Dear Renderousity friends, I apologize for my long absence. I made my last post in August of 2015 just before we went off on a camping vacation. I thought I would come back and post photos when we were home again. But, I got caught up in life. My husband decided to get a different job and I decided to put more effort in to finishing my integration exams. Now I am happy to report that my husband did find a wonderful new job and I have finally taken and passed all five of the integration exams I needed. Yipee!!! I hope to be a little more active again here. I did nothing more than sneak an occasional peek and maybe add a favorite these last 5 months. I did not make any comments and I am pretty sure I missed birthdays and special occasions celebrated by you. Anyway, enough excuses…forward to the good stuff. I will try to post a few vacation photos now. The first day of our vacation we drove from the Netherlands to Switzerland. We stopped for fuel and lunch in Luxembourg. We also took a couple of hours to visit the American Military Cemetery and memorial located by Luxembourg. This cemetary was created after WWII and is where General George S. Patton is buried. It was a beautiful place donated by Luxenbourg to honor the fallen soldiers who fought and died to free their little nation from Germany. The Americans created and maintain it beautifully. Each soldier has a white marble cross or Star of David. General Patton has the same because he did not want to have anything fancier than the men who fought for him. His cross is at the top of the gentle slope where many of his men are buried. There is a small and beautiful monument chapel and several huge stone walls with the names of the soldiers and big marble maps of the various battles. There is also a small house/museum where I believe the curator lives and where some of the personal stories and medals earned are displayed. The whole area had a peaceful feeling of reverence and honor. The stories were very interesting and the curator had even more stories and information which he was happy to share. He also told us about the German cemetary close by that the US had created and maintained for some years after the war ended because Germany could not do it at that time. So we went there as well after we were done at the American one. It was very interesting to see the difference. The German one was maintained, but in a way it was also like a forgotten place. Michel told me that many Germans do not want to remember because they feel a national shame about that era in their history. The curator told us that although the US did create the cemetery with a cross (in the German style of burial) for every four graves they did not use the expensive white marble. And later when the Germans took over they created a mass grave for many others whose remains had been buried in several other cemeteries around Luxenbourg. Luxenbourg had donated enough extra ground there for them to make one cemetery rather than many, but Luxembourgers were not happy about the fact that the Germans put all the other remains in one mass grave. It was an interesting and worthwhile stop. I created a little montage of the two cemeteries. The German entrance and interior are in the bottom left part of the picture. The rest of the photos are from the American cemetery.