As some of you may recall, I was stationed in Germany from January of 1992 to May of 1999. We lived in a lovely little village by the name of Waldfeucht, which is in Kreis Heinsberg in Land Nordrhein-Westfalen. Our house was on Balduintraße and that "A" in the red circle above is at the foot of what was our driveway. (A Kreis is a district, roughly equivalent to a county and a Land is roughly equivalent to an American state.)
(Before you start scrambling to bring up Google Translate, the title of this post (auf Englisch) is "My Military Service in Germany (Accommodations)". I'm sure my old friend Greg has already been there. Thought I'd save you the trip...)
Each of these political entities (if you will) has its own coats of arms, I find these things to be cool and awesome (YMMV) so here are those for where I lived.
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| Coat of Arms of Nordrhein-Westfalen |
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| Coat of Arms of Kreis Heinsberg |
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| Coat of Arms of Waldfeucht |
Now where we lived was less than 200 meters from the Dutch border. Here's a view of our little village from the Dutch border looking eastwards. Note the greenhouses in this picture (the low lying greyish structure just to the left of the triangular sign) these are the same greenhouses in the first photo, just behind our house.
Just behind where this picture was taken from and up the road just a tad was a really nice Chinese restaurant. Where you could also get really good Indonesian food. Which is very popular in the Netherlands and with Your Humble Scribe. Here are some other things I enjoyed while assigned to Germany.
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| Turkey Schnitzel with Spätzle |
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| Bitburger Bier |
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| Wiener Schnitzel |
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| Selection of Wine from The Mosel Region |
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| Uh, How Did This Get Here? I Do Like the Beer The Girl? I Guess She's Okay... (Don't Tell The Missus) |
There will be more tales of Germany in the future. But for now, I'll leave you with this German march, Preußens Gloria. From the 19th Century and still in use by the modern German military, a very rousing tune!
There's somethin' about a dirndl....
ReplyDeleteIndeed there is!
DeletePretty country where you were, a lot flatter than I would have thought. The food, the beer-especially all the local breweries. I think I could have been a fat and happy German
ReplyDeleteI loved the area where we lived. There was a restaurant over in the next village where we got to know the owner, food was marvelous. Whenever we wanted to eat there, didn't matter how crowded it was, he'd find us a table.
DeleteSome friends stopped by one Sunday and spur of the moment we decided to go eat there. There was a wedding reception in progress. We started to head back to our car, the owner intercepted us and insisted we stay and eat. We did. Had a marvelous time out there on the periphery of some young German couple's wedding. They didn't seem to mind!
I miss Germany terribly sometimes.
Beautiful area. And like Greg says, the food and the beer alone would be enough to keep me happy. Gimme some Grolsch, and some schnitzel and spatzle and I'm a very, very happy Herr.
ReplyDeleteWe often would pop open a bottle of Grolsch. My Dad once asked me if I'd ever had any beer with the porcelain bottle tops as he remembered them vaguely from his time in the service. Yessir Dad, that's Grolsch!
DeleteWhile I was in Ol' Blighty I had to go TDY to Ramstein once a year for the annual European CE (that's Communications-Electronics, NOT plumbers and nail-benders) Programmers' Conference, which was a week-long boondoggle that was mostly a collection of very bleary-eyed and sleep-deprived attendees after Day One. There were some great Gasthäuser in the local area and our hosts delighted in showing them off. So, yeah. The pics you posted to illustrate the post bring back some VERY fond memories. T'anks for that!
ReplyDeleteI think I gained ten pounds just editing this post.
DeleteI'd love a schnitzel and a Bitburger right about now.