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Ahh, Bosnia, my new home this year. This was my third time to Bosnia this year, but at least this time it was a different city. We went to Banja Luka instead of Sarajevo.
Saturday
Like a lot of my eastern European trips we can’t get there in the same day. So we overnighted in Munich again. We flew Tucson, Dallas, London, Munich, Belgrade, and Banja Luka. Whoo, what a long flight schedule. Whenever we overnight in Munich I always eat at this Doner Kabob place, it’s the best. We went out with a team of10 from our base and met 3 others from a regional site. Three navy guys, they were pretty cool.
Sunday
Got up and head some hotel breakfast, pretty awesome. We flew to Belgrade, where we had a 6 hour layover, it was OTC, but it was long. A group of us played Canasta. It’s a game that old women play, it’s kind of like a mixture of spades and hearts and go fish and rummy and old maid. Took a pretty long time to understand the rules, but we got to playing and had a pretty good time. Our flight to Banja Luka was on a turbo prop; it was my first time on a propeller plane. It was louder, but still smooth; feel more comfortable on a jet, but it was no big deal; I just slept on the plane. We got to our barracks pretty late, had a small orientation, and then we went to bed.
Monday
This was just a basic setup day and we didn’t do much. The Bosnian mess hall was pretty bad, very bad. We got to breakfast right at 6 when they opened and the food was cold. Fried eggs and sausage should not be cold. When did you make this stuff, 4 am? After about three days of this I went to the store and bought cold cereal and oatmeal. (whoo, I have no idea what went on that day, I was there for three weeks, I always tell myself that I should write these things during the time, cuz now sitting in Africa I can’t remember, but here we go), that night we drank a couple liters of beer. It was called Nektar, it was the nectar of the exercise. At lunch and at dinner the food was also pretty cold. And it was the same thing for three weeks, pork or no pork. A couple of times we had pretty good meals, but mostly they were just blasé.
Tuesday
Setup continued. We had quite a few problems reaching the forward operating sites in Denmark and Netherlands. Not we per se, but the people doing the communications for the exercise. My job didn’t really start until the first day of testing, so I just did small things and mostly surfed in the internet.
Wednesday
Yeah more of the same, it’s very much like the Maytag repairman, once my stuff is up, it’s pretty much up. Wednesday was some training, so I did some passwords and what not, and drank more beer. That night was the ice breaker and I drank a good amount of beer. Holla.
Thursday
Thursday was the opening ceremonies. Parade of nations, roll call, come to attention, come to parade rest; too much pomp, not enough circumstance. It’s always my favorite part because it’s like a mini Olympics. All the different flags and all the different uniforms; way cool. The first day of testing is always hectic, because people don’t know what’s going on. They’ve been through training, but you know in a live fire exercise, people always shit their pants. Eventually their training takes over and all is well.
Friday
Was still pretty hectic, power outages, and no connections to the Dutch or Danes. That night we went to Café Romansa, it was not very romantic or tasty, but it was okay. For whatever reason they were not real big on tomato sauce on their pizzas. I don’t think you need that much pizza sauce; where its overflowing, but it can’t be dry, and these were dry. They weren’t very expensive though, so we patronized them pretty often during the three weeks. At night there was a lot of basketball and volleyball going on. Many of the nations were prepping for the sports tournament that was going to be held toward the end of the exercise. These fools take this shit super serious; especially in volleyball. They were calling plays, setting, diving, digging, and spiking like seasoned professionals. It was pretty amazing to see these weekend warriors move. They were getting some serious air and serious power. I would have been afraid to receive those serves or to block those spikes.
Saturday
Last day before first break. I was real happy for this first phase to end. That night was the Finnish party. They shared that night with the Croatians and the Belgiums and the Canadians. I had some moose milk and some black death and some gasoline and some pork and some rockin goulash.
Sunday
This was our first day off and it was also our cultural tour. We got on the bus and I had instant sleepys. We went to see the Bosnian WWII memorial. It was very nice, very cold war esque, but still cool. Some man gave a beyond detailed rendition of the history of the area, it was cool for the first few minutes, but the next 45 minutes drAAGGed on. Eventually, someone had to pull the plug and tell him to shut up. We got back on the bus and I fell asleep pretty quickly. We then headed over to this river pool. It’s a part of the river that they damned up and made some swimming pools. It was way too cold to go swimming. Some of the guys did some sunbathing in their Speedos. Not fun. We had more cold mess hall food at this park/picnic/pool area. We saw some cultural dancers, they were pretty good. The cultural music was pretty good too, although the singer had the worst tambourine skills I’ve ever seen. And being a part-time/amateur/semi-professional tambourinist I was not impressed. A few of us ended up playing scrabble; I lost due to someone else going out before me. But I blew away my competition before that part. We got back that night and were treated to some more lovely cold pork.
Monday
Bahh, back to waking up before the sun comes up and back to cold mess hall food mmmm hot oatmeal. I don’t think anything to great happened the next few days, lots of groundhogness. Wake up, ‘I got you babe plays’ then I got work. I was working the data collection forms. Handing them out and then accounting for them at the end of the day. Most of the data collectors were from New York, they were Army Reservists. They were crap at first; I didn’t like any of them. But then they turned into some of the coolest people at the endeavor. They were way better than the Marine reservists from last year. I don’t particularly care for New Yorkers since they think the world revolves around them and they all think they are flyer than fly. I’m from NY, I’m so cool, I’m so fly, suck my dick….but you’re a girl, just do it. A lot of them were ethnic. I know that sounds incredibly xenophobic of me, but we had Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Jamaicans, and like one white girl. They all turned into the Tall Jacob Fan Club Groupies. Since I had to sit at my desk the entire time, I get to meet everyone eventually and often times they’ll sit and chat with me because they have nothing better to do and I can’t leave.
Tuesday
Things were running fine. We found a really good sandwich place called Cap Cap, pronounced sap sap. We had some hamburgeresque meat as well as some baconesque meat. Yummo and cheap. The place had really good bread. One of the Navy guys said the bread was the offspring of an English Muffin and a Pita, a dirty delicious lovechild. They had pretty awesome condiments and MAN it was just nice to have hot food.
Wednesday-Saturday
Im just going to blast through this week and the next few days. We worked from 630 to about 19-1930. Not a lot going on, plenty of laughter and good times, but nothing worth noting. I will talk about a few of the parties that I attended. The Polish Czech party was pretty freaking awesome. It really out did the US National Guard party. The party had really good music and really good food. Most of the music was in a language I didn’t understand. At one point though, they played what had to have been, one of the Poles favorite drinking/dancing/drunken dance songs. It started off slow and trance like. The people were kind of just moving around in circles to beat of their own drum. They were prepped, you could tell they were cocked and loaded for something. All of a sudden, drums come in, a little 808s magic, and the people went ape shit crazy. It was a weed and E moshing extravangaza. It was a spectacular spectacle. The US party was so-so. When we got there we were waiting quite a long time for some food to be put out. They had music going, if fact it was blaring. We were outside and couldn’t really hear each other talking so one of the guys asked the dj to turn it down. He pretty much turned it off, which was okay. Well it was not okay with this little tiny specialist or sergeant. He came out there spitting fire, asking who told him to turn off the music, and then he spewed some garbage about how he had rented out the place and hes going to do whatever he feels like. He was quite the feisty rapscallion, because the guy he was screaming at could have easily taken him out. We left after that because we couldn’t wait that long for food. When we came back there was a samba a salsa and some other booty shaking baby making music going on. The ethnics from New York were getting down and dirty. We had some beer there and then just went back to the Slavic party.
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Sunday
This was our next day off. It was the day of the sports tournament that we didn’t participate in. I watched a little bit of it, but mostly just surfed the internet. We went downtown that day. Walked around the old fortress. We perused the flea market. Got some beer on a boat, then we went to lunch. We had veritable smorgasbord of food that was cheap. We had lamb, veal, bifstek, and I had calamari. We had some pretty rocking corn bread. Could not finish the whole thing so I took back to the room. Came back and just took it easy. The Americans cooked dinner that night, fried chicken and baked beans. Man alive it was tasty, too bad I wasn’t hungry. I shoved some down my gullet, just for good measure. I think that night I just went to bed.
Monday-Wednesday
Ahh entering the last phase of testing. I don’t know what else I want to say about work this week. I think I may just fast forward to the closing ceremonies and closing barbeque. After work on most days this week I played basketball with one of the Navy guys and German. We had been teaching him American slang and shit talking. And with his German accent it was hilarious. “Drop a deuce”, “This shit is gangsta”, “Butterface”, “Go back to the crib”, and others. I sent him to urbandictionary.com, anything he wanted explain, I explained it. He found the magic of youtube and all the stereo typical German videos. He loved them.
Thursday
This was the last day of the exercise, we had a few test in the morning, but mostly pretty easy. We had the closing ceremonies that day. Another round of pomp and circumstance, which I love. Lots more press, some generals and admirals. They had the three presidents of Bosnia. I guess they have a president of Bosnia, a president of Herzegovina, and a president of Kosovo, maybe….I just made that up. But there are three presidents; I just don’t know which regions of the country they are president of. It was a pretty long event, pretty warm; in fact three US people passed out. It was embarrassing and hysterical. They weren’t out there that long and it wasn’t that hot. That night was the closing party. It was held in the same tent as the opening ice breaker. It was pretty good except it took forever for the food to be ready. So instead I started drinking. I just opened up this blog thinking I was going to copy and paste it online and realized I hadn’t finished it. So Im trying to remember at the moment what happened three months ago. It was a pretty good party, but not as big as last years. Since we had three sites, there were a lot of people missing. Nonetheless, the alcohol flowed. I think I restrained and contained myself. I didn’t throw up at all this exercise. So I didn’t want to do it on the last day. I hung out with all my friends that I had seen/met/made over the last 20 days. I was said to see the people from the New York guard go. They really grew on me. The music was really good and there was just a lot of relief that we were going home. That all I remember now. Sorry. On to Friday
Friday
Woke up with only minor body ailment. We had an 8 oclock meeting. Bosses wanted to say thank you and all that happy horse. D-Money and I went on the town for some shopping and to get some pizza. I don’t feel like rereading this blog to see if I talked about this pizza place that was just off base. It was just alright. We ate there a lot because there wasn’t much else in walking distance. This pizza was spicy and was the total hangover cure. I had quite a lot of Bosnia money on me and decided I needed to spend it on something. I went into a store and told myself I had to buy something. I found a shirt that was nice and it had a pretty interesting button pattern. I tried on 4 sizes before I found one that fit. Evidently I wear a XXXL in Bosnia. Who would have thunk. We came back that afternoon and just hung out. I think I went to dinner and watched a movie. Then I packed and off to bed I went.
Saturday
Got up at 3 am to catch our 6 am flight out of BL, BiH. Getting checked in sucked. All of the people on this flight had lots of overweight luggage and nobody knew how to deal with us. Charge us now, charge us later, ohh we only accept cash. Yeah, well youre behind the times because nobody has cash anymore. They barely knew how to work their own computer systems. Getting through immigration was another joy. Im leaving your country, there should be no questions. It should just be bon voyage and don’t let the door hit you on the way out. Its only a short flight from Banja Luka to Belgrade. About 45 minutes. I slept for 43 of those minutes. Fell asleep before takeoff and woke up when the prop plane touched down. We had another 6 hour layover thank to our remarkable travel office. So we ended up finishing our Canasta game. We flew back into Munich and it was the start of Oktoberfest there. Never seen so many hot ass women rocking drindels. Man I was in love. They had a oom pa pa band and the whole shabangabang. I, of course, got another doner kabob. Drank some beers and went to sleep. I was bummed about not going to the actual Oktoberfest, but I had another 6 am flight. And being hungover across the Atlantic is no way to fly. So I didn’t drink too much.
Sunday
We flew home Munich, London, Dallas, Tucson. Our plane broke again in Dallas. And by the time they fixed it they had to get a new flight crew because they had logged so many hours in the day. I finally got home and that’s all that she wrote.
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Thanks for listening,
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Jacob
