15 YEARS

I was looking at some older pics and wondered about doing a sort of time lapse of myself over the past 15 years, so I created a video. Maybe I can someday have the time to create a life history, but in the meantime...

https://youtu.be/lK5ZA3bd5_4

Just In Time For Fest Season

It seems like I spend a lot of time looking forward to things that always end too soon. As I embark on a new adventure, I get sentimental again after 6 months in Japan that blew by too fast, following an intense few months living in Israel. In Japan had the excitement of meeting up with my old friend Clyde and reminiscing about the “good old days”. I met my brother’s long time friend Brad, and got to spend a little time with him, talking like old friends about different memories of the same space in time. Taking three weeks in August to take care of personal business, see some friends, and visit my family, including Blake and John and John’s son Cayden was a welcome but fast break. And now I am in Baumholder, Germany having recovered from my wrist surgery in July and my back balagan in August.  My year in Germany is starting off with some cool new adventures with a new and an old friend. Baumholder is a small village on a hillside that I can pretty much walk around in an hour. The US Army installation here is quite big, so to coin a phrase, you can’t throw a rock without hitting an American, but I just try to blend and get away when I can so I feel like I am actually in Germany. Fall in Deutschland is a very festive time of year with trees changing colors rapidly, new wine being sold at every venue, wine fests, beer fests and pumpkin fests. 

This past weekend all of Germany was celebrating German Unity Day marking 25 years since the reunification of East and West Germany. Look it up folks, Germany used to be 2 countries, and before that it was one country and, well, the center of a lot of the world’s energy. Anyway, I have enjoyed some Autumn festivities and now thinking I am gonna chill for a week or so, before I indulge again. I was planning to go to Munich for Oktobefest last weekend, but after the fest in Stuttgart, I decided that I could not handle Munich.  I just contented myself with throngs of quite drunk, mostly happy and intensely celebratory people in lederhosen and dirndlen singing Take Me Home Country Roads at top volume from the table tops and lampposts, spilling beer and laughing, throwing up on the sidewalks, urinating anywhere there was something to lean against, and eating bratwurst and pommes frites.  If that doesn’t tell you why I didn’t go to Munich, add in the fact that the train was the best transportation to the Stuttgart Volksfest which was crammed with people of every ethnicity, size, age and degree of inebriation. Once you are in the mob moving to or from the train, you are going where the mob goes regardless of your agenda or itinerary. When the fest closed Friday night it seemed like EVERYBODY in Stuttgart moved as one throbbing organism, heaving forward, then to the side with no room to turn around, fall down or exit. We had a colorful term for it in Boot Camp, but here I will just say that I got to know the people in front of and behind me very well…all while singing Country Roads or Sweet Caroline or Ein Prozit…loudly.

Then it was Saturday, Unity Day and my friends and I went into the city for a little while before attempting to go back and enjoy more of the Volksfest. It was an incredibly beautiful day and despite the heavy presence of Polizei in riot gear surrounding an event that resounded with shouts by angry white guys trash-talking America and Israel while waving a hodgepodge of Middle Eastern flags. It was a small but hostile crowd that I was able to walk the long way around and visit the Palace grounds and enjoy the weather and scenery. Since then it has rained everyday, which local people affectionately call Baumholder sunshine. I love Germany.

Photos are from top to bottom, left to right: Clyde; Brad; Blake; John and Cayden; pumpkins everywhere; Volksfest table dancing; my bodyguards/entourage; Stuttgart and Stuttgart Schlossplatz. Tschuss!