Feeling just a bit over-warred, we trudged into town once more. Why subject ourselves to this torture? Like a dose of bad medicine, it had to be done. Perhaps like moths drawn to flames or watching train wrecks we are powerless to prevent, we bought a combined museum ticket this morning, took a deep breath, and plunged once more into the abyss for one last dose of it all before turning our minds to happier things.
We’ve had enough of war to last us quite a while, and we are already actually quite well informed, but there’s more to the story than death and destruction, and it's be nice to discover a little of the few thousand years of history that tend to be lost in the annuls of the last hundred. It is always a shock to see that “destroyed” in the war means “not a building in the town still standing”, yet strangely encouraging to discover that a town has had a bit of practice at building from the ground up.
Apparently Ypers is known as the “City of Cats” appropriately perhaps, but not as a result of the nine lives it has experienced, but as a result of a tradition which grew in the middle ages, of flinging cats, which were thought to be the instruments of the devil (are thy not?) from the town belfry. For that reason alone, the town shall be held very dear to our hearts.
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