Reims!

Bonjour! This weekend I travelled to Reims, France, among other places. Well, actually I travelled to Verdun, France first to see the fort and battlefield from World War I. This site, I can honestly say, was the first time that I really felt the impact of studying AND travelling abroad. The first few two weekends I saw some incredible sites and had truly unique/unusual experiences, but didn’t really feel like I had learned a lot from the actual location. I certainly learned a lot about being in a foreign country and all that goes along with that, but didn’t really feel too impacted from where I was. At Verdun, however, I felt I had a better understanding of what WWI really was, especially for those living in France. For instance, the landscape of the battlefield is completely different from that of the city because of all the shelling. I learned a good deal about living conditions of the Verdun fort as well, and that completely changed any romanticized feelings I had about living a fort. I always pictured the fort as being the safe haven for war-ridden soldiers, but our tour guide informed us otherwise. She told us that some soldiers actually left the fort and entered the battlefield, because the conditions (constant noise, little food/water, extremely low hygiene and disease) were so bad. We also learned that there were about 9 villages in the battlefield areas of Verdun, but those areas haven’t been inhabited since the battle in WWI. This really made me understand the impact of having a war in your home country. I suppose I never really realized that the war impacts the soldiers, the soldiers’ families, and those living in the country of the battle. Quite obviously, this was a big learning experience for me, particularly since it was all in the span of 3 hours.
After Verdun, we travelled to Reims in the Champagne region of France. I learned that you actually cannot call sparkling wine champagne unless it’s from the Champagne region of France. I believe that it is actually illegal. Before getting to our hotel, we went to the Pommery champagne cellar. To get to the cellar, we had to go down 136 stairs. Our guide told us that, at that level, the temperature is always 55 degrees and the champagne needs to have a constant cool temperature. The tour was really interesting, particularly as the cellar is divided into areas named for cities in Belgium, Luxembourg, France and other areas of Western Europe. A lot of the rooms also had pieces of modern art in them. One room, for example, had a palette full of Nutella just sitting there and our guide told us it was modern art. Many in our group, myself included, considered taking a piece of that modern art for ourselves. At the end of the tour, a friend of ours got to open a Champagne bottle with a sword (so cool!) and we all got a flute of Pommery champagne (with three different kinds of grapes) for ourselves.
Following the tour, we checked into our hotel and had some authentic Mexican cuisine at Le Latina! I know it sounds awful having Mexican food in France, but French food is pretty expensive here and it had been a long time since I had guacamole, yum! The next morning we visited the Reims cathedral. I found it to be an absolutely breathtaking place. The outside is huge, and is almost difficult to fit into one picture. I had never seen so many statues on one building before! The inside is also gorgeous, with lots of intricate stained glass everywhere. I’ve found that the advice of my Grandmother and Grandad has been incredibly useful in cathedrals, among other places of course! They told me to always consider the actual work that went into making it, which I took to heart when I saw the very top of the massive church and realized that someone must have had to go up there to work on it (I’m guessing cherry pickers were a lot harder to come by back then). Their second piece of advice was to “look up” which caused me to see some amazing statues that I never would have seen had I not remembered to look up! All in all, I was incredibly impressed by the cathedral and am very excited to see more like it in Florence next week!
We left the cathedral around noon and headed to a monastery in Belgium where they brew their own beer and make their own cheese. The monastery was, in accordance with the rest of the sites of the trip, beautiful. We got to taste the beer and cheese and I discovered a love for celery salt! Now, I know you’re thinking “Lisa, isn’t the cheese/beer a little more important than celery salt?” I answer this, no. Beer seems to be everywhere in Europe and, although the cheese was delicious, cheese is also everywhere. Celery salt is not! It was amazing, it really tasted like celery but in salt form! And put together with the cheese, it was so good! I need to know if they have celery salt in the States, because if not, I am going to bring some home! Thus, I had a very good time at the monastery.
After the monastery, we traveled to a citadel in France. The citadel was cool because it reminded me of my days in history class learning about city-states. I always wondered what one would be like and if it would really make me feel safe, as some of the wars back then did not seem like experiences I wanted to have. The fortress was really interesting and I definitely felt safe, however, the town with the citadel is so obscure now that I never really felt unsafe. Maybe put it in some inner city area of Atlanta or something and then I could really put that safeness thing to the test! We then travelled from the citadel back to Luxembourg, making my Saturday a tri-country day!