You can now buy a large-format book with the blog entries from the Dispatch from Metz through Blurb at http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/2027500. The cost is $112.95. The book contains the text and photos that recount Susie's and my French adventure.
Here are a few concluding images that stick with me as I think back on our visit. The view of the Esplanade, looking west from the Place de la République toward the Moselle, captures a part of Metz's spirit, with dancing waters, rolling forested hills, and a French garden. Metz is also the ancient, medieval and now modern city, with its streets that date back to the Romans, its Cathedral tower part of the unending work of renovation, its combination of roofs of dark slate and red tile, and its mix of buildings of all eras, shapes, sizes and styles. And Metz is a city of people, unseen from the Grande Roue but braving the cold of winter to stroll the narrow streets to prepare for the coming holidays.
And here's an image of the Bras Mort of the Moselle, off the Plan d'Eau and the Canal de Jouy. This is the picture on the desktop of my computer, so I get to be there every day.
From the Museums of Metz, here's a bird's-eye view of Metz and its fortifications in the 17th Century. Just above the cathedral, on the open field at the left of the little island in the Moselle, is where the Temple Neuf now stands. The city walls have mostly now disappeared, except for the ramparts at the junction of the Moselle and Seille, at the right side of the city in this picture. The elaborate fortification on the left was the Porte Serpenoise, now shrunk to an arch. Overall, Metz must have been a formidable defensive position.
Toward the top of the village, the visitor finds numerous apartment buildings, which I figure are condominiums. These are modern and look up-scale. Here's an example.
Almost all the dwellings of modern Saint-Julien probably date from the 2oth Century. A painting in the Metz art museum shows a view, dated 1833, of Metz from Saint Julien. The city's surrounded by fields instead of houses.
Here's a view, roughly from the same direction but not as high up, taken during our visit in November of 2010. You can still see the cathedral, but buildings now completely fill in the landscape.
All during our stay in Metz last year, the Place de la République was a mess, torn up and muddy, with its construction spilling over into the adjacent boulevard and turning the city's largest bus hub into a crazy quilt of displaced bus stops. On our return for Thanksgiving, all the work was finished and the square's holiday activities were in full swing. We arrived on a Sunday, and the square had just been officially reopened on Saturday afternoon.
The most obvious feature was a temporary one: an enormous Ferris wheel that was visible for miles around. And at the base of the Ferris wheel stood seasonal attractions, including a branch of the Metz Christmas fair, which had been sidelined last year, and an ice-skating rink.
Throngs of people, mostly young, flocked to the ice-skating rink. Individuals had varying levels of evident skill, and tumbles were common. Everyone, with exception of perhaps a small crying child, seemed to be having fun.
Other than the fountain on the Esplanade, the ice-skating rink represented the area's only water feature, and a frozen one at that. Come summer, the Place de la Rep' should be flowing with water features. There's even a "beach" built on a wooden deck.
The Grande Roue, whose loading structure also reflected the chalet style, towered above the area. This massive machine, on which Susie and I rode, of course, turns out to be from Germany; it was made by the Great Wheel Corporation of Munich.
Closer to home, we could find the apartment we stayed in while living in Metz during the winter and spring. Our building was the one with the gray roof in the center of the photograph.
After our revolutions on the Grande Roue, we looked back at it and the Place de la République from the Esplanade. Even when the wheel and rink are gone, the Messins will have a great public space to enjoy.
The tourist office, on the north side of the square bordered by both the cathedral and the hotel de ville, displayed a banner commemorating the liberation. On the south side, opposite the banner, a plaque on the base of a statue marks the place where General Walker of the U.S. Army handed over to the French authorities the city liberated by his troops. The mayor's office placed a ceremonial bouquet under the plaque.
Many more bouquets surrounded the monument honoring the U.S. Army's 95th Infantry Division, the Iron Men of Metz. Among the tributes, just below "Metz," was a red-white-and-blue floral arrangement from the Association Lorraine-Etats Unis.
In the pre-war evacuation, the French government moved inhabitants of the Moselle region, especially those closest to the German border, to places of relative safety in other parts of France. As documented in the Archives' prior exhibition, "Un exil interieure: L'evacauation des Mosellans," about 300,000 people from the Moselle moved in September 1939 and May, 1940 to regions closer to the Atlantic. After the French capitulation in September, 1940, most of these people returned to their homes in the Moselle.
The current exhibition documents the brutal wartime expulsions, part of the Nazi plan to "Germanify" the Moselle. This region, considered by the Nazis to be not occupied France but rather an integral part of Germany, saw 100,000 inhabitants expelled as "undesirables."
Some left willingly, others only when forced. For the most part, they were French speakers who didn't fit into the victors' vision of a German Moselle. The Nazi authorities limited the expulsed to 2,000 Francs and 110 pounds of baggage; everything else--houses, furniture, clothes, shops, factories, dishes, toys, and tools--had to be left behind.
German posters proclaimed the new cultural order. "It's a privilege and an honor to be German," declared Metz's new ruler.
All that was French was to be swept away. Streets were renamed for prominent Nazis.
The expulsed ended up, for the most part, in the Midi--south central France. Many lived in poverty. Local inhabitants of the Midi provided shelter and support, and the Vichy 
government trumpeted its support in its own posters. This one shows well-fed children at the winter aid cantine of the Marshall (i.e., Maréchal Pétain.)
In the cities of the Midi, the expulsed tried to keep their culture and traditions alive. These advertisements in the Periguex newspaper, for a restaurant, a tailor, and a tavern, suggest to me that these cities must have had a "little Alsace and Lorraine," something like little Italy in New York City.
With the Allies' victory, the expulsed began to return home. Despite German assurances when they left the Moselle that their property would be protected, they soon found that everything had been systematically looted. This letter, to a man in exile in Casablanca, informs him that his tire-repair shop is now unoccupied but that it had been emptied of all of its contents in the first months of the German occupation.
In the immediate post-war, life was hard in France and especially in Alsace-Lorraine, which saw the worst of the fighting. The expulsed, who had lost almost everything when they left and found little when they returned, were among the worst off. They organized to claim their rights. Here's a poster calling for the expulsed and refugies to hold a big demonstration in Metz.
Contemporary Metz no longer has the street names imposed by the Nazis, but the story of the expulsed is still within the city's living memory. The exhibition "De gré ou de force, l'expulsion des Mosellans 1940-1945" runs through 31 May, 2011.
Indeed, the dedication ceremony took place the day before we arrived. The Pompidou Center-Metz continues to attract crowds; we met a group from Nîmes who had come up for a couple of days, with the new museum as the anchor site for their trip. The holiday lights on some of the streets have been updated, and the Christmas markets have expanded into the Place de la République itself, after having been pushed to the sidelines by the renovation. There were new exhibits at both the city and departmental archives. The cathedral's tower is still being renovated, with years to go, I think. The Saint Martin church near our apartment is now being renovated, too. Not surprisingly because we'd only been away since June, most of Metz seemed to be pretty much as we'd left it.
