(yn0t_ should have been worried when he considered what I might do with no work-related responsibilities and some time on my hands...)

I spent 1974-1975 in Germany (then West Germany) working at 2 U.S. Army Hospitals, including the 2nd General in Landstuhl -- the hospital to which wounded soldiers and Marines are currently being evacuated from Iraq. The locals were generally friendly, though many were reserved, especially those older locals who had lived through the Second World War. Some of those elders were overtly hostile and seemingly bitter. It didn't help that so many GIs were essentially run amok in their town, had set up a bustling drug trade, and, in one sorry case, had cut the throat of a local taxi driver.

Most of the folks I worked with saved all of their time off to fly home to the States, a vacation strategy that puzzled me. By July '75, I had accrued almost 3 weeks of vacation and got approval to use it all in one fell swoop. I had a cheap backpack, sleeping bag, stove, and tarp and I hoofed down the hill from the 2G early one morning in July and stuck my thumb out on an entrance ramp to the Autobahn with a goal to visit Scotland and points between.

At a time when many folks in the U.S. take almost personal offense at the seeming animosity directed at Americans as a whole, it is refreshing to remember just how well I was treated as an individual and that I was *never* treated poorly.

My first ride was a "local" in a 2002tii (which I soooo lusted after) who let me exercise my clearly pathetic German all the way to Saarbrucken until he switched the conversation to impeccable English -- but offered me effusive compliments for my lame attempt. I was emboldened.

West past Metz and across northern France, I was the beneficiary of good conversation, free munchies, sandwiches and schnappes. People seemed happy to see me. No matter that the U.S. was on the tail end of a particularly wrong-headed and mortal war (to which so many Europeans took vocal exception) or that I was obviously a troop (I had done my best to stretch the haircut rules in advance of my departure date, but hair only grows so fast). People were just *soooo* nice.

Arriving in Calais very late one evening, I struggled to find a place to flop, finally passing out in a collapsed concrete bunker on the beach near the hovercraft terminal. Years later, when my ankles itch, I blame all of the Goddamn French sand fleas I met that night. J'Accuse!

Heading toward Newcastle, A gent in a small blue Ford screeched to a stop nearly shouting "You're an American!" as if I had just landed from Alpha Centauri. Pulling away, he asked "Where are you from???" as he rummaged in the glove box for a box of cassette tapes. When I answered "Boston", he studied the stack of tapes, grabbed one, popped it in his exotic car cassette player and treated me to "This is Arnie 'Woo! Woo!' Ginsberg on WMEX!!!!!!" ... He had "Cruisin'" tapes in the glove box for any stray American hitchhikers he might pick up. "I love it." he said, "I roll up to a stop light with the windows down and somebody in the next car says 'What's that you've got on?' and I get to shout 'KLIL Dallas!!!'"

On and on...in Edinburgh, after exercising my map-reading skills to help an electronics executive find a warehouse, he kindly kicked the local manager out of his office, gave me the biggest swivel chair and had the staff send out for some sandwiches for his grubby, unshaven, unwashed navigator....returning through Glasgow, stuck on a desolate road by, of all things, a huge crematorium, a local family (The Birds) took me in, pulled out the couch, and gently inquired in the morning as to whether 3-minute eggs were sufficient...

My strangest, most memorable moment came late in the trip as I hitchhiked east near Cambrai when a large, faded pea-green Mercedes with Belgian plates pulled to the side of the road and I beheld 4 fully-inhabited, very plump, nuns and their slender novitiate assistant. Jumping from the passenger seat, the head nun grabbed my pack, threw it in the boot, pulled the novitiate out of the rear seat, plunked her in the middle in the front, and then nearly threw me in the middle position in the rear. Trapped!

Shades of parochial school! I huddled in the rear, avoiding eye contact, mumbling something about "Allez-vous a Metz??" when the boss nun started to quiz me in very respectable English: "So you are an American?" "So you are a soldier?" I thought "jeez, is it that obvious? I mean, my hair has grown a *little*!!" I sheepishly admitted that, yes, I was a troop, but my lack of enthusiasm for what I viewed as the mickey-mouse military life I'd been living (and for the general recent direction of our military's efforts) clearly caught her attention. Boss nun slowly launched into a polite, sympathetic, but emotional and insistent, lecture for her trapped American: "I know that maybe these days you don't think it is such a great thing to be a soldier...not maybe the life you like...it maybe does not seem like you are doing something interesting....but I think that we can all say that the best, happiest day of our life was when a big green tank with a white star rolled into our village..."

I looked to each side, and could see tears rolling from the eyes of my two "guards" and I could hear what I though were soft sobs from the boss nun. I leaned a bit and caught the eye of the novitiate which I thought was rolling noticably, as if to say "Oh, here they go again!" I didn't know what to do or say. It was as if my Uncle Bill was driving that tank.

I mumbled something completely inadequate about "I see what you mean" and "oh, I like the Army OK" and we rolled on down the highway in what seemed a much more serious way. At Meziere, the boss nun confessed that, alas, it would be necessary for the Mercedes to take a sharp left -- turn north -- if it was to stand any chance of reaching Belgium and home. At a junction, my starboard-side guard allowed me to debark, and the boss nun worked the trunk lid. After helping with my backpack, she pulled out two grocery bags with 3-4 long baguette/ham sandwiches and as many liters of bottled water, ignored my protests, thrust them into my arms, and jumped back into the tank commander seat. With some of the nuns still sniffling, with a handkerchief or two flying out the windows, the Mercedes pulled across the road and disappeared into the North.