Details...

Someone requested details on the Fest. Well … let’s just start right off by saying that the picture from the previous post showing me (presumably) inebriated is not a true reflection of my state of soundness at that particular point of the day. I had just purchased the hat from a wandering carnival barker, and had turned around to model it. When the photo was taken I must have been in mid blink. The photo was taken around 12:30 and I was only on my second beer at that time. So you can just put any scurrilous thoughts right out of your collective heads.

Anyway, that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it!

There was a special guest present, and those of you from the Louisville area may recognize him…



I was also asked in an earlier post, for some pictures of women. So Janie, I don’t know if this is quite what you had in mind, but I took these for you. See if you can tell what these two fine Bavarian Fraulein have in common…





Here is a plate of appetizers from our table (American Size)…



Then we saw bigger ones going out and we demanded a Bavarian platter…



Of course it was about three times as expensive as the other one, but there was a point to be made! Actually we had the second (large) one later in the day.

All in all, I think that I was a little disappointed by the Hofbrau tent. Last year we were in the Hippodrom, and it seemed much nicer to me. The waitresses were prettier, the beer was better, the band was better, and I think it was just generally a better place. Now don’t get me wrong … everyone had fun, and we definitely drank our share of the Hofbrau suds. Maybe it is just that the novelty had worn off. I didn’t really even take too many pictures because everything looked pretty much the same as it did last year.

Maybe I’ve become jaded…

However, I am willing to try it another two or three times (for the sake of science, you know).

The day before we went to Oktoberfest a couple of us went to the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial. We arrived late and the museum wasn’t open, although we were able to go into the camp. After wandering around the camp for a while … I don’t think that I would have had any interest in going into the museum.





Visiting this place is a somber experience. It’s probably not really the kind of thing you would want to do the night before going to Oktoberfest, but I’m not sure there is ever a good time to visit this place. I think that it is a good thing that they have left it as a memorial, and have even rebuilt two of the living quarter buildings.





I’m glad that I got to see it, and would hope that every person in Germany visits it at least once in their lives.

After the Oktoberfest, a couple of us went into Munich and visited the Olympic complex and the BMW museum across from it. Both of these were really quite nice.





We went into town for lunch at the Weissesbrauhaus - the home of two of my favorite beers in Germany (Schneiderweisse, and Aventinus). Apparently many more folks had the same idea, and there were no seats available. This is the place that has the miltzwurst, and sauerlungen. I was planning on trying the sauered lungs or sauered kidneys, but was now unable to.

We ended up going across the road to a restaurant owned by the Paulaner brewery. And although their menu was lacking in viscera, we still managed to have a decent lunch.

The next day we were back in the Rheingau, and went up to Schloss Johannisberg for a wine tasting. It was fun, and the wine was good. It was a clear day so I tried to get some pictures to show how many vines there are in this area.





Over Columbus Day weekend a friend and I went to Trier. Trier is a German town not too far from the Luxembourg border. It was once a capital of the Roman Empire. The town is pretty, but the weather was not great when we were there. There are a few Roman ruins around there, and I would definitely like to get back there someday when the weather is a bit nicer.







Oh … and while in Trier I was able to take a picture of what is obviously Barack Obama’s favorite place in Germany.



Good ol’ Karl was born in Trier, and it seems that the city officials don’t have the sense to try and cover it up or to at least NOT celebrate it. There are more pics from Trier on the flickr page.

I other news, I have procured another vehicle. After driving to Munich in a friend’s BMW, and seeing another friend buy a new Mini-Cooper, I decided it was high time that I join the sporty European class. So after much internal debate, and a little financial reckoning, I … well … let’s just say that I will take delivery of my new wheels in about two weeks. You can check back around then for pictures.

The next six weeks a going to be a whirlwind of trips for me. Starting Monday, I will be away for a week (work), back for the weekend, then another week away (work), then a long (4-5 days) day weekend in Portugal (fun), then two days at the office, after that gone for another week for work, then another long (4-5 day) weekend in southwest France (fun), then two more weeks away for work. This will bring us up to mid December.

If I can remember where I live by that time, I may sleep for a while.

I may have overtrained...

... just a little

Just a couple more reps…

On the penultimate night before the Big Game...

Once more unto the breach, dear friends…

Yeah, I’ve been slacking off keeping you apprised of the goings on here at the Haven. Truth be told, I’ve been a bit under the weather of late. I caught a nice little cold from a friend’s two little incubators. He calls them his children, but I know that they are just little weapons of mass destruction. Especially the little boy, the one I call the Wreckin’ Ball.

I wasn’t able to sleep through the night. I’d wake up hacking and wheezing every hour or two. It’s really is quite bothersome. I’ve been getting over this thing for the last week, and believe I’ve got it about licked now.

Of course this has cost me valuable training time, and seeing as how we are only a couple of days away, I fear that I will be in less than peak form for the event. I wish this cold had not set in during training camp. As it stands, I haven’t been able to participate in two-a-days, or do any type of serious capacity training. For this event Strength and Endurance is comparable to Tolerance and Capacity.



Oh I will still go, and you can rest assured that I will do my best to hold up the good name of the Haven, and make you all proud of me. I should still on the starting team; I don’t think I’ve been put on the bench. I’ll have to talk to the coach before the bus leaves Wednesday. In any case, I will be present at the 2008 Oktoberfest in München this Thursday. I’ll be in a box in the Hofbräu tent, in case any of you feel like stopping by. Wish me luck.



The picture above is from last year.

About two weeks ago I spent the week in Heidelberg at a training class. I didn’t get to see that much of the town, but we were able to eat in two different Korean Restaurants. The Kimchi Chigae (Kimchi Soup) was so good that I got me a hankerin’ to go back there for a spell. Korea, not Heidelberg. Of course I wouldn’t mind going back to Heidelberg either, as it is a nice place and has a neat castle that we were only able to explore a little bit.







Plus there are two Korean restaurants (maybe more) in Heidelberg and none in the area where I live. I would assume that they have some good Korean restaurants in Korea, but their beer is definitely not as good as it is here.

Why must my life be full of such quandaries?



There are more pics of the castle on the flickr site.

I realized that I haven’t posted anything about the Belgian Beer Fest either. Well, it was a pretty damn fine event. A friend of mine was already in Belgium, so we met at the train station in Brussels on Saturday morning and trekked into town. The fest was in Le Grand Place, and our hotel was about 2 city bocks away. This is the view from the hotel window.



That is not Le Grand Place … by the way.

This is Le Grand Place…





The picture above is the Brewers Guild building.

The hotel was inexpensive, and although it doesn’t look like much from the outside, it was clean and a comfortable place to crash.

At the fest we met this guy, who it turns out, is a beer writer from Norway. We talked to him quite a while and ended up getting quite a few free beers from the brewers he knew there. Sunday it was a bit rainy, but that didn’t stop us from enjoying ourselves. We tried many good beers there and even brought a few home with us.



This one beer in particular caught my eye because I liked the big glass it came in. My friend and I were each drinking one when I tasted something familiar. It was something in the background. It wasn’t another beer, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I asked him what it was, but he didn’t know either. It was a good beer, but it had a somewhat strange finish to it. Now Belgian brewers are known for adding anything from candi sugar to fruit to spices and herbs to their beers. I thought it was probably a familiar spice or a combination thereof. I put my nose into the glass and took a big whiff – it was definitely familiar. Something comforting, like a smell from my childhood. I took another sip, swirled it around in my mouth.



There it was…

I figured it out!

This beer tasted like…

Bologna!

I told my friend what I thought. He laughed, but said that since I mentioned it he was tasting a little bit of it too. Once I got back to my apartment, I looked in a charcuterie book and found out that bologna (or mortadella anyway – since it was the closest thing I could find) has the spices nutmeg, coriander, and mace. All of which are not unfamiliar ingredients in Belgian beers.

And yes, I actually bought a couple to bring home with me.

As I said it’s a good beer…

It just has a touch of Oscar Mayer to it.

Where there is smoke…

Well here at the Haven anyway ...

where there is smoke ...

there is pork*.



And where there is pork,

there is …

well …



more pork!

I smoked a pork shoulder, a chicken, and ten racks of baby-back ribs this past weekend.

It was the End-of-Summer/Beginning-of-College-Football/Opening-Day-of-Training-Camp-for-the-Oktoberfest Blowout Bash here at the Haven. We must have had 30 adults, and a passel of kids running around my backyard. It was quite a party.

And while we didn’t finish all of the pork shoulder, we certainly went through all the ribs, the chicken, several salads and dips, a 12 pack of bottled water, seven bottles of wine, a pint of bourbon, and at least three cases of beer.

I think I can consider myself and some friends officially “in-training”.

The only problem with having a party like this is…



And this is after we went through about 35 paper plates! And don’t get me started on the number of glasses I had to wash…



And even though I’m still cleaning up (on Thursday), after all was said and done, I think I’d have to call it a success.

This weekend?

Well, since I will need to be in Belgium for work on Monday and Tuesday, I thought I might as well catch an early train Saturday morning and go to Brussels for the weekend.

Weekend de la Biére that is!

I mean … I am in training, after all.

* I mean unless, of course, I have horribly burned something on the stove**.

** and there is probably pork in whatever is being burnt anyway.

Meaty things are afoot here at the Haven…

What do we have here? Is it some strange other-planetary landscape?



Or could it be a Bar-B-Que rub?

And what is this here?



A pig’s shoulder perhaps?

Well, we should probably remove the most of the skin.



Here at the Haven, we’ve got a hankerin’ for a little smoked pig skin, so I left a little bit on. The rest, however, will be frozen for other festivities, that will occur at a later date, and will remain nameless for now.

The rub is applied to the shoulder, it is triple-wrapped, and it will be refrigerated overnight.



Stay tuned for the further adventures of this pig's shoulder, and even more porcine goodness ...

But it’s a dry heat (Part II) …

The siren that warns of incoming mortars only went off once the entire time we were there. And even then it was the one on the other side of the base. Thus I never saw a mortar attack, or even heard bullets whistling overhead. I miss out on everything.

After a week at JBB, we were planning to travel by helicopter up to COB Speicher, but we ended up doing a ground move.

There were five of us going, and we loaded into two armored Ford Excursions. The lead and follow vehicles were Armored Toyota Land Cruisers. Each of the Excursions had a driver and team leader who was also a medic.



We convoyed up the road to Speicher at a pretty good pace. The Iraqi civilians pull over when a convoy is coming through. If things up ahead were moving too slow, we drove on the other side of a divided highway, into oncoming traffic which was all pulled over. We did this because these convoys do not stop.

It was a pretty exciting ride, and we got to see a little of the country side. Of course it was desert for the most part, but there is still a good amount of agriculture. This shouldn’t have been surprising to me (but it was), because we were in the Fertile Crescent, and pretty close to the Tigris River.

Speicher is a larger base than Balad, so things are spread out a little more. It is also pretty much in the middle of nowhere, so they don’t get the attacks they used to get at JBB. Everything at Speicher was relatively quiet. After about four days there we were supposed to go back to Balad by helicopter. However, a dust storm kicked up and nothing was flying. The next day we were going to try to get out by fixed wing, but the dust storm continued and nobody got out that night either. We ended up going back to Balad by convoy again the next day.

The dust storm was not a really bad one, but it was still pretty nasty. You can actually taste the clay in the air, and you end up with a nose full of dirt. You really end up with pretty much everything full of dirt. Everything there essentially has a layer of dirt on it.

The temperature there never got much above 120, but I don’t think it got any cooler than 90 or so. There is no need to turn on the hot water in the bathroom, because the only water that is cool (relatively speaking) is the water that is in the pipes within the air conditioned building. You turn on the cold faucet and get tepid water for a few seconds before it heats up again.

It WAS a dry heat, and would have been miserable if it was humid. It was hot like the inside of an oven, and when the wind blew it was like the inside of a convection oven.

I was warned not to use one of the Port-O-Lets during the afternoon. It just gets too hot and smelly in them. Also in the event that one would use them during the heat of the day, they definitely run the risk of backsplash with near scalding water (and whatever else is in there). The thought of having blue-green welts on my ass from the splash, just did not appeal to me.

We stayed in Containerized Housing Units (CHUs – pronounce choose), which are mostly remodeled shipping containers. We stayed two to a room and each room had it’s own bath. These are known as Wet CHUs. If you come here for a lengthier visit, you may get a single Wet CHU.

The Army gave us safety goggles (sunglasses) before we left. Since I wear glasses anyway I needed to get prescription inserts. They gave me an eye exam and my distance vision had not changed. However, old age is apparently catching up to me, so they prescribed bi-focals. Not being used to wearing bi-focals, when I did put them on I ended up staggering around like I had too much to drink. Which I didn’t, because there is no alcohol allowed there. That means that I spent two weeks without beer (just in case you're counting).

We came back via a military flight into Kuwait, and then flew on to Frankfurt commercial.

All in all, it was not a bad experience, and I would definitely consider doing a tour over there if the job and the situation were right. Now that they are talking about pulling all the troops out, most of the projects were worked on will probably never even come to fruition.