La Grande Vadrouille ENG

Our journey north continues, kilometers are adding up on the odometer, we’re now at 26,700 km since we left on July 31st last year. The days are getting longer and longer. The first light of day appears around 4 a.m., and true darkness doesn’t arrive until about 11 p.m.  We really can't forget to close the blinds! As for the temperatures, they’re still a bit chilly for our liking. It’s true that we’ve now crossed the 57th parallel, but we still wouldn’t mind a few extra degrees. Still, we entered the Baltic countries under beautiful sunny skies, starting with Lithuania, the first of the three on our route. As soon as we crossed the border, we headed straight for the Baltic coast without stopping in Vilnius, the capital, because we wanted to make the most of the good weather with outdoor activities rather than city visits. We did have to make a “small” detour though, because the most direct road would have taken us through Kaliningrad, a Russian territory. Not exactly recommended t...

We had learned about it in history class, watched films and documentaries, and heard or read testimonies—but none of that could truly prepare us for visiting the Auschwitz camp. We both hesitated before making the visit, knowing it would deeply affect us. Is it really necessary to see all of this? Should such a place become a tourist attraction? Why willingly expose ourselves to the pain of the past when, in the present, the goal is rather to feel good? For us, the duty of remembrance answers all of these questions. We simply could not come so close without stopping to honor the memory of the 1.3 million people who died behind those walls, to see with our own eyes what human beings are capable of. Even though we can never come close to the suffering, fear, and misery they endured, standing ourselves behind those walls and barbed wire remains, in our view, a human duty toward those who were (and still are) treated inhumanely. One of the things that struck us most during this visit w...