Interesting stuff!
I like these comments by someone who claims to have worked on the construction:
I worked on this project last summer. It was a lot of fun. Good food, lots of exercise...I lost 20 lbs, and I wasn’t trying. Made some great friends, too.
Things I noticed:
1. They think anything over 85 is unbearably hot. Not ‘complain wow it’s hot and keep working’ hot, but ‘shut down everything before someone has a heat stroke’ hot. Coming from the South, this amused me greatly, especially since they have almost no humidity there (by comparison). They would be wilting like flowers in the sun, and I and some of the other workers from truly hot places would barely be breaking a sweat. Before I sound too boastful though, there was a dude there from Algeria who made the rest of us look like poseurs.
2. You gain a much better appreciation for just how much shiat weighs when you have to move it by hand. I was working as a basic laborer, hauling stones, lifting logs, etc. They have levers, hoists, and horses, but when you need to shift a 500lb block 3 inches left without power tools, you respect the weight a lot more.
3. The Spanish and Italians on site were really really lazy. Maybe it was just because they were young, but wow. Everyone else was amazing though, so maybe they just looked lazy by comparison. Or maybe lazy isn’t the right word...’there to play’ might be better. They could be fun during time off, but someone who wants to play when everyone else is working is annoying. At least to me.
4. Working a long hot day on French food was...gut wrenching. Their food is a lot richer than I was used to, and I had several days early on where it was like ‘...must...not....puke’. Then I got used to it, and I was fine.
5. The level of academic research that has gone into this is simply flabbergasting, and I have a degree in medieval history. The archival research, the knowledge of languages, the engineering knowledge...it’s even more impressive when you’re participating that it is in general.
6. It’s not geeky. Strong interest in knights/armor/castles etc in the US = you were the sort of kid who grew up reading Dragonlance novels. Strong interest in that in Europe = you were the sort of kid whose kick-ass WWII Resistance veteran grandfather told you lots of stories about the cool old buildings down the road. IMHO the American concept of ‘geek’ just doesn’t really apply.