7th Week

It's late and I never got around to this week's post so sorry but you'll have to wait another day or two.

Sunday May 8
Lots happened but first, Happy Mother's Day!
OK, I have a good reason why this post is late but since the reason happened this past week you'll have to wait for that post.
So, two weeks ago.....
I went to Madrid to meet a few more people I'll be coordinating with from the Embassy and the Office of Defense Cooperation (ODC).  The ODC is, as the name suggests, a group of US military and civilians that works with the host nation's military for doing training together.  So four years ago when I was in Georgia, the ODC there helped coordinate that.  Our unit down in Moron, Spain does a significant amount of training with the Spanish military and we're trying to do more of it, and more complex training.

Madrid is a gorgeous city.  Beautiful, interesting, charming, hip, and just cool.  Except in the summer when, I'm told, everyone leaves the city and goes on holiday to the beaches or anywhere other than the city since it's too hot.  Modern Spaniards love burgers.  Not surprising since they're known for meats but there are a lot of places to get a burger, a few typical cheap burger joints but mostly upscale burger restaurants with choice of meat: US beef, Spanish beef, Japanese Kobi beef, veal, pork, etc.
I was there for a day and a half and lunch the first day was in one of the nicer places.  I had a burger of the waitress' recommendation.  I can't remember what it was other than really good. mmmmmm.

I wandered around in the afternoon and had a Negroni cocktail at an outdoor cafe.  A Negroni because I read somewhere the Spanish have a current craze for gin, and the Negroni is supposed to be  the 'it' drink.

The hotel I stayed at was just a few blocks from the Embassy and not surprisingly several other embassies are in the area.  Here's the Portuguese Embassy, right across the boulevard from my hotel.

And this is Plaza de Colon with the monument to Cristobal Colon in the foreground, the Spanish National Library and Archaeological Museum on the right, and the plaza dedicated to Cristobal behind the flag.  Remember, Christopher Columbus was Italian but sailed on behalf of Spain.

Once back in Germany I spent the weekend with my wife's relatives who live outside Pforzheim which is only about 30-40 minutes from Stuttgart.  Pforzheim sits on the northern edge of the Black Forest so we spent a day visiting a few towns in the area.
The tower in the photo below is part of an original castle built 500? 600? years ago.  The photo on the bottom is a view of the Black Forest from atop the tower.

And 'cousin' Sebastian, his girlfriend Christine, and me.

Since that weekend happened to be the first weekend of May, it was 'May Day' when German towns put up a tree in the center of town.  I guess it's sort of like a Christmas tree, but different.  Each town has one and the local firemen are responsible for getting the Mai Baum up entirely by muscle power and poles.

I have a few videos of the process - it took about a half hour.  Hopefully my daughter who again made Dean's List for film school will know how to stitch together the video clips and make it better.

OK - that's it for now.  I'll work on this past week's events tomorrow night.