The Queen and I got back earlier this week after seven weeks in the US of A. It’s always nice to be “home”, but I look at America through the eyes of a visitor most of the time. Here are some of my observations:

America as the land of round door knobs is becoming a myth. Yes, it’s long been a running joke among us ex-pats that America is the land of round door knobs. I think that that used to be the case. I remember growing up in a house with round door knobs. I went to school in a building with round door knobs. I worked in factories and stores with round door knobs. Even my first job as a teacher was in a building with round door knobs. But this time, I noticed that many buildings, including the condo that we rented for the summer, had levers of the catch and rip variety….just like we have in Europe. America is becoming globalized. Well, at least in the area of door knobs. Here’s a question for you: if it’s a lever, is it still called a door knob?

The newspaper classified ad section was full of foreclosure announcements….every damn day. It was depressing. Page after page of announcements of “sheriff’s sales” to sell homes on which  people could no longer afford to pay the mortgage. There are probably some bargains to be had if one has the capital to dabble in the real estate market.

On a related note, I noticed so very many empty storefronts. The malls especially were noteworthy. Where there used to be stores, the doorways were blocked off and there was no business there. One mall in Austin where we visited was in dire straits. The hair salon where the Queen and I get our hair done (well, I get mine cut. She gets hers sculpted) will be moving from Highland Mall to Lakeline Mall by the time that we visit again. There’s just no business for that place in NE Austin. Scary!

One thing was still a constant. Lots of good Mexican and Tex-Mex restaurants are still around and apparently making a go of it. Thank goodness for that. We love Papasito’s in Austin and Pueblo Nuevo in Florissant, MO. Or is it in Hazelwood on that part of Lindbergh Blvd.? Not to worry. The food tastes good no matter which town in which it resides.

We ate a lot, and both of us gained weight. Now I’ll have to work hard at taking it off again. Once my 3 days of training are completed this week, I plan to get back on the walking paths every day. The blister that I developed on my foot (and thereby sidelining me) has healed and I think I’m good to go.

Thanks to Facebook, I made contact with several friends from high school (can you believe that we are all in our mid-60s now????) Gosh it seems like only yesterday that we were cruising the streets of Springfield, Ill, and terrorizing our teachers. Now many of us are retired teachers and have many memories to enjoy. I got to my hometown for just one night and had a great time reminiscing with some old friends. Some of then are very old, but don’t tell them I said that.

We visited the house that we own, and the Queen informed me that she hates that house and doesn’t want to live there. Let’s see….the market is down and we won’t be able to sell it for even what we paid for it. Does this sound like a good thing to spring on me now? I thought that she might want to buy a place in Austin, but she hates Austin because of the heat. Our friends want us to move to Tennessee. But I think it gets hot there too. I did enjoy visiting Nashville again. We saw the Country Music Hall of Fame. Got to see Elvis’ gold Cadillac. I think I saw him there, but I’m not certain. I know that I saw him a few weeks before we left, and he was driving an Audi at 150 mph on the Autobahn here in Germany. He looked older.

I’ll save more reflections for a time when I can give full attention to spending time 24/7 with one’s spouse. I go back to work this week. She goes back to work the following week. I’m sure that we’ll both be pleased.

I think that the real reason is that I’ve gotten lazy. We’ve been eating many meals in restaurants lately, and they have been quite good. The best, however, was last weekend in Nashville. We were in the area visiting friends who live in the Fort Campbell area. That meal was a family-style extravaganza at Maggiano’s Little Italy. Normally, I’m not much for Italian food, but this was outstanding. I couldn’t believe how much food was brought to the table. And then there were seconds. I’m also not big on desserts, but the other three had a great time with the two(!) desserts that we got. The Queen wanted profiteroles, and they looked scrumptious. I even took a little taste. (They aren’t exactly at the top of the list for a diabetic’s diet.) The other dessert was a layered chocolate cake. The layers were cake, chocolate mousse, more cake, more mousse, more cake, and a thick chocolate fudge icing. Just looking at it sent my blood sugar soaring. Our friends took it home with them. I could go on and on about the other four courses that we ate. If you have a Maggiano’s in your area, give them a try.

(About 3 weeks have passed since I first started this blog entry, and all I have to show for it is an expanding waistline). We have eaten more Mexican food this summer than I can recall ever doing before. Since we like Mexican, that isn’t a problem. One of our favorite restaurants in the St. Louis area is Pueblo Nuevo in Hazelwood. We have gone there for years, and the food is delicious. Whenever we are in the area, we make it a point to go to Pueblo Nuevo. Of course, all of those tortillas and chips have added more than a few pounds.

We have gone to so many buffets that I have lost count. Each time, I feel my belt getting tighter. I can’t wait to get off this merry-go-round and get back to some serious eating choices and exercise. I now have a good reason to have curtailed my walking. I developed a blister on the sole of my right foot. I didn’t even know it was there, but my daughter (an RN) noticed the dark spot when I took off my sandal the other day. For a diabetic, blisters on the foot are nothing to toy with, so I have tried to stay off my feet as much as possible, but I’m ready to go again, as soon as we get back home to cooler weather. It has been 105° for the past two days. Even with air conditioning, it makes one wilt when you have to step outside. Right away, my sunglasses will fog up when I get out of the car. It makes me recall our first years on Okinawa when our car had no a/c, and the temps and relative humidity were in the 80s and 90s until about November. Those aren’t especially fun memories when I think about driving “up-island” from south of Naha to the big BX at Kadena on the weekends.

My birthday was last weekend, and both of my daughters and our one son-in-law were here to help me celebrate. Of course, food was the defining factor. We celebrated on Friday and Saturday because Allison had to check in to her hotel (she’s been in town for a conference) on Saturday evening. So on Friday, we went to a movie in the Delmar Loop in the St. Louis suburb of University City. After the flick, we went to get some drinks at Blueberry Hill,  because Drew said that he had never been there. It’s a must for any visitor to the area. Local icon Chuck Berry performs there about once a month, and I think I remember hearing that one of the owners is actor John Goodman (both St.Louisans). While we were inside, the area got some torrential rains, so we decided to stay there for dinner instead of following our original plans. If you’ve been there, you’ll be able to guess what we had: Hamburgers! And they were delicious. Made even better when washed down with a good European beer – Bud Light. Ever since our local brewery was bought by a Belgian company, I just can think of any Anheuser-Busch product as being an American beer. After dinner, my kids treated me to an evening of karaoke at an establishment owned by a Korean lady. She was startled when I greeted her in Korean, and that (along with the fact that I told her it was my birthday) got me a free drink.

On Saturday, my official birthday, we had a wonderful brunch at the Ameristar Casino. That was the Queen’s birthday treat for me. I think I waddled away from that meal. The good news is that I more than doubled my money in the casino. Yep, I started with $5 at the slots and ended with $11.30. All in all, a good birthday. Monday was ballpark fare. Allison and I went to a Cardinal game, but the evening was tarnished a bit because the Redbirds played like they didn’t care. The lost 9-4, which was better than the next night when they lost 18-4. Thankfully, they finally beat the Astros on Wednesday evening to salvage one game of the series. They won’t lose today…it’s an off-day before flying to Florida to play the Marlins.

I think you are now up-to-date with my dining experiences, and I gotta say that I’m ready to go back to schnitzel and good Frankenwein. I’ll try to do better at posting to this blog when my routine calms down a bit. I hope everyone is enjoying the dog days of August.

I’ve been occupying my time mostly with walking. Until yesterday, I was trying to do about 6 miles every morning, and I was getting pretty good at it. I have been walking along the “Katy Trail“, which goes from St. Charles, MO, to Clinton, MO, a distance of about 225 miles. I would absolutely love to walk the entire trail some day. Although my daughter has a close friend named Katy, the trail is named for the railroad which used to occupy that right-of-way. The Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad (MKT or just “KT” for short) donated some of the land and sold the rest of the land to the State to build a trail. The portion that I have been walking, over and over again, is along the Missouri River, the “Mighty Mo”, and it’s gorgeous scenery along the way. The problem that I have is that I can only go so far, and then I need to turn around and come back. Anyway, it’s been fun. Well, it WAS fun until I woke up yesterday morning feeling a bit ill. I don’t know if it has anything to do with the walking or if my problem is a result of watching the fireworks on the evening of the 4th of July, but I am covered with mosquito bites which have swollen into rather large welts that are driving me nuts. Well, more nuts than usual.

I also have a headache, and I almost never get headaches, so this can stop any time! I’m ready. I just haven’t felt like getting out there and walking along the water where the mosquitoes have been breeding.  Sometimes, life just gives you lemons and I don’t know how to make lemonade out of those darn mosquitoes. I also have been wanting to do some volksmarching while I am here. I like to “volksmarch” which normally is done with a large group of people, but there are also “year-round” volksmarch sites, and there are two close to the apartment that we have rented for the summer. So I went to the start point on Sunday, and no one there knew what I was talking about. Hmm. Not good. I will have to go back on a regular business day and see if the regular employee knows how to issue me a start card. The start point is one of the local hospitals, and it should be manned 24/7, but Sunday was not only a weekend but a holiday, so I will try again. I’d like to get credit for my walks, and there are several opportunities in the surrounding area to do that. The walks are normally 10 km, or about 6 miles, which I have been doing before breakfast usually.

I hope to get to my hometown of Springfield, Illinois, this summer to link up with some high school friends. I also need to get to our adopted hometown of Springfield, Missouri, (just a coincidence with the names) in order to check into possible storage locations for some furniture. If all goes according to plan, we will move to that location when the Queen retires. I have about 10 months left on my authorization to ship household goods at government expense, and we’ll need somewhere to ship them to. If the price is not outrageous, we may contract for storage with a local moving and storage company.

Our flight home was uneventful, thank goodness, but the connection in Chicago was full of excitement. We spent 7 hours at Ohare Field waiting for our connecting flight to St. Louis. There was a significant storm in the area, and the plane that we were supposed to take never came in. After about 6 hours of delays, the flight was finally cancelled. The Queen has trouble walking, so she commandeered a wheelchair to take her to another terminal where we had to compete for seats on the last flight out. I ran; she rode. The wheelchair attendant took her right up to the front of the line, and we got the last two seats on the flight. Instead of arriving at 6:30 pm, we arrived at about 1:30 am. The car that we had reserved was already given away, so we got a minivan instead, and it’s very nice. We have decided to try to keep it for our entire stay, even though we’ll have to suck up one week of rental cost while we are renting another car in Austin, TX. That’s life, but we like the car.

So we’ll go to Texas for a week to see daughter Allison. When we return, Wendy and Drew (daughter #1 and son-in-law) will arrive in town while they are finishing up their vacation to the midwest. Allison flies in for a conference on the following day, so we’ll have the whole family here to celebrate my birthday at the end of the month. Following that, Wendy and Drew go back to Brooklyn the next day. Allison will take some vacation time here, and I’m sure I’ll be driving to more doctor appointments and hair appointments. I’m so looking forward to that.

Blissfully, this vacation will end on August 11th, when we fly back to Germany and I can relax a bit. That will be my vacation.

In the US, we are accustomed to seeing American flags flying on many public buildings and even at many people’s homes. While one does see the German flag at some public buildings on a daily basis, it is not as prevalent as in the USA. Except for football Cup quests, such as the current World Cup or the European Cup that was held a couple of years ago. It’s kinda cool to see ordinary people flying German flags from their cars or having the flag hanging from their balcony. The whole country gets excited about it. I wonder how many people “call in sick” on days when the German team is playing. I watched their previous two games, and I can only imagine what happens when the whistle blows for intermission (or what we could call “halftime”). I think that every toilet in Germany flushes in unison. There are no breaks in soccer (or Fussball, as it is known here), so fans have to wait for the only natural break in order to trot off to the bathroom.

The German team plays tomorrow, as does the US team, and I will miss both games. I’ll be flying to the US for vacation. So let me say, “Go Germany! and Go USA!” I’ll root for both teams until they have to play each other. Then I will have to wear my red, white, and blue instead of the black, red, and yellow of the Bundesrepublik Deutschland. If both teams advance, and that’s not a certainty for either team, it is possible that they will play each other in their next match.  The Germans have to play without one of their stars in the game tomorrow. Miroslav Klose (yes, he plays on the GERMAN team) will have to sit it out due to getting a red card in the last game. All in all, it should be interesting. The German team won it all in 1990 and we really enjoyed the fireworks when that happened. I am talking about real fireworks, not burning cars and shooting at policemen. I’m sure that there will be plenty of noise from the vuvuzelas tomorrow during the game. I’m talking about here in Germany, not just at the stadium in South Africa. Those damn horns are sold here for about €1.80 and lots of kids have them. As I write this, the neighbor kid is blowing his outside of his house. Hmm, I wonder how stupid he would look with that horn sticking of his …… oh, never mind.

Yes, we board the plane tomorrow if there is no problems with the aircraft, the airline (United), or some volcanic eruption in Iceland. With any luck, we’ll be in St. Louis by Wednesday night and maybe I can catch a Cardinal game on TV. I’m definitely NOT looking forward to the heat and humidity in St. Louis or anywhere in the Midwest. Today, the temperature when I woke up was 6 degrees Celsius, or about 42 F. The gate guard at the base was wearing a heavy jacket and gloves. I said to him, “You know this is summertime, right?” His answer was on the lips of many people right now, “This is crazy weather.” But I’ll take this over the oppressive heat any day.

Well, my next post will be from the United States. Please check back for the story of our flight, and let’s hope that there really is no story to tell!

The Queen will have a medical procedure done shortly after we arrive and may or may not have a bit of a recovery period. In any event, she has been told that she needs to have a six-week post-operative follow-up (how many hyphenated words can you have in one sentence before it becomes pretentious?) visit. Therefore, our stay will be about seven weeks this summer.

We have rented an apartment in St. Charles (the jumping off spot for the Lewis and Clark Expedition), which lies on the Missouri River, just north of St. Louis. We’ll be there for the first month. Then we head for Austin, TX, to visit with daughter Allison. By coincidence, we will travel there on our wedding anniversary (37th) and are planning to celebrate with a dinner with Allison and a friend of ours from here in Schweinfurt and perhaps her daughter (who lives in nearby Round Rock) at my favorite Austin dining spot, Pappasito’s. I blogged about that place in one of my very first entries. Great margaritas (or so I am told….I only drink dry wine and an occasional beer), the best salsa and chips anywhere on the planet, and superb Tex-Mex food. I took the Queen there last summer, and she loved it. As it happens, we will be there on a Wednesday, which is “Fajita Night”. Really a great deal.

After Austin, we fly back to St. Louis. Our first-born daughter, Wendy, and her husband Drew will be finishing up a road-trip vacation in St. Louis. They will join us for my birthday celebration at the end of the month. OMG, I’m going to be 64. I think it was The Beatles who asked, “Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I’m 64?” We’re about to find out. Allison has a conference in St. Louis at that time, so she will fly in a day or so later and our entire immediate family can help me celebrate. Wendy and Drew fly back to their new (!) apartment in Brooklyn (they moved in this past Friday) on the day after my birthday. Allison wanted to attend a Cardinal game, so she and I will watch the Redbirds play Houston on August 2nd. Let’s hope for temps in the 70′s instead of the usual three-digit temps that St. Louis is famous for in August. I once attended a night game in the old Busch Stadium (the one down along the river, not the one on Grand Avenue formerly known as Sportsman’s Park) when it was 97 degrees at game time and about 110 down on the field. When that stadium opened, an All-Star Game was held there. The “old perfessor”, Casey Stengel, was asked what he thought of the new stadium. He replied, “It holds the heat well.” I’ve been to one game in the new stadium (compliments of Wendy and Drew), and it was very pleasant. I even think I was able to purchase a beer for less than $20. It was an Anheuser-Busch product. Are you surprised?

We will also get to Canton, Illinois, to visit that aunt of mine who lives in an assisted-living facility there and to Springfield, MO, to visit our property. We own a house there that will be our retirement home, but it is rented out at the moment. What I would really like to do is to visit the “other” Springfield in my life. I grew up in Springfield, Illinois, and many of my schoolmates still live there. Because of Facebook, I’ve been able to reconnect with many of them, and I’d love to see them again. I’m going to make every effort to get there and see if we can’t find an evening to have a mini-reunion.

So that’s what’s on the horizon for me and the Queen. If anything even remotely exciting should happen, I’ll blog about it.

We had unseasonably cold weather for a few weeks, along with rain. But last weekend, things got nice again. Of course, the Queen is unhappy about it. She likes cold weather, she says. Anything over 70 degrees makes her miserable. Consequently, I’m miserable too, because I feel guilty about enjoying bright sunshine and 74 degrees or whatever. I was over 80 yesterday if I remember correctly, but we had a storm last night and things have cooled off considerably.

Over the Memorial Day holiday, I took a trip to Karlovy Vary. The Queen didn’t want to go anywhere, so I went by myself and had fun. Karlovy Vary is a spa town in the Czech Republic, about 2 1/2 hours away. I took a few pictures. Well, more than a few to tell the truth. When I checked my camera after I got home, I saw that I took 114 pictures despite the torrential downpour that plagued my trip. For your enjoyment, I will post all 114 in this post. OK, just kidding.

The picture at left gives you an idea of the architecture in the town. I call it “post communist” style, meaning that the fronts of the buildings have been restored to what they must have looked like in times past, but the backs of the buildings are crumbling and downright sleazy in some locations. However, if you don’t look at the backs of the buildings, it is impressive.

The picture at right is of a local park that is used for both locals and tourists. Many people come to Karlovy Vary (Carlsbad in German) for the so-called healing properties of the mineral water and the hot springs. I saw these people, many of them my age or older, walking through the park and sipping their mineral water that is piped right out of the hot springs. The use commemorative cups to drink from.

This river provides a scenic focal point for the city, and at the other end of town the water spews out of the hot spring. You’ll see a picture of that shortly. Note the pretty architecture on the buildings. This town is also famous for crystal and gemstones. We may go back and make some purchases, but prices have shot up in the 15 years since we were last there. It was always known for good (e.g. cheaper) shopping. Not so much any more.

My hotel is the salmon-colored building on the right. Since it was in the center of town (and we are in Europe,after all), there was no parking anywhere nearby. The closest lot was .7 miles away. Fortunately, I didn’t bring a suitcase. Everything, except for my laptop, was in a backpack. The laptop stayed in the car, because the hotel did not have wi-fi or even an ethernet connection. When I was ready to check out, I hoisted my backpack onto my back and hiked back to the car. When passing the old bathhouse, I saw this artist painting the same scene that I was enjoying for real. Check it out on the left.

At the right is a picture of the steam rising from the hot spring that feeds the river. You could really smell the sulfur! Inside a museum, there was a geyser that was erupting constantly. The height varied, but it never seemed to stop. Beyond that area, there were spigots where the people could fill their cups with the sulfurous mineral water. Not my cup of tea….pun intended.

Here is the geyser. It was quite a sight, but probably not as thrilling as Old Faithful.

And finally, the pictures below show someone filling her cup while others are walking by with their cups at the ready. The third picture shows  commemorative cups for sale at a kiosk.

Rats! I can’t get all three to line up horizontally in the final product. They look great in draft format. Any WordPress experts out there?

That about does it for this trip. I have many more photos, but you’ve seen the important stuff, except maybe the picture of the breakfast in my hotel. It was quite nice. The Queen and I are headed Stateside later this month. Perhaps I’ll have more photos to share at that time. Meanwhile, I’ll keep my eye open for anything that is blogworthy.

Anyway, this is a woman who has been by my side for over 37 years. We’ll celebrate our 37th wedding anniversary in July (just 3 days before our daughter Wendy and her husband Drew celebrate their 1st anniversary). Of course, we dated for a while before we got married, so it’s approaching 38 years of being together. She has stuck with me no matter where my job took us. When we arrived in Okinawa in 1973, after being married for about 3 weeks, I wasn’t sure if the marriage would last one month! We got stuck in a small hotel room with no transportation to and from the base where I worked and where she wanted to find a job. It was brutal. After about a week, the military allowed us to move into a BOQ (bachelor officer quarters), but it had no air conditioning. Since the building was designed for air conditioning, our room had no cross-ventilation. They gave us a table fan that had a bent blade. The fan wobbled and “walked” across the table. About every half-hour, it would fall off the table with a clatter. There was mold and mildew on the wall so thick that only a putty knife would get it off. We got no help from the housing office because we were assigned to Naha, and they determined that they would only help people find housing north of Machinato (later called Makiminato, and even later called Camp Kinser). Lord only knows what that base is called now. As I said, it was brutal. Eventually, we did find a place to live, just down a steep cliff from an Okinawan junior high school. About every three days, they would flush out their septic tanks, and our back yard would fill up with urine. There were open ditches along many of the roads. They were known as “benjo ditches”, and you don’t want to know what you’d find in them. Along the way, we got two dogs (Bonnie and Clyde). Clyde was in Bonnie’s litter, so she was his mother. Clyde was very sweet, but Bonnie was aggressive and wanted to run away all the time. She would go swimming in the benjo ditch, and then we’d have to catch her and clean her up.

The base exchange on our base was adequate, but not much more. To get to a larger PX or BX it took a drive of about 1 1/2 hours to go only 10 miles “up island” to Sukiran (later called Zukeran and even later called Camp Foster) or Kadena Air Base. Our car did not have air conditioning, and the rides in the heat and humidity were really draining. We were raw rookies into the overseas schools and didn’t really know what we were entitled to and what to expect. As I said, I’m surprised this marriage lasted past that first year. But it did.

Our first daughter,Wendy, was born on Okinawa, and she probably remembers very little about it. We left when she was about 2 1/2. But that didn’t happen until we had moved into our 3rd house on the island. I had been promoted to school counselor after our first year. After our 6th year, I got promoted to be a principal in Korea, so off we went to Chinhae, Korea.

Chinhae was a lovely place, and the Queen seemed to like it as well, even though it was a bit isolated from the other military bases. We were probably 4 hours from Seoul and over 2 hours to Taegu (now called Daegu). Pusan (now called Busan) was about the same distance. The high school kids from our small base had to ride a van to Pusan every day to go to school. The school where I was principal was a K-8 school, and we had maybe 30 kids maximum in the three years that we spent there. Normally, our school had about 20-24 students, so it was a very small school….the smallest in our system at the time. Chinhae was a beautiful location on a mountain, looking down at the harbor. We’d often have deer and pheasants visiting our yard. Very idyllic. But after 3 years as a teacher-principal, I got moved to Yokota Air Base outside Tokyo.

I was again an administrator, but I wasn’t in charge. I had a principal over me, but I was in charge of about half of the school. Our new school facility was under construction, so we were scattered all over the base, and I had teachers in 3 different buildings who reported to me. Wendy was in the first grade when we got there. Our daughter Allison was born a short time later. Both of the births came with some excitement. Wendy was born during a typhoon on Okinawa, when the winds hit over 100 mph just a couple of hours after she was born. Allison came rather quickly, and she was almost born in our van as we were crossing the runway overrun at Yokota to get to the hospital. But both deliveries turned out well, and the Queen has raised (along with me) two beautiful daughters.

We went back to Korea after another promotion. This time it was Seoul, and I worked in the district office. It was one of the best jobs that I had in my 36 year career, but we didn’t like living in Seoul. It was there, however, that the Queen got hired as a regular teacher (instead of a substitute) for the first time. I got to travel a lot, and she was stuck living and driving in Seoul, which takes some fortitude, believe me. I think I spent a lot of my time on the “Blue Train” headed down to Pusan or Taegu or in the back of a C-130 or C-141 headed to Okinawa or the Philippines. Those were exciting times. But eventually, we just had to leave Seoul. I won’t go into why we didn’t like the place, because many of my friends loved it there, and I don’t want to whine. We wanted to see Europe.

So I got a transfer to Bremerhaven, Germany, to continue doing the same work that I did in Seoul. Bremerhaven is very far north in Germany and is almost to the North Sea. It was one of the best-kept secrets in the military, as far as I am concerned. The problem was finding suitable living quarters. We couldn’t find anything for months. We lived in two hotel rooms, sharing one bathroom, for nine months! Again, I’m surprised that she stuck with me. She was on LWOP (leave without pay) for a year to accompany me to Germany, so she was stuck in the hotel with no job. Brutal! But she stayed with me.

Finally, we got a house when a fellow administrator got a sabbatical to go back to the States to work on his doctorate. We lived in that house for 2 years, and Wendy thrived in the Osterholz High School, where the Queen taught English after our first year there. Allison attended both Bremerhaven Elementary School (while we were in the hotel) and then Osterholz Elementary School. She was an outstanding student in both locations. But, due to the military drawdown in the early 90s, my office closed, and we had to move to Bitburg Air Base in western Germany.

We were lucky to find quarters comparatively quickly, and we got a house in a town that was almost in Luxembourg. I think we were about 6 miles from the border. The Queen got a job teaching English at the high school on base, so we even could share a ride to and from work. The girls had the benefit of a school bus, but they usually chose to ride with us. Wendy learned how to drive while we were there, and she graduated from Bitburg High School.  Allison attended her fourth and fifth schools by the time that she was in the fifth grade. Again, the base closed. Are you seeing a pattern here?

I got moved to the district office in Kitzingen, Germany, and the Queen got moved to the middle school in Schweinfurt, where she still works after 16 years in the same location!  Allison attended the middle school for two years. However, in the 8th grade, she would have had her mother for a teacher, and neither of them wanted that. So we got permission for her to attend Wuerzburg Middle School, which was “down the road a ways”. Only about 25 minutes by car, the school bus took over 90 minutes to get there. Poor kid. She had to board the bus before 6:25 AM, and didn’t get to school until about 8:00 AM. We found a house rather quickly, and we still live in the same house. The Queen loves it here, and so do I.

Allison moved on to Wuerzburg High School, from which she graduated in 2001. That made 8 schools for her from K-12. The Queen and I lived in 12 houses by the time that we had been married for 20 years, but have lived in the same house now since 1994. I had an assignment starting in 2007 that had me move a little over an hour away, and I got home only on weekends. I usually did find an excuse to be in Schweinfurt when it was her birthday, and I was glad that I could do that. When I retired last summer, I got to move back with the Queen and her “palace”.

She has raised our kids, cooked, done the laundry and the shopping while working at a job that is “more than” full-time. Fortunately, I can help now with some of the laundry and cooking, but I will only shop in the local grocery stores. I’d rather have a root canal than shop at the commissary on base, so she puts up with that as well. She’s a beautiful lady and a real “queen” to have put up with me all these years.

Happy birthday to the Queen.

On most Army or Air Force bases, there is a PX or BX (for Air Force) and also a Shoppette. A shoppette is like a mini-PX, and is much like a 7 Eleven back in the USA. On Saturday morning, I was in the Shoppette getting a newspaper and some coffee. There was a mother and her daughter (about 13 years of age) in there, both dressed in workout clothing. They were looking for something to eat right away, but the mom was pushing something that the kid didn’t want. They walked past the breakfast sausages and the grilling hot dogs and walked over to the muffin case. The mom said that the kid could have a muffin. These are Otis Spunkmeyer prepared and pre-packaged muffins. The kid whined that she wanted something else (I didn’t hear what), but I did her the mom say, “MUFFINS….HEALTHY!”.

At this point, I’m thinking to myself, “Healthy?” Later, I went over to the muffin case and checked. Each muffin had 73 grams of carbohydrates and 37 grams of fat. You be the judge. Is this a healthy choice? What do you think?

For many Germans, it is a time of enjoyment. Many, probably most, communities erect a Maibaum. Although the literal translation is a bit different, we’ll call it a Maypole. These are tall trees, stripped bare up until the top few meters and erected on the town square and/or church grounds. The erection, if you’ll pardon the expression, is a big deal and a time for partying in the streets. Would it surprise you to learn that prodigious amounts of beer are consumed? I didn’t think so. Our village had its celebration on Friday evening at 6:00pm. The Queen and I did not attend; instead, we went to dinner at our favorite restaurant. More on that later.

Mayday is also a time for some stupid behavior. The day is used as an excuse for rioting. Read the Sunday papers for reports of rioting around the world. Yesterday, our nearby city of Schweinfurt looked like an armed camp. (Since I have spent the better part of four decades living and working on military bases, I have a pretty good idea of what an armed camp looks like). I went to the PX yesterday morning to buy some printer ink, and I had to pass through a gauntlet of polizei to get into the city. It was a true roadblock. All roads leading into the city were blocked by police. I think I counted ten police vans lining the road that I took. All traffic was funneled into one lane, and local cars were allowed through. It appeared that cars from out of town (you can tell by the license plates) were being stopped and the occupants questioned. Why was all of this going on? I’m told that the neo-Nazis were having a rally in town and there were also counter-demonstrators. I saw police vans from as far away as Bayreuth, Ansbach, Bamberg, and Wiesbaden in addition to our local cops. I got through OK, but decided to stay away for the remainder of the day. I haven’t read the local news today (my German is spotty at best), but I have heard no reports of violence on our American Forces radio station.

But Mayday is more than demonstrations and Maypoles. The arrival of May means that we are in the midst of Spargel season. If you don’t know what Spargel is, you don’t know what you are missing. It is white asparagus that is grown underground to stop photosynthesis. Driving along the roads, you’ll see fields that consist of

row after row of dirt mounds. Underneath the dirt grows Spargel. This is treated as a real delicacy by our German neighbors (and us too). It is boiled and served with drawn butter or Hollandaise sauce. It is also made into soup, and Spargelcremesuppe is a real treat.Trust me on this. In fact, the Queen and I have eaten Spargel for our last two evening meals, and I’d have it tonight if I had a cooker in which to boil it. I really need to get one of those! I’m told that you cook them with the stalks standing vertically with the tips out of the water. Since I’m becoming a “serious cook” (not so much!), maybe I need to get with the program. Actually, I never really involved myself with cooking until I lived by myself for two years, coming home only on weekends. I got started rather simply, using a two-burner stove in my small apartment. Since retiring and returning home for good, I have learned how to cook some entertaining meals.

Last week, for example, I cooked crock-pot rotisserie chicken with potatoes, carrots, and onions. Later, I cooked blackened porkchops with bratkartoffeln (fried potatoes with a special seasoning), green beans in a mustard sauce, and a spinach salad with hard-boiled eggs and feta cheese. Who would have thought that I could pull that off? I’m rather proud of myself. <grin>

Well, after nine months of retirement, I have accepted a new job. I work for a company that has a contract with the Department of Labor to provide to provide TAP training to soon-to-be-separated military members. The company is based outside of Washington, DC, and provides over 1300 training sessions annually to military members around the world. What is TAP training, you ask? You didn’t know that I could tap dance, did you? Actually, I did learn how to tap dance around an issue when I was being trained as a public affairs officer for my school district, but I digress. TAP stands for Transition Assistance Program, and we train these soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines in how to get prepared to enter the US job market. It’s a steep learning curve for me considering the content, but the process is at least familiar to me. I’ve given many trainings to adults in my previous job. I’m very proud to have been selected for this position, which is part-time. I will probably only provide t=one or two workshops a month. Each workshop is 2 1/2 days, so that is manageable for me. I’d tell you the company’s name, but I haven’t asked their permission to use their name in this blog. Although I haven’t earned a penny from the ads that appear at the top of my blog, technically I could be making money on the blog and there might be some concern about a conflict of interest. Therefore, I’ll just tell you that I am pleased to be a part of this company, owned by a disabled veteran, which provides assistance to our brave warriors.

My first solo effort will be next week, so wish me luck.

If there is such a place, I believe that we have found it. For spring break, the Queen and I took a 6-day trip to the south. We started by going to Oberammergau, Germany, the location of the decennial Passion Play. Although we hadn’t originally planned to view the play, we changed our minds. If we can still get tickets (our innkeeper is working on it for us….he plays the High Priest this time), we plan to attend over Labor Day weekend. Oberammergau is always pretty, and I have many pictures from previous trips. Here is a photo from our one night there this spring.

After leaving Oberammergau, we drove to Bolzano, Italy, to see “Ötzi” or “The Iceman”. He is a mummy that was discovered in the Alps about 20 years ago. Perfectly preserved in the ice, he is now on display in a museum in Bolzano (or “Bozen” if you speak German). Photography is not permitted in the museum, but I can tell you that it is very well done, and the artifacts of the era are very interesting. The speculation about how he died, what he ate, and how he lived captured my attention. We had not been to Bolzano before, and it is a very nice-looking city. Bolzano is in the “Südtirol” or South Tirol, which makes it really more Austrian than Italian. I heard a lot of German being spoken and many of the signs are in both languages. I took only a few pictures during our very short time there, but there was a very interesting church.  The roof had a unique finish to it, as I hope you can see.

From Bolzano, we made a quick trip to Vicenza, the home of the 173rd Airborne Brigade and the Southern European Task Force, in order to get authorization for and to buy coupons for tax-free gasoline while we were in Italy. We saved a few bucks by doing so. I took no pictures there, and we quickly headed out for Desenzano, on the shores of Lake Garda, for our second overnight. We have been to Garda before, and we only spent one night there.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t listening or I wasn’t aware that the Queen wanted fish, and I drove to a restaurant in a reconverted barn, way out in the country. We had been there before, but the Queen reminded me that things are never the same the second time around. The Cascina della Taverna is very popular with the locals (it was packed), but obviously not with visiting royalty. I won’t make that mistake again. However, if you are interested, the restaurant has its own page on Facebook and has many fans. Can you guess that the food was not fish, but meat? Check out the picture. The food is cooked over an open hearth. There is no menu.You eat what they cook. Wine and beer are readily available. Again and again. Ah, yes, Italian wines. They made the whole sorry experience tolerable.

In fact, the next day we stopped at a winery and loaded up the car with Lugana wine, a specialty of the area. Little did we know then that we would find yet another favorite wine later in the day. After the Lake Garda area, we went to our main location, Bellagio, on Lake Como in the Lombardy region of Italy. This is the Heaven on Earth that I spoke of. The picture at the right was taken from a ferry as we crossed from Bellagio to Cadenabbia on the west leg of the lake. The picture at the left was taken from our hotel room balcony. Bellagio sits at the tip of a peninsula that divides the lake into three legs. There’s a north leg, an east leg, and a west leg.

Words cannot describe the beauty of this place. In the morning, lying in bed, we could look out and see the sunrise over the mountaintops. At night, the lights of the villages ringed the lake and made for an idyllic setting. We had planned to go to Turin and view the Shroud on Wednesday, but the thought of traveling all day to get there, view the Shroud, and then return, made us think that we’d rather view the scenery around Bellagio. And that’s what we did. So don’t expect a report on the Shroud of Turin in this space. Regretfully (maybe a little), that won’t happen. But because we did stay in the area, we got to visit the Villa Carlotta in Tremezzo, on the western leg of the lake. I took about 100 photos in the garden and here are just a few of them. I have posted more pictures on my Facebook page, and I invite you to view them there.

These three pictures cannot begin to describe the floral beauty of the garden. We will have to go back there to take in more of it. There was even a bamboo garden, some waterfalls, beautiful flower gardens, trees, and rock formations.

On our way home, we spent the night in Garmisch, Germany, a frequent haunt of ours. We dined at a favorite restaurant, Bollywood, on Indian food, and it was one of the best meals of the trip. And that’s saying something, because the Italian food was excellent. I have not been much of a fan of Italian food, but I am getting converted! I really enjoyed it.

When we left Garmisch, we got routed through Steingaden, which is the location of the famous Church in the Meadow, or Wieskirche. After I posted several pics to Facebook, one of my friends told me that you aren’t supposed to take pictures in that church. I didn’t see any signs to that effect, and almost everyone was snapping away with their cameras. This church is one of the foremost examples of Rococo architecture in this part of Germany. You can find more pictures on my Facebook page, but here are three for you to enjoy.

We had to drive fast to get home, as the Queen was suffering from a sinus infection the entire time and I had made a doctor appointment for her at 5:30 pm on the day we got back. Normally, that would not have been a problem, but traffic was brutal. We got back with about 15 minutes to spare. After her appointment, we rushed to the Apotheke (pharmacy) and got there just 5 minutes before closing. We lucked out.

And we lucked out on this trip. It was probably the best one that we have taken in a long time. Bellagio is a place that we will plan to return to at some time. Please check out the pics on my Facebook page if you enjoyed these. Until next time, when I will report on my new job that I started last week.