4 Day Weekend

John took a 4 day pass this weekend, which has been very nice.  We have gotten a lot done around the house, watched movies and taken a day trip with one more to come later today!  And FYI, a 4 day pass gives him Friday-Monday off without counting against his leave.

Starting Thursday, we set the tone for our weekend by being productive.  We went to IKEA and used our remaining wedding money to buy 2 computer desks, a computer chair and a drawer system for our office.  Once we got them together, we were even more excited.  They fit together great, and we can finally start using our guest bedroom/office for something!  For the past 6 weeks or so, that room has just been full of stuff we didn’t know where else to put.  Now, we’re hoping we’ll be extra motivated to find spaces for the last of our stuff.  Also, when we put the desks together, we put the drawer system in the middle, and it fits together great and ended up looking like we have one long desk, which is really nice.

On Friday, we took the hour drive to Kaiserslautern, which is nearby Ramstein Air Base.  We spent a couple hours at a Japanese garden walking around and enjoying the greenery, ponds and waterfalls.  Then we drove around for a bit before heading to Vogelweh, which is part of the Kaiserslautern military community.  We went to their huge BX (base exchange…kind of like a Wal-Mart) and then met up with a friend and her husband at Baskin Robbins.  I met this girl (Jamie) last November on my flight to Germany.  She had gotten married in August and was finally on her way to live with her husband (who’s also a soldier) in Germany.  We have kept in touch since and finally got a chance to visit.  Now we’re just hoping they’ll come see us in Heidelberg.

After ice cream, we headed to Ramstein’s enlisted club, because they have a Chili’s there.  That is a BIG deal to us.  We don’t have “American food” here unless you count Taco Bell, Burger King or this place called Wingers that serves so-so wings and burgers.  We really enjoyed our dinner at Chili’s.  We had skillet queso and margaritas as well as entrees.  After dinner, we tried our hand at the slot machines, but we both lost.  Booooo.

Saturday we went to the gym and worked out together…I’m STILL sore!  We also watched Shrek 3.  Saturday is also when we found the time to assemble everything form IKEA.

Yesterday, we went to church, ran errands, watched the first half of A Prarie Home Companion and went to downtown Schwetzingen for the Schloss in Flammen (the castle in flames).  More about that later :o)

Today we are going to take a little trip to Speyer, which is about 20 minutes away to see a big cathedral (Dom) they have there.  Here’s a little snippet on it from Wikipedia:

The Speyer Cathedral is a very large and imposing basilica of red sandstone in Speyer, Germany.  Its official name is Mariendom (Cathedral of St. Mary and St. Steven), but more often called Kaiserdom zu SpeyerIt was built at the instigation of emperor Conrad II in 1030–1061 choosing it as his last resting place. Later on, it also held the honour for serving as the burial site of 7 more German emperors, kings as well as some of their wives and a number of bishops.