Extreme Sleep Deprivation Part II

So I may not have been tired on my way through Manas this time around, but I started off on the wrong foot to continue my journey in the same manner when I got to the Bishkek commercial airport at 5 AM having gotten no sleep whatsoever.

The whole day was a textbook description of experiencing reverse-culture shock. I was constantly barraged by the extreme cleanliness of the Istanbul airport and the restaurant attached to the hotel I stayed in in Germany. Did you know the Istanbul airport is full of nothing but women? It's true! Because I was used to there being practically no women downrange it really seemed like they were everywhere I looked (and this continues to be the case as I write this while I am currently visiting Israel). Anyway with a relatively long layover in Istanbul, and a shuttle from Frankfurt to Sandhofen, just north of Mannheim, I was very ready to pass out and did.

Being back in Sanhofen was also very strange, but in a way unrelated to the reverse-culture shock. Firstly, CTC is no longer storing people in the Weber, it's all about the Adler hotel, now. There are good things and bad related to the change, anyway it was only for one night. Also, being in the same place first in summer, and then again seven months later was interesting to see. 

After my out-processing in Coleman Barracks, which consisted basically of my filling out some forms and giving my opinions on how the program can be improved, I was on my way again back to the Frankfurt airport. Hearing Israeli's speaking Hebrew on their way back from a trip to Italy in the Rome airport (which coincidentally was also full of women) was like music to my ears.

Alitalia is very concerned over the people nearing their 40s who still play their original gameboys.

By the time I got to the little hotel near the beach in Tel Aviv that I was staying in it was 5 am again, and I had a hard time sleeping. By Saturday night, I had gone since Wednesday morning with nothing more than 10 hours of sleep total...

It's good to be back, civilization.

The Little Things

When there have been no blog posts on this page, it's not as though I'm doing nothing waiting around for something to write about. Things are still happening, none of them are important enough by themselves to write a full post about. Here's a few of the little things that go on around here.

Sandhofen is the name of our little suburb north of Mannheim. It's a collection of about 30 blocks with a tram line that connects us to downtown Mannheim, and farm or factory in every other direction (and the military base). If you check out the webpage for our little enclave you'd see that there's not much there. In those 30 blocks, there's our hotel with a Mcdonalds/gas station across the street, a couple of mini marts and like 10 restaurants, 4 or so of which are Italian.

Jordan and Erin enjoying the authentic German restaurant in Sandhofen

The crew.

We've recently re-implemented into the CTC training process Tuesday go-kart outings. There's this indoor track with lots of turns nearby and on Tuesdays that happy hour is like $20 or so for 20 minutes of go-karting. It's wayyy faster than American go-karts that are similar in size. I came in second on our last run.

The track

Me and Cheryl preparing to race

I'll beat you next time Raymond!

Speaking of diversions, there are signs around Coleman Barracks (where the training takes place) for a paintball play area and Raymond Wilson, the CTC employee who organizes our go-karting expeditions says that there's paintball on Saturdays... Will be investigating further before the weekend.

What do I even do all day?

Good question! Every day, I usually wake up between 7:30 and 8 in my tiny little room at the weber hotel here in Mannheim. I'll postpone getting out of bed as long as possible and then go down to breakfast (which is automatically getting paid for so I feel obligated to eat it.).

Don't be fooled, it's smaller than it looks.

Many different cheeses.

At 8:30 Ladell Heath (the deployment coordinator for CTC) picks up everyone to go to work at Coleman barracks a couple miles away.

Thanks for schlepping us around, Ladell

Work, sweet work...

In case you forget whose fire escape this is.

We spend the morning training in the training room and then go to the DFAC (Dining facility) for lunch which costs $4.25. This includes everything - basically like in a college dining hall.

See our rag-tag bunch of trainees in the training room.

Devin, deciding to get the ice cream for dessert.

So something the DFAC has that I find fascinating is the POW/MIA table. It's constantly set for one on a raised platform and everything on the table is meant to be symbolic of something involved with the experience of being a POW/MIA (Prisoner of war/missing in action). For instance, the slice of lemon on the plate represents the bitterness of their experience, and the salt on the table represents the tears of their loved ones... it's really powerful and a constant reminder that while we are in a peaceful place here in Germany, it's still very much a part of the military.

The caption below the silhouette of the POW says "you are not forgotten"

Some time between 4 and 5pm we leave. I've started going to the gym on base when I can and then walking the little over a mile back to the weber hotel. Home sweet home! In the evenings I spend time in the lobby where we get internet (no internet in the rooms), and find someone also with ctc to go to dinner with. There are a bunch of places that are the standard places to go for us around here. There are Italian, Turkish, and German places all nearby.

And that's basically what I do every day. All of this I wrote while Shakira lounge musak is playing over the hotel lobby speakers.

The hotel lobby.

The Hotel Lobby Soundtrack:

This weekend I think the plan is to take another day trip like we did last weekend.