July 1: Long way to Saint Mihiel ("are we there yet..?") and... a shower!

A day with not so much First World War but with a lot of living ones.

The approximate route: Pfetterhouse -> Rechesy -> Delle -> Belfort -> Frahier-et-Chatebier? -> Saint-Sauveur (Luxeuil-les-Bains) -> Fontaine-les-Luxeuil -> somewhere at a crossroad -> Bains-les-Bains.

The Harvard map of the trenches had a big star indicating an important battlefield at Saint-Mihiel so I decided to went straight there to try to win some time. The plan was to reach Saint-Mihiel today but that didn't happened...

But everything from the start...

The day started at the fish pond that grew to be like second home to me after spending three nights there (sleeping next to water is great because you can wash yourself and your clothes). I packed my stuff, put the knee supports and walked to the end of Pfetterhouse where I started to hitch-hike to Belfort (decided that splitting the road and choosing bigger and possibly more well known towns would give me higher chances to stop a car). First car - a nice man. He talked French and German, so we managed to exchange more than few words. He dropped me off at Rechesy at a cross-road next to a bus stop. Just after few minutes a man driving to Delle stopped. Since I had no idea where Delle was, I went with him. He took me to his house because his wife spoke German and he wanted to make sure he knew where to take me. He drove me to a bus stop from which I walked to the outskirts of the town (which wasn't that near).

Few minutes with my thumb up and Christian stopped. He told me a bit about the history of Alsace-Lorraine (about the ping-pong between Germany and France) and also gave me a French Michelin guidebook with history and visiting sites, and maps of this region! He also showed me the village from which the first French solder came who died in the war (it was either from Les-Pres or Sous-Le-Rang - sometimes it's hard to figure out where one village starts and the other ends). We drew across many beautiful places and I felt probably as a kid does in Disney land - widely open eyes and a smile that was hard to contain.

Sadly, I don't remember where this place is

Typical small village main street

Christian took a spin around Belfort to show me the town. The name sounded quite English for me, but he explained that the name means "beautiful" "fortress" and the town centre is indeed like that.

Belfort was a stronghold from historical times. During the beginning of the war it was a starting point for two French attacks towards Mulhausen in an attempt to push the solidifying front. It housed two infantry divisions (7th Army) and one cavalry division (1th Army. Headquarters at Epinal). 7th Army was a part of "plan XVII" (similar to German Schlieffen plan. Composed in 1913 it was a French offensive in Alsace-Lorraine) and their objective was to cover the mobilization of Belfort, the railroads to Paris and the pass roads of the High Vosges (from Col de la Schlucht on southwards).

Throughout the war Belfort remained an artillery-on-alert point which could attack the front when needed. (Mulhausen had similar function on the German side.)

Christian dropped me of at a perfect place to hitchhike. After few minutes Bernard stopped and drove me few kilometres (I am not sure about the exact place. It was a crossroad). The sun was hitting as never-ending wave of heat arrows and taking out some water out of my body with every hit. Even standing with my thumb up was hard. After some time, a car stopped. Again I had no idea where he was going, so of course I went with him. I had no idea about the roads we were driving so my eyes where wide open. The man said his name, but sadly I don't remember it. Strangely, he said: "I'm Arab. That's ok with you?". I had no idea why it wouldn't be. While we drove, everything looked so beautiful. He drove out of his way to drop me of at Saint-Sauveur. From there, I walked to and across Luxeuil-les-Bains.

Typical small village church (Saint-Sauveur).

Both of the villages looked very beautiful. And the stream next to the church had many perfect places to spend the night.

One of the clearest streams I had seen through all of the trip (Le Breuchin)

Luxeuil-Les-Bains

Loved the architecture there.

Abbey. The flag in the balcony isn't English (as I thought). It's a flag with Templar cross

Saint Colomban abbey

Don't know what this building is, but it's beautiful (just look at the balcony and the tower - fairy-tale-like!)

There are no trees in the streets. I couldn't get used to this the whole trip

Luxeuil-Les-Bains has numerous archaeological sites evidencing the old history of the village (some of the sites dates back to Gallo-Roman times). During the First World War the famous La Fayette escadrille was organised here (near the front on the edge of the Vosges mountains).

The cultural life of the village seems to be rich. There are museums and I stumbled across some kind of music festival.

     

There aren't many cars after 6 p.m. driving in France. It gets even worse at 7 p.m. But I took my chances. After few minutes on the road, a very nice girl stopped (Emily, if I remember correctly). She was working as a teacher in French Polynesia and currently visiting her family. We talked a bit about her work. Due to the particulars of French Polynesia, working there is hard - every day feels like a vocation, the locals act as is nothing else exists in the world and education isn't seen as a value by the locals (why should it? They have all the resources they need to live and they have time to spend with their family. They are happy. Even if their lifestyle does not fit the "Western standards").

She dropped me of at Fontaine-les-Luxeuil. She was so nice that she looked for a shade so that it wouldn't be so hot for me.

Fontaine-les-Luxeuil was relatively far from the front. Nevertheless, there was a German prison camp established here and the place still bears the inscription "Police Station". Also, as in every French village, there is a monument for the fallen for France.

I stood next to the church of Fontaine-les-Luxeuil for some time until one women walked out of a shop and offered to give me a ride to a crossroad leading to Bains-les-Bains. The air conditioner was a blessing. After a short drive and  talk about French language (the difficulties of learning it, to be more exact), I got out to the melting heat again. It was a crossroad with one way leading to Bains-les-Bains. Then, a BMW coupé stopped. The drive was short and quick. The driving reminded me of the French movie "Taxi" and I absolutely loved it.

Bais-les-Bais - a small, green village which also has a nice small and a relatively young name (the name prescribed by decree in 1892 September 9). A park is the first thing that welcomed me (I later found out that some oaks there remember all the wars of the 20th century). There were many elderly people walking here; however, my guess, it wasn't because of the old age of the village (dating Roman times), but it was due to the mineral springs that this place is known for (after all, they were used by the same Romans who settled here too). Interestingly, despite being situated in this continental part of Europe, this small village was destroyed by an earthquake in 1682.

The almost empty streets and green colour of vegetation felt inviting and calm. If only I could walk normally without the need to sink my head in water and drink a well dry... Even with my body giving up to physical needs which were arouse by not-so-welcoming-for-travel weather conditions, my brain and eyes were able to catch and admire the small architecture (too bad that my camera didn't caught it...).

While trying to get out of the village, which started to feel like a never-ending network of small streets, I stumbled across a plate

"A TOUS NOS
COMBATTANTS
DE 1914
A NOS JOURS"

I continued to walk the streets trying to get out of the village and reach Poussay before dark (my desperate attempt to do the impossible) and unexpectedly (after all, I had no idea what I was going to see) I entered the main square. Next to the square, there is a Roman bath - a stone building built in 1845 by Louis Gahon.

In the square stood the monument for the fallen

"1914 - 1918
A
NOS MORTS"

 This solder was a reminder of the fallen during other wars too

"GUERRE D'INDOCHINE
NOEL BREGIER 1948"

All the dead are equalized. In time and space the same. In culture..?

I continued my long, tiring walk outside. At some point, I felt as if I was walking a maze - I got lost with my GPS (not the first time. That's the reason I prefer paper maps over GPS - you will never get lost with a paper map!). After walking the same street up and down few times, I managed to find my location and, what's more importantly, figure out where I needed to go. Up. Up. Right. Up. Straight. And I was finally here - the road to Poussay. It was about 8:30 p.m. The river of Bains-les-Bains was in the opposite end. The next river was about 3.5 km away. I knew I could manage that with some effort. But I was out of water and out of spirit - Bains-les-Bains was nice and beautiful, but walking across it irritated me a lot.

A dog, a woman and a shower

There was a house and a dog running in the yard. After standing next to road for an hour, I started to talk to the dog with the intention to make him bark, so that someone would come out and I could ask for some water. After ten minutes of talking to the small, jumpy and excited dog, he finally voiced his opinion on things (most probably me). A lady walked outside. I apologized for my limited French and asked for some water. She smiled, invited me to the yard, took my bottle and vanished in the house. Meanwhile I took my time with the dog (Koko was his name, as I later found out). After few minutes we were playing "catch the hand" - my objective was to catch one of his four hands-feet and his - one of mine with his teeth. The woman walked with my bottle now full and sat in the chair to look at us. I love dogs. Grew up with them, so I appreciate every chance I get to play with them and enjoy the life (dogs are great at doing that). We enjoyed one another about 1 - 1.5 hours or something like that. Koko was tired, but his desire to continue our game was bigger than his fatigue. The side-effect of our play was that my clean clothes (I washed them in the fish pond) lost their black colour and turned to be brownish-dirt. The woman smiled all so warmly at me and offered me to take a shower (and asked if I wanted to eat, if I had a place to sleep). I was reserved - to accept the generosity is harder than to offer it. After she reassured me for the n-th time that it was ok for me to take a shower, I humbly accepted it. My backpacks were left by the road and I went to take a shower. Even though I washed up myself at the fishpond (washed, not took a swim!), the water running from me was brown as if I was a car fresh from a rally track. I used my t-shirt as a sponge (2in1 - wash yourself while washing your clothes!). The shower felt amazing. I didn't realize how much my body needed the water. That strange chemical substance definitely is life. In more way than one. (Water + Trees = Life, or, more exactly, heterotrophic life forms).

After the shower, I thanked Pauline (hope I got that one right) thoroughly, gave her the most sincere and tight hug I managed and went to sleep with the cows.

The trip wasn't going the way I planned it at all. There weren't that many dead and I wasn't sleeping in places they slept, I wasn't foraging (not that there was anything to forage). And I met people. A lot of people. My tribute to the dead was starting to turn out to be a tribute to the living one. But maybe that wasn't that bad..? In the light of all the places I planed to visit, the memories of war and all the slaughtering that happens during it, the encounters with all these wonderful people turns out to be an ode to humanity. After all, the good living ones are the real reason why war is a part of "Theatre of the Absurd".

Goodnight.

My approximate route: