The Colmar Pocket Campaign

Apparently one of the important campaigns of WWII was the Colmar Pocket campaign.  Audie Murphy was a part of this campaign.  As we continued with the tour of his memorial and other key points of the battle, we were fortunate enough to be able to tour the museum as well as the American Memorial at a place called Sigolsheim.  We had an amazing guide (as are all of the Viking guides) who should be a history professor, she was fantastic in explaining so much of the impact of this battle on the war and on this region:

The Sigolsheim memorial was at the top of a hill and the view enabled us to see the relationship of all the towns that were a part of the battle.   The American flag flies over this memorial and there are also battalion patches for all the soldiers who fought here.   We are hoping to be able to find the Audie Murphy autobiographical movie when we get home.

Storks and the Alsace Region

There are lots of storks here!  And they are protected being that they are the symbol of this region of France, called the Alsace region.  In every town, we saw the huge nests as well as the huge storks that call those nests home.

We also learned that this is how babies are delivered in the Alsace!  Apparently, you leave sugar cubes on the window sill for the stork, and nine months later, the stork delivers a baby.  

Can you spell *H*O*T*

It seems that we arrived in Europe during an unusually hot summer (sounds suspiciously similar to the 'unusual' weather story that I got when I moved to Minnesota).  It has gotten over 90 degrees every day that we've been here.  Thankfully the ship and the tour buses have AC, but many of the things we tour do not.

#wearehavingaheatwave     #OMGitshot    #thatsplashpadsurelooksgood

Audie Murphy memorial

After a wonderful morning excursion to the Black Forest, we were fortunate enough to do the optional excursion to visit the Audie Murphy memorial.   Audie Murphy was the most decorated soldier in WWII, but I didn't realize all the details of his heroism until yesterday.  France has put up a memorial on the site of the battle where he single handedly held off a much larger force of German soldiers for over an hour.

The internet is being painfully slow, so hopefully I can upload some additional pictures of the day.  Tomorrow we get to tour Strasbourg  AND do a tour of the Mercedes Benz plant -- I'm hoping they do free samples!

The Black Forest

Our first cruise excursion took us into the Black Forest.  We managed to do a short hike and enjoy the scenery....  we also learned a few things: The forest isn't black, it's mostly made up of evergreens.  The German word is Schwarzwald and means "black woods" simply because it was so dark in the forest


   

And we depart....

We finally got underway about 10 pm -- delay was due to some airline issues for six of our fellow passengers.  We went under the bridge seen below, the river level is down so we aren't really sure how they navigate this when the river level is up!

We were scheduled to go through four locks overnight. Due to our still trying to acclimate to the time zone situation, we did manage to see our journey through two of the locks.

Our home......

For the next week, we'll happily let someone else cook and clean......