By Train Through Former Battlefields In A Newly Troubled Europe
War memorial at the Gare de L’Est, Paris.
This post is an extract of my latest article in The New European. It’s published in the current issue, and reflects on a train journey through some of Europe’s former war zones at a time of fears for the future of peace in Europe.
That morning Paris was slowly waking up: shops still shuttered; some of the metal slats coloured with graffiti, which always seem to my eye to have superior artistic qualities to that seen in other capitals around the world.
Here and there lights shone through the gloom of a February morning – this was no springtime in Paris – as cafes opened for early trade. Schoolchildren were already hurrying to lessons. I was on my way to the Gare de l’Est to catch an early train to Mannheim in Germany.
The journey took me though territory that France and Germany fought over in 1870, and twice in the 20th century. There were reminders of these past wars at the station: plaques commemorating the tens of thousands of French Jews taken east to Nazi concentration camps between 1942 and 1944; memorials to railway workers killed fighting for France.
You can read the rest of the article here.
