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On August 17th after an all night MAC flight from McGuire AFB in New Jersey, my sponsor met me at the Rhein Main airport and drove the two hours to my hotel in Ramstein village. I checked into the hotel where I would stay until I found an apartment to rent. The village is next to the air base where I would work as a civil engineer and project manager for NATO Infrastructure projects at the headquarters of U.S. Air Forces in Europe.
Housing was in very tight supply, but I used a local real estate agent and in about three weeks found a duplex in Glan Munchweiler, a small farming village about 16 kilometers northwest of the base. There was only one other American family in the village, Nan and Stacy, and we became good friends. The husband worked in my office , so we rode to work together.
In early September, with the lease signed, I was able to bring Linda to Germany. I picked her up at Rhein Main and drove the scenic route to our new home which was actually an old home built in 1927. She was tired from her all night flight and
was not too impressed with the apartment; in particular the gaudy wall paper which looked like large green cockroaches. She shed a tear, whether for the exhaustion or the wall paper, I'm not sure. The weather was also rainy and cold, and would pretty much remain that way until spring.
In late September we signed up for a conversational German class on base. We soon had a chance to practice. On New Year’s Day 1978 we arrived home from church and our elderly next door neighbors invited us to their home for café und kuchen. We spent the next five hours talking to them in German supplemented with plenty of sign language. We learned all about their lives as farmers and his life as a German soldier on the eastern front, his subsequent capture by the Red Army and two years in a POW camp.
Our next priority was to buy a car. We bought a new Volvo which entailed our first of many trips in Europe to the factory in Goteborg, Sweden. On a Friday afternoon, October 20, 1977 we took a chartered bus from Ramstein to Kiel where we caught the overnight ferry to Goteborg, arriving
in the early Saturday morning hours. We then boarded a bus to the Volvo factory and were given a welcome in their board room and a factory tour. It the end we accepted delivery of our new car. We had that evening and Sunday in Goteborg, before catching the Sunday night ferry from Goteborg to Travemunde. We walked around Goteborg Saturday afternoon and evening. On Sunday we drove south of town to a castle built by a Scottish trader. It was wood paneled throughout and very cozy for a castle. We had lunch there before driving around the countryside back to Goteborg to catch the overnight ferry. Monday morning we arrived in Travemunde and drove to Lubeck, and ended up driving on a pedestrian street to the historic center where we walked around to see the sights. Then we drove south to the Hartz Mountains, to the city of Goslar, a free imperial town that was a favorite capital of northern Germany in the 11th century, where we spent the night in a small inn. Tuesday we drove the rest of the way home.
In February 1978 while I was at a three week course in Ohio, our furnace
caught on fire because the chimney hadn’t been cleaned. Linda soon met all the neighbors. Our neighbor on the other side had been a POW in Canada, which he really enjoyed as he was allowed to work at nearby farms. That’s where he learned English; I think the only elderly person in the village that did. We also met our landlord. In their conversation he told Linda that his wife wanted to vacation on the North Sea, but having been a sailor on the Prinz Eugen, the escort ship for the Bismarck, he had seen enough of the North Sea and wanted to vacation on the Mediterranean. We found older Germans very willing to talk about their WWII experiences. Following the chimney incident, Linda also met a family down the street and was invited for the wife’s birthday party. In Germany they serve many birthday cakes, not just one, and she was expected to have a slice of each! Another day, when she went to the butcher every one pushed forward, and she just stood in the back. Soon they noticed her and invited her to come to the front while explaining that there are no lines at the butcher,
or baker, or any other store. When I returned, Linda introduced me to all her new friends. The family with the birthday cakes also enjoyed playing table games. We were frequent guests at their home playing Memory and Parcheesi.
When spring came, Linda and Nan decided to plant a garden in our back yard which touched on the back fences of every property on the block. Linda got her gardening book out and both started to follow the directions; measuring the distance between the seeds, etc. Soon all the farmers’ wives were looking over their back fences and asking what they were doing. They soon had plenty of help and guidance. All these encounters were in German so we continued to take language lessons which helped with our new friends. We were blessed with a wonderful village for the 2 ½ years we lived there.
In May 1978 my Mom flew from Thailand to be with us for several weeks. I took her and Linda on a business trip to Jever Air Base, a German base in northern Germany that the USAF would use in wartime. We stayed and ate a small gasthaus. While eating, the landlord’s teenage
kids, Jenny and Jurgen, noticed we spoke English. Soon we were helping them do their English homework. The next day while I was at the German air base, they took my Mom and Linda on a tour of the town. It was freezing cold and they insisted everyone have ice cream. In German the J is pronounced as a Y, so we will always remember the kindness of Yenny and Yurgen from Yever. After my meetings, we drove back to Ramstein via the Benelux. Right after we returned we went on a vacation to France and Switzerland.
In July 1978 I had a business trip to Camp Darby, Italy near Pisa and Livorno to inspect and accept 77 ammunition bunkers into the Air Force inventory. I decided to take Linda along and add a few days vacation to the trip. There we met my Corps of Engineers counterpart, Mike and his wife Betty. We would become lifelong friends. We drove down on Saturday, stopping in Lucerne, Switzerland and Pisa, Italy on the way, arriving at Camp Darby on Sunday. Most of the weekdays were spent on the job, but in the evenings we enjoyed going to restaurants on the
beach in Tirrenia. The first evening we ordered pasta, and were informed by the waiter that we had to order at least four courses; the antipasto, the pasta, and a main course, and dessert. Dinner took four hours to eat; and this was pretty much the same each evening. We departed on Saturday and stopped in Portofino for the night. Our hotel was right on the waterfront. The owner informed us that the King of Jordan had previously stayed in our room. I thought that he must have been traveling incognito as a poor student, because our room wasn’t up to royal standards. Sunday we drove to Genoa and tried to find parking, driving to every level of a parking garage just to find every spot taken. We were still charged for the effort. We headed north, driving over the San Bernardino Pass as the tunnel under it hadn’t been built yet. We continued through Switzerland into Germany. By then it was pretty late and I was tired so I let Linda drive. I woke up to find her driving 90 mph, which is ok for the autobahn, but still to fast for us. Anyway, we finally made it home
in one piece.
In August 1978 I had another business trip to a conference with the German Ministry of Defense officials at the Armed Forces Recreation Center on the southern shore of Lake Chiemsee. This was one of many former Nazi resorts taken over by U.S. forces. Again, during the day I had meetings, but afterwards Rich (who would also become a lifelong friend along with his wife Judy), Linda and I would tour the countryside between the lake and the German Alps. We would find a nice restaurant during our travels, and enjoy delicious schnitzel, sauerbraten, strudel and beer. Our conference was cut short because our guests didn’t appreciate the poor accommodations, which I don’t blame them for. The resort subsequently went through a major renovation.
Another time I had to go to a meeting in Osnabruck, in northern Germany, with the German regional military district construction office, so called flight ops to see if they had anything going that way. They had a plane going to Berlin and agreed that they could make a quick stop in Osnabruck. It turned out to be an executive Gulfstream jet with United States of American emblazoned on the side.
I was the only passenger. When we landed I got off the plane and strode to the terminal with people wondering who this was. Mostly I drove or took a train for these trips.
A fun summer activity sponsored by Ramstein AB was the annual air show. Over 500,000 Germans came to see the aerial displays, and to eat American ice cream. They liked our ice cream like Americans like Italian gelato. I guess ice cream is always better "on the other side of the fence." As for the show, most NATO air forces were represented by their aerial teams. The US has the Navy's Blue Angels and USAF's Thunderbirds, who were usually not there, but the UK had the Red Arrows, the Italians had the Frecce Tricolori, the French the Patrouille de France, etc. The Frecce Tricolori was in my humble opinion the best. Their most daring manouvre was when all nine jets approached each other from nine different directions crossing in the middle a hundred yards off the ground where they then curled straight up crossing again a couple thousand feet in the air. A similar manouvre resulted in a crash when eight planes, four from the
right and four from the left came straight at each at low altitude, crossed, and curled upward, their trailing smoke drawing a heart. The ninth plane would pierce the heart, except this one time it clipped another plane going through the heart.
One Sunday I was an usher taking the offering at the base chapel. I noticed someone that I was sure I recognized from somewhere. I kept staring in her direction was I continued to pass the offering plate. Her husband noticed and was wondering why the interest. This could have turned out to be very embarrassing, but after the service I went up to her and asked aren’t you Kay Joy from Dalat School. Fortunately for me she was, and we also became good friends with her husband Steve to this day. We took many vacations together and visited them later on home leaves.
Throughout the fall and subsequent years we went on volksmarches, where each village sponsors a 10 or 20 kilometer walk from their village into the surrounding countryside, which upon completion the marcher is given a medal or plaque to commemorate the accomplishment, and where plenty of good German food and beer is
served. So over the next two years we saw most of the Rhineland-Pfalz, Saarland, and nearby France.
September is a wonderful month to be in Germany; especially in the Rhineland Pfalz area, as this is when they pick the grapes and produce new wine which is eaten with onion pie at the various wine fests. Each town with a castle also has a “burning of Rhine castles.” On successive weekends we saw a series of castles burned with fireworks launched from the attacking forces below, with responses from the castle above. The castle always lost with red flares lighting the ramparts. We saw the “Student Prince” at the Heidelberg Castle. However, our favorite burning was at Rothenburg ob der Tauber.
In January 1979 we joined the others in my office for the annual weeklong ski trip to Erpfendorf, Austria. This time Linda and I learned to cross country ski. We skied to Kirchdorf and to St Johann and many other villages in the valley. We both got a medal for the distance we had covered. From then on we mostly did cross country skiing, although I also did some downhill without Linda.
In June 1979 Bob's Judy
and her husband David visited with us for a few days on their way back to the States from Thailand. We were able to take them to Munich, the Herrenchiemsee Castle on Lake Chiemsee and to Berchtesgaden for three days. We had to cut our trip short as David received word that his grandfather had been killed in an auto accident in England, apparently driving on the wrong side of the road. So they flew back to the States right away.
In July 1979 Uncle Wayne and Aunt Minnie visited us. They joined us for our summer vacation to Bavaria, Northern Italy, and the French Riviera.
In December 1979 we traveled to Northern Ireland to attend Linda’s sister Shirley wedding. She was married to Trevor and I was the substitute Father of the Bride, since her dad had passed away in 1976.
The following are more detailed descriptions of the more extensive trips we took while living in Glan Munchweiler and Ramstein.
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Nickoals
non-member comment
These picture are great.
I lived in the Glan for five years and miss it so much