Sprichst du Deutsch? Away we go... again... finally... hopefully!

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This year we decided to take our vacation traveling the Romantic Road in Germany, with a few extra stops afterwards. Unlike other years, now that I am retired, we did not book our flight. Instead, we decided to fly Military Space Available, or Space A. Because I am retired military, I have the benefit of being able to fly on a military plane to anywhere they go, for free. My wife can also fly, but only with me, and only to destinations outside the United States and return. I found out that Hawaii and Alaska don't count as inside the U.S. or CONUS, so she can also fly with me to those destinations. Before you get all envious (if you aren't retired military), let me add a few important details. As I said, we can only fly to destinations outside the U.S. and return, and only of course to U.S. bases or sometimes other places they now and then fly to. Also, they go by priority or category, and since I am retired, not on active duty with orders, I am at the bottom of the pecking order at Category VI. That means any seats available on a flight go to folks in those 5 categories above me. They also go by signup date, so if you haven't been waiting a while, you may have to wait a while... more. Last year I used Space A for my first time when I traveled to Spain to walk the Camino de Santiago. That time, I was able to get a seat from Charleston to Rota, Spain pretty soon after I planned on going, near the end of August. This year, I signed up early in the middle of July, intending on traveling around the 3rd week of August. The signup forms are only valid for 60 days, so you have to be careful when you signup or you may run out of time and lose your place near the top. I had been tracking flights from Charleston (and a couple of bases not too far away) since May, and had determined there was no particular pattern. I currently work part time for Hertz, and told them to not schedule me starting the 20th of August. Well, we have been checking the Air Terminal website since the 18th of August, and until just now, there have been no flights of use, meaning to Germany of anywhere else in Europe. Finally, the 30th of August, a flight showed up to Ramstein AB in Germany on the 3 of September, with 45 tentative seats!

We have been more or less packed for almost two weeks, so there is little left to do but wait until Monday. If the flight is still listed, with seats, Monday morning, we will load up the car and drive to Charleston, about 3 hours away. Roll call, or when they start calling names of people on the list and present, is at 4:20pm. We'll arrive a few hours earlier, put ourselves on the present list, and cross our fingers, and toes, and eyes. If all goes well, they will call the folks on active duty with orders, dependents returning from vacation in the U.S., and a couple of categories above us, then start calling Category VI people. If that happens, and there are at least 2 seats left at that point, my wife and I should be on our way, since I've been signed up for just short of the 60 days. At that point, we present ourselves and our luggage to be checked in. They allow each passenger two bags of up to 70 pounds, so that is even better than commercial flights. When I flew to Spain last year, I was able to purchase a decent box lunch for the flight for just 5 bucks, so hopefully we'll have food for the flight this time too. After all people present for the flight, or at least those lucky enough to be high enough on the list, they herd us to the plane. Last year I left on a C5 cargo plane wth 73 seats in a "capsule" mounted on the top of the plane. On that flight, they still had something like 20 empty seats. The flight took about 7 1/2 hours, was quite pleasant except for the noise (which I barely heard without my hearing aids in! LOL), and landed in Rota so smoothly I could barely tell. Our return flight (with my wife who had flown to Spain on a commercial flight to meet me after my Camino, was a different story. We had to travel to the base 3 times before we actually made a flight, then when we got on board and the plane started down the runway, they shut down the engines due to a improper indicator, and we had to wait 18 hours before re-boarding. Also, that plane was a C141 with cargo netting seats on each side of the plane.

Once we get to Ramstein, hopefully Tuesday morning, we plan on renting a car from Hertz (with my employee discount... I hope), and start our trip on the Romantic Road. The Romantic Road runs about 300 miles from Wurzburg to Fussne in Germany, ending at the famous Neuschwanstein Castle. This is supposedly the castle that Walt Disney modeled his Disney Land castle after. After a couple nights stay in Fussen, we plan on driving to Innsbruck in Austria, then Liechtenstein, then Zurich in Switzerland, before heading back to Ramstein for our return flight home. I'm posting this Sunday night in hopes that we'll be on the plane Monday. After that, I'll be posting a daily journal of our trip, with photos. See you again Tuesday... I hope!

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Photos

Our Vacation 2018
The route we will be driving in Germany

Comments

[D MJ Binkley]

Romantic road
Thanks for the explanation of all the hoops you go through to catch a flight. That is determination.