My Apprentices

I dropped off my younger brother and sister to the Birmingham airport this morning so they could catch their flight to Boston via Amsterdam. They arrived about 12 days ago and boy, if ever there were 'house cats' these 2 are them. They are not the type to travel outside of their element for too long. It is funny how siblings can be raised in the same environment but be so different than each other.

I am not hating on them for not liking the food in the UK as the pickings are definitely slim when it comes to locating great food but these 2 had issues almost everywhere we went even while on the continent. If it wasn't McDonald's or pizza they were looking at it as if it was meant to eat them and not the other way around.


We were able to acquire cheap flights to Frankfurt Hahn and then make our way across to Paris before flying out of Charles de Gaulle airport on this past Wednesday night. As well I took them to Stonehenge and briefly stopped through Salisbury and Bath since we drove all that way to see rocks in the middle of an English field.

I have previously written about my experiences with Ryanair and this one-way flight to Frankfurt Hahn was probably the worst flight experience I have had with Ryanair. It seems we were fortunate to be in the midst of a stag party en route to somewhere and they were just plain out of control on board and the flight crew did nothing but facilitate them in getting even drunker on an 11AM flight.

We landed at Hahn and caught a bus to Luxembourg city where my firstborn son lives with his mother and stayed there in a hostel for 3 nights. I had never stayed in a hostel before as I believe they would disagree with me. In fact unlike my sister and brother I have never even been inclined to see a scary movie that involved a hostel so my expectations were pretty low.

They should have been lower. Really. Much lower.

I do not ask for much from a hotel when I stay in one. I mean clean linen/towels, an electrical outlet to charge my phone and laptop and decent shower. I can deal without TV/cable, a refrigerator or a nice view. This hostel had none of these things except clean sheets. And we had to go fetch those from reception. I had to borrow some towels from my son's mother because the hostel charged for them. They also charged for soap and I am really surprised they didn't charge for toilet paper although I am sure they tried but realized it was to the benefit of their cleaning staff to not do so.


The 'shower' was especially noteworthy for its terribleness. I have been in rain storms that got me wetter than this little spout coming out of the wall in the bathroom. And even better was the squeegee you had to use afterwards to steer the water on the floor towards the drain. Or maybe the the best part was that the bathroom lights worked on a motion detector and when you closed the cloth curtain to enclose you in the corner the lights would magically go off making you wave your hand outside the curtain trying to get the lights to switch on. You decide.


Anyway Luxembourg is a really cool city to explore and in my view maybe the most underrated capital city in all of western Europe. I wore them out with a lot of walking up gorges and down valleys and my brother got really cool blisters because he thought it would be gangsta to wear some heavy Timberland boots.


We took a short train ride to the nearby German city of Trier as my brother felt like he was missing something from the last time he was there and I stopped by there. Apparently he was. The crowd of people was especially strong for some reason on this particular Saturday and all the Germans seemed to be competing in an event to see who could irritate us the most by stopping in front of us or creating a wall of humans walking at a snail's pace.


They succeeded fairly quickly as my brother takes to people about as well as British Home Secretary Jacqui Smith takes to answering questions about her husband's taste in pornos.

We left Luxembourg train station on a TGV train heading to Paris on Monday afternoon and made it to Gare de l'Est in slightly more than 2 hours. I had booked a hotel in the area near Jardin Luxembourg on the south side of the river Seine and after staying in a hostel it seemed like a chateau.


My brother seems to have this notable ability to act as a magnet for weirdos. He was approached by one particular nutter who seemed to admire his aggression and made some gorilla motions while using both his hands to indicate on himself that my brother had huge nuts. And the guy who was in the middle of the subway train with a bag full of the type of stuffed dolls you win at carnivals. He had characters ranging from Superman to Homer Simpson and was performing a play with them. Unfortunately my French is too poor to understand the storyline between Homer and Pokemon.

We walked around and hit the normal tourist areas for a couple days and I even (for some reason) took them to the one tourist area I have always avoided. The area between Sacre Coeur and Montmarte is particularly seedy. I never get used to seeing sex shops next to the post office.

On a positive note I did have the best pizza I have ever had outside of America. I highly recommend Cafe di Roma on the Champs-Elysees although to eat on that road one must apparently be prepared to part with €14.20 for a 1 liter bottle of Pepsi. On a plus note they did give us some ice for free.


We eventually got tired of the bad weather and headed to the airport early for the 2100 flight to Birmingham on FlyBe.

And then I had to deal with the fish incident... Seems there are as many nutters in Birmingham as there is in Paris.

All Greek'd Up

Tonight I went out to a Greek restaurant here in Birmingham named Zorba's to eat with my wife and children. I found them on the Internet and decided that we would give it a shot.

The exterior of the restaurant was beautiful and stood out from the buildings around it like a rose blossoming from a crack on the sidewalk of Birmingham. I cannot recall seeing any shopfront like it in all of the 4 years I have been in Birmingham. Perhaps it was due to the lighting showcasing the shop in the night but it was very impressive.

Too bad that was the best the place had to offer.

The interior was better than average but slightly conflicting between traditional Greek and Victorian era architecture. In the main dining room it had Victorian style chandeliers and other ceiling fixtures but ostentatious Greek art and drawings on the walls. In a side dining room that we ate in the decor was cool and very much in tune with the outside of the restaurant but the white Xmas lights flashing kind of made it look a little tacky.


We were given menus and took out time looking over them as we waited for our drinks. The starter menu was more expansive than the main course for some reason and when I think of Greek food I am sorry but lasagna and rigatoni are not up there at the top. We ended up ordering 4 starters and just nibbling on them between us.

We ordered one of my favorite salads named Caprese, an assortment of Greek sauces including Tzaziki and hummus, and a few other dishes. None of them were particularly any good and only the sauces and fresh pita bread with Haloumi cheese was really any good. A plate of Calamari rings tasted like something I could buy frozen from the supermarket and cook at home on my own. In fact most of the starters were like that.

I think they over-charged me as well. I guess the moral of the experience can be summed up in 3 words.

Book, judge and cover.

5 Cool Things about Germany

I was fortunate to live in Germany twice for a total of around 5 years. Once when I was actually in the Air Force and the other time as a contractor for the Department of Defense.

When I first arrived in Germany I absolutely loved it because of its novelty of it. It was completely different in almost every way that you could imagine to America. Then as I travelled to neighboring countries I kind of forgot about what Germany had to offer even though I lived there.

Upon returning to live in Germany after being away for about a year and a half I quickly remembered what I had been missing.

My list of 5 cool things about living in Germany...

1) The cars and the driving -- What came first? The touring car or the or the impeccable highway system? I don't know but either way the Germans have mastered both a long time ago. Okay dude, your Mustang is fast off the line but how do you feel when a BMW 520D (yes, diesel!) station wagon full of kids passes you on the Autobahn at 160 MPH around bends to boot? Where else do you pass police cars on the highway going over a 100MPH and not think twice about them.. Nor do they think twice of you?

The thing that is awesome to me about driving a German car in Germany is that people do not look at you so pretentiously like they do in other countries. Whether it is a BMW, Mercedes, Audi, VW or Porsche they are driven by everybody and anybody. These brands are seen in Germany the same way Chevrolet or Ford is seen in America. To me that is cool.

2) Turkish food-- Where to begin?! I guess the classic Döner kebab that tastes best in Germany (and I have tried it in Turkey...) Think of it as European fast food. Typically the place you order it from has a window on the front of the shop and you stand on the sidewalk and tell the guy what you want. About 60 to 90 seconds later he hands you your sandwich. Depending on where you are it will cost you anywhere from €3.50 to €5.00 for one. They have been in the news lately, as some 'news agencies' like to report the obvious as news.


3) Location, location, location -- Where I lived was 4 hours to Paris; 3 hours to Munich; 5 hours to Zurich; 3 hours to Brussels; and 6 hours to London... Enough said.


4) German mentality -- The Rule of law. Germans live by it and seem to love it. I have been yelled at by a German (who was actually obstructing traffic to yell at me) for riding a bike on the sidewalk and then an hour later for not having a headlight on the front of my bike and a flashing tail light on the back by another German. I once got pulled over on an access road between two highways by an unmarked German police car. He didn't stop me for driving 140 MPH in a 50MPH zone. No, that is understandable as it was a only a half-mile stretch of straightaway connecting two separate highways. He pulled me over for passing on a solid lined road...

There is no litter. People think nothing of keeping their trash in their pockets until they come across a trashcan. It seems to be a religion here in the UK to dump your trash wherever you please.

When you live in a place where people have little or no respect for the law it makes you appreciate a nation where the people comprehend the reasons and benefits for the whole of society in following them.

5) The American bases -- It is perhaps the most remarkable thing to me that I lived in a foreign country where you are surrounded by a new culture and language but have any 'touch of home' that you desire at your fingertips. I lived on base and off base in Germany and saw the positives and negatives of both but crossing back and forth between the two was truly something that made my stay in Germany much more enjoyable.

Want some Lucky Charms, Snapple Iced Tea and Hostess Donuts? Go on base and get it at the Shoppette or Commissary!

Want some Punica multi-vitamin juice, fresh Brotchen and Milka chocolate? Go off base and get it at Real or Toon!