Sainte-Mère-Église

Quite a lot of fighting happened in this town during the Battle of Normandy. As a tribute to the paratroopers, there is now a model of a hanging paratrooper on the side of the church.

This place was also featured as a mission in the Call of Duty Series and here too I could see a lot of resemblance.

Museum of the Airborne

This museum is dedicated to the paratroopers during the Battle of Normandy. The biggest exhibit there was the C-47, the plane that the paratroopers flew in before they dropped.

The museum is situated just outside the church in the city centre.

La Fière

The guide explained that at the time, during the Battle of Normandy, the water level was much higher and the bridge was the only way across the river. The American paratroopers withstood fierce German counterattacks before they finally defended the bridge successfully.

As always, there is a monument of some sort.

Utah Beach

This was probably one of the beaches with the lightest amount of fighting, relatively as opposed to Omaha beach.  The bunkers here are also gone just like at Omaha.

Here’s a pretty artistic shot of a Flak 88 and the horizon.

Angoville-au-Plain

This church was a field hospital during the Battle of Normandy. The guide said the church was built around 425 AD, but other sources say its from the 12th century.

In the church, there are still some scars from the fighting. In particular, there is a patched up hole from where a mortar shell once dropped. It seems it was stuck in the ceiling and never exploded.

Some of the church pews still have blood stains on them.

Driving Back to London

On the way back to London, we stopped at the Canadian World War I memorial at Vimy Ridge. After that, we drove back to France. At the border, the British border guard gave us such a hard time. She kept asking questions like, “why are you travelling?”, “where are you getting the money for this trip?”, “what do you do for a living?”, etc. I didn’t think we looked that suspicious.

When we first drove to France, Edward drove for most of it, but on the way back, I wanted to try driving in London just to see what it felt like. Every moment of the drive was quite stressful for me.

The weird part was that because the lanes are narrower, the driver almost always naturally leans to the left side of the lane and the left side mirror is over the lane divider.  Through construction sites, we’d drive past the orange traffic cones and if those were a tad bit taller, the mirror would have hit them.  We both ran up the curb a few times during the drive too. Luckily, we returned the car in one piece and without and scratches or dents.

Links to photo albums:

• Normandy
• Normandy (Edward’s Photos)

The past two months of weather in Stuttgart saw a majority if days that were partly cloudy without a lot of sunshine and a lot of random rain.  Since the beginning of last week, the temperature in Stuttgart rose from a comfortable 20 degrees Celsius to a phenomenal 30 degrees Celsius over the course of a day.  Also part of this dramatic change was the sudden disappearance of all the clouds.  This weather persisted for a few days and I was beginning to think that summer in Stuttgart finally arrived.

Last Wednesday, I noticed on the weather report that Stuttgart would get more rain today and when I saw that I thought it was kind of strange.  As usual though, the forecast here was generally pretty accurate.  As predicted, it started raining as I got to work.  The rain was so light that it may as well not be considered rain.  Not long after, the weather reverted to the 30 degree sunshine.  That was disappointing.  I wanted more rain.

Later that day, as I was leaving work, the bright summer sky was overrun by a large gathering of storm clouds.  A large rainstorm started pretty much around the same time I decided to leave work. I walked from the research building to the main building, which usually takes about a minute, and during that time, it rained so hard that everywhere that my umbrella didn’t cover was soaking wet, namely my jeans from the knees down.  I could squeeze the pant leg and water would gush out like a wet towel.

Like everyone else, I waited for the bus by the guard booth at the gate under shelter.  Looking out, everyone could see the rain turn into hail.  Hail the size of loonies rained down.  The sound of the hail hitting cars just made a loud and persistent rattling noise.

When the bus came, everyone opened their umbrellas and ran to the bus.  While inside, we could still hear the loud rattling from the impact of the hail and we were all thankful that we didn’t have to be outside anymore.

As the bus passed under an overpass, we could see the drain on the overpass disposing the drainage water onto the side of the road beneath it and because of that, it ended up flooding the road.

About halfway down the mountain, the rain stopped and almost immediately, a rainbow appeared.  After getting off the bus, I started feeling the intense summer heat again.  The wet ground now just reflected the intense summer like a giant mirror.

I don’t think I’ve ever encountered that large of a rainstorm in recent memory and definitely not one where it started hailing in 30 degree weather.  Haven’t been that soaked from rain before either.  It was really like movie rain – it comes out of nowhere all of a sudden and gets everyone soaked, but it stops really quickly.