I still don’t have a visa, but tomorrow is supposed to bring a telephone call to the associate dean here from the HEAD of Lux immigration, so apparently I have a chance to get one. Got a whole pile of documents from the US today, proving, at least to me, that I was born and that I have a PhD. Also that in the last 7 years I have not made it onto the national register of sex offenders. You can’t have everything. We will see if all this impresses the guardians of the gates of Lux.
In the mean- or downtime, I have been active! Yes! I saw happy children who don’t know yet that they are not supposed to smile at strangers. They were here, way after Easter, I don’t know why, for an Easter egg hunt–which they had never heard of–on the chateau grounds. They seemed to be having great fun.
Last weekend went to Bastogne, the city held by American troops and surrounded by Germans during the Battle of the Bulge, Dec.-Feb. 1944-45. Actually, it was only surrounded for a few days, before crazy George Patton drove his troops through the Germans and opened a corridor to the city. Then he held the corridor despite massive German counter-attacks from both sides. It made me feel proud for a while to be an American; the citizen-soldiers faced massive German superiority in men, artillery, and tanks–yes, the last German punch, but with men who had been in combat before vs. essentially untested Americans. Our lines buckled but never broke, and there was some heroic fighting. And this while Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin were meeting at Yalta. Roos. had to ask Stalin to step up a planned attack on the Eastern Front in order to relieve pressure on our guys . . . and you wondered why we made key concessions (not really concessions; we didn’t have anything or any territory to concede) to the Soviets at Yalta! That was only one of several good reasons to do so.
The museum at Bastogne and the memorial to US casualties there did move me. 80,000 on our side, 100,000 on the German side.
Got to drive the dean’s almost new BMW X3 SUV today. Nice, but after Das the Auto, I’ll take Das. Sticky on the roads, it is.
But then had pate de foie gras and sweet wine with the dean. I know about the geese and how they get stuffed in order to get them to produce the pate, but it is so good on fresh bread, with a little onion preserves on top. You have to have this with sweet wine to do it properly a la francais. Man, sign me back up for another tour here! Well, maybe not, esp. if I don’t get a visa. Stay tuned for the latest hot news!
