Back to the Salt Mine (or would it be Sand Mine?)

Editor's Note: The picture to the right is described near the bottom of the story. (Who am I kidding - what editor?)

I made it back to my normal location without any real difficulty.
Unfortunately, that means that the internet infrastructure is far less robust so I will probably have fewer entries in the near future.

Since the connection is so slow, I am going to try and post one or two pictures from my trip, but the majority of them will probably have to wait until I am in a better location with faster internet service.

With all of those alibis in place, let me finish up with the details of my visit to Belgium. Once I was settled in Mons Belgium, I picked up the rental car in order to get back and forth from the hotel to the base. For the entire week I think I drove 50 miles but it was a nice change of pace. The rental was a new VW Golf with a 5-speed transmission. Fortunately it is a small car because the roads in and around Mons were somewhat smaller than what we enjoy back in the US. I know for certain that my Chevy Avalanche would have been a major headache to try and steer through some of the one way streets/alleys that I accidently discovered.

The funniest night of driving was Wednesday - several of the conference attendees were supposed to joing the Admiral for dinner. The Admiral wanted to eat mussels that night, and as you could surmise, the Admiral's wishes dictated the restaurant choice.

Unbeknownst to me, I had to change hotel rooms for that night because my reservation had a glitch and somehow my room was double booked for Wednesday evening. So instead of caravaning with the group from the base to the restaurant, I had to go to my new hotel and then navigate to the restaurant.

I was armed with a trusty set of directions from Map quest, and was told the destination was only 5 miles away. What could go wrong ... enough could go wrong I found out.

First, my cellphone has no coverage in Europe, so for the entire week I was without communications whenever I was away from the office. That is a truly weird feeling in this day and age. Second, the map quest directions did not have the name of the restaurant, just the street address. Third, the map quest street images did not have sufficient detail to determine exactly how to accomodate the detour to my new hotel. Fourth, I don't speak or read French, so reading the street signs and comparing to the maps was a bigger headache than it would have been in English or Spanish.

The end result of all of these factors was that I spent about an hour driving through the same 10 block radius of eastern Mons looking for a restaurant that serves Mussels, and I hate mussels anyway. But it was dinner with my CO, so I carried on.

At one point, I decided that I had no chance of finding this place and that I had better go back to the hotel and revise the directions they gave me when I departed the hotel. Ironically, the road I took when I left the hotel was a one-way street, and my general sense of how to backtrack failed me because the road going in the opposite direction became a 5 foot wide cobblestone alley with cars parked alongside it. Remember how I said my pick up would be a pain ... I was very glad to be in a tiny hatchback at that moment.

Once I extricated myself from the alleyway and back onto a wider road, I realized I was not even close to where I thought I should be, and had completely lost the bubble on where my hotel should have been. The end result of this stupid search for the restaurant was: I couldn't call anyone, I don't speak the language, it was 8:30 pm and downtown was empty, and I had no idea what part of downtown I was in or how to get back to my hotel or back to the base.

In a moment of good luck, I stumbled across the perimeter loop that cicles Mons and drove until I got back to the area where the restaurant was supposed to be. I got back on the road where my search had begun 45 minutes earlier and saw a person filling up their car in a gas station. I decided I better take the plunge and confess I was a clueless American who spoke not a lick of French and see if he could point me towards my hotel.

The gentleman and his wife spoke enough English to advise me how to get back to the hotel. On a whim, I showed them the map and the address for the restaurant. They pointed me straight up the street we were on, and said "very close."

With a renewed sense of confidence that I could at least get back to my hotel, I took a gamble and searched for the restaurant again. I drove about two blocks and pulled into a restaurant that I had driven by no less than four times already and searched for a street address. There wasn't one. Remember, the map quest directions did not give the name of the restaurant either. So I went inside to see if they could help me refine my search.

It turned out that this was the correct restaurant and two of my co-workers were already there. No more than five minutes after I arrive does my colleague's cell phone ring (he is assigned to the base in Mons) and we are told that the Admiral cannot make it because his meetings are running late.

At that point, my local co-worker lets me follow him back to my hotel, (ironically he got stuck in the same one-way alley that I had discovered earlier that night), and we park our cars and walk to a nearby steak place for dinner.

This restaurant was right up my alley ... good beer and great steaks. The unique feature was that your food is brought to you on a tray with a super-heated brick and the raw meat. You then cook your steak to your liking as you eat your salad and appetizers. Personally, I wonder how many customers after a beer too many accidently put their hands or arms onto the hot brick and burn themselves. This kind of thinking is the twisted thought process that my Torts professor warned me would happen after you go to law school.

The dinner was delicious, and the beer was tasty and afterwards we walked down to my hotel and called it an early night. After all, I wasn't going to miss out on any extra time enjoying my Western style hotel room with my own private bathroom - I was living the good life but only for 6 days.

I didn't get a picture from the restaurant, but I did get a picture of one of the older buildings in the Central Square that was light up for the evening.

This post is long enough, and probably pretty mindless now that I am looking back at it. I will make one more short post about my last day at Ramstein, and that will contain something of historical significance I hope. Bye for now.