The Passionate Traveler

Painting by Claude Monet This is one of the trips we did before the age of digital cameras and smart phones, so the photos we took on this trip are all on slides. Hopefully I will be able to get some of these slides digital to include in the blog. At this stage, the photos in this post are not mine. Water lilies One of my wife's (Marie) favorite artists is Claude Monet. On one of our trips to France, we visited the Musee D'Orsey in Paris, which has quite a large collect of Monet paintings. She was totally in oar being able to see some genuine Monet painting. She has a few posters of his artwork and a few of the originals could be see here. The Musee D'Orsey is in an old railway station and it is often overlooked by the millions of tourists who flock to Paris - although I think that this is changing. The first time I went to Musee D'Orsey, there was basically no line. The last time I went there, there was a long line. Most tourists flock to the Louvre ...

The "must visit" site in Rio During a recent work trip to Argentina and Brazil, I had the weekend off between countries. The best option I could think of was to spend the week-end in Rio. Basically, I  only had the Saturday free in Rio. I flew in on the Friday afternoon and departed again on the Sunday afternoon. So not much time in Rio. Best option was to do a day tour. I booked this through Viator ( www.viator.com ) before I left. Shortly after booking and paying, I got confirmation of my pick up. I was very happy with booking my tours on this system and I have not had any difficulties with this.I have previously also booked a few other trips with them. The tour operators arrived at the hotel, pretty much at the time stated on my voucher as the the pick up time. A broken elevator at one of the lifts at the next pick up put them a bit behind with their other pickups, but they really tries their best to be on time. It was a mixed language tour and there were only three En...

Passchendaele - at what cost? The 100th anniversary of end of the First World War has just been celebrated. There is a massive amount of interest and information available on-line on the end of the First World War. There are pretty good records which are coming to the surface, but the personal records and stories of those who were there are fast dying out. Obviously there are no living survivors from the First World War. It is, after all, over 100 years since the guns fell silent on the Western Front. Many of the children of the survivors from the First world war are also no longer with us. The grandchildren of the survivors of the WW1 are now starting to move into the age of Alzheimer Disease and these stories, which have already been dramatically diluted by time, will be lost for all time. So we, the grandchildren or great grandchildren of the men and woman who served not only in the first world war, but the second world war as well, need to record that we can remember before i...

Damaged railway line at Ypres In the first part on the history of my Grandfather in the First World War, I explained that I only had very limited information on his story during the Great war. To my surprise, when going into his military records, I discovered that he also took part in the South West African campaign from 1914 to 1915. This I discussed in Part 1 of this series. According to his records, he was discharged from the army after the successful completion, and defeat of the Germans in S.W.A. He was discharged on 31 August 1915. He was a train driver, so I presume he continued with his life as a train driver. I obtained some information from a family member that his brother, Joe Bragg (it was probably Joseph Bragg - as this was a family name at that stage), also came to South Africa with him as a train driver. I understand that he was killed in a train accident. There was a train crash in the Cape on 22 April 1911 in which 30 people were killed. Another fatal train crash i...

German fort in Etosha - Yes he was in South West Africa in 1914. In my previous blog post, I mentioned that I will be going through the history of three family members in the two world wars. I managed to get their military records which allowed me to get information on their units and dates of posting. Based on this information I have been able to start piecing bits together. This has been an amazing experience piecing together the history. I am now very sorry that I can no longer speak to any of them. It is essential that these little bit of history and the personal stories of the men who served in the World Wars are recorded before that get lost forever in the mists of time. The history of the wars are well recorded, but the personal stories of the men who served dies off with each passing of another soul. If the surviving family members do not make an effort to tell these stories, they will be gone forever. Document signed by Richard Bragg So, lets start with the ol...