AUGUST 20, 2010

We had an opportunity to travel west this weekend. I had a conference with some of the military orthodontists in Heidelberg...where the famous castle and "burning of the castle" takes place. I met one of the three other orthodontists from my area and three others from the Heidelburg/Manheim area. We met with an oral surgeon that does some of the orthognathic surgery for us...but it is very limited, so I am not sure how that will actually serve the needs we have. Anyway, the meeting was on Friday morning so we spent two hours on the autobahn to get there and were finished by lunchtime. Kay and I then drove another hour west to the Kaiserslaughten/Ramstein air base area, near the French border. We had information that it was a bigger more modern base (Air FOrce) and we were not disappointed. It was more a piece of little America than Germany and they even had an Officer's club. We thoroughly enjoyed our time in the bar rubbing shoulders with the Air Force guys. You can see from the pictures that there were a lot of planes, mostly C-117s and a couple of 747s, an old 707 tanker and a few prop planes (click on the photos to make them larger)...overall very impressive. And they were flying off to war zones as well as stateside..Dover, McCord, Travis, Charleston, Wright Patterson etc...an exciting place with a lot happening. Kay and I are not eligible for Space A flights unless for emergency, so we will likely just go commercial as usual (out of FRankfurt or Nuremburg). We got back home Saturday afternoon late and spent a little time in our home village of Sachsen. This was the weekend for the summer festival..small, but fun..we had some beer and bratwust in the Omm-Pa tent and even danced to some Beach Boys music until the wee hours.. Sunday we took a driving trip in the Porsche..more on that in the next blog.