The American Cemetery in Normandy

Above Omaha Beach in Normandy, France, more than 9,000 United States soldiers are buried in a field of nearly 200 acres. The Crosses and Stars of David are in symmetric lines. All of the markers face west toward America.

Walking around and across this beautiful field, my mind went back to another area of about a square kilometer honoring people killed in this war: the Death Camp at Birkenau, part of the Auschwitz extermination camp in Poland.

The Americans who gave their lives in Normandy began the invasion that would end the Holocaust and end Nazi tyranny in Europe.

The soldiers buried in Normandy are a small part of the nearly half-million Americans killed in World War II. But the field of graves feels endless. I have been to other military cemeteries with their rows of identical markers, but somehow this one was overwhelming. Any time I turned to the north on this bright, sunny day, I could walked to the edge of the hill looking down on the beach and see where many of these soldiers died.

The Whole World in a Paris Laundromat

I returned from the visit to Normandy with one clean pair of shorts and a shirt, bike clothes. Everything else needed to be washed. I found a laundromat near Luxemburg station in a lovely part of Paris. Most of the machines were busy in the small place so several people were standing or sitting and reading or looking at their phones.

One of the guys was tossing bike clothes in the washer. We started talking about the Tour,and following the Tour and riding. Jay is from San Diego which in my mind is only rivaled by San Francisco as the best bike riding places in America. He has lived in San Diego long enough that he said its strange that it rains any time except January and February.  We both talked about our favorite rides up and down Mount Palomar and along the San Diego coast road.

When he found out I live in Lancaster we talked about Floyd Landis and drugs.  A couple from Australia was in the laundromat also and joined in talking about the Tour. They were leaving for home in Adelaide on Wednesday. Jay was starting the second of three weeks in France with his family.

Tim and Andrea from Adelaide knew about the Tour, but they were in France for the 24 Hour Sports Car Race at LeMans. I used to follow International sports car racing in the 80s and 90s, so we talked about the wide variety of engines back then and how drivers crossed over more.

We also talked about traveling in Australia. I had been to Perth on the west coast more than they had. For most Australians, the west is simply not a place they go. Perth and Bunbury are the only cities. They rest of the huge state of Western Australia is the set of the Road Warrior movies.

The four of us had been to or were going to or lived in most of the time zones of the world and met in a Paris laundromat.

Visiting Omaha Beach on the 4th of July Weekend

The view from the long stretch of beach up the hills above Omaha Beach.

The German view down onto the beach where the Americans 

waded to shore and crossed the long stretch of sand under fire.

So peaceful now.

As my trip continued to change and unfold, a conversation with my friend Cliff led me to change the trip again and go to Normandy, France, before I left for Israel. I had not even thought of visiting Normandy when I planned the trip because I would not have arrived in Paris until just before flying to Israel. But now I had an extra day and decided to spend part of the fourth of July weekend in a place where America fought tyranny and prevailed.

Looking down from the German defensive positions and up from the beach, it is amazing any assault troops survived.  One platoon sergeant quoted in the memorial said he had 35 men when they ran from landing craft and only six survived the day.

Budapest to Bratislava Train to Avoid Rain

If wind looked like fog, you would not be able to see the road in this picture. 

High winds every day.

On the train from Budapest, Hungary, to Bratislava, Slovakia, I sat in a 6-seat compartment with two women in their 70s. One was visiting relatives in Hungary. The other was going to all the way to Bratislava. It was her first time in the city, which is just 120 miles from Budapest. Martine said she was going to see a portrait of a family member from five generations ago in a Bratislava museum that a friend had told her about. She said she was going to look for a hotel when she arrived.  I got on hotels.com and gave her three places within 2km of the train station for under $60. She thought it was funny that you could do so many things with a phone. She just had a flip phone for emergencies and said, "I only use it to talk."

We talked about changing money and border security.  She had seldom been outside Hungary so even this trip to neighboring Slovakia was a big deal for her.  I told her where I had been in the last week. She had been to Yugoslavia when Serbia, Kosovo, Montenegro, Bosnia and Croatia were one, big, unhappy nation and to Serbia after the countries separated.

She had never been to Macedonia or Bulgaria. One of the things I learned in reading about the Soviet Union was how little most people travelled. The same would be true in country under Soviet domination. She was also worried about immigrants and refugees. She told me I should never take my eyes off my luggage. I left the compartment ten minutes before the station to get the bike ready to exit the train. Martine thanked me for the hotel info. She said again she had no idea these phones were so useful.

When I got off the train, I started to ride to Brno in the Czech Republic, 60 miles to the north. It was raining in Budapest when we left, so I took this train to Bratislava to get ahead of the rain. It was clear in in Bratislava, so that part worked perfectly.  I got on the bike and started riding. The rest of my plan then hit a literal 20 mph headwind.  I rode 36 hard, hilly miles in four and a half hours. It would be dark in an hour and a half. My plan to cover 60 miles before dark didn't look so good now. I crossed the Czech border and found a tourist hotel. The phone does so much for me, but it can't make me climb hills faster on a 60-pound bike in a headwind.

German Who Loved Cold War Army

On a local train between Wiesbaden and Darmstadt, I sat next to a guy in the bicycle car who was in his late 40s. He asked where I was riding. I told him I had visited my former commander who was now at Wiesbaden Air Base where I was stationed in the 70s.

Dieter brightened and said, "I miss the American Army." He grew up in Darmstadt and was in school during the 70s. He said Americans came to all the festivals and brought their Boom Boxes. Black soldiers, he said, were at all of the festivals. He made a gesture indicating he remembered boom boxes a yard long or more. They played soul in the 70s. In the 80s when he was a teenager he heard the beginning of Hip Hop and Rap from the Americans.

Now, he said, all the Americans are gone from Darmstadt.  He was on the way to a big festival which he said was less festive since the Americans left.  I told him about letting German kids about his age play on my tank in the woods near Fulda. That story is here. He said he sat in several America vehicles, but never a tank.

In the 70s, I had the general impression that Germans from cities far from the border saw us as drunks they had to put up with, but closer to the border, they liked us a lot more. It was nice to meet a guy who truly enjoyed having American soldiers in his young life.

Small Talk About Life Fifteen Miles from Auschwitz

Riding to Auschwitz dfrom Katowice, Poland, I stopped for a drink at a gas station and met Jakub. He knew I was an American. He told me how he would love to go to America and work.

Like so many people, he sees a guy my age riding a bike he started talking about fitness. He lives at home with his mom and brother. He said his mom who is in her late 40s is always talking about getting in shape, but she drives one kilometer to work. "In case she needs her car. Which she never does."

He also told me that his girlfriend applied to get a visa to work in America and lost several thousand dollars in a scam telling people from Eastern Europe they could get visas to work in America.

He also loves cars. That is not always true of people working in gas stations. He has a little 3 Series BMW hatchback. I was telling him about the Toyota Auris I was driving in the Balkans. He likes hybrids a lot.

He visited America once. Only New York City. He would like to see more of America. I told him I live 200 miles from NYC in a place where some people still drive horses and buggies. He had never heard of the Amish. Then I told him they talk on cell phones while they drive horses. He was going to tell his friends about that. I wrote down Lancaster so he could show them on a map where the horses and buggies are.

Visiting the War Museum in Belgrade

In the Serbian capital of Belgrade, the military museum is in the ruins of a castle on top of the highest point in the city. It overlooks the place where the Sava and Danube rivers flow together. To the north of the confluence is an old Roman tower that marks the only other hill in an otherwise flat landscape--flat for a hundred miles in almost any direction.

From the walls of the old fortress, it is easy to see why Belgrade is among the most conquered cities in the world. In the museum on the property, you see how many times Serbia and Belgrade have been rolled over by conquerors from antiquity to now.

The first room in the museum has artifacts of Alexander the Great and the Greek Army from 2,300 years ago. The Romans, then various barbarian tribes took over Serbia.  They had a run of sovereignty in the middle ages, followed by the Turkish conquest in the late 1400s. The Ottoman Empire remained in charge until its collapse at the end of World War I. Belgrade's independence lasted only until Nazi tanks rolled in at the beginning of World War II. The Russians defeat the Nazis and formed Yugoslavia from a group of countries and peoples that hated each other. Marshall Tito kept a lid on that mess until the collapse of the Soviet Empire. Then the Serbs started years long slaughter of Bosnian Muslims and Croats that only stopped when American bombers attacked Belgrade.

Outside the museum is a display armor and cannons from World Wars I and II.  Some of them are here.  While I was near the tanks, I overheard a French group talking about the German tanks on display as early models. We ended up talking about the invasion of France and how the French and British tanks were in many ways better and that the Allied forces outnumbered the Germans 3000 to 2000 in tanks. The difference was that the French and British spread their tanks from Dunkirk to Switzerland and the Germans put nearly all their tanks on a 20-mile front through the Ardennes Forest and into France.

In the lead of that formation was General Erwin Rommel, the best tank commander in the German Army. The lightly armed and armored German Panzer I and II tanks were stopped several times when they faced a formation of heavier Allied tanks. Even the Panzer IIIs were outmatched by the much bigger British Matilda tanks. But the German light tanks were supported by large-caliber towed guns with well trained crews that would take out the opposing tanks so the Germans could move forward.
On paper, the French and British had the numbers and the equipment to stop the Wehrmacht, but the greatest and most storied victories in military history occur when brilliant tactics  overcome sheer numbers. The Fall of France in 1940 was one of those victories.