July 24th

It's been 3 weeks since my last post - so here's a quick rundown.

Erika, Elise, & Jack came out to Germany for a 2 week visit.  We had a great time touring around mostly southern Germany.  Lots of pics posted on Instagram.

Now I'm back travelling for work.  The past few days I was back in Spain and now I'm at the navy base in Sigonella, Italy (Sicily).  Most of the people I've talked who've been here said the same thing, 'it's interesting, but crappy'.  Yes, it is.

Sunday July 3, 2016

I know I didn’t post anything last week, but there wasn’t a whole lot to post about. 

It took me five minutes after writing that last sentence to figure out what to say next.  OK, so I'll try stream-of-consciousness writing.  The coffee here is really good.  I complain about spending $60 on a stupid auto-drip coffeemaker but here they sell $2000 - $3000 machines, for home use.  Nespresso and Tassio are about the lower to mid range brands.  Look up Jura.  Coffee is good.  Café ist gut.  Die brot sind leckar. (the bread is delicious)

Another Marine who just left here had recommended Memrise which is a language app.  It’s really good because it takes maybe 5 – 10 minutes per day and goes through repetition in different ways.  Since I usually walk to work for 20 minutes I can go through a lesson a day.  Then the next lesson is a review, then a few more words & phrases, then a review, etc. 

But the weather is still cool, this morning was around 55.  It’s partly cloudy but the high is only supposed to get to the high 60s.   It’s the Fourth of July weekend and I need long pants and a light jacket.  Germany beat Italy last night in the EuroCup.  Friday night was a big win for Wales in a 3-1 victory over Belgium.  The news said Wales hasn’t made it this far in…uh…ever.  That’s what the news said, direct quote.  Really.   We get several news feeds at work, CNN, Fox, MSNBC, AFN (armed forces network – which carries a mix of US news) BBC, RT (Russian – aka Rooskys), Al Jazeera, and maybe something else.  You would think Al Jazeera would be the most slanted news source but I think they do a pretty good job of presenting information.  So here are my top 5 channels that have an obvious slant to their news:  Fox takes gold, silver, and bronze – 1,2,3.  RT gets 4^th place, and MSNBC takes 5^th.  CNN doesn’t place in my list because the majority of what they do doesn’t qualify as news.  My list, my rules!

So Germany won last night.  The games start at 9:00 and are usually over by 11.  Europeans use the 24 hour clock so that would be a start time of 21:00 and ending around 23:00.  I was woken up a little after midnight by all the shouting, screaming, and carousing of my neighbors.  Like a scene out of a movie I heard a group of drunk German guys stumble down the street absolutely murdering some patriotic-drinking song. 

I went to the Porsche museum last Sunday.  Porsche and Mercedes are both based in the Stuttgart area, the Mercedes factory is here in Boblingen, a few blocks behind the train station.  Here’s a picture of the valet parking for the Porsche museum.  Crazy Germans….

Ferdinand Porsche designed and built utilitarian vehicles also.  This first of its kind firetruck was built in 1912 and was STILL IN USE up until the 1970s.

This is not a firetruck