Report # 2

8/10/2002

Hi Everyone,

    We're in Paris now; got here Friday evening, checked into the hostel, had dinner and several of us hit the nearest internet place in the Latin Quarter. Our scouts had the time of their lives in London. You would be impressed by how quickly our scouts figured out how to get around London on the Underground. Most of the boys took the tour bus around town on Monday morning. Then small groups scattered out around the town to see the things they found of interest. I thought the best overall remark was Chris Poats assessment that "London is just like New York except it has fewer trash cans."

            The older guys, Keegan; Chris Bond, Josh, Jeremy, and Peter first attacked the Tower of London, as did almost everyone else. They also went to the London Dungeon and Westminster. A beautiful waitress, or as they would say, "a really hot" waitress, served them lunch in the Princess of Whales Pub. This mostly college age group has been challenged to rate the ladies in each of the countries we visit. Keegan brought his laptop on the trip. The laptop actually serves several purposes. He uses the hard drive to store digital images that he and other scouts take with their digital cameras, and he has quite a few movie DVD's to play at odd hours of the day and night. Keegan is keeping a written journal of the trip on his laptop too. There's the original version that only a select few can read, and there's the edited version for parents and scoutmasters.

            Gary (adult) and Andrew started out with a whole group of younger scouts, but quickly lost them! The younger scouts didn't have the patience to wait for these two inquisitive people who took much too long examining and reading things. Among the younger scouts, Danny, Bobby, Jeff, Matt and Brian took off on their own to Piccadilly Circus under the lure of the Tower Records store they saw on the while on the tour bus. The story they tell is that they got to see a lady fined 5 pounds ($8) and kicked off the train for not having a valid ticket. They also visited the #1 rated man's loo in London on Baker Street. Gary and Andrew, in the meantime, found the British Museum, where they met scouts from Norway, Lancashire and Bohemia (Czech).

Shirley, Justin, Jimmy, Aaron, Mark and David had lunch at the Red Lion Pub, and saw Buckingham Palace as did almost everyone else. Shirley found a talkative English Policeman to talk to for an hour or so in Hyde Park while the boys cooled their heels.  Eventually, this group wound up in the original Hard Rock Cafe for dinner.  Other people, like the Schneider's and Aaron, Sean, Jimmy and Mark found their way to St. Pauls either the first or second day in London.  There they climbed almost 700 steps to the top.  The Schneider's also managed to buy theater tickets to see The Complete Works of Shakespeare, Abridged, and Michael put on impromptu street shows in Piccadilly Circus (juggling and doing other tricks).  Several scouts found the Easy Internet Cafe to send email messages home and to play computer games.

            Ben, Oktawian, Ryan, Chris Poats, Bryan found the Imperial War Museum on Monday.  Then on Tuesday, Aaron, Sean, Jimmy and Mark went there to see the trenches of WWI and the Nazi bombardment of London during WWII.  This latter group also decided that the base fare of 1.20 pounds ($2) for a taxi was cheap enough for them to ride around in style a couple of times!  They discovered the joys of talking to cab drivers too.

Back on the ship, scouts from Kenya taught us a few words of Swahili, and we traded scout patches for some hand made African souvenirs.  Oktawian and Ryan surprised everyone when they returned to the ship Monday night.  They both had gotten their ears pierced!  It was now my job to buy cotton balls for them to use to apply antiseptic.  While all the scouts were seeing London's great tourist attractions, I discovered the Jewish Museum and got to visit the oldest synagogue in England, known as the Bevis Marks synagogue. The museum is located in Camden Town and the synagogue in Aldgate.  It was built in 1701 by Portuguese Jews who had escaped the Inquisitions in Spain and later Portugal.  I learned a little history too.  The first record of Jews in England dates to the time of the Norman Conquest almost a thousand years ago.  Edward I expelled the Jews in the 13th century, and after an absence of 350 years, in the mid 1600's, Jews from Amsterdam petitioned Cromwell to come to England.  These Jews were the descendents of those who fled Spain and Portugal.  Cromwell let them return for economic reasons.  It was this community of Spanish and Portuguese Jews that built the synagogue, and it has been in continuous use since 1701.

            There are two major European Jewish cultures called Sephardim and Ashkenazim.  People who follow the former are mostly from Mediterranean countries, while the latter come from Germany and other Eastern European countries.  There are significant differences in customs and practices between the two, and I had not known that the Jews that settled in England where Sephardim.

One evening on the ship, Keegan was sitting in the dining area talking to a group of younger scouts.  A few other scouts came by and asked what was happening.  I overheard Josh tell them that Keegan was "putting on a Sternberg!"  That was a great compliment as it meant Keegan could hold their attention with an interesting story full of facts and information.

Our motor coach arrived from Holland Wednesday evening.  The driver called the ship to let me know he had parked temporarily near the London Arena.  I walked over and guided him back to park the bus on the docks near the Lord Amory, our ship.  In the morning we loaded our gear on the bus, bid farewell to Tony and Josie, our English hosts, and headed to the port city of Dover.  There we caught the P&O Stena Line ferry to Calais, and drove south into Normandy.  We had sandwiches for dinner at a rest stop enroute before getting to the hostel in Bayeaux.  However, our hostel breakfast was substantial.  We had French rolls, pastries, a whole wheel of brie, croissants, ham, salami, cereal, coffee and tea.

After breakfast, we drove to Omaha Beach and the American cemetery.  It was an enormously moving experience.  I explained to our scouts that the Americans who landed, fought and died here on D-Day were 18 and 19 years old, like Chris, Peter, Josh and Keegan.  I also told our scouts that if it were not for the heroism of those soldiers almost sixty years ago, our lives might be much different today.  They would not be Boy Scouts, and I would definitely not be their Scoutmaster.  Everyone understood me.

After Omaha Beach, we drove to Point du Hoc, an incredible place where our naval guns blasted German artillery positions high on the ocean cliffs.  The shell craters, bunkers and concrete artillery emplacements made for an exciting place for our scouts to explore.  It was definitely a highlight of their trip so far.  Then we headed to a little town called St. Marie Eglise where paratroopers from the 82nd and 101st airborne divisions landed unintentionally.  One soldier's chute got caught on the roof of the church in the middle of the town, and he hung there as the Germans blasted his comrades falling out of the sky.  There's a neat museum with lot's of American WWII artifacts, including a glider that the paratroopers flew in.

Before leaving for Paris, we had lunch in a small French restaurant right there in the middle of this tiny town in Normandy, and the boys had their first go at reading a French menu.  Then we boarded the bus for the trip to Paris which I'll tell you about next time.

Philip Sternberg