We were awake by 6am and ready to go. Sean had to leave for work by 7am and Alina was going with us to try again to get out of Ramstein. When we arrived, we saw our old C5 flight, plus the one that had been rescheduled 4 or 5 days, and a C17 to McGuire through Canada. The McGuire flight only showed 14 seats, tentative, so we weren't holding our breaths. As the morning went by, the rescheduled both the C5 flights and the C17 still showed 14 seats, so a number of folks left for greener pastures, including most of the folks that had been ticketed for our cancelled C5 from yesterday. The three of us, Alina, my wife, and I, decided to stick it out and see if we might possibly make the ... read more

Today, hopefully our last full day in Germany, Manoli remembered the statues of soccer players (football or fusbol in Europe) that we'd seen a couple times on our way to the base, so we headed in what we hoped was the right direction. Along the way, we passed a General Dynamics European Land Systems compound. I'd worked for General Dynamics 22 years before retiring last year. I knew they had offices around the world, but was still surprised to find one here. Since it was a different division than mine, Information Systems, I just sort of gawked, took a photo, and continued on. We found the first set of statues called Fussball ohne Grenzen, which means Football without Borders. It is a sort of reenactment of a soccer game with players from all around the world ... read more

This morning, after a better than usual night's sleep, we got up later than normal and headed to the base at Ramstein to check things out. We wanted up-to-date info on upcoming flights home, how to turn in our rental car, and see if we could browse the base exchange. We'd found out on their webpage that there were two flights to the states on Sunday. At the moment, there is a flight to Andrews AFB in Maryland and one to Dover AFB in Delaware. Neither is ideal, but with no better alternatives in the current future, we will probably go for either one of those tomorrow. We also found out that although Hertz isn't open on Sunday, we can park our rental car in a lot near the terminal and just drop our keys in ... read more

After a minimal breakfast, we headed towards the Tourist Information Office in the Hauptbahnhof railway station to see about a day pass for transport. When we told the lady there that we wanted to take the trian to the Uetliberg scenic overlook, take a short lake cruise, and ride the trams around town some, she was kind enough to explain the system and recommend a day transport pass for 17 CHFs that would cover all that at no additional cost. We bought the two passes and soon found the platform for the S10 train to Uetliberg and were on our way. The train passes underground a bit, then starts heading out of town and soon uphill. Half way there, when we stopped at a stop, about 10 or 12 little kids, like 5 or 6 years ... read more

We did our usual routine of cleaning up, changing clothes, packing, and away we went, to our next stop in the tiny country of Liechtenstein, about 1 to 2 hours away. After getting another 50 Euros of gas at the station in front of the hostel, we were sent by the car's navigation system down one of the streets that was closed for upcoming festivities in Innsbruck. Fortunately, after a couple of turns I made on my own, the system picked a new route and we were off. Most of the trip was on decent roads, as usual, but this time instead of one longish tunnel and a couple smaller ones like we'd gone through on our way to Innsbruck, this time it was tunnels galore, several long ones, and one that was over 10 kilometers ... read more