By telling us your country of residence we are able to provide you with the most relevant travel insurance information.
Please note that not all content is translated or available to residents of all countries. Contact us for full details.
Shares
The American War cemetery in Normandy, France sits like a vast and hopeful oasis on the side of cliffs overlooking the beach. While it is a place where there once was immense loss, the white marble crosses reflect the sun and stand side-by-side, in peace together with the resilient waves crashing below. They will remain forever, a constant source of comfort and honor. I now stood at the entrance of the German La Cambe cemetery just outside of Normandy, a few miles south and much further from the beach. Hidden by the surrounding forests, the black stone doorway loomed over me like a long-lost nightmare. It was much less welcoming, but I was still curious about the air of solemn silence that surrounded me. All of the black crosses and gravestones stood coldly before me in scattered clusters, seeming to huddle away under and behind trees. The moss-covered gravestones looked heavy and jaded, as if they had been dealing with their own shame for quite some time. Not only did they look as if they had never seen the light of sun, but I don’t think they wanted to. The abrupt crosses before me downplayed the glorification of soldiers fighting for their country. Standing on the damp pavement covered in soggy leaves, I looked over to the guest book, which above bore a plea for people to use only words of empathy and to refrain from defaming the crosses. These were the bad guys, but like all human beings, I know how it feels to be an outcast, ashamed, even regretful. I knew I could not judge in this moment. What would I have done? Would I have been brave? Perhaps I would have stood in fear like the crosses now before me? It was in the German cemetery, not the American, that I was overcome with a sense of being human that I have never experienced before. Reality check. These were the ‘bad guys’, I realized. But in times of war, if you look past the conflict at hand, you realize that we are all just people. We are all human, and we all will act as such. Being in a place that so honestly displayed this allowed me to connect the tragedies of World War II to my own present-day life, and for the first time ever, I felt sympathy for the German soldiers buried under my feet. These are the questions that traveling forces us to ask ourselves. Going to new places takes the empty words from the page of a history book, brings them to life and makes them fathomable. Even in the bleak, damp, and depressing moments of travel, we are reminded in the surrealist ways of our humanity. It is in traveling that we are able to step out of the confines of our existence, onto foreign soil, compelled to free any preconceived ideas and to feel our toes in the sand. Best of all, traveling takes off our blindfolds, and inevitably allows us to see.