Days after my sophomore year at Caesar Rodney High School, my father and I set out to see my sister, who was currently stationed in Ramstein, Germany. After dealing with the hassle of flying the eight hours on a military “hop”, we arrived to the Ramstein terminal. Little did we know, my sister, Christie, didn’t know that we had arrived. After waiting a minor eternity, she found us in our terminal. Turns out, she checked every terminal on the air base looking for us.
She then proceeded to drive us back to her house in her “safe” Mazda. Normally, I would have felt perfectly safe—it must have been the 120 MPH she was driving on the Autobahn that unsettled me. We arrived after a short twenty minutes (and 40 miles!) to the barracks. Other than the place being a complete sty, it was great to see her again, for it had been at least three years since we last saw Christie.
Christie had work every day around the crack of dawn; I didn’t wake up every day until the crack of noon. Since I was only visiting for a short few days, Christie took off work to take us to Heidelberg, a huge castle built during Roman occupation of the Germanic tribes! Luckily I knew enough Latin to read the original inscriptions on the battlements. After scaling the 315 sadistically numbered steps to reach the castle, we took a self-guided tour of the fortress. Of course, when I say “self-guided” I mean wandering randomly. Once we found the castle walls, though, the wait was well worth it for the view.
Later that night, we ordered pizza. Against Christie’s wishes, we ordered a large. We didn’t quite understand how big larges were in Germany. Ice cream was for dessert, of course.
Unfortunately, Christie happened to be going to a conundrum at work—she was being treated like dirt by customers and her boss. She resigned and luckily my father and I were there to support her, since her husband, Jason, was away at training. Since she was so upset, my father and I wanted to surprise her, so we cleaned her apartment before she arrived home from work. We did it just in time for inspection, too! Something about half filled, highly combustible kerosene tanks in Jason’s bedroom was feeling ominous…
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