The last weekend in August we headed down into Mons for a special event, "Tanks in Town", and frankly the title is pretty self explanatory. Every year the locals dress up in authentic WWII clothing and ride through the streets on tanks and other military vehicles up to the Grand Place. The event is held every year to celebrate the liberation of Mons by the Americans during WWII. We found a spot on the sidewalk right on the route the tanks were taking to where we could literally reach out and touch them. We watched as the tanks drove by and roughed up the cobble stone streets; we just couldn't believe the number of original tanks they had for the parade. At the end they parked all the vehicles in the Grand Place so that people could take a closer look and even sit in some of them. Keith told me later that many of these types of parades are subsidized by the Belgian government to help keep them running and maintain the cultural heritage in the local communities. Pretty cool. The funniest part was seeing all these guys dressed in U.S. WWII uniforms only to hear them speaking French, Belgian impersonating Americans, who would have thought?
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3 comments:
Did they throw out any cliche American sayings? Anything about credit cards and the like :) ?
I still think it is kind of funny that it is called the Grand Place...not very fancy sounding. Maybe next trip you can go to the Super Thing or the Magnanimus It.
I think I want to plan a visit. But I want to plan it for right when the are colliding the first particles at the CERN. I want to be standing right in the center of the 17 mile loop when that puppy goes off.
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