Weekend Wrap Up - (Germany) Days 145 & 146

Me and my wife in front of the Worms Cathedral

Saturday: Ahhh…so nice to sleep in! After waking up and getting ready at a leisurely pace, my wife and I headed off to the Rhein-Neckar Harley Davidson store. I needed to purchase a battery for my motorcycle because mine was totally dead. My bike has been in storage since basic training and found out the battery would not even take a charge. The store is about 20 to 25 minutes away in a town called Ludwigshafen. Once there I asked if the lady at the parts department spoke English and she said only a little. I was able to tell her what I needed in German and it all worked out. Luckily we also had an extra VAT form. This is a form US folks can use when buying something on the German economy and they take off the tax which is 19%…so with any big purchases it's really worth it. We ended up getting a couple t-shirts and headed off with a new battery. Now once I take the motorcycle safety course, I'll be able to ride my bike here in Germany.

By this time we were getting a little hungry and wanted to grab a bite to eat while we were out. We punched in what we thought was a place to eat in our GPS, but ended up in a town called Worms. It wasn't where we were expecting to be going, but we made the most of it. We parked the car downtown and headed to the city center. We ate at a bakery and then had some ice cream at one of the vendors. The town had a huge cathedral which we decided to explore. The cathedral was pretty cool. We walked around inside checking out the various sculptures and then around outside admiring the architecture of this ancient building. It's awesome to be able to just stumble upon something so grand.

We headed home and spent the night watching TV shows and relaxing.

Sunday: This morning we went to church for the first time here in Germany. One of my co-workers was having his son baptized. His wife is a local national, so the church was of course a German church. It was an interesting experience attending church in an entirely different language. I would catch about every 4th or 5th word, but that was about it. We watched the baptism and then we headed back to Patrick Henry Village for a barbecue that my co-worker was throwing. Most of our office showed up, as well as my co-worker's wife and her family. Good food…good people…good times.

After feeding our faces and visiting for a while we headed back home and video chatted with family for a bit before relaxing and watching some TV shows…..a good weekend.

You can check out more photos from our accidental trip to the city of Worms:

Created with flickr slideshow.

Weekend Wrap-Up - (Korea) Days 18 & 19

The live band at “The Main Post Club”. The club was almost completely empty and the band sounded a little more like Karaoke. I should’ve taken a pic of the guy behind us...he looked like Woody Harrelson’s twin brother!

Saturday: Slept in this morning which was nice as usual. I did laundry and cleaned my room. I still had all the stuff I was issued from CIF all over the place. I could barely walk around. Now it's all either in my closet or under my bed. I was able to video chat with my wife for a long period of time which is always awesome. Being able to see your loved one just brings you that much closer to them than the sound of their voice alone.

SPC Short gave me a call and asked if I wanted to head out and check out the Seoul Harley Davidson store. Of course I said heck yea…it's always nice to get away from post for a while. We took a taxi out which cost about $5.00 and checked out both the Harley and the Victory motorcycle stores. There are some sweet looking bikes in there. It would be fun to ride, but I'd definitely want to get out of the city first…the people here are crazy drivers.

We then went to Outback steakhouse of all places to eat dinner on the way back. SPC Short was craving it. I'll have to check out the Korean food and the street vendors at a later date. We walked back which was interesting. There are a lot of people, a lot of stores, and a lot of vendors out on the street selling everything from boxers to food. When we got back we tried to go bowling, but there were no open lanes until 21:00, so we went to the nearest bar…"The Main Post Club". We had a couple of beers and watched the entertainment. There were three Korean girls singing pop hits. It was actually entertaining listening to them with their accents singing. When I first walked in I thought there was karaoke going on, but this was an actual band…lol. After a couple of beers we headed back "home". I checked my watch and it was 20:00…OMG I'm getting old when I end a night out this early!

I ended up watching "Daybreakers" on my laptop. It's a vampire movie with an odd twist, there are too many vampires on earth and not enough humans for them to drink blood from. The human race is going extinct. As a typical vampire movie goes, there is a lot of blood. It also goes into social issues such as how we treat the poor in our society and how government can resort to extreme measures and trample people's rights.

Sunday: I didn't do a whole lot Sunday. I was able to sleep in, do some shopping, and video chat quite a bit with my wife which was nice. I got called into work only to find out that the meeting was actually tomorrow. Now I have to be at the office at 5:10 AM tomorrow morning. That sucks! We do start half days tomorrow, so at least I will not be working until 5:00 PM…well that's the plan anyways. We'll see what really happens tomorrow.

I watched "The Social Network" which was a pretty interesting movie. For anyone that's interested in Facebook and how it got started.