7 People in a Twingo

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It is a rainy Tuesday night and I until two seconds ago I was painting my shoes with my oil paints. Now I am going to tell you about Normandy because writing might be a better use of my time. Actually, that is debatable; my shoes look pretty cool.

A Twingo is a 4 person French car that looks like it is smiling, or so my friend Christy insists. Twingos used to make me smile, but the sight of this little automobile pulling up to the train station with the Art and Ben in the front seats causes April, Drew, Carl, Jessica and I to take one step farther towards the nursing home. The only way to describe Art is HUGE, Mexican, optimistic diva. Beaming, Art leaps out of the barely car and assures us that this is happening and that we are all going to be in Normandy in three hours. As the sun glares off the silver flowers tattooed on the side of our Twingo, we strategize a game plan to fit our large, American selves into this tiny French car. Ben reminds us that he HAS to drive, since the car is rented in his name and he is responsible, because Art lets out a loud groan, his hot pink middle squished between door and Car as Drew squeezes in. With April and Jessica in the front seat, the Twingo looks like it is going to pop. Diva peers at me from beneath his jeweled sunglasses and commands me to dive. Handicapped by the hilarity of the constipated Twingo, I attempt to follow directions and find myself squeezed between the back seat and the front seat looking up at six humid bodies. My smile becomes just an occasional glimmer as the thought, we are all in here continues to dawn on me and my legs start to go numb.

A Twingo is a 4 person French car that looks like it is smiling

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Several hiding from French police head ducks later, and we are hobbling into the D day museum in Normandy. My sore limbs quickly recover as I wander through the displays and videos of a time of patriotism and heroism but also of death and destruction. The image of our seven persons packed into a happy Twingo is replaced with images of somber faced youths packed into tanks and bunkers. I leave the museum, no longer caught between the feet and seat of the morning, but instead somewhere between an interesting game of battleship and a nightmare of futility and brutality.

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The American Cemetery looks like a cold army in uniform lines awaiting orders through the fog. Each cross or star is engraved with the name and home state of a young man. Brian and I search for long lost, potential relatives among the Minnesotan and Iowan graves. Fog also covers the ocean, a barely visible backdrop for the modern metal sculpture, which stands to thank the allied liberators. We bare our feet for the water and the prepared kids (you know- the ones that always are handing out loose leaf to the kids who's rough edged, notebook paper is rejected by stingy teachers) pull out their jars to collect sand souvenirs off the Normandy beach. I'm content to leave the sand to the waters. Exploring bunkers and bomb craters, however, I take full advantage of. Some of the bunkers are so dark that a cell phone is not sufficient light, and we are forced to use the strobe light of my camera flashes.

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Again in the daylight, the German cemetery contrasts the white uniformity of the American cemetery with small brown graves dwarfed by a huge grass mound monument. It is less clean and less extravagantly flowered than the American cemetery, but the bones that rest beneath the grass, I imagine, are looking quite similar to those in the flowery cemetery. Thankful to be in the bus for the ride back to Angers, rather than in the Twingo or a tank, for that matter, the sun on the my last organized excursion. I love you all always!

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Bises,

Hannah