Weekend Wrap-Up (Mainz) - (Germany) Day 283 - 286

Burg Rheinstein...one of the castles we visited this weekend

Friday: This 4-day weekend was unlike most of the 4-Day weekends we've had here. Usually we have big plans, but this time we only planned a small day trip on Saturday to try out some Mexican restaurant. The truth is that this 4-Day kind of snuck up on me, I actually thought the holiday was later on in October and not right at the beginning. No worries though, my wife and I spent a lot of time just being lazy and relaxed almost the entire weekend…which turned out to be a welcome relief. As for Friday, my wife had to work. I drove her to work, then ended up just doing a lot of housework and schoolwork during most of the day. I caught up on some UFC and then picked her up from work. We did some shopping out on the economy for a bunch of stuff to send back to family. We then checked out the holiday bazaar here on post. There was a lot of vendors, so much that it was a little overwhelming. It seemed as if they bumped up the prices though, everything just seemed a little too expensive…so all we did was window shop.

Saturday: We headed off to Mainz for a small day trip. We had seen a spotlight a while back on AFN about a Mexican restaurant up in Mainz, which supposedly has good food. Good Mexican food is hard to find here in Germany. So I did a little research to see what there was to see in and near the city and we took off. We checked out downtown, along the river, and the Mainz Cathedral. We then took off about a half hour out of Mainz to check out some castles. We were able to visit and tour two of the three castles we set out to see. One of the castles we missed the last admittance by two minutes! All the castles were pretty awesome to tour. I'm not sure what it is about the castles that interests me so much, maybe the history, perhaps the fantasy books I've read…but anyways I really enjoyed myself. We then headed back into Mainz and found the Mexican restaurant "Mexico Lindo". We had dinner and the food was decent, definitely not as good as our local Mexican restaurants back home…but certainly the best we've had here in Germany.

Sunday & Monday: I'm combining these two days because they were basically the same…not a whole lot going on except being lazy, hanging out on the couch and watching TV and movies. We did end up going to the theatre on post as well…twice this weekend. We saw "Looper" and "Total Recall (2012)". Both were pretty good movies. The weekend was nice and relaxing. We've already made plans for the next 4-day and also for 2 of the 3 weekends left this month…so this was a nice weekend to totally just chill.

Inside the Mainz Cathedral

Inside the Mainz Cathedral

My wife posing on one of the castle walls

Vanishing Act - (Korea) Day 162

A pretty crappy photo (because I took it of the monitor in our control room) of the
ceremony for our colonel. Check out those flags...and how shiny the glass on the head
table is! Our control room is actually behind the screens in the background.

Work call this morning was at 0830, we setup for an awards ceremony for our colonel in our conference room. I arrived first and started the cleanup and setup of the conference room. I vacuumed and windexed the glass on the head table. I then moved all the flags to the center of the room and turned on the a/v system. By the time I finished that, SPC Mick was setting up the name tags for the seat reservations. The flags never stay straight so we have to rip pieces of paper towels and stuff them in the base to get them to all line up, it's a pain in the butt. When we finished I watched a little basketball until shortly before the ceremony when we had to head out to call stand by. Once that was finished I went back to watching the NBA playoffs.

I went to lunch with SPC Roy who wanted a salad. He's in the process of trying to lose weight and pass his PT test. So we went to the Dragon Hill Lodge and ate at their Mexican restaurant there. He had a salad and I had the lunch buffet. It was decent, but let me just say that Korean's can't do Mexican food very well. I'm really craving some good Mexican food.

After lunch our sergeant, Special K and I all headed over to STB-K (Special Troops Battalion - Korea…yes I'm special). This is where we go to get any paperwork updated. It has all the "S" shops for our battalion. We headed to S1 where our sergeant got a copy of his orders, Special K and I both had our ERB updated. We both had a number of correspondence hours from before 2011 that are not showing up on our ERB. We also gave them our certificates we received from the training exercise to have them add it as well. Each certificate is worth 5 promotion points with a maximum of 20 points. I'll get another one for the August exercise too. I then headed over to our company just for kicks to check on my separate rations. This is something that was put in as soon as I arrived here and it seems my packet has vanished in thin air. The specialist I asked about it said he was going to battalion at 1500 and would check on it. He made copies of all my paperwork and said that he’d get back to me via email by 1600 for sure. (Never heard from him again the rest of the day)

When we got back I watched some more NBA playoffs. Can I say holycow!!! The Oklahoma City vs Memphis game had 3 overtimes which was just crazy! I then did some real work and updated the events calendar, then worked on some SkillPort. Before I knew it, it was 1640 so I headed down to clean up the office and leave.

Once back in my barracks, I ate a small dinner and watched a TV show. I then checked in with school which is all I do on Tuesdays (gotta have a break once a week). I then watched a movie called Centurion. I had actually never heard of it before, but I borrowed it form my sergeant to check it out. It turned out to be pretty good. It reminded me of "The Eagle" which I watched in the theatre here on post. It's about the trouble the roman army had expanding into northern England. I thought "Centurion" was actually better than the "The Eagle" though. A small band of roman soldiers get stuck behind enemy lines after their ninth legion gets decimated. They try to make it back only to be hunted down by the enemy. Lots of blood and gore in the fight scenes. There is also something hot about chicks wielding swords and chopping people's heads off.

Overheard Quote: "Stickshifts and balls everywhere" (Special K describing working in our office which is all male)