During our eight days in Europe earlier this month we had many opportunities to literally walk through history. From castles to cathedrals to WWII cemeteries and the now dissolved Iron Curtain we soaked it all up.

When I first visited my friend Jean in Hatzenreuth in 1986 the border with Czechoslovakia was not more than a kilometer away from their home. Yet it remained closed in that Soviet-controlled area. The village her mother-in-law grew up in and her childhood farm across the border were visible from the farm she and her husband went to in West Germany after WWII.

It wasn’t until the fall of the Iron Curtain and the reopening of the Czech border in the early 1990s that she was able to go back. Sadly, the Soviet-era neglect and abuse left the village and surrounding farms shells of what they used to be.

As Jean and Hubert took us to Marienbad, a resort area in the now Czech Republic that had been a favorite of Bohemian royalty and European high society in the 1880s and 1890s, they pointed out improvements that have been 30 years in the making. Hubert and his son now farm ground in the Czech Republic and note they are working hard to restore soil health that was depleted during the decades of collective farming.

After leaving Hatzenreuth we took trains to Cologne where a highlight was visiting the Cologne Cathedral. A landmark for centuries, it was begun in 1248 and took 632 years to complete. Amazingly the structure appears uniform because no generation of builders departed from the original masterplan.

Work went painstakingly slow and in 1520 came to a near standstill. With the invasion of troops from the French Revolution in 1794 the cathedral was used as a storage room and prisoner-of-war camp.

In 1821 the Archdiocese of Cologne was reestablished after being abolished in 1794. In 1842 construction resumed after years of restoration and in 1880 the final stone was inserted in the south steeple in the presence of Emperor Wilhelm 1.

One of the key artifacts housed in the cathedral is the Shrine of the Magi, created to hold the relics of the Magi. The case concentrates on the entire salvation history from the Old Testament to the future return of Christ.

We took nearly an hour to walk through the cathedral. While I had been there in 1980 as an exchange student, our time was short, and I really didn’t get a chance to soak in the history and the beautiful artwork contained within those walls. Amazingly most of the medieval stained-glass windows were removed and stored away during WW II, surviving the ravages of Allied bombings and surviving to present day.

Our last dose of history was more recent. While visiting our friends Hendrik and Anita in Belgium. They took us to the Henri-Chapelle American Cemetery and Memorial. Established in September of 1944 it served as the temporary cemetery for casualties of the battles that took place across Belgium and Germany during the winter of 1944-45, including the Battles of Aachen, Hürtigen Forest and the Bulge.

Following the war, the German and Allied casualties were transferred to other sites and about 60 percent of the U.S. ones were repatriated. The current memorial was dedicated in 1960 by General Eisenhower himself.

It was humbling to learn about the devotion the Belgians have to maintaining the cemetery and honoring the fallen. Hendrik, who was born well after WWII noted, “Every time I come here, I get choked up when I think about these young men coming here to fight and giving their lives for us to be able to live in freedom.”