Blogs from Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, Europe - page 3

Enjoyed a lovely breakfast in our hotel before jumping into the car and heading up the Moselle along the N53 to Cochem and back. It took all day we stopped for coffee and cake at a beautiful little town called Bernkastel. Cochem was beautiful and after a long stroll to ALDI we enjoyed a picnic lunch on a reclining bench in the sunshine with a spectacular view of the castle. ... read more

Kirsten and I wake up, it’s 8:30am and we both feel well rested. Uli and Gudrun have a great breakfast waiting for us. This is the best Zimmer I’ve stay in. Omi, wakes up and is down stairs soon. Omi and Gudrun go way, way back if you haven’t figured that out yet. After breakfast, Kirsten works with Omi on ordering her train ticket to Fulda using her phone. It’s is impressive how much Omi uses technology, iPhone, iPad yeah.. she’s getting quite good at posting, using Apple Pay, taking pictures and finding Kirsten and Bea on Find Friends. Everyone gives us a great send off and we promise to return soon. On the road again... Kirsten is driving and I’m navigating, where are we going, I have no idea, maps, iPhone. I have to ask ... read more

Well... we packed up and headed towards Ramstein Air Base, to hopefully get a flight out. At the time we left, there was a flight to Charleston, but it was showing 0 seats Firm. There was also a flight to Dover AFB (on a C5 with nice seats!) in the afternoon with 73 seats Firm. When we arrived at the terminal and parked our rental car, we went into the terminal to see that the Charleston flight now showed 49 seats, Tentative. After reviewing the Space A "present" list, we saw we were 70th and 71st on the list, so we decided it would be safer to take the Dover flight since that way even if everyone present wanted to go, we'd still make it. When the roll call started, there were several names called that ... 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

Well, today started like most days, but didn't stay that way very long. We ate breakfast, packed up, and went down with our luggage to the nearest tram station, Bellevue. We caught the No. 4 tram to Wildbachgasse, close to where our car was parked. From there, we walked the 2 blocks or so to our car and .... couldn't find the car key! We both looked "everywhere" for the key, but neither of us remembered where we'd put it or seen it last. This was the start of a major fiasco, with a happy ending, Manoli stayed with our luggage near the car, partly to make sure that if the parking police came she could tell them we'd misplaced the key and would be gone soon. I walked back to the tram station and took ... read more