IThinkImLost's VirtualTourist Home Page

I joined the Army a while back, I don't really know why I did it but it has opened up the opportunity for me to travel. I arrived in Germany in 2003 or 2004, I don't really remember and don't really care to think about it right now, and met up with some friends I had made in Georgia, and now we began our travels. Nothing big right away just tried to find some good mountains to snowboard, so off to Southern Germany and Austria we go. Garmisch-Partenkirchen was our first stop, the lifts where not open that early into the season so we went to Austria. This is where we get a little lost. To make this story a little short, we ran into some guy at a gas station caring a snowboard, picked him up and he showed us how to get to the mountain. To this day I don't know where we where, but it was a blast. During the time we where there it was the world cup of skiing or something like that and the town was packed. We only had the weekend so we ran out of time and didn't get to experience all that we wanted; I will find this city again. Lucky for me the war in Iraq had just kicked off, so after a month in Germany I am off to the desert.

This is how I began my travels. I was sitting in Kuwait waiting to leave, we just got out of Iraq, and I bought a movie from one of the local nationals. It was a bootleg copy of Euro Trip, and so the story begins. Let me paint the picture. There are about 12 guys sitting around a 15in laptop yelling and screaming about the places they now want to go see and how much fun it would be. "Are you telling me that I can buy things for a nickel in Bratislava?" are some of the comments you would have herd if you where there. I later found out that this was not true by the way. The movie was the topic of our conversations for the next weeks while we waited to return to Germany; where are new journeys would begin.

We are back into the land of beer and schnitzel. Now a lot of these stories I have long forgotten all the details so I will enlighten you our traveling philosophy. American soldiers do not always have the greatest reputation in Germany so to find a nice place where people will not immediately hate you; you have to travel a little out of the way. So one night after sitting around a friends place we decide that we are going to find this far of utopia. We find a road map and locate a small but big city that is away from any American Bases. The first one located was Limburg, and this quickly became our favorite city, our secret city that no Americans knew about. We also made trips to England, Berlin, Muchin, Amsterdam, and some random small villages in Germany.

My group of friends where cut short of our travels again. We receive the news that 10 months after being back from Iraq we are leaving to go back again. So once again our trip is put on hold. Sitting in Iraq gives us a lot of down time, and our down time consisted of planning the ultimate vacation. We spent the entire year researching, and planning our trip. The way it works is that after each deployment the army gives the soldiers a 30 day window for a vacation, time to recover and see our families. For five of us this time was used to really travel Europe.

The 30 day trip was one that was great in the beginning but towards the end was starting to get a little painful, but that’s another story. The antics can be found later on the other pages with detailed information about each place. So to the story; we started our trip with a four day trip from Darmstadt to Garmisch-Partenkirchen for some snowboarding. From there we went back to Darmstadt to pick up some more passengers, then off to Czech Republic. We stayed in Prague for a couple of days, and then drove up into Poland. We stopped in a small city on the Czech side for the night before we crossed. Poland we stayed in Wroclaw, our favorite Polish city, for a few days and then headed to Holland. The drive to Holland is long, and there was poor weather that made us stay over night in a hotel outside of Berlin. The next day we made it to Holland and stayed in Amsterdam for a couple of days. Left there and headed back to Germany, we had to drop some people off in Frankfurt for them to catch a flight back to America. We started with 10 people in the beginning, loosing some on each leg of the trip. 2 left after Czech and 3 more where lost after the Holland trip. All where ok they just had to catch flights back to the states. Now we are left with the original 5. We head to Frankfurt Hahn and catch our Ryan Air flight to Latvia. This is our second leg of the trip and the last 2 weeks. We land in Latvia in the winter; this is another story that will require some time to write. So we are in Latvia, we grab a Taxi and head for a hotel. We are in Latvia (Riga) for a few days, leave there to meet some people in Lithuania (Kaunas), from Lithuania we leave and drive to Estonia (Parnu). Estonia was late in the weekend so we where only there for a couple of days before we had to leave to meet up with some friends that we had made in Riga. We met up with the friends in Riga for the last couple of days before we had to be back at the Airport to fly back to Germany. Now we are back at work. There is one traveler that has a few more days that he gets to take because he had a late start. He started after the snowboarding so he had somewhere between 5 and 7 more days that he took in Spain and Portiguel.

Well we are back in Germany and working again. Leave is over and we have caught up on our rest. A lot of the following trips bleed together when I think of the times and trips that we took. We live in Darmstadt but each weekend involves a trip to a city that we have never been to or a place that we have grown to enjoy and think it deserves another trip. For example Wroclaw Poland is one place that we visited around 20 times. So during this time we made out trips to Ireland, Slovakia, some cities in Czech Republic (Piltzen, Brno), more German Villages, Netherland cities (Amsterdam, Zanvoort), Mallorca, and maybe more but that’s most of them for now.

Well our time is coming to a close in Darmstadt. We are getting assigned to new units. We try our best to stay together but we fail. Out of the five travelers 3 of us stay together and go to Bamberg Germany, 1 gets placed in Mannheim Germany, while the 5 guy gets sent back to the states. We are no longer able to take trips at the blink of an eye; some planning has to be done. This was never our strong suit. So this next year we only made a few more trips to Poland, and a trip to Norway (Oslo). There where a few trips here and there that some made it on and others did not. There was a Polish wedding that most made but I missed a tip to the Canary Islands that two of us took, and some other trips here and there. We have more trips that are taken to see old friends and old friends that come by to see us. The money is low and we spend some weekends saving to make larger trips, but in the end we are cut short one more time with another deployment to Afghanistan.

I am sitting in Afghanistan writing these sections, planning my next 30 day trip. We have 3 members from the Original group that will be in attendance, with a couple new, promising additions. Now the planning begins. If you read all this and have some ideas for us please send it our way. Another event that I have forgotten to mention about and feel should be here were our trips to Rock Am Ring. This is a great 3 day concert that takes place in Nurnburg each year. So for now the trips are over but it gives me time to add my stories. So until then.....