Day Trip to Ramstein

We took a trip down to Ramstein on Friday. We've been wanting to go down there for a while now to get some household stuff, some clothes, and a few other things. At least, that's what we told ourselves. Actually, we really just wanted to see the Mall! =)

We got up really early because we thought we would have to spend 4 hours driving down there and 4 more coming back, and we wanted to have some time to actually do something as well. As usual, the kids weren't too happy about waking up early, but that was ok. They had a long car ride in front of them that they could spend sleeping.

To get to Ramstein, we had to drive right past Bitburg and Spangdahlem. We've been there before. The German country side is gorgeous, so the ride was pleasant and familiar this time. Since Spang was about the halfway point to where we were going, we decided to hop off the motorway for a quick break. Adam is sooo glad we did!!!

Back in Salt Lake City, Adam and I would go to this cute little Austrian restaurant called the Vienna Bistro. It was way too expensive, but the spaetzle was to die for! Adam is not a huge beer drinker, but we had tried earlier the wheat beer Budweiser was touting for a while. He decided that particular beer wasn't too bad. So, at the Bistro, he saw on their beer list an imported wheat beer and ordered it. It came out in a dark brown bottle with gold foil on the top and a picture of a monk on the label and a glass to pour it in with the same monk on it. He loved it!

Well, what do you know? At the Shoppette on Spangdahlem AFB in Germany, while Rachael and I were taking a potty break, Adam found a whole case of his Franziskaner Hefe-Weisse, and one even had taped to it the same tall glass at no extra charge. You bet he snatched that right up!

We got back in the car and continued our journey. We made it to Ramstein in just over 3 hours total, instead of the 4 we had expected. That was a nice surprise. More time for shopping!!! Anyways, I don't know if it's because we've been seeing so many small installations or what, but Ramstein just seemed huge! And, oh my goodness, there were cars everywhere. The whole place was busy, busy, busy.  We found our way to the mall (which, by the way, wasn't hard at all because it's so huge!). I've talked about BX's and PX's before, the base and post exchanges for the Air Force and Army. They are part of AAFES - the Army and Air Force Exchange Service. When we got to the mall, it only said, in BIG, HUGE letters: EXCHANGE. No 'B,' no 'P.' It is just the 'Exchange.' And it's big! Like any other mall, it had a food court (with many AAFES restaurants, like Burger King, Anthony's, Baskin Robbins, Taco Bell). I think the Romano's Macaroni Grill was even in there (I don't know, we didn't even get to see the whole place!). It even had a few local German eateries, too. There were vendors down the aisles. Lots of vendors! And little stores. Then, the biggest part of the mall was the actual Exchange, which rivaled many large Wal-Marts in the amount of space it held.

We spent quite a bit of time in the Exchange. We found some clothes for the kids and for me. We bought some towels and kitchen accessories. Of course we had to get some electronic stuff (I like clothes and home stuff; Adam likes his electronics =). Before we left the states, we had been looking into getting some of those expensive foam pillows for ourselves, the Tempurpedics. Well, they had some Serta ones for about half the price that we really liked, so we got two of those. Oh, we had so much fun spending money!!

The mall had 4 theaters showing first run movies. We ate some ice cream at the Johnny Rockets and headed upstairs to catch Kung Fu Panda 2. And, guess what?!?! The movie was spoken in English, aaaaaand there were no subtitles!!!! The movie itself was really great (I even think it was better than the first one, but that's just my opinion =).

These are 'Kissing Bears' because there are two flavors of bears stuck together in each set =)

We headed back downstairs and walked around some more. There were several German shops sporting their wares. Adam and I ogled at the beautiful, intricate cuckoo clocks, promising ourselves that we would get one as a souvenir when we actually did some sight-seeing in Germany. The candle-powered windmills were so fascinating. One shop was like a Christmas market the whole year round. That one was hard to leave!! A vendor in the aisle had so many wooden wall-hangings, plaques, etc. that he was personally engraving right there with a branding iron. It was so fun to watch him! A lady selling gummi bears offered to let us try a few. I agreed (oops!) and ended up buying a bag for too much money. But, I don't regret it, because those fruit juice flavored German gummi bears are the best gummi bears I have ever had!! I also bought a beautiful statue of Mary from another vendor. What a wonderful day!

We drove around the base some more and eventually ended up at the Chili's restaurant. What a treat! We hadn't eaten at a sit-down American restaurant since a week before we left. Of course, it was delicious.

After dinner, we let Rachael and Zach play in the park we found on base just to burn some energy off before the long ride. It was fun and they enjoyed it. But finally, the time came that we had to leave.

The drive back was nice. The sun doesn't go down around here until about 10:30 at night, so we had daylight the whole trip back home. As we were driving, we saw these fields on rather steep slopes, and we just couldn't figure out what they were. As farmers of wheat and barley, who understand that combines can work on slopes that are only so steep, we were rather confused. Eventually, we got close enough to some and found that they were rows of vines. Vineyards!

We enjoyed the rest of our trip home, with the kiddos crashed in the back. Adam had picked up a brochure for Octoberfest running the last week of October somewhere in the Kaiserslautern Military Community. Heck, we might back sooner than we planned. Yay!!! Ta ta!