Where We Traveled through Eastern Europe

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Return Home from Spangdahlem Air Base GE to Dover AFB DE

Spangdahlem Air Base Germany
Spangdahlem is home of the 52d Fighter Wing which maintains, deploys and employs General Dynamics Block 50 F-16CJ and Republic A/OA-10 aircraft and TPS-75 radar systems in support of NATO and the national defense directives. The wing supports the Supreme Allied Commander Europe with mission-ready personnel and systems providing expeditionary air power. The wing also supports contingencies and operations other than war.

We had to take matters into our own hands to try our perceived better chances on getting a Space A hop out of Spangdahlem Air Base in Germany, rather than continuing to try to catch a hop out of mega-huge Ramstein Air Base. Hats off to our newfound friend and Space A mentor "the professor of Space A" retired Army W-3 RAY McGEE, who schooled Wendy in the ways and wiles of taking Space A hops - - to include how to cover one's self with 3 days worth of ahead-of-time Q room reservations at all possible divert bases! Ray McGee, other fellow retireee travelers, and we were able to catch a ride on a Spangdahlem bus picking up Iraq-returnee, combat engineering, "redeployers" from Ramstein back up to Spangdahlem on Wednesday 2 July. Emily and I stayed the night at the Spangdahlem Visiting Quarters.

Our whole group of twelve assorted types of Space A travelers all got up the next morning and were able to get seats on the wonderful, relatively new Air Force C-17 cargo aircraft. Wendy got to sit up in the cockpit for takeoff and many hours of the cruise to chat with the crew and catch up with the goings on of crewdog life. The C-17 can aggressively climb out at 15 degrees nose-high attitude at an astounding rate of climb. This aircraft is awesome. I loved every minute. The 60th Military Airlift Wing with its Reserve component out of Travis AFB CA was super accommodating to all of us. What a blast. What was even cooler was, while transitting Dutch airpspace, two Dutch F-16s joined up on us for practice!

Wendy's snapshot out of the C-17 cockpit window of two Dutch F-16s up close and personal. We were literally waving our hands at one another!

When we landed at Dover AFB Delaware, the wonderful retired Marine family of Bill & Roz Leopold, with 16-y/o future Marine son Reed, gave us a ride in their rental car. The Leopolds were driving nonstop back to Wright-Patterson AFB OH to pick up their parked car, to then return home to La Salle IL near Chicago. They dropped Emily and me off at the Wilmington DE Amtrak station. There, Wendy & Emily parted ways.

Emily took the Amtrak train to Penn Station NYC and then a taxi to the Birchard family's home, so she could start her waitress job today at http://www.veselka.com/ on July 4th.

Wendy took the Amtrak train to 30th St Station in Philly, then a mad-scramble taxi ride to the Philly airport to get on a plane 20 minutes later to Salt Lake City, with a transfer flight to Phoenix.

Needless to say, Emily arrived NYC many hours before Wendy arrived PHX, but we all got back OK. I (Wendy) awakened at 3:30am this morning Arizona time, wondering which youth hostel I was in and why it was so dark, peaceful, cool, and quiet! It took me several seconds to realize I was home in my own bed.

Last Day in Kindsbach GE

Monika and her cousin, Rudi, in the background.
Oma Thum, age 74.

Monika and Oma practically raised our George and Emily from 1991-1996 while Hal and I went to work every day. This is why the kids speak native German and have a sound work ethic and loving discipline. Opa died a few years ago. The three of them were and are like family to us. They lived just two blocks from us and filled the kids' days with outdoor hiking, swimming, and instructive walks in the woods. (Strollers are only for infants - every kid WALKS.) Indoors they would accomplish all kinds of German crafts and schoolwork. George attended 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grades in the German school. It was because of Monika (a university trained kindergarten teacher) that George was able to get into the German public school. We had quite the ideallic life in a German village largely because of Monika and the cultural experiences she enabled.

We longed for and finally had opportunity to reminisce by walking up to the Barenloch (Bear Lake) in Kindsbach. We stayed up there for hours and just watched the kids swim, as Monika lined up another possible babysitting client. I was able to put in a strong testimonial for Monika. I mean, how many clients come back after 15 years to extol the virtues of their babysitter?!

Nothing has changed in Kindsbach. Came back to Monika's and Oma's for a sumptuous meal of sausage and barley salad out in the back yard. Then we set to work and trimmed the hedges and mowed the lawn at 9:00pm (daylight lasts until 10:30pm), took another walk up to Kandalthaler (new houses in Kindsbach) and turned in on the sofa bed at 11:30pm. Monika's cousin, Rudi who works on Ramstein Air Base, drove us to the Ramstein Passenger Terminal this morning for a 6:40am showtime for us to fly to Dover AFB DE. Oops, found out aircraft left early at 5:40am, so sorry. Oh well, now we do the Mill-Around Checklist and wait for antoher flight. There is a C-17 medevac later this morning, which we would LOVE to get on, but they probably won't release any seats.

Svemja, Monika's cousin's daughter, for whom Monika cares on a daily basis. We think Svenja looks like Carina Alf.
Monika and longtime family friend, Heinz.

Remaining in Kaiserslautern 29 June

Roy Meynderts and Jeannette Terpstra (married) are a Dutch couple who are dear friends of ours. Their son, Jiri, was our son George's classmate in German elementary school. This is where they now live in nearby Kaiserslautern GE. The build of the home is alternating concrete and wood sections, which provide insualtion and sound proofing between units. Ingenious. There are also many other "green" features like a 5,000 litre cistern under each house for the collection of stored rainwater.


Emily and Jeannette after finishing real bamboo application onto a wall in Jeannette's study.

Notice the clever build of the steel and glass joints for the "picnic" table. All permanent and sturdily built in.
Back yard with fish pond and sauna building in very back. Bucholic. A tonic for the soul. I could sit for hours back there.

Departing Vienna arriving back to Kaiserslautern (28 - 29 June)

10-hour train ride from Wien via Salzburg, Munich, Ulm, Stuttgart, Heidelberg, Mannheim. Glad to be back to dear Dutch friends Roy and Jeannette's home away from home. Their efficient green home with 5,000 litre underground water cistern to catch rain water. Herbs and vegetables growing in back yard. Humongous goldfish in water refuge with a big blue heron who would love to catch one every morning. Wendy ate the most delicious rhubarb pie ever and is cured of her ages old dislike for rhubarb! Emily is now helpingJeannette appilque real bamboo from their garden onto a bedroom wall.

Time to 'get out of Dodge' (Vienna). Wien train station was crazy with inbound travelers to see the European Cup 2008 finals the next day between Germany and Spain. Viennese merchants like the high spending Germans and Russians, butapparently not the skinflint Spaniards!

Day Trip to Bratislava, Slovakia (from Wien) 27 June

While watching a little of the European Cup soccer game at an imbiss stand by the UBahn station, a very informative Viennese archivist got to know us and advised us we would be fine trying to taking the train into Bratislava, even though our Eurail passes were only good for Austria and not Slovakia. Bratislava is just inside the border, so he was right and we had no problems. The train trip was beautiful and we got to Bratislava in an hour. What a great little city! We LOVED it. Took us awhile to figure out where to go. We got directions from the train station to take Bus 80 for five stops into the Old Town, but then walked the wrong direction for awhile until getting corrected. Then we stopped into an 5-star hotel and acted like we were staying there, so as to use the WC and get a city map. Then a few steps later an American college student asked me as though I were a Slovak local to take her picture along with her friends under a specific symbol on a building. Turns out they were on a photo scavenger hunt and were a group of American students doing mission work with Campus Crusade for Christ. We took pictures for another similar group a few steps later. Some in the groups were American ex-patriot kids who had lived in Bratislava their whole lives and of course spoke Slovak. In any event, to seize the moment, we asked them which sights we should see in our 5 hours on the ground and where the best restaurants were. Their recommendations were spot-on target. Our lunch was a pungent combination of Slovak sheep cheese, dumplings, and bacon or ham. Couldn't finish it all. We loved the old town square the best, St Michael's Gate, the Primate (not monkeys) Palace, the St Martin's Cathedral, and the Bratislava Castle overlooking the Danube on the other side of the main road. We saw no other Americans. There were a fair number of Norwegians and Brits visiting. Currency is the dvesti, even though they are part of the EU. When asked if they would take euros, the answer was a resounding YES with the accompanying look of "You must be kidding, of course." The descriptions below and changes in demographics highlight how volatile our traveled region has been.

Bratislava (German: Pressburg, Hungarian: Pozsony) is the capital of Slovakia, and with a population of about 427,000, the country's largest city.^[1] Bratislava is in the southwest of Slovakia on both banks of the Danube River. Bordering Austria and Hungary, it is the only national capital that borders two countries.^[2] It and Vienna are also two of Europe's closest national capitals, at less than 60 kilometres (37 mi) apart. German name Pressburg. The city was the capital of the Kingdom of Hungary under the Habsburg monarchy from 1536 to 1783. Bratislava was home to the Slovak national movement of the 19th century and to many Slovak, Hungarian and German historical figures.

From the city's origin until the 19th century, Germans were the dominant ethnic group.^[80] However, after the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, active Magyarisation took place, and by the end of World War I Pressburg was a German-Hungarian town, with Slovaks as the biggest minority. After the formation of the Czechoslovak Republic in 1918, the proportion of Slovaks and Czechs increased in the city. The creation of the first Slovak Republic in 1939 brought the expulsion of many Czechs and Jews. In 1945, most of the Germans were evacuated, or after the restoration of Czechoslovakia, displaced from the city, along with Hungarians accused of cooperation with the Nazis. The city thereby obtained its clearly Slovak character. Hundreds of citizens were expelled during the communist oppression of the 1950s, with the aim of replacing "reactionary" people with the proletarian class. Since the 1950s, the Slovaks have been the dominant ethnicity in the town, making up around 90% of the city's population.

The St. Martin's Cathedral in Slovakia's capital, Bratislava is situated at the western border of the historical city center below Bratislava Castle. It is the largest and finest, as well as one of the oldest churches in Bratislava, known especially for previously being the coronation church of the Kingdom of Hungary.

Primate's Palace in Bratislava's Old Town. It was built from 1778 to 1781.

The palace and its most famous chamber, the Hall of Mirrors, have played host to many significant events. Perhaps the most famous of them is the signing of the fourth Peace of Pressburg in 1805 after the Battle of Austerlitz, which effectively ended the War of the Third Coalition. Serfdom in the Kingdom of Hungary was abolished here in 1848. The city purchased the palace in 1903.

During reconstruction in 1903, six previously unknown tapestries were found behind a wall, depicting the legend of Hero and Leander and their tragic love. The tapestries were woven in the 1630s at the royal weaving workshop at Mortlake, near London.

St Martin' CathedralImagine grabbing hold of this handle on the choir chancellery while singing!


St George slayingthe dragon and St Elisabeth
St Michael's Gate.
One-man band.
Town square gate.
Town square

Atop Bratislava Castle.
Bratislava has all of these figures around town which are fun.
Slovak National Theatre.
This THE story of Eastern Europe, everywhere we would go -- reconstruction and new construction. "Sorry the museum is closed for three months for reconstruction." We found this to be true from Belgrade to Budapest to Bratislava.

Atop Bratislava Castle.
Danube down below.

Night return to Vienna-- St Stephen's Cathedral - - again, notice its top is under reconstruction.

Windmills in Austria on the way back to Vienna from Bratislava.

Final Vienna sightseeing stop was to Haus der Musik. If our dear musician friend, Dr Ed Wolfe, were to ever enter this museum, one would never see him again.
- an interactive discovery museum located in the heart of Vienna's first district nestled between St. Stephen's Cathedral and the Vienna State Opera. A host of interactive installations playfully communicate openness to new things, understanding and enthusiasm in approaching music http://www.hdm.at/en/sound-museum/16.htm

Here you can conduct your own Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and when you mess up, they bad-mouth you right back to your face and say how they cannot continue to play for such an awful conductor!

Vienna, Austria // 25 and 26 June

Arrived Wien (Vienna) and went directly to our Pension Hargita http://www.hargita.at/. Then took the UBahn to the Ringstrasse and took the tram around to get oriented. Crowded here. Hot, too. Too many tourists, although not very many Americans at all. So headed to the outskirts in order to take in Vienna's Wine Gardens / / Heurigen. Came back to the ages old Prater amusement park to ride the largest in the world ferris wheel Riesenrad here in Wien, which I had riden as a child 45 years ago. Emily and I rode it again for the sake of my sentimentality.

Today we saw the Interior Apartments of the Hofburg and the Sisi Exhibit. Elisabeth Amalie Eugenie, Duchess in Bavaria, Princess of Bavaria (December 24, 1837 – September 10, 1898) of the House of Wittelsbach, was the Empress consort of Austria and Queen consort of Hungary due to her marriage to Emperor Franz Joseph. Her father was Maximilian Joseph, Duke in Bavaria From an early age, she was called "Sisi" ("Sissi" in films and novels) by family and friends.

Then we just got finished seeing the Renaissance paintings portion of the nicknamed Koonst Museum http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunsthistorisches_Museum. This has to be one of our very favorite art museums ever. We could not take our own pictures.

Brueghel / Tower of Babel

Hofburg Imperial Palace is a palace in Vienna, Austria, which has housed some of the most powerful people in Austrian history, including the Habsburg dynasty, rulers of the Austro-Hungarian empire. It currently serves as the official residence of the President of Austria. It was the Habsburg's principal winter residence. The Palace was the birthplace of Marie Antoinette in 1755. We could not take our own pictures.

Hung out in the lobby to scam free tickets from exiting opera goers and scored two tickets with an hour left and got to see Pique Dame (Queen of Spades). Emily ended up not being able to see it though because her shorts were too short!

Although known more for his ballets and piano concertos, Peter Tchaikovsky also wrote some of Russia’s best operas. Pique Dame was based on Modest Tchaikovsky (Peter’s brother)’s adaptation of a popular novella by the great Russian poet Alexandr Pushkin about how gambling destroyed a man and those around him. This romanticized operatic version premiered to great success in 1890.