In January 2015 our own Sam Mulberry and Chris Gehrz will again take Bethel students to Europe for a three-week travel course, HIS230L World War I. It’s a perfect time, as Europe is about to start an ongoing 100th anniversary commemoration of the war (fought between 1914 and 1918), so we’ll no doubt encounter lots of special exhibits and events during our time abroad.
Our tentative schedule, a photo gallery from the 2013 trip, and links to posts from that first iteration of the course are below. But if you’re a current student and would like to learn more, we have two events coming up in early April:
- We’ll have a table at the 2015 Interim Abroad Fair — Wednesday, April 2nd, 11am-2pm in the Brushaber Commons Atrium. Sam and Chris will be there, along with some of the students from the 2013 trip.
- Then we’ll have an information session about the class on Thursday, April 10, 10:20-11:00am in CLC 109, also featuring the two instructors and some student-veterans from the first iteration of the course.
And, of course, you can always e-mail Chris or Sam with questions!
Tentative Schedule
January 5: depart MSP for London
January 6-13: London — including visits to the Imperial War Museum (completely renovated for the WWI Centenary), St Paul’s Cathedral, the Tate Britain, and the Museum of London, a walking tour of war memorials in Central London, a night at the theatre to see War Horse, and a day trip to Oxford to learn about C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien’s experiences of the war. You’ll also have plenty of time to see other sites in and around London, like Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, Kensington Palace, the Churchill War Rooms, the Tower of London, and the Tate Modern. (Note that you’re responsible for any additional sightseeing and travel costs not included in the cost of the travel course itself.)
January 14-16: Western Front — our local guide, Carl Ooghe, will take us to battlefields, memorials, and cemeteries near Ypres, Belgium and The Somme, France. While we’re in Ypres, we’ll attend Last Post, a nightly ritual going back over ninety years, when Belgian firefighters play bugles at Menin Gate in honor of fallen British and Commonwealth soldiers.
January 17-20: Paris — with stops at the Invalides (home to Napoleon’s tomb and France’s military history museum), the Eiffel Tower, Versailles, and the Armenian cathedral that served as a gathering place for refugees from the 20th century’s first genocide. You’ll also have a day off to use your Paris pass to visit any other site in France’s capital (e.g., the Cathedral of Notre Dame, the Louvre, the Musée d’Orsay) or you can join your instructors on a day trip to the great Gothic cathedral of Chartres.
January 21-25: Munich — we’ll consider the aftermath of the war from headquarters in Munich, the southern German city where Adolf Hitler returned after Armistice. We’ll take a walking tour of Hitler’s Munich, learn about the war’s impact on modern art at the Pinakotheke der Moderne, and close with a visit to the concentration camp memorial at Dachau. (You’ll also have a day to yourself to visit nearby sites like Nuremberg, Salzburg, or Neuschwanstein.)
January 26: fly from Munich to MSP
Photos from our January 2013 WWI Trip
Links from 2013 Posts
- Watch Our WWI Presentation (linking to video of a presentation by Profs. Gehrz and Mulberry and students Sarah Ouverson and Annie Berglund, reflecting on their experiences on the WWI trip)
- Student Thoughts on the WWI Trip (a sampling of student reactions to the trip)
- WWI: Week One Update (London) (during downtime in January 2013, Prof. Gehrz blogged from Europe with some photos and preliminary reflections on each leg of the trip)
- WWI: Week Two Update (The Western Front)
- WWI: Week Three Update (Paris)
- WWI: Final Update (Munich)
CC 4th 
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