After traveling more than 4700 miles, I have finally arrived at my permanent duty station in Illesheim Germany. First and foremost, I would like to apologize to everyone that I haven’t been able to get in touch with and update with my progressions. For the past 2 weeks I have been living out of my bags, all while being on the go from place to place. Nevertheless, I can finally say I’ve settled in and am almost ready to start my life anew here in Germany.
I arrived in Frankfurt very early in the morning of Friday, December the 17th. After a short period of in-processing into the Army’s European theater, I was notified I wouldn’t be able to get to my actual unit of assignment until Monday at the earliest due to severe weather conditions. Consequently, we were then bussed over to Wiesbaden (pronounced VEES-BAHDIN), which is a very affluent town about 25 minutes west of Frankfurt. Ironically enough, Wiesbaden is the city in which I would have loved to gotten stationed in because of the aesthetics of the community and it’s geographic location. Word around the Army has it that Wiesbaden is arguably the best place to be stationed in Germany, and our first night there attested to the fact.
When we arrived in our hotel in Wiesbaden, I decided to room with a guy I became good buds with while at Fort Jackson. Although Evans is black and from South Carolina, we hit it off quickly due to similarities in our personalities like our extroverted ways. Once settled in, we agreed to make the best out of our weekend snowed in, so we walked over to a nearby convenience shop and bought a handle of Brandy. We had convinced ourselves that Friday night would be an epic one as it was our first night in Germany, so when we got back to our room, we went upstairs and invited a few guys to join us for a pre-game at our spot and then eventually wander off into town. That was exactly what we did.
Around 2300 we made our way out and stumbled throughout a town we had no knowledge or bearing but still managed to get around. Only after a few minutes of walking around, we approached a small group of kids to ask for directions to any place we could crash. Turns out these 2 guys and a girl knew not a single word of English, but were from la Republica Dominicana and spoke perfect German and Spanish. Needless to say, the language barrier was no longer an issue for obvious reasons and they were more than happy to take us in and show us around. We walked in the heavy snow going from bar to bar until we found a spot we felt was good enough. The small venue was a hooka bar named Sahara, and upon entering, our group got the party started.
Sahara is a cozy and an almost too clustered place, so when we walked towards the bar we could face every single one of the tables filled with groups of people. As stated previously, Evans and I were determined to make the best of our night so we instinctively scoped out the table with the best looking girls. With no hesitation, we made our way to a table of 5 girls and invited ourselves into their dynamic with an irrelevant introduction. All of the cards were falling in place, and after about 2 minutes Evans got distracted and went back to the table where our group was hanging out. I spent the remainder of my night talking up the hottest girl of the bunch, her name was Vika (short for Viktoria.) The best part of it was that of all her little friends she was by far the most receptive. Bingo. I think she bit the dust after I made her laugh hysterically when I recited the story of a time I shit my pants last year. It always works :) I’ve already told some of you what the remainder of the night was like, so I’ll leave it at that.
After a successful night of interaction, conversation, and everything else…we spent the remainder of our weekend sight-seeing and mostly wandering about waiting for news of our departure. While my time in Wiesbaden was fun, it could’ve still been much better. I’ve definitely got unfinished business. Monday morning came around with good news, we were going to arrive at our duty stations. The rest of the day was all about moving all of our shit from place to place again, until we finally got on a bus around 1400 and made our way. For a trip that should have taken only 2 hours, I arrived in Illesheim about 3 hours later due to the heavy snowfall and dangerous road conditions.
I didn’t really know what to expect when I arrived here. It was difficult to get a good glimpse of what this base looks like because it was already dark out when I got here, but I get the sense that everything I read about it being extremely small is true. Furthermore, it truly is in the middle of nowhere. More in-processing awaited me inside my company headquarters, but after meeting my First Sergeant and a few other soldiers that I’ll be working with in my shop, I get the sense this place might not be too bad. A little bit of good news, I’m thrilled to have my own room as the whole trip leading up to this point I was under the impression I would have to share a room with someone else. The barracks are very similar to college dorms. I will post pictures of my room as it was when I first stepped into it for you all to see.
In my room I have a small bed, desk, two bed tables, and a small walk-in closet with plenty of room to fit everything I brought with me and the things that will follow. There is also a small kitchenette equipped with a sink, cabinets, microwave, and a medium sized refrigerator. My bathroom connects with the room next door, but fortunately it is pretty well sized and clean so I do not foresee any issues living here. I spoke for a little bit with one of the soldiers I’ll be working with, he told me about what my work days might be like here, traveling and getting around, deployments, and a few other things. Just to touch base on these very quickly…when the holidays are over, I should expect to work 5 days a week, PT everyday at 0630, but the work days won’t be strenuous or anything. I am located (driving distance) only 30 minutes from Ansbach, 40 minutes from Nuremberg, and 1 ½ hours from Munich. We also don’t expect to deploy until 2012, but of course that’s always up in the air…and not too sure if it will pertain to me if I do end up going OCS.
Tomorrow (Tuesday) my first hit time is 0900 for more in-processing and other stuff, apparently that should take up about 2 days since we also have to drive up to a nearby town to do some of it. More updates to come soon, but until then everything is starting to take shape. My apologies for the length of this post, but I’m trying to fill you guys in with brief but concise details. Thanks for reading! Life is good.
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