aaagh!! don't shoot me!!!

Last saturday we went to one of our friend's (Jeb's) belated birthday party. and there we went paintballing for the first time, Zach got a couple bruises, but I didn't but it hurt a bit. there were 8 of us all together and we had the whole place to ourselves because it was cold and it was outdoor paintball. while we were there we did 6 rounds, and it was a lot of fun. 

Henry V-Stratford

On Thursday we went to Stratford, to see the Shakespeare play Henry V. before the play we also had a tour of the props warehouse, where they had all of the costumes, and the props they use in the plays stored. There were many different types of props including Food, Chairs/couches, and daily household items.
Also there were medieval props as well, we didn't get to see the weapons, but we did see some armor, and a fake horse with armor.

It was a good play, it is about an English king named Henry V, he invaded France with his small army and subdued it. The play had the whole plot, starting from back in England where Henry makes up his mind to go to France, Then he goes to France, and fights many battles, (The only 2 in the play are The battles of Harfleur, and Agincort,) in the play they simplified the battle of Harfleur so there was no fighting. But for Agincort They made a full scale battle, with both armies rushing across the stage, and afterwards with all of the wounded going across the battle field. in the play they have many French and English flags, but at the end, after everyone bowed the put up a Canada flag.

Genbaku Dome - A Bomb Memorial

Among the places Hiroshi and I visited during my quick visit to Hiroshima was the Genbaku Dome in the middle of the city. A building from the 1880s, it gained fame and infamy August 6, 1945, when the fireball of the first atomic bomb exploded about 600 m overhead and slightly southeast. Being ground zero for the A-bomb, ironically it was also about the only building in town standing after the explosion. Check on Google and you can find iconic photos of Hiroshima after the bomb, and the Genbaku is the only building you'll see standing. Post-war, Hiroshima was rapidly rebuilt, but in the 1960s it was decided to keep Genbaku as it stood as a permanent memorial. It was pretty powerful to stand there on a beautiful quiet night and realize that such horror occurred directly above your head.

Thank You - Merci Dieppe Veterans

70 years ago today, about 5,000 Canadian soldiers took part in the infamous raid on the northwestern French town of Dieppe. Growing up, I read so much about World War 2, and it was a special dream of mine to visit Dieppe and the site of the invasion. We were fortunate to do so last December during our road trip to commemorate WW1 and 2.

It's a small town and there are no massive monuments like at Vimy Ridge or Ieper, but rather lots of small commemorative plaques and monuments. The Canadian cemetery is a few kilometres inland from the beach itself. I rather like that the beach is largely untouched by ceremony. Standing there on the rough shifting pebbles, battered by the wind and waves, I certainly got a sense of the enormity of trying to survive on that completely exposed beach.

Merci beaucoup. Je me souviens.

Harderwijk

This past Saturday afternoon, Jacob, Zachary and I drove with our friends, Hein and Elly, to the town of Harderwijk where they were having a special day at the harbor there. Hein is the scientist that Stephen is visiting and collaborating with here in the Netherlands. They've known each other since 1995, when Hein was a visiting scientist at DCIEM where Stephen did his Ph.D. His wife, Elly, works in Amersfoort as a physical therapist for children. They live in the village of Soesterberg where Hein works at TNO, a well known Dutch research company.

Harderwijk is also located on the "old land" side and across the water you can again see the reclaimed "new land."  In the water, we saw a new memorial that was just unveiled on April 12 2012, honoring 117 people who died in this area from air crashes during WWII. Walking along to the dock, Hein had to stop for a fresh herring sandwich, but the boys settled on deep fried mussels.

Elly tried her hand at a sail raising competition. The problem was that they had weight the sail with an extra 20 kg weight to make it a challenge.

The boys got a chance to go out in a little sailboat and have a cruise around the harbour.

Our camera failed and Stephen had the other one in Italy, so here's some gratuitous Dutch cheese and swan photos instead!

There was a windmill in town that had been built in the 1700's and moved to this location in 1968. We were able to go right up inside it and see how everything worked on the inside. This windmill has previously been used to grind flour and also as a distillery for making liquor. It had a thatched roof and will all the wooden parts inside it is easy to see how windmills could catch fire with the friction of the parts and the heat produced by the brakes. 

Anne Frank Huis

Since knowing we would be coming to The Netherlands, the Anne Frank House has been on our list of places to visit. This  museum is the actual warehouse and business in which Anne Frank and her family and 4 other Jews hid  during the Nazi occupation of Germany. The Secret Annex was in the back and upper part of the warehouse and business owned by Otto Frank. When they went into hiding there, they had written some letters to make it appear they were leaving the city. They were helped by Mr. Frank's business partner and employees.  Unfortunately, before the end of the war, they were betrayed and sent to concentration camps.  Otto Frank was the only one of the eight who survived the camps and returned.

During their time in hiding, Anne kept a diary, which she called Kitty. She had gotten the first diary on her 13th birthday shortly before they went into hiding. At first she was writing just for herself, but when she heard on the radio a request for written notes and diaries about the war, she started rewriting the diary and editing it with the view of submitting it for publication.  After their arrest, one of the helpers (Miep Gies, Otto's secretary) who was not arrested, collected up the pages from the Annex to save them for Anne. Unfortunately, she never came back from the concentration camp.  Her father, Otto Frank, decided to publish the diary but he merged her personal diary with the rewritten diary to come up with a third version.

The Diary of Anne Frank has been translated into many languages. It has become a story synonymous with WWII history, but much of it deals with the thoughts and feelings of a young, teenage girl. There was about a 40 minute wait to get into the museum and then a slow line following along the rooms. Photos are not permitted, but this is the bookcase they built to cover the entrance to the secret annex. The museum consists of the rooms of the warehouse and Secret Annex but without the furnishings, which Otto requested to symbolize the emptiness of the world from these lost lives. There were some personal articles on display and audio-visual presentations in the different rooms.  Some pages of Anne's actual diary were on display but no pictures were allowed due to preservation concerns.

What's on our reading list in the Netherlands

Since I've told you what we have been reading in Greece and Italy, I will add what we are reading in Netherlands.

The Diary of Anne Frank - we have found several online versions, but with the first many of the words ran together and were difficult to read. This one is a bit better. http://www.readanybook.com/online/42_0.
We have also visited the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam so that helps us to be able to picture the rooms that are being talked about.

The Hiding Place - this is the story of the ten Boom family from Haarlem. They owned a watch shop there but during WWII, they were involved in the underground and hiding Jews. Eventually their home was raided and all the members of the family were taken to prison. The book tells the story of Corrie and her sister Betsie's time in  prison in Holland and concentration camps in Holland and Germany. After her release, Corrie spent the rest of her life helping those damaged by the war and travelling around the world spreading the news that God was with them even in the concentration camps. She traveled to over 60 countries and wrote over 10 books. We are planning a trip to the Corrie ten Boom House Museum in Haarlem.

Hans Brinker or The Silver Skates - we read Hans Brinker, written by American author, Mary Maples Dodge, earlier on our travels but it is a lovely story of a poor Dutch family and village life. It also describes a lot of Dutch history.

Upcoming on the list:
Peter of New Amsterdam
The Dutch Twins
Dutch Fairy Tales. 

The Swiss Circus Guards

The Swiss have always been the guards of the pope. Swiss mercenaries have been bodyguards, ceremonial guards, and palace guards. Michelangelo actually designed the yellow and blue "costumes" for the Swiss guards or the guards of the Vatican. The Swiss guards (The ones at the Vatican) are the only  Swiss guard left in Europe. The Papal Swiss guards are now at the Vatican but used to be in France.

The Swiss Guards also double as traffic cops for cars going into the Vatican, minus the court jester uniforms. Mommy is just outside St. Peter's Basilica with the Guard in the background.

Colloseum

After Tuscany, we spent a few days in Rome before continuing to the Netherlands. On Sunday (May 6) we went to the Collosseo. The Colloseo was built on top of the place where Emperor Nero's house once was, but they built it over top to show how much they disliked Nero. We got our tickets at the Palatine Hill because there was the shortest (zero) lineup there. The ticket was combined for the Colloseo (or Colosseum in English), the Foro (Forum) and Palatino Hill (Palatine Hill). So when we got to the Colloseo we just jumped through the huge long lineup getting tickets there and went straight in!
Roman Holiday!

About 50,000 people could sit in the Colloseo. All 50,000 seats could be filled in less than 15 minutes by the 80 entry ways. There's the postcard photo attempt on the left, and us inside on the south end on the right.

The Emperor had private seats and entry all for himself on the north end on the ground floor (right side of left photo). The nine Vestal Virgins had seats directly opposite on the south. The entry was free but to get in you had to have a ticket, which was a piece of clay with your seat number on it. There's a couple of circus performers on the right.

The official name of the Colloseo was actually the Flavian Amphitheatre, as they were the emperors that built it. What you see here are the underground "backstage." This is where all the prisoners, wild animals, gladiators, and stage sets would be. The actual stage is on top in line with the ground floor of spectators. It was a wood floor with nine inches of sand on top (sand is "arena" in Latin, which is where we get that word from). The performers would be hoisted up to the arena with trap doors and elevators.

The actual show is pretty gruesome. Prisoners, slaves, and others would be killed by wild animals from all over the empire, or else forced to dress up as famous people from history or mythology and killed. Then the animals would also be killed by hunters or gladiators, and of course then there's the gladiator battles themselves. Makes hockey seem tame!

Sharp Sharp and Pointy

When we went to the island at Ioannina we went to the hidden school, then to Ally Passa's house where he went to hide from the Turks but he was on the second floor and the Turks went beneath him and shot him from underneath then they took his body down the stairs and beheaded him and sent his head to the Sultin in Constantinople (left).

Then we walked to the dock and me and Zach bought some knives then we went onto the boat and sailed home to the castle.

Oh and here's my latest befunky design!

National D-Day Memorial

The National D-Day Memorial is located here in Bedford, VA. It was awarded to Bedford by Congress because the town suffered the highest per-capita losses on D-Day (19 Bedford soldiers out of 30 died on June 6, 1944). It's a nice bit of symmetry being at Normandy in December and now here. It's located at 3 Overlord Circle (Overlord was the code name for the invasion).

Lots of impressive and symbolic sculptures on site. In the background on the left is the victory arch, with a soldier dragging a comrade in the foreground. On the right is a soldier in the "Scaling the Wall" sculpture, with the "Peaks of Otter" mountains (Sharp Top on the left, Flat Top on the right) behind. The sculpture represents both the individual accomplishments of the US Rangers at Pont-du-Hoc, and also the symbolic scaling of Fortress Europe itself by the invasion.

The English-style garden represents the preparation for invasion in England. The statue of Ike in the cupola has a tile mosaic of the invasion in the ceiling above. Monty's in the foreground on the right, with the arch behind. The flags represent the countries participating in Normandy, with a plaque detailing their roles below each flag.

General Dwight "Ike" Eisenhower is in the cupola at the back on the left, and close-up on the right. The garden is inlaid with the sword symbol of the invasion.

The invasion tableau. Really neat design, with waterspouts randomly firing to represent the gunfire. The iron contraptions are anti-landing craft traps, designed to impale or rip open landing craft. On the right is a symbolic view from inside a landing craft. Note the design replicating Atlantic Wall defensive bunkers that the invasion is attacking and scaling.

The designers have done an admirable job of aiming to register and commemorate every member of the Allied Expeditionary Force that died June 6, 1944 as part of the invasion, regardless of nationality. Overall, the design of the memorial was really quite amazing, telling the story of D-Day in both direct and symbolic representations.

Lunch - Greek Style

Last Sunday we had lunch with the pastor of the evangelical church here in Trikala, Giorgos and his wife, Paraskevi, also with their daughter Litsa and son-in-law, Nick who is our English translator at church. Giorgos is around 83 years old and has told stories about during WW II when he was  13 years old and all the people in his village were being rounded up in the town square by the Germans. They knew what their fate might be because in another town nearby over 300 people had been killed. 
The priest in the village offered his life to the captors and pleaded with them to spare the villagers. He said we have beef, pork, and vegetables - take what you need but spare the people.  And the Germans did that, they took the food and spared the villages, even the priest.  Giorgos thanks God for sparing his life when he was 13 years old.  He became a Christian when someone visited him in the hospital in the 1960's and in 1971 they founded a small church in Trikala - the small city near the village where he grew up.  
The new church endured persecution in the town and had the building permits revoked and they had to fight until 1978 when they were able to start  in a new building by registering it first as a business. That building is close to the downtown and Giorgos is still leading the small congregation there 34 years later. We had a really nice time with them even though they don't speak English and we don't speak Greek (very well yet!) They were delighted though to hear us use the few words that we know. We've been going through a Pimsleur's audio course daily, and Nick will also be giving the boys some lessons.

 We also bought a Valentine's Day cake and shared it with Petros and his parents.

The Downfall of Napoleon

Trafalgar square is dedicated to Admiral Horatio Nelson and The battle of Trafalgar which was on October 21, 1805, where Horatio Nelson and the very powerful British fleet destroyed Napoleon's fleet. This wasn't the first time Nelson destroyed Napoleon's fleet though. The first time was with the battle of the Nile, where after destroying the French fleet Napoleon's army was stranded in Egypt. But later Napoleon jumped on a ship and went back to France without his army. The battle of Trafalgar was right when Napoleon was starting to lose power, this the Russian campaign and his campaign in the Iberian peninsula were the main causes of his downfall. In the battle of Trafalgar, the only good thing for Napoleon was that near the end of the battle Nelson was hit by a cannon ball and died. So after The battle of Trafalgar the British navy was unarguably the strongest in the world.

I got information about all this from Khan academy.

This is a chart about Napoleon's campaign through Russia it is arguably the best chart in the world.

it has the amount of troops Napoleon had throughout the campaign, it also shows his route and I think also the temperature. Napoleon started the campaign in 1812 with approximately 450,000 troops and ended with approximately 10,000 troops but some people say more and some people say less.

1808 The peninsular campaign started, (the Iberian peninsula) it was mainly fought with guerilla warfare all over spain. But later in the campaign a British general named Arthur Wellesley came, defeated Napoleon, and went part way into France. The peninsular campaign started because  Napoleon allied himself with Spain to attack Portugal because he wanted Portugal to join his "continental system" to pretty much blockade Great Britain. Then Napoleon got greedy and sent 100,000 troops to Madrid and dethroned Charles the II. So that's what started that campaign.

Last Post at Menin Gate

The final stop on our early-December trip through WW1/2 battle sites was Iepers (Iepers is the Flemish name, we might know it better by the French name of Ypres) in the west side of Belgium. There stands Menin Gate at the entrance to the old city. The archway is incredibly impressive, and was built as a WW1 memorial, listing nearly 60,000 missing in action from the Commonwealth military in Belgium. About 7,000 Canadians who were MIA in Belgium are included here, with the ones from France on the Vimy Memorial.

The Last Post Association

The gate is pretty impressive by day, but it's ethereal when lit up at night. It's not flashy or showy, but the gate almost seems to glow from within.

Since 1928, every night at 2000h, the town's fire brigade conducts a "Last Post" ceremony to honour the fallen. It occurs rain or shine, and differs slightly depending on if dignitaries are present and such. The constants are playing the Last Post and also Reveille. The only times the ceremony was cancelled was during the Nazi occupation of Belgium in WW2. Indeed, the very day that Iepers was liberated in WW2 by the Allies, the fire brigade was ready and conducted the ceremony that very evening.

This is a video of the "Reveille" they played at the end of the ceremony

We ended up taking in the Last Post with the Toombes family from near Oxford, UK. We met them earlier that day at the Vimy Memorial, taking the tour of the trenches and tunnels together. They were staying in Iepers for a few days with their daughter and her partner, doing some shopping and taking in the war sites like we were. Michael was involved with the fire department at Oxford, and apparently the brigade there often comes to Iepers for Remembrance Day. Taking in the ceremony was a terrific finish to a fabulous trip.


We were actually incredibly fortunate with the weather the entire 4 days. It rained almost all day Saturday, but the one time it stopped was the 2h we were at Dieppe! And on Monday touring the Normandy beaches, it was absolutely beautiful while we were outdoors at the German and American cemeteries, poured rain while we were driving to and inside Juno Beach, then cleared up afterwards. And it was again beautiful all day outdoors at Vimy and in Iepers. But after we got back into the car after Last Post, it literally began raining hard again as soon as we drove through Menin Gate for home!

Albert Joseph Buhlman

For the first stop on our top secret road trip, we left on Saturday morning and drove to Holten, Netherlands. It is a small town with an adjacent National Forest and within the forest is the Canadian War Memorial Cemetery. There are approximately 1400 Canadian Soldiers buried here and there is a recently opened (Sep 2011) Visitors Centre. Earlier on this trip, we learned that I have a great-uncle, Albert Joseph Buhlman who is buried here. 


At Juno Beach, we found information about his burial plot and at the British Grenadiers shop in Iepers, we found out that every year on Christmas Eve, the town holds a candlelight ceremony in which the school children of the town place candles in front of all the graves. Secretively, Stephen arranged the surprise trip so that we could attend the candle ceremony. He had actually contacted the organizer (Roland Cornelissen) and arranged for us to participate in the ceremony. 

We arrived early in the afternoon and were able to find the grave of A.J. Buhlman (Albert Joseph), He was a member of the Governor General's Foot Guards in the 4th Canadian Armoured Division and was killed in action on April 28/1945 when he was 21 years old. The information at the center lists his place of death as unknown, but it would have been in northern Holland or Germany if he was buried here. Albert came from a family of 5 boys and 2 girls (my grandmother). 2 of his brothers are still alive, one in the UK. and the other in Dundas, Ontario. 

The ceremony was attended by hundreds of townspeople and the children of the town. In addition, the ambassador from Canada to the Netherlands was there as well as Canadian soldiers from NATO and the Canadian base in Germany.  After a few words of introduction by Roland and the Canadian ambassador, they called Zachary and Jacob and I to come forward and place the first candle on Albert Buhlman’s grave. This was followed by all the school children placing candles in front of all the 1400 graves.

I was very surprised that Stephen had arranged with the organizers for our participation. He even arranged for our friends Eric and Astrid and their children, Dorien and Jacco to come and join us there. After the ceremony, we all went for pancake buffet at Woody’s restaurant. The boys were even impressed that Stephen arranged for the ambassador to eat there as well. After eating too many pancakes, we went back to see the cemetery in the dark with all the candles glowing. Many others had come back as well and it was a moving experience.

It is amazing that the Dutch people take such good care of the cemeteries of the Canadian soldiers and they are passing this tradition on to their children. We met one couple in the afternoon and he was 62 and remembers placing candles there when he was 10 years old. Other women recalled coming to the ceremony every Christmas Eve since they were children.