Transient

My experience from Kandahar to Manas was basically the same as my trip in, but in reverse, and without the extreme sleep deprivation. There were no all-night flights. I was able to appreciate the experience of flying in a C-17 because I wasn't nodding off, using my body armor as a headrest.

The Manas Nato base at the Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan airport, is meant as a staging area/transient base for people going somewhere or coming back from somewhere (mostly Afghanistan). Everyone not leaving within a few hours is assigned transient billeting, which is like what you imagine old-timey barracks to look like. Rows of bunk beds in a tent, and that's it.

I got to Manas Monday evening and was stuck here until I left for my commercial flight back to Germany very early Thursday morning with nothing to do in between those times except turn in my body armor which took about twenty minutes. So with all that time on my hands, I got to know the base fairly well. 

After getting everything scanned in, and getting some linens for my stay, and arranging for my travel to the Bishkek commercial airport on Thursday morning at 0430, I traipsed over to Pete's Place.

This is where residents of Manas are permitted to buy and consume two alcoholic drinks per day. As far as I've been told, most other bases where alcohol is permitted, but restricted offer two beers smaller than a regular 12-oz can/bottle. Here, they're serving big, European-style, .5 liter bottles. Also they were serving these beers at incredibly low prices  - nothing over $3 for a wide variety, including many fancy schmancy brands. Not having had the ability to drink for a very long time, my alcohol tolerance had diminished... noticeably.

Across the room at Pete's Place I noticed a man wearing a Yarmulke. I went up and asked him if he was with the chaplaincy, and he told me not yet but that he planned on it and on going to JTS for his rabbinical training. I'm sorry we didn't get to chat longer, I didn't even catch his name, but good luck to that guy.

Also on base, there is AAFES town. AAFES has set up a sort of courtyard of shops off to one end of the base. There's a bunch of souvenir shops, a Burger King, a Pizza Hut, and a Green Bean coffee place.

AAFES Town.

Apparently structures of this shape are central in Kyrgyz culture, and that's why this gift shop was shaped this way.

Most of Wednesday evening I spent wasting my energy trying and failing at getting some sleep before my shuttle to the commercial airport. Since that wasn't working I got to chit chatting with some of my tent-mates (who were also my plane-mates on my way out of Kandahar as we were all assigned to the same tent). One of the two soldiers I was talking to said that he was from Ohio. Where Ohio? Cleveland area. Where Cleveland? Do you know the Shaker Heights area? Ha! How crazy is that? A guy from the Shaker square area and I (also being from Shaker Heights) end up sleeping in beds 6 feet from one another on the complete opposite side of the world! We spent some time leading up to his (and everyone else in my tent besides my) departure recommending restaurants in the Cleveland area for each other to visit once we each get home.

For a brief moment at the Bishkek commercial airport just after 0500 on Thursday morning, it looked as though I wasn't going to get on the flight which would've been a disaster. Apparently, the interpreters had told me I had the proper stamps on my paperwork to travel through Kyrgyz customs, but in fact, I did not. After the interpreter with me rushed off to get me the right stamp, I made it through customs on time and I was on my way.

Hiking in Heidelberg

For Saturday, I and four other trainees from CTC decided to go visit Heidelberg. We met in the morning, took the tram to the Mannheim train station, 15 or so minutes on the train to get to Heidelberg! Can you believe it? Figured out how to take public transportation to the old town. Did that.

Now our goal was to visit the famous Heidelberger Schloss (schloss means castle). The problem was that it was a bit of a hike halfway up a mountain to get to it. 

View of the castle from the old town.

So we hiked it.

The steep hill to get to the top.

We got up there and saw a pretty awesome castle. It was half destroyed in 1620 and several times since then so it's got this cool half-ruins sort of feel to it. The weather was nice, everything was going pretty good. There was a little museum and a great view of the entire city.

After coming back down from the mountain we strolled around the old town for a while and window shopped at all of the little tourist-y vendors around a big church. We found a restaurant and had a late German lunch on the river that goes through Heidelberg,  which is a tributary to the Rhein (which flows through Mannheim, have I mentioned that?).

Since I was going to spend this weekend in Brussels, but then those plans fell through I was able to meet up with my airplane friend, Emily (who was going to be in Heidelberg the whole week). As we check out the pedestrian bridge near our restaurant, I see a large group of student-aged people coming along and then she was right there with that group! So we met up earlier than our original plan. She had said that I should explore the hauprtstrasse and that we would meet up and go on the philosopherweg. I had no idea what any of this meant so I just went to the castle and checked out the bridge.

Emily is a part of this program called RISE. I'm sure it stands for something, but I am sick of Acronyms, so what it is is this program that offers internships to students all over the world studying sciences in the effort to try to get them to move to Germany for to get their Post-Secondary degrees. They were all fun people she was with. Problem was, they all wanted to go up to the castle! I didn't mind going up again, after all, it wasn't that hard. Then I found out what Philosopherweg was. It's a promenade along the opposite bank of the river's mountain called "holy mountain". It has paths all over it that lead to the top. And we were going to hike it...

View from the castle of the bridge where we ran into each other with the holy mountain presiding over the picture. See that little break in the treeline at the top there? That's where we're headed.

The half-liter beer that I had ordered at lunch was already disagreeing with me a bit, but I suppose that was just too darn bad. It wasn't so terribly hard a hike, and I enjoyed it a lot, but it was still a sweaty and tiring mess. At the top there is this ancient guard's tower with some great views of Heidelberg along the way. Then between the two summits of the holy mountain there is a WWII era amphitheater used by the Nazis. It was all an overgrown mess... take a look:

Seig How! ...are we all going to get down from this amphitheater in the mountains!?

Then at the second summit of the holy mountain we saw some ruins of an ancient monastery (probably has something to do with why the mountain is called holy). Between the amphitheater and the guard's tower there is this little mountain-top restaurant/beer gaarten. The group ate there. I had kaesespaetzle (cheese noodles - varying shaped noodles with cheese and onions - it was great!) at Emily's insistent suggestion.

Waldschenke apparently means "gift of the forest" This was supposed to be a candid, but Alex caught on.

We hiked down the mountain (by this time it's getting dark) and made it down to the river. At the bridge we all split up. Took the train to Mannheim myself and got back around midnight.

Emily Hart, Heidelberg's biggest fan. Josh Kramer's legs' worst fan!