Balmy baumholder. Well here it is day 6 of my trip and I have some free time before homework starts and I thought I’d better start writing this blog. A usual 10 day trip comes out to about 2500 words, so I can imagine what a 20 day will end up being. My flight was good over here, I was upgraded on the Tucson Dallas flight and the stewardess hooked me up. Every time I finished my vodka and orange juice she hooked me up with another one. So it would not be a farce to say I was hammered when I landed in the lone star state. My flight to Germany was okay. A very quick 10 hours. I didn’t like that both national treasures were a selection but I survived. I watched I am legend. And now I know why cousin mark has a man-crush on will smith. He was jacked in that movie. I also watched a movie about debaters from an all black school in Marshall, TX circa 1931. I will never see a Denzel Washington movie in the theaters but every time I see one of his movies I thoroughly enjoy it. Nevertheless, my mind has not changed. Because my company is cheap or perhaps because the US is broke we had to take taximeter cabriolets to baumholder which is 215 Euros from Frankfurt am Main airport. That’s about 2 hours. Because taximeter cabriolets are not allowed on base we had to stand outside the main gate for about an hour. Luckily it didn’t rain. It rains a lot here. At least that’s how’s it been thus far. My boss told me to pack for hot cold wet dry all in the same day and thankfully I heeded his warning. I go from t-shirt and sunglasses to overcoat and hat within the hour. We’ve been eating quite a lot of mess hall food; I’m accustomed to it at home. But not three square meals a day’s worth. There are a lot of cold cuts in European foods, not my favorite by a long shot. So I’m already tired of the food and we still have two more weeks. The days are long but they go by fast. The nights go by quickly also, sunrise is about 6 am and sunset is about 10pm. You fall asleep quickly because of all the beer you drink. Beer is drunk by the liter here, not ounce. I don’t think I’ll reach my collegiate capacity, that would just be unprofessional, but it certainly will be higher than when I got here. The troubleshooting I’ve done has been fun. Made some new friends from Ukraine, Montenegro, and Azerbaijan. They have a neat tradition at the workshops of exchanging pins. Usually flags of the home countries. Currently I have 5 pins, but only from two countries. That should go up, I’m rather personable.
Alright it’s currently one week later than the last sentence. I can’t remember what I didn’t Saturday or Sunday night but Monday night was Cinco de Mayo and I got hammered. I went to the Macedonia party and drank 2 liters of their finest. Went to Germany and Slovenia and had Jagermesiter, they call it Jagy here. Had some more beer somewhere else then had some Patron in honor of Mexico whooping the shit out of the French. As you all know Jagermeister translates to hangover in a bottle. And that is what I had. I didn’t go to bed that late on Monday probably 130 or so. We had the cultural tour the next day which was in Heidelberg we left by busses. About 1.5 hours into the bus I started getting that churning feeling in my stomach and you start to sweat and swallow hard. It was very reminiscent of Albania if my readers remember correctly. Well luckily they had given us sack lunches, because I was forced to dump out my lunch and put my breakfast into the bag. Not once but twice. I have to tell you though, it was the most professional regurgitation I have ever had. It was quiet, into a bag, in the corner; no one smelled it, I tied up the bag quickly, wiped the tears, snot, and saliva from my face. All the marines laughed at me, but it was handled in the best possible way. I was able to finally sleep after that and got to Heidelberg ready to tour.
Heidelberg is a beautiful town if you even get a chance to go. It’s on the Neckar River, there’s a beautiful castle, beautiful bridge, beautiful churches, and beautiful co-eds. See, beautiful, I told you! We had an excellent tour guide who gave us lots of details, dates, and facts. Visited the Alstatht, which is the German old town. There are over 600 pubs and restaurants there. There is a wannabe Hard Rock Café, so yes of course I got some pins from there. I say wannabe because it is neither a corporate nor a franchised HRC, just a complete knock off. But HRC recognizes its pins, so my pin catalogue was able to grow. There were some beautiful churches, Catholic and Protestant, they were built in the Baroque and Gothic style, 300 and 600 years ago. More gorgeous than me. The University there is the oldest school in Europe dating back to 1386. The castle is not complete anymore, they decided not to restore it, they wanted it to keeps its relic state; so now it is just maintained. All of the streets are cobblestoned and cleaned. There is a monument to Martin Luther when he came to Heidelberg to defend his thesis. I had some lunch at a small Italian bistro, very good Margherita pizza. Giuseppe made my pizza, I’m not sure if that’s what his name was, but it should have been. I pretty much slept the whole way back and came back to find my coworkers preparing for a bbq. Oh yeah I jumped in there and mooched some good steak and hamburgers did not want to have any beer, but my German counterpart made, so I drank half of a Heineken and called it a night. During the BBQ we played catch, when was the last time you played catch, everyone should add catch to the list of things to do in a year.
The next day was back to work and I wasn’t feeling well, there was a cold going around that everyone seemed to have caught. I don’t know if my throat hurt from that or from singing or from the regurgitation. Anyways, I was in a salty mood, or so my coworkers said. That night I took some Nyquil and called it an early one. I must have needed my sleep because I slept through my alarm again. This time only by twenty minutes. That day I just drank lots of water and hit up some Dayquil and all was well in the world. I said one more night of not drinking would do me well so I watched Good Luck Chuck, which is hysterical by the way. Jessica Alba is hot and Dane Cook is awesome, I know none of you like him, but that shit is funny. So the next day, I don’t know the days, because they have all run together, all I know is that it is currently test day 9 and tomorrow will be two weeks here. And somehow or another Ring of Fire by Johnny Cash has become the theme song of Combined Endeavor. Someone is either whistling it or playing it on their computer. I actually don’t mind, I think it’s funny. Last night we cooked the remaining steaks and hamburgers, mmmmm beef. Then I went to the Finnish sauna. They made an impromptu sauna out of a tent and an oven it’s pretty legit though. Cedar planks and the works. And a bunch of naked Europeans. Someone wanted to get into an argument about George Bush. I would have won because I probably would have concurred with them. Whenever people find out where I’m from, Texas not Arizona or the United States, they all want to Bush bash or ask questions about freedom fries or something. I don’t mind, I don’t find it offensive or anything. The Finnish have their own version of Jager that is a little bit stronger. Theirs, too, is pretty much hangover in a bottle but I only had one shot so I didn’t feel that bad this morning. Nothing that a little 7-up couldn’t cure. That’s about it for now, tonight is the UK party so that where I will be abusing my liver at. Cheers mate‼
Fuck the UK and Slovenia and their glorious beer. I drank some water and took some pepto before bed, not even drunk, woke up at 2am thinking I would take a horse sized piss and ended up throwing up in my sink. I was so upset with myself. I really didn’t have that much too drink, 2 liters tops, TOPS. The next night was the American Italian party and the Americans brought steak, STEAK‼‼! The Italians brought some good cheeses and some spicy pasta, but they brought some bad wine. Very, very dry. Usually the more drink the better everything tastes, but I didn’t want to give it a try. The marines were pretty much running the show. Some of the worst IT persons Ive seen in my life. They were nice individuals, but they were very dumb. I wont tell you the actual number and division, but they don’t do very good IT. They were reservists, so their day jobs are all scattered but their MOI is IT. Oh well, we got through it. They also had some beer pong going on. Took off fairly early because I was severely sleep deprived. Tuesday night was the CJCCC dinner, Im not going to explain that group but its basically a planning group for Combined Endeavor. They had a nice schnitzel and white asparagus dinner. White asparagus is pretty good, they just bury it so that it can’t photosynthesize, tastes like regular asparagus, and now I can say Ive had it.
Wednesday was our last test day and the night of the BIWAK, its pronounced beevahk, I don’t know if it translates to anything other than a drunken good time. I was pretty tired of beer so I decided I would only drink red wine that night. I had red wine from Germany, France, Slovenia, Moldova, and Hungary. Canada was serving up pancakes and moose milk. Moose milk was basically a white Russian. Had some shots from various countries, did quite a lot of dancing. My contacts fell out, but I had my glasses, said goodbye to all of My German friends and called it a night. Woke up with a hangover but no real stomach problems. We had about a two hour bus ride to Frankfurt and to our **** hotel. Im not sure if it was really 4 stars, but it had a sauna and Im all about the sauna.
We arrived to the hotel about 2 and went to get some dinner. Stopped in an Italian restaurant had some very good gorgonzola ravioli and we were kicked out right at three, evidently there is siesta in Germany. We rode the subway downtown and did some shopping, bought some euro trash sunglasses. Came back and had the same red snapper with mango coriander rice and walnut ice cream. This time though I had a couple glasses of Riesling.
Friday morning got up and had some very expensive euro buffet breakfast. Went to the airport a little too early, went to the admirals club and had a number of vodka and orange juices. I don’t really sleep well on the plane and since this was a ten hour flight I was able to watch almost 5 movies, bucket list, blood for oil, jumpers, you could never be my boyfriend, and the savages. Again I ordered the kosher meal, this time it was really good. Salmon, peas, egg fried rice, and some chocolate cake. Then for a snack they served vegetable lasagna and fruit cocktail. We had a pretty long layover in Dallas so I did some more Admirals club, that’s where I am currently. It’s a quarter to six Dallas time which is a quarter to one for my body Germany time. My flight is currently delayed so I won’t be getting home until 7 or so which should be hour 25 or 6 for me. All of these days and dates have been squished together. I didn’t even know that today was Friday. That’s what’s it like for me right now. Well I’m going to go for a walk to try and stay awake. Ill finish the rest this weekend. Going for a walk I smelled some delicious McDonalds. I can’t remember the last time I had burning hot fries, man were they delicious. Got on the flight and came home. I don’t know what it is about Tucson airport, but you always have to wait 5 hours to get your luggage. Got it and went to my cousin’s house. Sorry for the unexciting finish but that’s it.
Peace love and soul,
jacob
