Visit to Lucie in Pont-a-Mousson, France/WWI Battlefield of Verdun/Nancy/Metz (October 27-29, 2006)

Complete Set of Photos

So, last weekend, I took the train to France to visit Lucie Watrinet, who was an exchange student at Mason High School during my senior year (2004-2005). I rode the train from Stuttgart through Karlsruhe and Strasbourg to Nancy, where Lucie picked me up. We then took another train back to Pont-a-Mousson, which is where she lives. This town is famous for producing most of the manhole covers in Europe (the lids even say the name of the town or just "PAM" on them too). It's a nice little town, similar in size to Mason, with a town "triangle" instead of a square, an old gothic church, and an Abbey on the Moselle river.

I stayed with Lucie and her family at her house for the weekend. They were very nice, even though we couldn't really understand each other (Lucie had to translate!). Her mom made excellent meals the whole weekend - cheesy artichokes with bacon, a variety of french bread, french cheeses, french wines, foie gras (yes, I know what it is!), lamb, and all sorts of other tasty foods. I did not get the chance to try horse meat, frogs, or snails, but I would have if I could have!

Something cool I noticed while I was there was that license plates there are yellow on the rear of the car, but the normal EU colors of while/blue on the front. Also, beginning drivers (meaning 18-year-olds) have to have a big "A" sticker on the back of the car to show that they are beginning drivers. The "A" stands for some french word that means "Apprentice."

On Saturday, her mom drove us to the town of Verdun, about an hour away by car. This was the scene of a long and gruesome battle in WWI - the Battle of Verdun. This area of France was the scene of really fierce fighting during WWI - some villiages of the area were just completely destroyed during the war and never rebuilt. On the drive, we passed American, French, and German military cemeteries with rows and rows of white, tan, and black crosses, respectively. The actual battlefield itself was very humbling and somber. There is a huge ossuary and cemetery there also, with the bones of thousands of unknown soldiers actually viewable through windows. We also visited the nearby Fort Douaumont. The whole area is now wooded and covered in grass, but there is an obvious difference in the way the trees look and there are still visible trenches and thousands of bomb craters still visible. I am standing in one here that is deeper than I am tall. Remember, all this is from 90 years ago too. It's quite amazing.

That night, me, Lucie, and two of her friends drove to the town of Metz (in a car with an "A" on the back!) to go to a "crepe" restaurant. I had never had them before. I had my first crepe and a taste of a french sausage called "andouille," which is made from the entire gastrointestinal system of a pig (that's about what it tastes like too!), and even a Mirabelle flambe crepe.

The next day, we went to a section of woods only a couple of kilometers from her house, where the battle of La Croix des Carmes. This was a much smaller battle, but there were still trenches and craters around today, as well as old pillboxes and even the barbed wire and metal pointy blockade things.

Later that afternoon, Lucie took me around the city of Nancy, where I had to catch my train back to Stuttgart. There were lots of old baroque style buildings as well as a very interesting Lorraine (this region of France) history museum dating back to the Romans. On the trip back to Stuttgart, I rode on a train that was similar to the one from Eurotrip - there were little rooms in the train car that held six people each.