Rennes

18 March 2025

Sometimes the most challenging part of visiting a foreign country is pronouncing your city of destination. One wrong inflection, and I would find myself hundreds of kilometers from my room for the night. Such is the case with our first stop: Rennes. I may think I correctly pronounce the city’s name, but the French say differently.

For Americans, European train travel is so civilized and convenient. But then, we are not apt to discover big bombs, well, at least not WW2 ordinance!

Earlier this month while replacing a railway bridge just a few miles from here, construction workers  discovered what SNCF described as a “really huge” unexploded ordinance. The 1100 pound bomb dropped some 80 years ago, contained over 440 pounds of explosives. Enough to make a really, really big hole!