Well the SFC I mentioned earlier finally went back to the states. Ed and I were so happy to get moved out of the four man room to a two man room. We set up our bunks and found extra mattresses and double mattressed our bunks, so we could sleep more comfortably. We were pretty good buds.
Ed was sort of crazy in a way. He told me a story about how after his mom and dad died he got all the insurance money. He was an only child and he had put away well over a hundred thousand and for the early seventies that was an enormous amount of money. He would go out with his friends on weekends and hit the streets and he liked to race. So he went out and bought two two-toned 56 Chevys. One was a six cylinder three on the tree. The other was a rat motored car with a four in the floor and they were both painted the same colors. They matched perfectly on the outside. He’d drive the six banger out and sucker someone to race and he’d say to met him somewhere and on the way over he’d swap cars in between. He made a few bucks doing stuff like that. Like I may have already said he didn’t have to join the Army and to this day I still don’t know why he did.
A couple of weeks after we moved to the new room Ed was convinced that we were safer here and he wanted to start buying stereo equipment. The thing was that Ed didn’t want to buy a little bit each month off of his pay, so he decided he’d go home to West Haven and spend some time at home and then come back with a pocket full of change to buy what he needed all at once. So, he left me with a room to myself for a couple of weeks. I was in heaven not having to worry about underwear guy or any other guys for that matter.
But as all things go, Ed came back and to my surprise he brought a good size amount of money back with him. So much I was afraid if someone knew we’d be robbed or something. He was smart enough though to put it in the bank. Then he and I hit the bricks off to the stereo club across town. It was supposedly the largest stereo club the Army had in Germany. If you wanted it, they had it. Should I say that Ed and I came back with a pot load of stereo equipment? Well, yes. He got a Kenwood AM/FM tuner amplifier. This thing had it all, including a jack to plug in an electric guitar. He got two tower speakers with marble tops and a big high end cassette player and a turntable. We set it up and got it booming in no time. His and mine together was quite a bit of money, so we made sure we had a good lock on our door and the window was extra secure. Our window faced the parking lot, so we were pretty safe there. The reason for wanting to be extra secure was because now Ed, Hochsang, his girlfriend, Pops and me were about to embark on trips at least once a month to somewhere in Germany by some means or method.
We went to Bonn one weekend. We saw a military sponsored trip by train to northern Germany to the capital city and it was cheap. It included rooms, train tickets and a couple or so meals. Bonn was and probably still is a beautiful city. It’s buildings were magnificent. We visited several churches. You would have to see it to believe it. European churches are very ornate. The old churches are relatively old. Some date back several centuries. There was much gold in these places. It was overlaid on about everything you can imagine.
Ludwig van Beethoven was born and lived in Bonn. Expressionist painter August Macke lived there for about three years before WWI. This town sported itself as having a large number of museums, which it did. They have close to a dozen.
And of course Ed and I became connoisseurs of pastries and coffees. Every town we spent time in was ensured to have at least one of its many pastry shops visited by our little crew of wandering Army buddies. Germany has some of the best. I may have already said this, but it bear repeating. Bonn was not left off the list of pastry visits. We filled our sweet pastry tooth and got our caffeine buzz at least twice here. Pops and Hochsang weren’t left out, but they didn’t quite have the flair for it like Ed and I did. I still kind of wonder how a country boy could adapt to such a level of social things as this. I guess I’ll give it to my mom.
After taking in the sites, pastry shops and an overnight stay we were on our way back to the battery. Let me say one thing here that I don’t think I’ve mentioned here to for. Mass transit. Let that settle a moment. I’d never known what that was till I got to Europe. But I developed a real liking for it. For one it was cheap. But for another side it was available to take you anywhere and I mean anywhere. It seemed that every city, town and village had a cab, bus or train system. I’d only use a car for vacation if I lived there. I’d not have a need for any personal vehicle to the level we need in America. Most everything was locally available, so if you had a bicycle with a basket on it you could easily get what you need by this conveyance or simply walk. I was able to go anywhere effortlessly via mass transit. America seems to not know this very well except maybe in large metro areas.
Another city we liked to visit was Nuremberg. It was only a two hour train ride south of Kitzingen. We are something like equidistance between Frankfurt and Nuremburg. We traveled there at least three times. It was my first experience with the girls after dark. I won’t go into it except to say I tried it once and found I wasted money. The peripheral time spent was actually longer than the time the money was spent for. But Ed wasn’t to be dismayed. Our going back was mostly for his benefit, but I must say the town was magnificent as well. This town is where we shopped like women. Everything you bought was purchased in what we call here as being a specialty shop. Large department stores were rare then. I went to a huge store like that once. I don’t even remember where it was or when. It made me feel like I was back home and it was disappointing to have that feeling for some strange reason. The little shops where fascinating. There were Hummel figurine shops to lingerie shops. You name it you could find it. Tobacco shops, men’s shops on a more personal level. They were kind of like neighborhood enterprises. We were outsiders, but we were welcomed and felt welcome. I bought a fringe leather vest in one that catered to leather and I bought Julie a nightie at a lingerie shop. I had the most fun buying that. Everything is measured in metrics and trying to explain to the girl what size I needed was a laughable event. I wasn’t embarrassed so much as funny trying to describe how tall she was. The girl then made a gesture of how big was she up top and I in turn tried to use my hands to describe it and she was grinning. Ed was laughing and some of the other clerks where hiding behind clothes racks cracking up. But I managed to buy one and we bagged it and left. That was my most memorable purchase.
Speaking of purchases, let’s go back to the barracks for a bit. We had a service club I frequented at least once a day, since I didn’t eat in the mess hall. Ed and I were coming out of the club one evening and outside there was a woman with a table of chinaware samples. As I walked by her she said something to me about the fine china and I said politely “No thankya”. I noted that she had an Oxford English accent and no more than that, but she grabbed me by the arm and pulled me back. Thinking I was about to get the hard sell, I closed my thinking, but was quick to reopen it when she said if I wasn’t interested would I at least stop a moment and just talk to her. I asked why and she replied she’d never heard such a quaint accent. I told her it was southern. She said she’d heard about it and seen people imitate it on TV but never had she heard such a heavy southern accent in person. So we stood and talked for a few minutes. She was interesting, but I was off to a movie or something. I had to go before it started.
Now movies were a staple of weeknight excursions. Movies were up to date. Not something six months or so old. We had the latest and for a quarter. I remember sitting in a small theater somewhere at another kaserne with Ed and we went to their theater and saw Midnight Cowboy with Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight. I won’t go into the details of it, except to say it was my first time seeing a movie about male prostitution. Whoa. One thing we did do most Saturday mornings when we weren’t gallivanting around the country was to go to the theater and join the American kids to watch the next edition of Flash Gordon, or Laurel & Hardy, Buster Keaton or any number of others I can’t remember at this moment.
By this time I was beginning to enjoy living in this adopted country. I had learned to move around freely and had gotten enough understanding of the language I could make out what was being said on signs and such although I didn’t know the language hardly any at all.
One warm Sunday morning Ed and I thought we’d do something different. So, we struck out to the Service Club where we checked out two bicycles and took off down the road, not the least bit worried about where we were going. We just went. We rode out of town and found it quite interesting to be able to experience things along the road kind of first hand. We stopped in on one little village that was walled in completely. I would suppose in Medieval times these little villages did this to afford themselves some sort of first line protection against attacks. We decided to ride through this village. It was very old, but still very populated. We took pictures and I plan on adding them at some point to this writing.
After a ride around this village we took off down the road and passed by this old church. It wasn’t big nor was it ornate other than the architecture. It appeared to be very old. We probably rode ten or fifteen miles out and came to a walled town called Markbreit. It was a busy little town so we rode around in it and checked out the building and such. Not much open on Sunday. So at some point we thought we might better head back. We didn’t get far though when Ed blew a tire on his bike. There we were walking down the side of the road knowing it was a long walk back, but a bus came along and we flagged it down and managed to communicate to the driver our situation and he let us on for the fare along with our bikes and we were back to Kitzingen in no time. And our Sunday afternoon was over.
We did manage one more tour before the weather turned cold. The train took us south. We found out there was a tour of the Danube River and thought it would be a good adventure, so the four of us guys and Hochsang’s girlfriend signed up for the tour. I wish I could remember the girl’s name. She was a great help for us since she was German. She did our interpreting for us. So, we hopped a train and headed for this town next to the river. There we met up with a tour bus and it took us to a boat at the river’s edge and we started out. I didn’t know this river when through such terrain. There were sheer cliffs on both sides of the river much of the run along the river. It was interesting that at places we saw what looked like windows carved out of the sides of the cliffs with icons in them. I suppose that they were there because our destination for lunch was a monastery. A couple of places along the river, we saw climbers scaling the river. The river was beautiful in its landscape of a flat flowing river with these cliffs that walled up on both sides, except when we came to our destination. It looked like a scene right out of a movie where the cliffs moved back from the river far enough to leave an area big enough to build a monastery. It was build with the typical old European style. The monks weren’t like I expected. Being a tourist attraction was probably their biggest source of income. The served us lunch and you would know it. I don’t remember what we ate, but I do remember it was my first try at black beer. It looks very much like Coke with a head on it in a glass stein. It was a very rich beer. Very potent. I wasn’t into getting drunk. That wasn’t the point for this stop, but I would imagine you could do so very nicely in quick fashion with the stuff.
The trip back was almost as awesome as coming in. Once we were back to the start the bus picked us up for a tour of a church. As we approached it, we could see the dome of it and it was noted by our guide that this dome was completely overlaid in gold. It shown in the afternoon sun brightly from it too. Once we got into the church there was quite a different story. This church was built back during the days of the Inquisition. Although very ornate in usual European church fashion there was a very dark side to this church that lay below ground in what could only be described as a dungeon. I would say that is was called something more like the court room for heretics. There in this room that ultimately is nothing more than a torture chamber were racks, iron maidens, inquisitional chairs and smaller devices like a heretic’s fork. You can look these up on the web now. They were very effective at coercing confessions of guilt, albeit under extreme duress by people who very likely weren’t guilty of anything. The deal was if you were accused they figures with enough torture if you didn’t give in you were innocent. Trouble was most the time the extremity of torture often ended in death before they decided innocence. Then, if you confessed your were found guilty, of course, and put to death. So you can see the plight of an accused individual. On one side of the room was a gallery that had a wooden louvered screen that the so called judges presided over the “cases” through these slats by asking for confessions. They remained in the darkened seating area there and were not visible to the accused. This room was so filled with the history of its purpose so much so that I could feel the pain of those who had passed on in its confines. It was chilling to say the least. It made me realize that verse in the Bible in Matthew 23:27 where it mentions of men that they were like whitewashed tombs. . . being beautiful on the outside and full of dead men’s bones.
If there was anything on my tour that touched me the most it would have been this one single place. The inhumanity to man was exhibited at its best in a church of all places. It still goes on today, only done with words against the spirits of men in many places. It’s not my indictment on all churches. I’m saying that it does happen. Okay, I feel I got on a soap box, but suffice to say this place put its mark on me.
