DAY 256 - VERDUN TO ST MENEHOULD: 24.4 MILES (48,800 STEPS)

24.4 miles (Total: 2402.2 miles) – 48,800 steps (Total: 5,101,001 steps)      

Apart from two short symbolic walks in Berlin, I had not put in a serious day of walking for ten days – the longest break of the walk so far. Coupled with this, it had been a wonderful Christmas and New Year with family and friends in Berlin and Paris and one that I will never forget. After the rigors of packing and unpacking every day and the uncertainty as to where I was going to stay every evening, it was just great to have a base. As if the Man from Upstairs was giving me a stocking filler, there was also a Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts just around the corner. I ate like a student who had been on Pot Noodles for a term having blown his grant cheque on booze and an iPhone in week 1 and then suddenly arrives at an all you can eat buffet with to find that someone else is paying!

When I said goodbye at Gare du Nord I can say that I don’t recall ever feeling so alone, forlorn even. It was a long journey back from Gare du Est to Verdun in more ways than mere time. I though that hitting the road would be the perfect antidote to the January blues, but I was wrong. Something had happened over Christmas and New Year that was much more than simply a break from the walk, it was a deep, deep desire to go home. A sense in which a job had been done, but a high price had been paid and I now questioned whether I had the desire or the resources to keep on paying.

I rose early the next morning having had a restless night on account of my shoulder and arm, which although the accident was now two months ago was still causing me great pain. I began to think that there was something seriously wrong that needed attention, but I wouldn’t be able to do that until I was back. Then another surprise – my clothes seemed to have shrunk whilst they had been in my rucksack over Christmas and I struggled to fasten the belt on my waterproof trousers whilst my thermal vest no longer covered by bulging stomach (see pic).

To add to these woes, I had lost my other arm—my Blackberry—in Berlin and for some reason that remained unknown even to O2, I couldn’t just go into the O2 store in Berlin and get a replacement phone and SIM—they had to be validated in the UK and so it would be another two weeks before I would be in a known location (Paris) long enough to have it sent out. The loss of the Blackberry was a total game changer because I relied so much on telephone calls and emails to keep the campaign ticking along; SMS messages from friends and family to keep me plodding along; Google Latitude to keep me on the right track and the notes function to record details along the way for my blog. There was also the sense of being stranded should a problem arise.

I had been here before, or had I? My response in the past was just to get moving and work it off, but from the first step out into the cold and driving rain of Verdun I began to question the received wisdom. Yes things had been tougher before with nights of sleeping rough, heat exhaustion, shin splints, and latterly a broken arm, but the reason for my questioning this time was not because things had been tough, it was instead because they had been so good. When faced with great challenges, our instinct is always to dig deep and battle on (though that may not be the right metaphor for a truce walk), but the Christmas break and the joy and fun of time again with friends and family seemed to sap my will to go on more than anything else.

It is said that we see things not as THEY are but as WE are – this I have found to be true. Because I now wanted to be at home continuing the campaign with others rather than alone on the walk, my mind started flooding with lots of good reasons why it was time to ‘draw stumps’: the campaign was petering out – there had been very little in the way of real progress on the truce despite all the emails, telephone calls, and even sending out hundreds of newsletters before Christmas. I began to think that the blessing of there being little or no interest in my walking was that there would be little or no interest if I were to stop walking. I could justify it on the basis of the shoulder injury that now meant I couldn’t carry my rucksack as well as the fact that I had now exhausted all of my money leaving me entirely dependent on the generosity of friends and family to get home. In terms of the finances, the campaign, and health I began to convince myself that I should call it a day. Nice try but I failed, that wasn’t so bad as I had failed in most tings in life, but I had given it my best shot. It wasn’t the hardship that got me, it was the goodness of time with friends and family.

Coming down the hill into Dombasle en Argonne, my iPod shuffled onto ‘I Won’t Back Down’ by Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers and there was a momentary lift in my spirits. I seized the lift and put it on replay/loop. It seemed to work. I began to think of the people who I had met along the journey who had been inspired by the truce and what I was seeking to do. Sure there weren’t many, but numbers shouldn’t matter; if we have the opportunity to influence one person with a sense of hope and of what is possible then that is a huge thing. Conversely, to let down even one person by giving up and going home is also a huge thing, whatever the reason.

I marched on beyond Clermont where I had planned to stop, but the one hotel was still closed and went another fifteen kilometres to Ste Menehould. I finished the day physically, mentally, and spiritually exhausted. I drowned ‘some’ wine, well okay ‘a lot’ of win, but purely for medicinal reasons and fell asleep for a few hours giving thanks that I had made it through another day, albeit by the skin of my teeth.

DAY 253—REFLECTIONS ON NEW YEAR 2012

Paris

2378 miles –  5,101,001 steps

I stoped off in Paris on my way back to Verdun from Berlin to celebrate New Year with friends and to take some time to reflect on the progress of the Walk as it enters its final stage. It is a mixed picture:

The Olympic Truce – To be an optimist often makes it difficult to face up to the cold facts of reality. I find myself choosing to always dwell on the positive conversations with political and sports leaders about ideas for implementing the Truce, rather than concrete pledges made, because there have been about twenty of the former, but still none of the latter.

Of course 193 countries out of 193 signed up to the Olympic Truce when it was presented at the UN General Assembly on behalf of the British Government in October this year, but then again, they almost always do. After all, what is the cost of putting your name to a harmless Olympic truce resolution; if you don’t comply with it then you won’t be alone, as no one has observed the resolution for twenty years.

The Prime Minister, David Cameron, called the 2012 Olympic Truce an “historic opportunity” in the House of Commons in June. However, in foreign policy terms, this is a tiny matter on the “small earthquake in Chile, not many hurt” kind of scale in a time of very great matters – domestic economy, Europe, and the Arab Spring to name but a few.

Still I contend that honouring commitment in small things is a very big thing. When we do what we say, we build trust and trust is a commodity in very short supply in public life and international diplomacy at present.

It is not just the truce, it is what the truce could allow to happen that is the genius of the idea and the underlying intent of the UN resolution. To use the Olympics to broker a cessation of conflict in war-zones in order to allow in humanitarian aid, such as vaccinations and immunisations for women and children, is what the Olympics were originally designed for. They were designed as sport for a purpose and that purpose was peace rather than to secure a better sponsorship deal for the athlete, better corporate hospitality for the sponsors, or to beat the Aussies in the medal table, however laudable the latter aim may be.

Of course, the connecting dots between politician’s intent and political action, are the media. If the media were to think the cause of the truce worth implementing, then they would be able to close the gap between the rhetoric and reality in an instant. The fact that I have single-handedly managed to completely underwhelm the entire membership of the international press corps (with the single exception of ITV’s ‘North East Tonight’) is perhaps the most notable achievement of my 2400-mile walk to date.

This is my fault entirely for being boring or, as one friend put it over dinner, ‘instantly forgettable’, although he later said he couldn’t remember either the conversation or the dinner. If I had the looks of Liam Fox, the wit of Boris Johnson, the elegance of Philip Hammond, and the political intuition of Eric Pickles, it might have been a different story. Instead, I was endowed only with the elegance of Boris, the body of Eric, and the charisma of a former leader of the Liberal Democrat’s whose name escapes me.

I keep getting asked to ‘spice it up’ by getting Angelina Jolie, Scarlett Johannson, or Joanna Lumley to come out and join me for part of the walk in order to generate some interest and I keep telling them, I’ve tried and if I tried any harder I would be ‘had up’ for harassment. I’ve even offered myself to Angelina for adoption – well, not quite, Brad felt a bit threatened by the competition – he’s got a point. So, the Walk plods on towards Paris in glorious anonymity consistent with the 2012 Olympic truce itself.

On New Year’s Eve we went to the movies on the Champs Elysees to see ‘New Year’s Eve’, a great all-star ‘feel good’ movie about the preparations for the marking of the New Year in Times Square, New York. In the movie, Times Square is packed with New Year’s revellers awaiting the iconic ball drop to start the countdown to Midnight when the ball stops half way. In the face of the major humiliation and jeers from the crowd Hilary Swank’s character, who is the organising of the event, takes the microphone and says:

“Perhaps the ball is suspended there to remind us before we pop the champagne and celebrate the New Year, to stop and reflect on the year that has gone by. To remember both our triumphs and our missteps, our promises made and broken. The time we opened ourselves up to great adventures or closed ourselves down for fear of getting hurt because that is what New Years is all about – getting another chance. A chance to forgive, to do better, to do more, to give more, to love more. And stop worrying about what if and start embracing what would be”.

Okay it may be sentimental but so is the Olympic Truce. I remember being told that the difference between Americans and the Brits is that the Americans have an infinite capacity for sentimentality and the Brits have an infinite capacity for cynicism. Sentimentality is much underrated. I think 2012 needs us to be a bit more sentimental and less cynical, to trust our hearts a bit more and our heads a bit less, to believe in the best and to rise above the worst. Finally, we need to ensure we keep the light of hope burning even in the darkest of times and above all, whatever our circumstances, to have faith that tomorrow can be better than today if we truly want it to be.

 Happy New Year!

DAY 246—CHRISTMAS IN BERLIN—PART 2

2378 miles–5,101,001 steps

After the visit to the Holocaust Memorial, I took the U2 line up to the Olympic Stadium. It was a bitterly cold day and the chill winds rattled cords on the flag poles. The visitor centre was very quiet, but the reception was warm and welcoming. We explained the story of the ‘Walk for Truce’ to Cindy Baumann and she immediately understood the significance of the Berlin Olympic Stadium of 1936, but urged us to look at the hope that the stadium represents too. She was right. I would be walking literally in the footsteps of Adolf Hitler, but also in the footsteps of Jesse Owens.

The Olympics of 1936 were to be a showcase for the ‘superior Aryan race,’ which always brings a smile to the face since someone pointed out that ‘Aryan’ is a Sanskrit word of Indo-Pakistani origin. Still education was never the Nazi’s strong point.  So Hitler commissioned this vast stadium and theme park to celebrate the ‘superiority’ of German people with blond hair and blue eyes, although he of course, was Austrian had brown hair and brown eyes—not that anyone was going to mention that important those little details to him.  And upon that stage the star that shone brightest was a black athlete from the United States.

I got my first glimpse of the ‘hope’ that Cindy had asked us to look out for and I pondered again how evil constantly over-plays its hand. Jesse Owens won four Gold Medals in the Berlin Olympics and was cheered by the crowds in the stadium more loudly than the Fuhrer himself.  Now before we get too morally superior, it is worth noting that Owens was significant as he was the first African American athlete, in racially segregated America, allowed to represent his country at the Olympic Games. Moreover, Owen’s achievements of 1936 were never formally recognised by the US government until 1955.   He later said, ‘Hitler didn’t snub me—it was FDR (US president Franklin D Roosevelt) who snubbed me.’ Indeed at his homecoming in New York, he was required to use the freight elevator in the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel to reach the private reception area where he was the guest of honour, because the guest elevators were ‘Whites only’.

After a tour of the stadium and the grounds, we came back into the stadium from the cold and visited the Chapel which is directly under the VIP seating area from where Hitler viewed the Games – it is deliberately there as a centre for ecumenical prayer. The stunning gold gilded freeze which surrounds the walls carries extracts from the Lord’s Prayer in fifteen languages—one phrase leapt of the wall, ‘Forgive our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.’ I reflected that if it was possible to offer forgiveness in Berlin, then it should be possible for forgiveness to triumph anywhere. Why should forgiveness be important?  Because I sense that in the measure in which we offer it, we may also receive it and in so doing we also recognise that we are need of it.

My mind was too full of reflection to return to Potsdamer Platz to search out the Hansa Studios where U2 recorded their classic song ‘One’ and instead we went off to the movies to watch ‘Mission Impossible—Ghost Protocol.’ That turned out to be a choice rich in irony, given that the cinema at the Sony Centre is built over the former Berlin Wall.

I set off on this day to see the Olympic Stadium, the Holocaust Memorial and Hansa Studios—I managed two out of three and I pondered at the end of it whether, as Cindy had asked, I had caught a glimpse of the Hope of these sites. I think I did and it is this:

Hitler set out to create a platform for the Olympic Games to be exploited to showcase his doctrine of racial superiority, but the Games shot a giant whole through his prejudice.  Today there is no record of the name of the Adolf Hitler to be found anywhere in the stadium of the Olympic Park, but the entire edifice is approached through the wide boulevard called Jesse Owen’s Alley.

Hitler and the Third Reich set out to destroy the Jewish race and yet gave rise to the creation of the State of Israel, as the international community came together in revulsion and horror at what had been done to the Jewish people. The Third Reich lasted only twelve years, the State of Israel has been established for over sixty years and is stronger than ever.

Today there is a permanent memorial to the victims of the Holocaust just a short distance from the bunker of Hitler, which is buried in ignominy and shame without trace. Today Hannukah lights are lit proudly in from of the Brandenburg Gates.

Today the Berlin Wall which stood as a front line of hatred and intolerance for fifty years and one time adversaries in the Warsaw Pact, are now partners in NATO and in Europe and the Cold War confrontations are limited to plot lines for Hollywood movies.

“Two thousand years ago the proudest boast was civis Romanus sum ["I am a Roman citizen"]. Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is “Ich bin ein Berliner!”… All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words “Ich bin ein Berliner!“  President John F. Kennedy, Speech in West Berlin June 1963.

And…

Today the United States not only has legions of African American Olympians whose triumphs are a source of pride and glory, but it has an African American president too.

Take it away Bono…

One love
One blood
One life
You got to do what you should
One life
With each other
Sisters
Brothers
One life

(‘One’ by U2, recorded at Hansa Studios in Berlin)