Brissac and Saumur

Saturday we walked around and discovered the town a little. We stopped in the tourist office and looked at their artist gallery. We made a lengthy visit to the church in Brissac-Quince, St. Vincente en Aubance. We saw a large gathering at the school, a party for the end of the school year.

Richard feeding the chickens

Saturday evening Jean-Marie and Marie-Helene took us to a free concert by Barbara Hendricks, an American opera singer who now lives in Holland. For this concert, she sang blues, but ended with several songs from the civil rights era, including “Strange Fruit”, a Billy Holiday song about lynching, which I had never heard performed.

On Sunday, we went to mass in the nearby village of Les Alleuds; it was well attended. Having read about a special event in the nearby city of Saumur, we headed for the military tank museum there. This museum includes 200 armored vehicles, from Europe and beyond, starting in World War I.

Cynthia and a Tiger Tank

The German Tiger tank was perhaps the most impressive, and one of the largest.  There were people playing tabletop war games, and several Germans in historical bright red military officer costumes. We at some point hit the overload line in terms of how many vehicles we could look at and absorb. We learned from the Germans that the big event was not at the tank museum, but a reenactment of various wars at the cavalry museum. These are similar to civil war reenactments held in the USA, with firing of blank shells in rifles and cannons.

 The first reenactment that we saw was from the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, in which the Prussian soldiers were obviously better armed and trained than the French troops of that time. In the real events of 1870, the Prussian victory was swift and complete.

The French had the colorful Zouave uniforms with red pants, while the Prussians had more conventional blue and white uniforms; their helmets had a large spike on top.

We also saw some reenactments of World War II, including the Normandy invasion, tanks, and machine guns.

 We spoke to a young man who was a reenactor; he liked WWII and the British, so he joined a group of British paratroopers stationed  in North Africa, as part of a communications unit.  He indicated that one chooses which army and which unit to join.  He buys the uniform and equipment for that unit, and studies the history of the unit.  Most of the reenactors in France are French, as one would expect.

We took the scenic route home along the Loire river, through many small and picturesque villages.

Monday was a rest day, in which we went to the store, and reviewed our pile of tourist information. We had a glass of wine with our neighbors, and admired their garden.