This is the last post in the series on my R&R leave in Germany. It’s been a long time coming, but now that I am done with this, I can move onto finishing up the Mobilization Journal a bit more. Heck, maybe even get enough to write a book or something…

Anyway, the last day of leave, we were both kind of out of money, primarily after spending a lot of it in Pure Platinum over the previous two weeks… well, at least in my case. I now realize that the Romanian stripper that I met in Germany was never going to move to America and become my wife, no matter how many trips to the champagne room I took. (And, unless I am totally just a loser, there is “no sex in the champagne room).

Our last day in Germany, we decided to head out to a little town called Darmstadt via the train, if only to use our fourth day of our four day rail pass. The reason for the trip was to head to a gym owned by some huge German dude named Markus Rühl. On the short 45 minute ride from Frankfurt, I figured this gym would just be a gym that this bodybuilder dude lent his name to in order to make money away from competitive bodybuilding.

Albert and Markus – BFF!!

Needless to say, we were pleasantly surprised when he was actually in the gym! He offered to take us through a workout, but being that he was about as wide as two of me (and I’m a pretty large person), we politely declined. We did get some autographs for some of our Army peeps and took some pictures with him, if only to show how truly massive this man was. See below for pictorial proof. (FYI Al… if you want me to take this down, I want the one I took with him instead)

Say it with a German accent…

After stopping by the gym, we walked back to the train station, past German Target (get it? hahaha) (to be fair, it was a grocery store, so my guess that it was German Target is pretty close) and returned to Frankfurt. Our last night in Frankfurt was spent toasting to Germany while drinking Snakebites at the Irish pub and our last sojourn to previously mentioned Pure Platinum. The next morning, we took the train to the airport and returned to Kuwait, with a short layover in the Kingdom of Bahrain. Within 48 hours, we were back in Iraq for the last month and a half of our deployment. Good times.

There you go. As mentioned previously in other Germany posts, I would really like to go back to Germany again, though with less visits to the strip club and more cultural things.

Until next time…

German Eagle

Today, we took the train to Munich with little idea of what we would actually do once we got there. One of the deciding factors was that it was a little closer via train then Berlin, which would have been a bit more preferable. However, once we arrived in Munich, we realized there was a little bit more to Germany than Frankfurt and desired that we had planned our trip a little better, spending a few days in various cities around Germany.
When we arrived in Munich, we purchased a ticket for the Third Reich Tour, one of the many tour packages sold in Munich. It was a walking tour of all the buildings in Munich that the Nazis used, or at least it would have been had the Allies not had them all destroyed at the conclusion of World War II. A sample exchange from the tour guide:

Tour Guide: Over on this corner, the Nazi War Department had a building. As you can see, it is no longer here.
Tour Patron: Why isn’t it here?
Tour Guide: General Eisenhower ordered it destroyed after we defeated the Nazis in World War II. Over here, you’ll see the corner where the Nazi Children’s Corps was housed.
Tour Patron: Another empty corner?
Tour Guide: Just picture a big stone building with eagles and swastikas. That’s what it looked like. Moving on…

Very exciting as you can see.

The Hall

Personal Mugs at the Hofbrauhaus

Before heading back to Frankfurt, we stopped by the world famous Hofbrauhaus and tried to get some beer which turned out to be fairly difficult due to the language barrier. However, it was nice to see the place where the Nazi Party had its start, which you can see in the picture on the right.

All in all, it was a good day spent in Munich, even if we did spend a lot of time on the train on our way to and from. Once we returned to Frankfurt, we returned for Pure Platinum for the third time, hoping to make it the last night. Alas, it was not, a recurring theme of the trip to Germany, but it was a good time nonetheless.