Tampa and Sommerfest

I've had a busy time the last two weeks, last week I went to Tampa, Florida for a conference. I had all these plans for things I would do in the states, everything from going to the bookstore, to buying Brad glue at the model shop, to getting my hair cut, plus more. But instead, I ended up working all the time! (Okay I did get books and the glue but still...) And it's a miserable experience to spend all that time in the airplane, airports, and another airplane. I was figuring it out and it comes out to about 15 hours of travel, with a 10 hour flight going to the states and an 8 hour flight coming back.

One funny story while I was in Tampa is me, and my counterparts who were also from Stuttgart attending the conference all went to SOCOM (Special Operations Command) to a meeting. Anyhow, we had gone to get lunch and on the return we (as visitors without passcodes to the doors) were calling back to our escort when someone came out of the door. So I held the door for my counterparts, while the one guy wouldn't get off the phone (even though he wasn't talking to anyone). I guess at SOCOM their doors are alarmed and the security guys were searching for a blond female officer that had held the door open and then let in other people also! To add insult to injury, they then tell us since we had clearances and green badges that our badges would have worked on the doors!!

Saturday, after I flew back into Stuttgart, Brad and I went downtown Stuttgart. We went to the flea market and checked things out, then had a cup of coffee -- Brad had a beer -- and a piece of cake. It was really good. After taking it easy for a while we headed over to the Stuttgart Sommerfest. This festival, is big, spreading out over two large areas. There are a lot of food stands and (of course) beer stands. You can see just one small segment of the festival behind Brad in this photo. We walked around a lot but then I was tired so we headed home. The real appeal to the Sommerfest is in the evenings there are five stages set up with bands playing all different kinds of music. On Sunday evening we went back, meeting up with some people (Chris, who attended the school in Norfolk with me and his friend Alex), drank beer, ate supper and listened to music. We ended up hanging out by a pretty good celtic rock band. Best of all, Brad and I had ridden our bikes to the train station, so after we got off the train we rode home - the best part being that neither of us were driving so we could both have beers :-)

There are five festivals here in Stuttgart - the spring beer fest, the fish market (which we went to), the Summerfest (check that one off too), Octoberfest, and Christmas festival. So far we've attended all the ones we've been here for and enjoyed them all :-).