Saturday, July 07, 2007
Thank you for the wishes. I did get several messages and emails wishing me a happy 4th of July. Of course, I'd completely forgotten that it was a holiday. To us here, it blends with the other days of the week. If we were at an American base, we'd get the day off and there would be a celebration. Here, we get the German holidays off instead and our celebration waits until Saturday. So, this Saturday, the 7th, we headed to the base for a good ol' fashioned Independence Day celebration complete with American hot dogs, hamburgers, ribs, with good German beer and wine. All the little kid
rides and inflatables were free, so my little girls spent at least 3 hours jumping, climbing, and swinging on rides. Elise spent most of her time on the swings and the "jumping thing." My other two little ones went up and down the large Bugs Bunny slide over and over again until they were hot and sweaty - over an hour without rest. We ate, we visited, we avoided the food tent because that's where the stage was and it was too loud to talk. It was a nice time.
There aren't many times when you can see so many Americans all together in one place, so this one event each year is a lot of fun for us just to reconnect and socialize with people that we don't see every day. Dunkin Donuts was there - not my favorite, but their tent was very popular with people of all nationalities that attended. There was a bird show with absolutely gorgeous birds of prey flying so low over our heads at times that I was touched with the end of a bird's wing as he flew. Tiara rode the mechanical bull for a long time with the speed increasing slowly. She didn't get thrown, but finally stepped off as it got more intense in her typically graceful ballerina style. The bands were good if you were a lot younger. Apparently, the band, Lit, that was there, is a well-known band in the U.S, so there was a huge line outside their fancy RV when they finished with people getting autographs, guitar picks, and drum sticks. I stood outside complaining about the "noise" unaware until later that they were a "cool" band. Some call it age. I call it taste. I have some - they don't, and I prefer to keep my hearing.
The evening ended, as they all do, with a nice fireworks display - and a pretty nice one too considering the size of our area. My only gripe is that the display included no music at all. So, again, there was not one American song sung that I heard and watching fireworks without music is almost like watching a movie on mute. It's pretty, but hollow. Plus, the music gives you a pretty good clue as to when the display is ending. With this, we weren't really sure.
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Life In Germany
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