Cyrano delves deep into the world of Napoleonic battlefields in preparation for an eventual visit, and more ~
Jim Owczarski, 08 September 2016
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People are incessantly telling me I’m missing the point. (ed note – he frequently is, but usually about other things)
They wonder how someone can visit Paris and prefer the Army Museum to the Louvre — pace those areas given over to David — or would rather spend time crawling over an Old Vineyard in Bohemia rather than sitting in a coffee house in Vienna two hours to the south.
They even have a word for what I love to do, viz., “dark tourism”. I suspect it’s not intended as a compliment.
But I, and I am assuredly not alone, am obsessed with Napoleonic battlefields. I read about them, watch movies about them, play as many games about them as I can lay my hands on, and, far less frequently than I would like, visit them. I’ve been to Waterloo twice, Austerlitz once, and, having spent this Summer taking my son to middle-American water parks, am determined that next Summer will bring a visit to Jena-Austerstadt. The management has asked me to share my own journey to Jena as well as talk about those conflict simulations that take up the campaign and its battles.
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