This morning, the Normandy Scholars gathered to debrief on our time in France. As you will have seen from the students’ posts, we have traversed Paris neighborhoods on foot, from monument to museum to memorial, from the medieval to the modern. We have explored Strasbourg, from the curving glass façade of the train station to the half-timbered houses and winding streets of the historic Petite-France quarter. We have ventured into the Vosges mountains, sometimes reminding us of the Smokies until we arrived at the Nazi concentration camp Natzweiler-Struthof atop one the peaks, or the millennial walled mountain town of Obernai.
We have experienced how sites and institutions vary based on their resources, goals, and orientations. Concretely for us, this has meant: Are the visitors around us speaking French, or other foreign languages like us? Are translations available, and are they of good quality? Are places well kept up or disregarded?
Over the next few days, our reflections on France will be published here, while we begin our second leg of the course in Morocco. You can also follow along live via our Instagram @utk_normandyscholars. Students will be “taking over” the account in turns for the rest of the trip.
