Kaiserslautern

Our first full day in Germany was kind of a wash. I had planned to go to the Ramstein travel office to get some local help planning my next move. They were closed on Sunday (along with most of the rest of Germany). We decided to go check out Kaiserslautern and ended up just walking around a bit and having a nice lunch at this cafe'. Maxx tried out some phrases out of that phrasebook, and ran across the catchphrase for the trip "Ich bin hai", which we all thought was pretty funny because it means "I am high." Lonely Planet makes great travel books, and it includes information for even drug use. Good thing it's just a joke for the kids and me.

51 passengers to a broken bird

Organized chaos is how I can best describe this Space-A flight process. They loaded us all on buses out to the plane, and when we got close to it, we noticed the broken engine cover was still off. So they put us all back in the terminal and told us they'd brief us in 3 hours. This didn't happen, but you know me...I'm all about the communcation :) So, I found out that they didn't have the part needed to fix it, wand when they do get it, it'll take 3 hours to fix. We've been sitting here for 9 hours now watching the line to see if any maintenance people go out to the plane to fix it. Negative. Good thing I didn't try to push it any closer than 5 days to get back! :)

Giant BX in the sky!

Climbing gym here at Ramstein. This is pretty cool, it continues around to the other side. Ramstein has the largest military exchange (BX/PX/NEX) I've ever seen. We stopped in to buy an electrical plug adapter, snacks, etc. The hotel, BX, bars, restaurants (they even have Macaroni Grill), shops, etc. are all under one huge roof. There are three different car rental companies here, too.

USO is awesome!

Watching a bunch of troops heading "downrange" (i.e. Afghanistan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, etc.) brings into focus the value of somebody caring about them. USO here at Ramstein does an awesome job. They provide free phones, Wi-Fi access and computer terminals for people to stay in touch with family and make travel arrangements, family lounges, and simple things like coffee/sodas/snacks to help traveling military members. If you want to "support the troops," this organization is getting it done.

Sitting in the Ramstein terminal waiting to find out of our C-17 is fixed. We showed up yesterday, jumped right into the manifest for an evening flight and got through security when they announced that the plane was broken. Met another family with kids the same age as Quinn and Maxx, had some dinner, grabbed a room at the Ramstein Inn, and showed back up. Hopefully we get to fly out. Fingers crossed, since there are two more opportunities once we're in the air for the flight to go wrong...we're flying Ramstein, DE->Gander, Newfoundland->Mcguire AFB, NJ->McChord, WA. From McChord, we still have to hop down to Sacramento (Travis AFB) to catch a flight back to Hawaii. Or, we might just hang out a day or two and take a commercial flight out of SeaTac. Depends on how long it takes to get to WA.

Even more luck...

After landing at Ramstein at about midnight, we discovered that there was literally "no room at the inn," meaning the "Ramstein Inn." It's located very conveniently just across the Straße from the AMC terminal, so at least we didn't waste a bunch of time/money on cab fare to figure this out. We had been sort of hanging out with a couple with a 2 yr-0ld in the same predicament, so we agreed to share a cab to find a hotel. The luck part comes in when the cab we took was driven by a great guy named Peter. Our new friend Zander had gotten the list of area hotels/phone numbers and after we couldn't get into the first hotel, he really went out of his way to help us find a place to stay.

After about two dozen phonecalls, we landed at Seehotel Gelterswoog, a nice little boutique hotel on a lake near Kaiserslautern. The staff did not speak much English at all, so Peter helped us out there, too. The place was way local, and the wedding party that was taking place in the dining room behind the front desk seemed none too pleased to see a little group of Americans arrive. After a bunch of hassle and one beer, we got to sleep for the night, thinking we were in a boring little hotel and woke up to this:

K-town Synaogue ruins

We ran across the ruins of the Kaiserslautern synagogue, destroyed in the anti-Jewish pogrom in 1938 during Kristallnacht.

Lucky Trip

So, having checked into the Air Mobility Command terminal upon commencing my leave Wednesday, I was all primed to go for the flight to Charleston, SC on Friday. Charleston is one of four main places the Air Force flies to Europe from (the others being Dover, McGuire, and BWI). I found the flight on www.pepperd.com, which is a vBulletin site that has tons of Space-Available (Space-A) flight information, including members who post flight info they get from calling the terminal's pre-recorded message. Still not really clear on why they don't just post it on the interwebs.

I packed the kids (and myself) up and headed down to the terminal with the idea that we needed to be able to carry everything for the trip on our backs because we want to be mobile enough to walk places if needed.

Based on being a Category III (Active Duty-Regular Leave) and getting into the system early, we got selected right away for the flight to Charleston, SC. Quinn holds the "golden tickets" in front of two C-17's at Hickam, the current workhorses for the USAF.