A number of years ago, a friend and I decided to take this week long dash through some European countries we had not visited in a while and to see some friends – a week long journey of planes, trains, buses, trams, boats to the UK, Belgium and the Netherlands. Why we chose a week when Europe is often bitter and cold is a mystery…. but off we went anyway into the early November gloom to eat and drink our way across the days.

In London, we had pub lunches and visited the queen – well, the outside of her house anyway. In Amsterdam, we rode canal boats and drank lots of coffee and hot chocolate to keep ourselves warm.  And yes, I got in a giant clog. In Brussels, we ate fries (or chips for my English friends) with mayonnaise, drank far too much beer (the whole special glasses thing for special beers – not sure I’ll ever recover – was like getting a sort of present every time I ordered a new kind) and of course devoured the street vendor waffles.

On the morning of Veterans’ Day or Remembrance Day as it’s called overseas, we got up at dawn to spend a day in the beautiful medieval town of Bruges or Brugge – depending on which language you favor in Belgium.

It was foggy, cold and maybe a bit rainy and we were certainly half asleep for the train ride.  Like small children woken from a nap, we  got off the train, disorientated, and  took the bus to the center of town to start walking around.

In London, we’d seen all the paper poppies for sale. World War I and II happened mostly far from our American shores. Bombs didn’t drop on our houses, most people didn’t disappear by the dark of night (not discounting the internment of Japanese Americans) and the U boats we only knew after the fact how close they were to our shores.

My mother’s birthday is in December and she remembers hearing about Pearl Harbor on the radio, she gathered peach pits for charcoal and had a ration booklet. My uncles served and one was shot down and spent a long time in a German Prison Camp.

That morning, the thing we heard were the drums and then we saw the crowds – all ages, waving flags, cheering, smiling, lining every street and few people deep and then we saw the parade and then by accident like the greatest of travel memories, we were marching in the very back of the parade – a sombre occasion to be honored but there was so celebration in the air too.

Remembrance Day is about remembering and honoring the heroes that were lost to war but it’s also for all that lived on, communities that rebuilt and for the men who came home. It’s a celebration. Life can renew and the human spirit is more resilient than many ever realize.

And of all my travel memories, there’s something about this magical morning where I touched a part of history I was not really a part of except I was and I am. We all are. And that joy of marching to the beat of a drum,  to see a part of history honored and remembered, to have an ancient gentleman of a Vet smile and march along beside me – showing me how it was done and refusing to allow me to just walk beside him, demanding I march as well.

Of all the medieval cities of Europe, Bruges is a gem and retains her other worldly beauty. The fog stayed with us all day and in a place where you can wander off the main square and still hear the clopping tourist horse carts, it’s a time traveling place. It was a post 2000 morning, but it was also 1917, 1944, 1620, 1840 all at the same time – old and new memories blending together for just a moment when the best part of traveling happens, the traveler has a window into something so much bigger, larger than just one lifetime and remembers that with sadness, there can and always should  be joy side by side . Remember. Honor. Rebuild. Renew. Celebrate.