Ramstein Air Base and Europe’s biggest wine festival.

What a Week! We stayed with Emma and Nick in their amazing German house. Emma and I caught up and watched army wives.  Nick and Jons enjoyed some beers and played on a car racing stimulator.

We had such a great time and were throughly pampered with a bed and a bathroom all to ourselves – luxury. Nick cooked up one of the best Mexican meals we have ever had and Emma took such great care of us even down to making sure we had body wash in the shower.

Ramstein Military Base
We were both keen to check out the American ‘base’ and Nick even promised to try for a visit on a military plane.

Arriving on base with our passports in hand, as it’s therotically American soil, Nick asked to sponsor us onto base. The German policeman flicked through our passports and said we had overstayed our 3 months and sent us away saying we were ‘illegals’. We argued that we had left to the UK and should be okay but didn’t want to push our luck so quickly exited the building. This left us feeling a little stressed expecially after finding out Germany where we are flying out of is the strictest European country for visas and we might be banned from coming back to Europe if we managed to leave. Emma did some research on her phone and came to the conclusion that the policeman didn’t know what he was on about as we had been in the UK for a month which isn’t part of the Schengen agreement.  Phew! in the meantime we went shopping and out for lunch. After being sure we were right we went back to try our luck again. This time the guy scanned our passports and let us on base – success and stress levels back to normal.

The base Nick works at was awesome.  We all wandered through an all American mall checking out the goods. There was everything you would ever need, at American prices and in American dollars. After a spot of shopping, and a cookie candle down we headed over to the planes.

Nick handed us all a head set and we walked over the tarmac to one of the military planes which was not being used at the time. Pulling down the steps we boarded and were given a tour of the plane. It felt like being on set of an army movie, an awesome experience. 

The next was Jons’ birthday and coincendatlly the date of Europe’s biggest wine festival (we think). We enjoyed a bottle of bubbly over breakfast and headed to the train station to make the 3 stop journey. When we arrived 2 teenagers were trying to buy tickets and failing. The train rolled through while they were still trying to make the machine eat their money. It was an hour until the next train so we walked to the pub and continued with the wine. The below photo shows the coaster we were given.

3 train stops later we walked into the festival. It was going off, there were people everywhere and many had taken the opportunity to don their lederhosen outfits. We found a tent and ordered our first pint of wine spritzer and dove into plates of fried potato fritters.  On a suitable buzz we headed off to check out the rides. I hadn’t been on fairground rides since I was a kid and had a great time.

The train ride home was an event in itself. We were witness to display of male affection and the resulting fight, a young man self detoxing from his wine overdose and overheard the latest gossip from a group of military wives. What a night and the best birthday for Jons.

The next two days were hangover recovery and we lounged around watching various TV shows including a reality show on polygamy and a show about a woman’s prison experience.

A massive thanks to the Rice’s for having us to stay, we couldn’t have asked for more. Living in luxury was amazing and the company even more so. Here’s to next time!