Poor Honest Abe

We are at war on many fronts, the War on Terror, the War on Drugs, the War on Literacy. Ladies and gentlemen, may I present the one we have won. The War on Pennies. Well to be perfectly honest, we have only won the European Theater. Wherever you go in US Army Europe, there is nary a penny to be found. In the year when we seem to be celebrating the great Lincoln, I guess the army has moved on from his current lasting memorial. It may have something to do with the economic viability of shipping an item made for 2 cents that is worth 1 which is worth at today's rates about .77 cents of a euro.
But I obviously digress. In fact, digression may not be the word, as not one coherent thought has escaped my lips, or in this case fingertips, since I began this particular rumination. By now, you are probably wondering what I have been doing over here. So please be prepared for a rather lengthy account of my travels thus far.
Ma and Pa dropped me off at Boston Logan to catch my flight. Thanks to my powers of persuasion, a military ID and a set of orders, I was able to avoid the 200 dollar upcharge for my third bad. Phew. Once inside airport security I found a restaurant that happened to have Harpoon UFO (one of my favorite beers) on tap. Score one for Miller!! My waitress was really nice, and shared stories of her son's deployment to Iraq with 82nd Airborne. In short order, it was time to board the 6 and a half hour flight to Frankfurt.
The flight was uneventful, I did have an empty seat next to me, which was a god send, and enjoyed a surprisingly good meal washed down with an impressively good German beer. You have to love Lufthansa. I arrived hours later and not much the worse for wear in Frankfurt, and began a long yet ultimately successful quest to find the USO. To make a long story somewhat shorter, I inprocessed and found myself on a bus to Grafenwoehr. Properly, I was in fact headed to the Rose Barracks, more commonly known as Vilsek to meet my sponsor and get into my hotel. Joe (my sponsor) picked me up and brought myself and my bulging luggage to the hotel, and moments later we were on our way to Graf proper to meet my new commander.
Instead I met her dog. Now dog in this case was at first overly generous, as the cats are all bigger, but it ended up being worthy of the designation and is in fact a pretty cool dog. I was then taken to meet the Battalion Commander, where I found out that I had not in fact met my commander, but Jak's as they had switched the positions that we were going to. I met my new commander as I helped carry some of his stuff into the post office. First sign that I will like it here, all of the various higher ranking officers I met were nice, and seemed to honestly care about a snot nosed new LT, which at this point is something exciting and new.
By this point, my body was confused, and it was time for dinner by my watch, lunch by my stomach, and nap by my body. The former two were heeded, and Joe and his wife took me to have my first dinner in country. Mexican food. Probably one of the best burritos I have ever had, with not a single Mexican person in sight.
I apologize if my account of the first day is disjointed, but I am trying to piece it together from jet lagged memories. The rest of the week has gone uneventfully, I have met some of the folks at my new unit, gone to my first OPD, had amazing Italian food (don't worry, German dinner is due some time this weekend), completed part of my in processing, and begun to reset my body clock.
Today was a flex day (Army for we have nothing that you really need to do, so don't bother coming in), so I had my first solo adventure outside the fence, and hopped the bus to Auerbach. (full name Auerbach in der Oberpfalz) It was awesome. I wandered through a city older than any in the US, found a bike shop, ate delicious pastries, managed to avoid and linguistic disasters that could cause a Third World War, and even made it safely back to post in the end. I also encountered friendly gnomes, a statue of a bull equipped with . . .well. . .it was obviously a bull, statues of saints, of god only knows what, and generally just a beautiful little town. I will definitely return.
Alas, this has brought us to the present, and fortunately for you all the end of a rather poorly written narrative. I love you all very much, and miss you, but Jak and I have been able to talk on skype, so all in all the world isn't bad at all.

-Post Script. Re-read the first sentence if you have not caught it already. Thats right, I guess we got another winner there. War on Literacy. Oops