Clearfield Students Join German Teacher for Western European Tour

CLEARFIELD – A group of 22 Clearfield Area Junior-Senior High School students recently returned home from what for most might be a once-in-a-lifetime tour of western Germany through the Alps with German teacher Barb Simpson.

On the 10-day tour, students also crossed the German border to visit the small country of Luxembourg and eastern France. And then they capped off their tour leaving for the snow-covered Swiss Alps in the Bernese Oberland region of Switzerland.

Students departed from Clearfield on June 13 and arrived the next day in Mainz, located in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate, in Germany, with Simpson and her husband, Ben, who also had other adult chaperones accompanying them.

Simpson has done all of her student tours through EF Educational Tours, a reputable student-focused tour company based in Cambridge, Mass.

Her students were greeted in Mainz by their tour director, a 29-year-old German student, Ruben Grimm (or Courroux when translated into French). He is currently studying history, geography and English.

First, students visited the Gutenberg Museum, one of the oldest printing museums in the world. The most-prized pieces displayed are the original 42-line Bibles dating from the 1450’s.

These Bibles are considered the first-ever printed books using Gutenberg’s technique. Up until 1455, Bibles were hand-written by monks and the process took as long as 20 years.

“They were so beautiful,” recalled Simpson. “… They have been so well-preserved and are 500, 600 years old. These are probably the oldest books that these students have ever seen in their lives.”

On Day 3 students boarded for a three-hour cruise along the Rhine River from Koblenz to St. Goar. They cruised past the Loreley Rock Cliff that was shrouded in legend in a poem by Heinrich Heine.

Atop the river’s banks, students caught glimpses of castles in various stages of ruin and restoration every five to 10 minutes and collages of vineyards where people were working by hand in the steep, terraced hillsides.

Their cruise ship was joined on the Rhine by numerous barges and freighters carrying cargo and coal. “You don’t see the use of rivers like that here in America,” Simpson pointed out.

Before the trip, Simpson’s chaperone Sue Shaffner gave students a presentation on the Rhine River. She talked about how many ancestors came to America via the Rhine.

“They left Germany, and other countries, traveled the Rhine to the coast to get a ship crossing to America,” said Simpson. “So we were sort of tracing their steps but in the opposite direction.”

As well, students visited Castle Rheinfels to explore the largest castle on the Rhine. The erection of this castle began in 1245.

That afternoon students enjoyed a summer thrill during a luge ride down the hillside along the Rhine River. They became very competitive, according to Simpson, with Bison football center Dylan Fenton teaming up with her husband, Ben, to break the current-year’s track record to date.

She added that some riders speculated about what the possibility would be of building a similar track somewhere on the Rockton Mountain back home.

On Day 4 students left the Rhine Valley for the Valley of the Mosel. There, students visited the best-preserved medieval castle in all of Germany, Castle Eltz, along the Mosel River.

The castle is still owned and colonized by several descendants of the original families who lived there in the 12^th century, 33 generations ago.

It is also one of the only castles to the west of the Rhine that has never been destroyed.  Many of the furnishings and tapestries of the past eight centuries still remain in place, which made for a fascinating tour, Simpson said.

On Day 5 students traveled to Diekirch in Luxembourg for a self-guided tour of the World War II Military Museum. The museum displays thousands of exhibits, which include vehicles, weapons, uniforms and other military articles used by both the Germans and Allies alike during World War II.

Then, just outside of Luxembourg City, students visited the American Military Cemetery, with graves of the more than 5,000 American soldiers who were killed, mostly at the Battle of the Bulge and in the advance of the Rhine River.

Row after row of white crosses reminded them of the American cemetery at Omaha Beach on the north coast of France, the home of soldiers killed during the Normandy Invasion.

Students not only visited the grave of U.S. General George S. Patton Jr., where he was buried with his men, but also those of a dozen soldiers from back home.

Before the trip, Simpson’s chaperone Denny Shaffner, a former Clearfield school teacher and current president of the Clearfield County Historical Society, had researched soldiers who were buried in Luxembourg from Clearfield County.

“He had their names, ranks, location of their graves and a story about each of them,” she said. He also had arranged for students to have a private tour at the cemetery through the American Battle Monuments Commission.

On the crosses, the soldiers’ names and date of death are inscribed in the white marble. So for the students to better see and photograph the Clearfield County soldiers’ inscriptions on the cross grave markers, a guide rubbed a brown substance over to fill the lettering and then wiped it off to darken them.

At the base of each cross marking the burial place of a Clearfield County soldier, Shaffner had a different student place American and county flags. Afterward one student read the poem from World War I, “In Flanders Fields.”

According to Simpson, many soldiers buried here still haven’t been identified and their graves are marked as “unknown.” Research efforts continue today with the use of DNA to try to identify these men.

“Some graves only have a finger or an arm [of the soldier], but they are treated with the same respect as any other,” she said. “I was really impressed.”

On Day 6 students enjoyed sight-seeing in Trier, Germany’s oldest city, founded by the Romans under Caesar Augustus in 16 B.C.  There, they saw the Porta Nigra (Black Gate), St. Peter’s Cathedral and the Roman Baths.

In Trier, students toured the ancient Roman amphitheater, where gladiators battled, and prisoners fought wild beasts for the entertainment of the crowds 2,000 years ago.

Simpson fondly recalled that Sue Shaffner wanted students to have an especially neat experience here. With the amphitheater being similar to a football field only round, she organized a soccer game.

She donated her coat – despite the rainy and chilly weather – and it was wrapped in layers of plastic bags and then black electrical tape to make a home-made ball for the students to play with.

Clearfield’s soccer game lasted all but five minutes, shared Simpson with a light chuckle. An elementary school nearby was holding an outdoor program, and a teacher appeared on the hillside to bring it to a halt.

Because of the acoustics of the amphitheater, it had carried the enthusiasm in the students’ voices during their game. “At least they can say they got to play soccer in the Roman amphitheater,” Simpson said.

In her trip blog, Sue Shaffner admitted, “We were a bit noisy at the Roman amphitheater and I may have been the culprit.”

That day Clearfield students also bought an American football and decided to teach their German tour director the basic skills, and he did “pretty well.”  He was also very skilled in his favorite sport, which he considers to be “football” and what his travelers weren’t allowed to call “soccer.”

On Day 7 students crossed the Rhine and went westward to Strasbourg, France, which is on the border of Germany. There, they toured the Nazi Concentration Camp of Natzweiler-Struthof.

Natzweiler-Struthof is the only Nazi concentration camp on present-day French soil. At the time of its operation, it belonged to occupying Germany.  The camp began operating in May of 1941 and continued until the beginning of September of 1944.

At this time, in fear of the approaching American troops, the camp was mostly evacuated and sent on a “death march” to Dachau, near Munich, Germany.  Two months later, Natzweiler-Struthof was the first concentration camp to be liberated by the American army.

The total number of prisoners reached an estimated 52,000 over the three years of the camp’s operation. It was specially set up, in most cases, for people of the resistance movements.

While Simpson planned the students’ trip, parents felt their itinerary must include a visit to a concentration camp and Simpson agreed with them.

Normally, her student trips visit Dachau Concentration Camp, but that wasn’t a feasible option due to it being in an entirely different area of Germany. She began to research online and found a map with Natzweiler-Struthof, which would fit into her itinerary in France.

During their tour, students saw the guard towers, barbed wire fencing, communal bunk beds used in the prisoners’ barracks and the execution ground where hangings took place and where all prisoners had to watch.

They also saw the camp’s crematorium, solitary confinement cells and the table where prisoners were forced to lie for scientific experiments.

“The cloudy, rainy weather was an appropriate setting for our visit,” pointed out Simpson, noting, “It definitely was not the most pleasant day of our tour, but I believe it was a very important stop.”

Students also had guided sight-seeing in Strasbourg, a close neighbor of and which belonged to Germany at different periods in its history. They were greeted with both “Bienvenue” and “Willkommen,” breweries and vineyards and half-timbered houses and narrow cobblestone streets.

On Day 8 students continued their travels through Colmar, France and took in the sights of more half-timbered houses en route to their final destination of Interlaken, a charming town nestled between lakes in the Alps, in the Bernese Oberland region of Switzerland.

With the sun shining and a cloudy forecast for the next day, Simpson made a special request of their bus driver. She had the students taken into the valley for an unobstructed view of the Swiss Alps.

But her students quickly eyed a waterfall, the Staubbach Falls, one of dozens of waterfalls plummeting more than 970 feet to the valley floor. Then, they discovered a trail and man-made steps cut into the rock cliff that spiraled around for an up-close (and wet) view. They did it again the next day.

On Day 9 students traveled by four, different cable cars to the top of the Schilthorn Mountain to an elevation of 9,744 feet. It is also the location of the opening scenes of the James Bond movie “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” and a revolving 360-degree Piz Gloria restaurant.

At the top, they unfortunately missed out on a clear day’s magnificent view of some of the highest peaks of the Swiss Alps – the Eiger, Jungfrau and Monch. These peaks remained hidden behind clouds, but students did get to see some surrounding peaks.

On the way down, Simpson took students on a hike from the village of Mürren to Gimmelwald to give them a glimpse of real Swiss Alpine living. Hillside meadows had patches of wildflowers and flocks of grazing sheep.

In the afternoon, students who sought adventure got professional instruction and then took on a “Rope Park” featuring a zipline, Tarzan swings and more up in the treetops. Others returned to Interlaken, a town smaller than Clearfield, to explore on their own and to shop for Swiss souvenirs.

The next day, students left Europe behind to return home with memories and knowledge from their experience. During the 10-day tour, Simpson said they only saw one other group of American students. She believes it’s important for local students to see what lies beyond their home communities in Clearfield County.

By traveling abroad, students meet different people and experience different ways of life and doing things, some of which are better. “You don’t know until you go and you meet other people,” she said. “… I’m glad my students had this opportunity.”

Lynne Gaylor, who accompanied her daughter on the tour, shared she’s glad that she didn’t succumb to her fears of traveling to different countries due to terrorism around the world. She said, “It was the trip of a lifetime, and one I might never be able to take again.

“…The people were very nice, helpful and despite a language barrier in some instances, wanted to communicate with us and tried their best, as we also did.”

Gaylor continued, pointing out, “What I really learned the most on this trip is that, despite our differences, no matter where you are in the world, we have more things in common than we know.

“… This was an amazing trip and I am so lucky that I got to experience it with my daughter before she graduates and goes on to college.   I would do it again in a heartbeat.”

The 2016 student tour, however, marked the last one for Simpson, who has now taken more than 1,000 students and adults abroad.

Simpson began her career teaching German at Clearfield in 1987-88 and since then, she has taken 12 groups to the German-speaking countries of Germany, Austria and Switzerland as well as numerous other countries.

Before her tenure at Clearfield, she taught French and German in St. Marys for three years as well as French at the Penn State DuBois campus.

Although Simpson will no longer take student tours abroad, she has plans to continue adult and family tours. She will take local travelers to the Galapagos and Machu Picchu in 2017 and to China in 2018.