

Our first stop was at the city of Ieper in the eastern Flanders region of Belgium. Ieper was a key city during WWI as it was just a few kilometers from the famous Flanders Fields trench lines. As a result, Ieper became a safe haven for British soldiers during the war. In turn, the city was bombed to oblivion by the Germans. Some of the most famous images of the German brutality have come from pictures of the decimated city center of Ieper, in particular the decimated city Belfry surrounded by rubble. However, because British soldiers were so fond of the city, it was quickly rebuilt after the war with some of the first batch of reparation funds, to look like its original 1600’s setting. Therefore, though the city has history dating back to the medieval ages, most of the buildings are no more than a hundred years old.

On our visit to Ieper, the first stop we made was at the Flanders Fields Museum. This museum, located in the old cloth hall (Ieper having been famous like most Belgian cities for its medieval textiles), was a two story testament to the trials and tribulations of the small city’s three separate battles. During the war, the entire cloth hall was destroyed, and then restored to look like just as its original settings.

The museum told in depth stories about WWI. A lot of them were first hand accounts of the residents of the city interacting with the soldiers fresh off the front lines. Though it appears that in history WWI was almost the forgotten war, but the people of Ypres never forget the sacrifices the young soldiers made to defend their city. Though the museum was small, it was very interactive. Each person that pays for a ticket, also gets his/her own card with name of a soldier and a barcode on it. Then, periodically through the museum, there are kiosks in which you can follow the progression of your soldier throughout the war – even going as far to find out if they live or die at the end.

Though the museum was compact, it wasn’t too crowded, and I strolled my way through it, stopping at almost every informational docket and soaking in the reality of a war which I realized I knew little about. Occasionally, the lights would flicker, and loud booming would come on over the loudspeakers – catching you off guard the first time – to signify what it was like during the time the city was shelled.

I was astonished by a number of things as I worked my way through the museum. From the ferocity with which the Belgians defended their country and city, to the reality of the war’s trenched in fronts, to the number of countries (60) that were involved in the conflict throughout the course of the war. However, there were two major memories that I take away from the museum itself. The first being the dramatic readings and depictions of two poems – In Flanders Fields and Dulce In Decorum Est (mentioned in my earlier blog about Normandy). The poems were read slowly while graphic depictions of the reality of biological warfare were played in the background. Shortly after that section of the museum, was another, full of loud bangs and large flashing lights, as well as disturbing pictures of no man’s land (the place between the two trench lines where thousands of men died). Both of these depictions were enough to send a chill up my spine and goosebumps down my back.

However, my favorite section of the museum, was the part commemorating the famous Christmas Truce of December 24, 1914. As the story goes, the first Christmas night in the trenches began with holiday songs being sung by the German army. In return, both sides of the lines broke out in their own native songs. Then Christmas trees adorned in lights and candles started popping up on the German end of the trenches. Finally, men began to slowly wander over the top of the trench, offering cigars, cigarettes, and homemade delicacies to one another. That evening, though no ceasefire was ordered, and no treaty signed, the men of the two sides were able to come together in a moment of peace to celebrate. Afterward, they were allowed to bury their dead, and rebuilt the trenches, and then it was over.

I had heard that tale before, but never really realized its implications untill I visited the museum. One of the first hand accounts of the French generals was, "They came out of their trenches and walked unarmed, with boxes ofcigars and seasonalbe remarks. What were our men to do? Shoot? You could not shoot unarmed men!" It is perhaps one of the largest symbols of human hope that I had ever heard of. Soldiers coming together, almost despite their own countries, with arms wide open. There are tales afterward, that soldiers had to be transferred to new parts of the lines because they refused to shoot at the men they had just spend Christmas with and shared songs and food with. What a commentary on the reality of war, and perhaps its futility. But more so the hope of intelligent men to come together and recognize it.

After the Museum, I wandered out to the famous Mennen Gate at the east end of the city. The gate is a giant arch which commemorates where the soldiers marched out to the battlefield. Dug into the marble stone of the gate are lines and lines of the names of soldiers. The giant archway of the city stands out with its white stone among the rest of the small modern buildings around it.

From Ieper, the Loyola crew headed out to Sanctuary Woods (mentioned in the opening of my blog). These old woods began the war as a place where soldiers, separated from their units, would meet up with new patrols and continue to fight the war. However, in 1914, its name quickly became an ironic slogan, as the battlefields of Europe moved their front lines into the woods and farmland of the Belgian countryside. Today, the area around Sanctuary wood is where the best preserved batches of trenches from the war are located.

The trenches, muddy from the rainfall, are still held together with the same old barbed wire and metal from the war. Overhead the trees provide cover from the falling rain. However, back during the war, it was no man’s land of burnt out wooded areas, tree stumps, churned up earth and divots from shelling. For the men of the front line, the trench became a way of life, they were dug in for months at a time, began to stop firing during dinner time, or have treuces to bury dead and repair walls. The whole time, hoping to never be called to try and take the opposing line.

From the trenches at Sanctuary Wood, we headed out to the result of those trenches – the two cemeteries of Tyne Cot and Vladlso. The Tyne Cot Cemetery was a British cemetery that has been maintained since the beginning of the Great War. As you approach the cemetery, a monotone English voice reads over the loudspeaker, name after name of soldiers lost during the war – each time, a new name, with a new home country and a new date of death. At the Tyne Cot Cemetery, there are rows upon rows of white headstones for each of the soldiers dead or even recorded to be lost. Even in cases where the identity of the soldier was unknown, there was still a tomb stone dedicated to “A Solider of the Great War.”

In sharp contrast to the giant celebration of the sacrifices made by the British soldiers during the war, was the Vladslo Cemetery. Vladslo Cemetery was a German cemetery after WWI. However, as a part of the post war agreements, the Germans were given very strict restrictions on how to bury their soldiers. They weren’t allowed to celebrate their dead. They weren’t even allowed to use white headstones – only black. Each stone had to contain 20 names of soldiers. And after each name, there could only be a date of death. As a result, their cemetery was much smaller and more somber. The black stones lay flat on the ground with gold writing engraved into them.

Many years after the end of both World Wars, two statues were dedicated to Vladslo cemetery as a way to show the anguish felt by German parents who had lost their sons at war. They were created and dedicated by a mother of a soldier in WWI, and are known as the “Mourning Parents.” The statues represent the grief felt by parents unable to celebrate the life or death of their sons. I thought in my head, we never hear about how they treated the Germans after WWI, because before we could feel bad, they already had another war brewing. However, this cemetery was an interesting commentary on the treatment of Germany after WWI and perhaps even more sobering on the actual cause of WWII.

Finally, I will conclude this week (I know it’s been a long blog) with the stories about the Halloween Party. On Wednesday, October 29, the Loyola Nachbahr celebrated Halloween a couple of days early with our international Halloween party - largely because a large group was headed out to Dublin for Halloween for the weekend. The Americans in the group, as it is a largely American concept to celebrate Halloween, brought the festivities to 80 Schapenstraat. Our night included Halloween themed music, a bonfire (where we introduced the Europeans to smores for the first time), and a variety of party games, candies, and cuisines. In case you’re admiring my pictures in confusion, I bought a partially naked man apron, and wore shorts underneath, then put a nametag on that said “Buck”, and participated in the festivities as “Buck Naked.”

I hope you enjoyed the blog from this week, I know it took a while to get posted, and that it was longer than usual, but hopefully you enjoyed it nonetheless. I will have a new post up about the past weekend shortly! Talk to you all soon!