DARMSTADT DAYS (Final Episode)

So many glorious and interesting days passed us by in Germany. We did our share of traveling, took lots of pictures and got lots of trinkets. The cookoo clocks, the shadow boxes, the beer steins, and figurine nutcrackers, came in all sorts of varieties. These were attractive and made to attract tourist money, but the thing I remember most was the German food.

I'm not fond of sauerkraut and wieners, and you can keep the German beers, but I really loved the Jaeger schnitzels. A Jaeger is a hunter and schnitzel is breaded pork, veal or chicken, usually pan fried and often with gravy. It is served with various side orders and often brought to your table in the frying pan, which may be transferred to your plate. That was just one of the many items on the menu. There are many German restaurants dotting the towns and we even had our own German dining facility on base. All of them were guaranteed to expand your waist line.

On one particular evening, when I had just arrived home from work and my wife was at her two nights a week evening job, I decided to take our five kids out to get some dinner. We had tried all sorts of German food and never eaten anything from the small restaurant near our German duplex that we didn't enjoy. How about a take home pizza? Big mistake. Germans are not Italians. An obvious fact but one I had to learn the hard way. We walked the short distance to our neighborhood German restaurant, ordered our pizza supreme and waited. It was 6PM. This is going to be fun, I thought. The kids and I were hungry and we would walk home with our pizza, partake, visit and hit the sack. Just a nice evening with the kids...wrong!

Two hours later, the pizza was rudely brought to us. Germans don't do take out. If you won't eat their food in their restaurant then you are considered rude and should therefore be treated rudely. It was just one of those etiquette things we had to learn. When we got home very hungry, we opened the pizza box and were shocked at what we found. The pizza dough was not cooked enough, it was covered with green olives and anchovies, despite what I had ordered. On top of the pizza were four, almost raw fried eggs, sunny side up. We tasted it but could not eat it. Had we been in the States, we would have never waited that long and have gotten our money back, but this was not the States or even Italy. The pizza went in the garbage; we ate peanut butter sandwiches and went to bed. If the pizza had been superb, we probably would have forgotten the whole incident, but since it was just the opposite, I shall always remember it.

After three years, the time finally came for us to rotate back to the States, not only to leave Germany but also for me to retire from the Air Force. It was December of 1985 and one of the worst blizzards I had ever seen. It was absolutely miserable outside and we had been packing boxes and moving furniture all week. We were all exhausted, suffered from lack of sleep and too physically rundown to even eat. Our oldest son and I were moving a large German shrunk closet by taking it apart piece by piece. It was about midnight. Heavy snow was falling outside. I had my GI steel toed boots on so that when we disconnected furniture parts, our son could kick the piece over toward me, I would catch it on my reinforced steel toe boot and then drop it to the floor. Their were several to take apart and we had been doing it most of the evening. We only had one more to disassemble. Kick, catch, drop. Kick, catch, drop. Over and over we did it.

My wife, Jean, had been packing boxes and had finally finished. I realized we were missing a tool and went to the tool box to retrieve it. Meanwhile, Jean came over to help with the last disassembly. Our, son, Scott, was on the other side of the closet. Jean was barefoot. "Are you ready?" Scott asked. "Go," Jean said. Scott kicked and 30 pounds of heavy wood came down on Jean's big toe. She screamed terribly. It hurt really bad. Scott and I felt horrible about it but the damage was done. At two AM, we were laying on the floor on a make shift bed because our furniture was all disassembled for the movers, arriving early the next day. The pain was so bad that Jean could not bear it any longer. "Take me to the hospital emergency room." she ordered. It was 15 miles away, at two AM in a blizzard. We almost wrecked several times just trying to get there.

We waited two hours at the emergency room and when we finally saw the doc, he said that there was nothing he could do for a smashed toe. He recommended aspirin and sent us back into the blizzard. We arrived home about 5AM. The movers arrived at about 5:30 AM. Moving days are wonderful. A few days later, we moved into the base hotel temporary quarters and then left Germany. Our European adventure had come to an end but our memory of Darmstadt Days lived on.