Final day

Today was the last day of our amazing journey through Europe. It's hard to describe it. We left home sixteen days ago, in some ways different people. In such a short span of time we have visited twelve European cities in four countries, and spent at least one night in six of them. We saw a blended mix of large cities and small towns. We spent a night in, Cochem, Germany, which has 5,000 residents. We spent five in Paris, with a metro area of more than 12 million. In all of them we were warmly greeted, got to interact with residents and travelers alike, learn about the culture, the people, the work environments, and about ourselves. Tomorrow we fly home and begin the task of re-adjusting to our everyday lives. I have a great wife at home waiting for me, so that will make things easier.

We started our last day off with a visit to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or OECD. The OECD is an advisory body that has been working since WWII reconstruction to help countries share best practices for developing their economies. We met in a conference room in the center's main building, a chateau built by the Rothschild family in the 1930s. When they were forced to flee before the German occupation, the building lay empty and was eventually sold to the OECD for their headquarters. Our liason was a public relations officer named Andrew who originally hails from Indiana, but has been working in Paris for the past 26 years. Andrew gave us an overview of how the OECD works, and then handed the presentation over to a French gentleman named Justin, who works on an interactive survey called the Better Life Index (BLI). This index allows people to rank 11 factors on the basis of what is important to them to achieve their ideal quality of life. This provides the OECD with invaluable data on various life factors and what is important to different people throughout the world. I took the BLI after our session, and it told me that based on my responses, my top three countries to live in would be Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. The United States was 15th (out of 34) on my list. This is largely due to the fact that the average U.S. respondent ranks jobs and income #1 and work-life balance last, and I was nearly reversed in my scale.

After the OECD our official program was complete. We were allowed to spend the remainder of our final afternoon in Paris as we chose. Unfortunately it was also raining like nobody's business. Most of us hopped on the train and went down to see Notre Dame. The cathedral was free to enter and was a welcome break from the downpour outside. It was a very moving experience to see, just as the cathedral in Cologne had been. Afterwards, I joined up with Sasha, Barb, Becca and Marie and we went down to the Musee D'Orsay on the left bank of the Seine. This is another art museum, much smaller than the Louve. It is built in an old train station, and the architecture is beautiful. The Orsay is famous for its large wing of impressionist art, featuring many paintings by Monet, Renoir, and other French painters of the 19th century. They also had a fantastic temporary exhibit on the life of Vincent Van Gogh, with around 40 of his works on loan from museums around the world. We had already been to the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam, but this was equally worth the visit. Consider me a convert to his art.

After the museum it was time to meet up with everyone for our farewell dinner. This was at a very nice restaurant somewhere near the 14th district, on the southwest side of town. We had a three course meal featuring a salmon spread starter, roast duck with potatoes for the main, and a chocolate cake with ice cream for dessert. It was very good, definitely the best meal of the trip, and the duck was the best I have ever had. Sadly, the restaurant service was poor, and we were kicked out immediately after serving dessert so they could give the room to another group of 60 schoolchildren waiting outside. Not gezellig at all. On the way back to the hotel a few of us stopped for one last drink at a cafe. I paid 9 Euros for the worst Long Island iced tea I have ever had. I didn't even drink it. Not a great note to go out on!

Ater returning to the hotel nobody much felt like calling it in, so we decided on one last hurrah. At a little after 10 several of us met in the lobby and took the metro back down to the Eiffel Tower. We got there just before the 11pm light show. We couldn't sit on the grass because it had been raining all day, so we wandered for a bit, eventually passing under the tower and to the north across the bridge, where there was live music playing. We were careful of the time, as our metro passes expired at midnight, so we got on the subway line at Trocadero around quarter til. Finally, we returned to the hotel once more and surrendered. However, while standing on the steps of the Palais de Chaillot we all promised ourselves that this would not be our last trip to this city, and I mean to keep that promise. I would love to come back one day soon with Katherine (and again later with our children).

That's all. Tomorrow we fly out at 1:30 in the afternoon, headed back to Chicago. It will be a long day by the time we return to UWO tomorrow night, but we will all be high on excitement and ready to relay the stories of our wonderful adventure to family and friends.

International Chamber of Commerce & Versailles

This morning we ventured west once again, this time near Trocadero, to visit the International Chamber of Commerce. Founded in 1919, the ICC is an international agency designed to promote trade between companies of different nations. Before the United Nations, before the World Bank or World Trade Organization, the ICC hoped that by forming a stronger economic base between companies, it would be easier to create a lasting peace between nations. Obviously that did not stop the Second World War from happening, but the Chamber remains proud of all its accomplishments over the past century.

We had two presentations while there. The first was from Mary Kelly, an American who has lived the past 13 years in Paris. Mary is the Director of Editorial and Internal Communications, and she talked to us about the history of the ICC, their mission (peace and prosperity for all) and all of the different types of services the ICC offers to its member companies. Our second speaker, Alma Forgo, is a German deputy counsel for the International Court of Arbitration, a major subset of the ICC. She talked to us in depth about the arbitration services offered by the ICA and their value in mediating disputes between companies. It was very interesting, and gave us insight into an international trade organization that, frankly, most of us had never heard of before.

After the ICC, we boarded a suburban train out to Versailles. We took an hour to have lunch in the town center before meeting up for the palace tour. I had a very good hamburger for lunch from a local place, one of the few occasions I have had beef on our trip. At 3pm we met up and entered Versailles as a group. It was absolutely packed inside, giving much the same experience as the beginning of the Louvre yesterday. Because of the massive crowd we all quickly got separated, which was okay because we had already made arrangements for everyone to go back to Paris on their own as they saw fit. I ended up touring the museum with Katie and Brooke. We saw all that the palace had to offer, including the royal apartments, the bedrooms of King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, and the Hall of Mirrors where the worst treaty in the history of the world was forced upon the Germans in 1919. The scale of every room, combined with the intricacy of every detail in each carving, fresco, and painting was hard to fathom. To think of the contrast between this and the living standards in Paris of the day, and it's not hard to see why the people were so upset come the French Revolution. Much of the palace reminded me of Hampton Court in London.

After some time in the palace, we went outside to tour the gardens. They are huge, and it was warm and sunny, and our legs were just not happy after so much walking for so many days. So we did the natural thing- rented a golf cart! It just so happens that I am over the age of 24, and can therefore drive such a dangerous vehicle. So after surrendering my driver's license, the three of us set off to discover the gardens behind Versailles. They were beautiful, and well worth the extra entry price. We spent an hour driving to see all that they had to offer, and were rewarded with some spectacular views. The day was perfect for it too.

We pulled back in to the palace after an hour, just as the grounds were closing for the night. After joining the shuffle back to the train station, we boarded an overcrowded train back into Paris. It had some kind of mechanical problem and limped all the way back, stopping for several minutes between stations on two occasions. However, it did eventually limp into where we were trying to go, so we hopped off and switched to another line to go see the Arc de Triomph. We popped up on the Champs Elysees right under the arch, and spent some time admiring the colossal structure from inside. After a few pictures, we went for a walk along the most famous street in Paris, stopping in at an English pub for a drink along the way. Finally we came back to our part of town, grabbing some fruit at a local grocery store for a light dinner. I joined some of the guys outside for a few minutes before retiring to my room. One more full day left!

Sofitel la Defense & The Louvre

On our second full day in Paris, we started by heading out west of town to the modern-day financial district, la Defense. There, we toured the 5-start Sofitel Paris hotel in the district, which caters to financial customers during the week and tourists during the weekend. Our guide's name was difficult to catch, but I believe he said Dior. He was the Director of Sales for the Sofitel, having previously worked at their branches in London and Los Angeles. Dior gave us a very nice, personalized tour of the facility, starting with background information on the hotel and its related brands while we talked in the library. Then he showed us two guest rooms: one luxury, one mini-suite. Finally, we were shown the conference room facilities, where we got to sit down for some refreshments and go through a very detailed Q&A session. In addition, we met the general manager of the hotel, who was starting his first day on location, newly arrived from the branch in New York City.

The visit was very interesting, and I would rank it up there with the winery tour, just below that of the Claas factory visit. We learned a lot about this large worldwide hotel chain that is popular throughout Europe, North Africa, and China, with a small presence in the U.S. Sofitel is their luxury brand, built for business travelers, and the three pillars they stand on are interior design, food, and French culture (the brand is based in France). Interestingly, he told us that the only language requirement for any of their hotels worldwide is English. Even here in France, employees must know English and are not required to speak French. This is a concept that keeps coming up in our visits- I know how often English is spoken around the world, but this trip has really given me perspective into how far along English has gotten towards becoming a true universal language. In addition, our instructor asked the director if he would be willing to stereotype his clientele to give us an idea for how different cultures interact within the industry. He said that U.S. business travelers are more or less ideal clients. American tourists on the weekends ask a lot of questions but don't provide many headaches. Visitors from the middle east, however, are used to having unlimited amounts of service in hotels (you snap your fingers and 6 people come running was the example), and have difficulty adjusting to the European model (This hotel only staffs 100 people), so they frequently express frustration with the level of service even in a 5 star establishment. Finally, he admitted their biggest headaches come from Chinese clients, who do not know European culture or customs at all, and are very loud and demanding.

After the hotel visit, we walked through the la Defense district and saw all the modern financial buildings and businesspeople going about their day. I really enjoyed seeing this scene, because it showed me what a modern, vibrant metropolitan city Paris still is today, outside of the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame, the berets, moustaches, cigarettes and baguettes. In fact, I have enjoyed seeing that aspect in every city we have gone to. Amsterdam is Amsterdam and is unique unto itself, but outside of the canal district you can see the 21st century going about its business. The same went for Bremen, for Hamburg, Cologne, Brussels, and now Paris. All of these big cities that depend on tourism, but are also modern places where people live, work, and experience life on their own accord. They all provided the counterpunch to the disappointment that I experienced in Bruges.

We came back to the hotel to change out of our business clothes and grab lunch. I talked such a big game about Pret a Manger that Katie, Shelby, Brooke, and Mark were all willing to walk the mile from the hotel with me to grab sandwiches and soup for lunch there. They all told me how good it was- converts officially recruited!

After lunch we headed back into town and saw the Louvre! It was an experience just getting into the building. We came in from the street through the basement. It felt like we were rushing through a shopping mall until we turned a corner and suddenly came upon I.M. Pei's famous inverted pyramid. We got our tickets and all went in as a group. The idea was to get everyone in to see the Mona Lisa, and then we could split up from there. We started pushing through the crowd, and Sasha quickly asked me to take charge of the navigation through the labyrinth of rooms. I got us into the right wing, up two flights of stairs, and down the grand gallery quickly, until pretty soon we were in the room with the mysterious painting of da Vinci. Seeing the painting was wonderful, but I have to admit I was disappointed by the atmosphere. There are at least a hundred people in the room at a time, all pushing and jostling with one another to get as close to the painting as possible, with no regard for anyone else, and of course now everyone wants a selfie with her. I did not try to get too close, just admiring the masterpiece as best I could from around 10 meters back. Escaping from the room did not provide much relief, because the grand gallery outside was just as crowded. I actually wish the Louvre were more like the Van Gogh museum, where photography is forbidden and the demeanor of the crowd is much more subdued and respectful.

I joined up with a few others and we headed for the second floor, with a brief stop to see the Venus de Milo. Once we got all the way upstairs we found a better museum experience: many fewer people because the most famous pieces were not on this floor. We wandered for awhile through the French 18th and 19th century art, then began to move on towards that of the Germans and Dutch. Someone in our group really wanted to find art by Monet, and we were surprised to learn that the Louvre only has three pieces. We then dropped down a floor and saw the preserved apartments of Napoleon III in the north wing. By this time we had been in the museum for two hours, and most of the people in my group had had enough, and they all broke off to head out and go back up to Montmartre: some of them wanted to have a painting of themselves done and had not had time the day before. I stayed in the museum for another hour until I was kicked out at 6 when they closed. I managed to see much of the Greek and Roman antiquities departments, the Law Code of Hammurabi, and the medieval foundations of the Louvre itself. I very much enjoyed my visit.

On my own after leaving the Louvre, I did a little window shopping at the stores across the street, along the Rue de Rivoli, and then headed back to the hotel. Not being hungry, I skipped dinner and talked to Katherine for awhile. Then I joined some of the others down at the outdoor patio behind the hotel for a little wine and music. Once it got dark we hopped on the metro and went back down to the Eiffel Tower. We packed some wine and cigars with us, and sat out on the grass in the park just outside the tower talking and listening to music. We were far from the only people with this idea- it was very busy. Not nearly so busy as the fourth of July, but a similar environment. We stayed for a little over an hour, saw the light show the tower put on at midnight, and headed back at 12:30. We were a little concerned that we missed the last subway ride of the night when we got to the platform for our connecting train and found it all dark with no people, but a train did come by a few minutes later and we made it back safe and sound.

We have now seen most of the "sights" we came to see, and get to spend our last few days here simply enjoying Paris as it comes to us.

Eiffel Tower and Montmartre

This morning we were rushed off at 8am by Fatima, our new drill sergeant.  We arrived at the base of the Montmartre hill, in front of the historic Moulin Rouge, at 8:45. This gave us a comfortable 45 minute cushion to wait for our 9:30 tour. We sat on the boulevard waiting. After an hour we realized the tour guide wasn't just late, but something was amiss. After a few phone calls, the company admitted they did not have our reservation, and managed to wake up a tour guide who was at home sleeping. He arrived by 10:15 to give us our now abbreviated tour. Despite the disappointing start to the day, the tour itself was good, even if it did involve climbing the biggest hill in Paris. We saw several old mills, the city's only winery (apparently it makes crap wine), and the artist's square, the Place du Tertre. Around the corner at the apex of the hill is the basilica of Sacre-Couer, which commands a breathtaking view of the city below.

After the tour, we were given around an hour and a half to do some shopping at the Tertre and get lunch. Then we headed down to the Trocadero metro stop to get an amazing view of the Eiffel Tower as we approached from the northwest. After some pictures on the Esplande du Trocadero we walked down across the river to the tower itself. We broke into smaller groups based on who wanted to take the elevator and who wanted to climb the stairs. I chose the daring group that was looking for exercise. 670 stairs later we had a great view from the second level.

At this point you are still only 100 meters of the 300 meter total height of the Tour Eiffel. There are a further 1200 stairs which lead to the top, but they are not open to the public. So we had to shell out an extra 6 Euros to take the elevator to the top. It was definitely worth it, as the view is simply too much for words, in every direction.

After our descent, I grabbed a raspberry sorbet on our way to the banks of the Seine for a boat tour of the river. This gave us a perfect chance to sit down and cool off while seeing what the river has to offer: views of the Musee d'Orsay, Louvre, Notre Dame, National Assembly, and of course all the historic bridges across the river itself. It was a nice way to end the evening.

Paris!

This morning we packed up and left Brussels. We took a bus over to the coast to visit Bruges for the morning, getting a great walking tour from someone who's name I can't recall without my notes. He gave us a good succinct history of Bruges: a former trading city in the middle of the Hanseatic League that got wealthy because of its centrally-located port. By the 19th century the industrial revolution hit, but the local archbishop told Bruges they were not allowed to industrialize. This left the city without any industry, and quickly turned them into a poor, backwards place. However, no factories to build meant no reason to tear down buildings. This means that the entire medieval city of Bruges still stands today. We were shown a 16th century map of the city, which could still be used to navigate through the streets.

So, the result of all this is an incredibly quaint city that history passed by. The problem is, there still is no industry in Bruges. Their primary source of income is tourism, resulting in a town of 100,000 people with 4 million visitors per year. There were tour groups everywhere. And I mean everywhere. Always groups of 10-20 people huddled around one tour guide. We started at the same time as four other groups, and all through the city we were always jostling for position with the other people. So, the catch-22 here is that such a beautiful and quaint city has remained too beautiful and quaint, and has thus lost its charm by having 80% of the people in the city simply being tourists. My dad keeps joking about the places I'm visiting looking like Universal Studios, but this one felt like I actually was in Orlando. Belgium may as well buy the town, remove the residents, and turn the whole thing into a museum like Williamsburg VA. It's hard to explain the difference. I liked Williamsburg, but when I went there I knew I was going to a "historical theme park" if you will. In Bruges, it's like it is still trying to be a city, but failing (in my own biased opinion).

After the nice tour, we went back towards the entrance of town and everyone split up to eat lunch. I skipped lunch and went to the Church of Our Lady, which houses a beautiful sculpture of Mary of Nazareth and the baby Jesus. This famous piece of art was the only sculpture of Michelangelo to leave Italy during his lifetime, and one of the few works of his to make it so far north. The recent movie Monuments Men drew my attention to this work, which was looted by Nazi soldiers as they fled Bruges near the end of World War II, and fortunately was later recovered and sent back to the church. It cost 2 Euros to get into the church and see the sculpture, but it was well worth the money and the lack of lunch.

After Bruges we hopped on the bus and drove to our final destination for this study tour- Paris. We are at the Ibis hotel in Bercy, a newer part of the city in the southeastern 12th district. We were introduced to our Paris coordinator, Fatima, who gave us a long-winded introduction on how to use the subway. Seriously long winded, verging on an hour. We were then given an hour to do dinner on our own. I made the mile walk across the Seine to the Avenue de France, to enjoy a sandwich at Pret A Manger, the British sandwich maker Katherine and I fell in love with on our honeymoon. They have since expanded beyond London, and now have a few locations in Paris (and New York, and Boston, and Chicago, and D.C.). I had a great fresh sandwich, chips, and a bottle of water for 7 Euros. That's hard to beat here.

For the final activity of the day we wanted to get a real taste of Paris. So we met as a group and took the metro to the Marseilles station, then got off and walked down to the public square at the end of the Champs-Elysees. We took a bunch of pictures of the square (where Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were beheaded), of the boulevard with the Arc de Triomph at the end, and of the Eiffel Tower from afar. Then we walked across the river to the other bank, where we saw a massive procession of police go by. They stopped and we asked what they were about- they told us it was a motorcade for the President of France to go by. We stopped on the Pont Alexandre III bridge and watched as the Eiffel Tower first lit up, as it was after sundown, and then as it performed its hourly 5 minute twinkling light show at 10pm. Then we headed back to the hotel, having gotten a little taste of Paris. Tomorrow we go for a walking tour of Montmarte quarter and a boat tour of the Seine.

Technical difficulties

This is the third time I have started this post. I had the one from two days ago waiting for some time now, unable to publish with our lousy internet in Brussels. Now in Paris, it seems the internet is finally at least serviceable, if not great. That said, all of my pictures are on my phone, which I just killed Skyping with Katherine. So I will write these two blog posts without any pictures and edit them in later. [edit: pictures uploaded]

Yesterday was our last full day in Brussels. We spent the day down in the city center, under a massive triumphal arch. It was ordered by King Leopold II in 1880 to commemorate Belgium's 50th anniversary of independence. Apparently what was built was crap, so the King had it demolished right after the celebration and work begun on a new one. This second arch had one goal- be bigger than Paris' Arc de Triomph. Finally completed in 1905, it succeeded in that regard. It definitely is an imposing sight from a long ways around.

Built around the arch were four massive exhibit halls. One of these was designated for Belgium's military history museum, which was our first destination of the morning. It is not laid out like any museum I have been to before. Our tour guide, Dirk, said Belgian tradition was to display every last artifact they have in public view, so the museum was row after row of glass cases. There were enough muskets, bayonets, canteens and medals there to supply an army today. The only thing saving the exhibition from becoming too overwhelming was the fact that Belgium had less than a century of existence when the museum was opened in 1905.

Adjacent was another wing featuring Belgium in World War I. We were unable to see this section as it is currently closed for renovations. It will re-open later this summer to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the start of the Great War. So we skipped ahead to their newest section, a more familiar Smithsonian-style presentation on World War II. This was very well done, and included a lot of important relics from the war to help tell the story. In addition, Dirk (a retired Air Force officer) led us the whole way, stopping to set the stage and provide detailed information.

Finally, we went into one more wing and saw an aerial collection to rival the Smithsonian Air & Space museum. Devoted to the cold war, the collection includes everything from an F-16 to French and German aircraft, and a Russian Mig-23 and Hind attack chopper. The Mig had an interesting story. At some point in the late 1980s a Russian fighter plane malfunctioned and lost engines. The pilot was ejected, but the plane actually re-stabilized after he was out, and resumed bearing and heading west over Germany. Eventually it reached Belgian airspace, and fighters were sent up to intercept it. Finding no pilot in the cockpit, the air force did not know what to do. There was no protocol for how to react to an unoccupied plane! They ended up doing nothing, and sadly the plane crashed on a house in a Belgian town, killing a girl. It was the only "attack" on Belgium during the cold war, and after the fall of the Soviet Union the Ukraine government offered the Mig that is now on display in the museum as a gift to the people of Belgium in response to that incident.

One other interesting story from the museum that I did not know about related to the V2 rockets that Germany as launching at London near the end of WWII. These rockets were wildly inaccurate, but the point of them was to simply rain destruction wherever they landed, and they were nigh on impossible to stop. The explosion they provided was so large that any aircraft close enough to shoot them down ended up enveloped in the blast. Pilots began to get creative, and took to flying alongside the bombs and using the wings of their aircraft to nudge the wings on the rocket to send it off course. This worked for awhile, until the Germans found out and began putting trigger devices on the wings. Then the airplanes would try to fly directly ahead of the rockets and create enough turbulence through maneuvering to again knock them off course. The real breakthrough came in the form of proximity missiles, which the United States developed near the end of the war (I did not know about this), so that ground anti-air guns could shoot at the V2 and only need to come close, rather than score a direct hit. By the end of the war, the American units put in charge of defending Belgium were experience a 100% intercept rate against these attacks.

By early afternoon everyone but me had had just about enough history. So we took a little break for lunch, and everyone scattered to one of the few food places in the neighborhood. I stopped at a little place that has pre-made refrigerated food, and found Sasha and Barb already inside. You pick out what you want from the cooler, then take it home with you or stay there and they will heat it up and serve it to you in a small dining area in the back. So I was able to have some spaghetti for lunch for only a couple Euros.

After lunch we went back to the Arch. In the exhibition hall across the way from the military history museum is Autoworld, a museum devoted to all things cars. This was less interesting to me, but more up the alley of much of the rest of our group. We only spent an hour here, but there were a few neat sights and some cool historic vehicles on display.

Afterwards we headed back to our neighborhood with the rest of the evening free. We got off the subway near a market district so everyone who wanted to could buy some chocolates. I wandered around trying to find an H&M that my phone insisted was somewhere it wasn't, when I stumbled upon a used bookstore connected to an antique map store. I popped in and perused the collection for awhile. Eventually the old man running the place saw I was looking rather seriously, and came to help. I ended up picking up a map of Belgium and Holland from the early 19th century, after the Netherlands had gained their independence but before Belgium got hers (she belonged to the Dutch for those 15 years).

I was going to slum it on my own back at the hotel, but one of the girls came and asked me to go out with their group. So I joined about 6 others and we went to a little Italian cafe not far from the hotel. I had lasagna for dinner, and just realized now that means I had Italian twice in one day. After returning to relax for a little bit, I joined Sasha and Barb and about a third of the students in another trek down to the town hall to look at everything lit up once more (many of them hadn't been down at night yet). And that more or less ended our Brussels experience.