The trip :)

Hi guys :)

I woke up really late today. And it was really really late...even for someone like me who wakes up really late. I woke up at 3pm... .__. Stupid jet lag. I could only fall asleep at 3am. And even then, I was forcing myself to fall asleep.

Ahhh, I am really missing Europe :) It was really really very beautiful. All the streets and shops and houses. Though I didn't really like Paris. It was too crowded for my liking. But I loved Normandy and HonFleur. They are just the kind of towns that I like :) It was so quiet and secluded. Sadly, I don't have that many pictures because my camera battery ran out in the first day and I stupidly forgot to bring my charger -.- And all the pictures I took using my phone are a little blurry.

I took ALOT of pictures of fields and grasses because I never saw so much in my entire life before. Seriously. The scenery was quite beautiful too. Especially the sea. It was really the kind of beautiful blue-ish gray-green sea that you only get to see in movies. And the thing I liked the most about the sea was that it wasn't marred by any cargo ships etc. In Singapore, if you go to any sea, you'll see huge ships in the horizon which really completely spoils the view -.- And the water is an ugly murky gray :( Look, here's some pictures of the sea at Omaha Beach

The sky was really cloudy that day

the shore!

so pretty rite?

The beach was also quite clean too! Not like in Singapore, where there's litter everywhere -.- And there weren't that many people on the beach because it was quite cold that day. And we visited Normandy on the 5th and 6th of June. So, many of the people were watching the commemoration ceremony put up by the soldiers as 6th of June was the Battle of Normandy in 1944. That's why we were able to see the war veterans. Many of them were veterans from the Allied Forces: America, Britain, France and Russia. I think the German soliders came to pay their respects too.

I think it was really very touching the way that the date is commemorated every year. It is a very big thing over there. Many of the inhabitants of Normandy will come to see the parade and meet with the war veterans. The American Normandy Cemetery were also filled with people paying their respects to the soldiers' graves. We saw quite a few graves decorated with flowers and the American flag. Here's one that I took:

I feel quite bad for this soldier, he died on my birthday! And it also wasn't right for me to take pictures of their graves, now that I think about it...

Behind this soldier's grave is an area cordoned off for the graves of Theodore Roosevelt Jr and Quentin Roosevelt. There was also another grave there but I can't remember whose :( It really showed that the war seriously spared nobody as to take away two of President Roosevelt's sons. Actually, Quentin Roosevelt died in WWI. But President Roosevelt wanted his grave to be in the same place as his second son. I manged to take a picture of the graves but my phone camera sucks at zoom so I won't post it up. But what made me the saddest the most were graves like this:

This was taken by my friend at the cemetery. This was the epitaph given to all the soldiers who could not be identified. I found it really sad that they lost their lives for freedom and yet, they could not be acknowledged. It is no wonder 6th of June is such a big day for France. It was the day when they were liberated from Germany. And for that, they are very very grateful towards the American soldiers. Not like in Singapore, where Total Defense Day is such a 'whatever' day here.

Okay, enough melancholic thoughts. The trip was not all that depressing. It was more like an eye-opening experience for me. And it really made me appreciate all the WWII soldiers more. To me, WWII is no longer something that is sanitised by the textbook and something that we need to memorise to pass the exam. It involves REAL people with REAL HUMAN emotions. To end this post on a happy note, here are some picture I took in Berlin before my camera ran out :)

haha, the shadows of my friend and me :)

the graffiti is cool or what huh?!

kthxbai :)