How Long Will We Wait?

The mess hall sign was wrong again. We showed up at about 9:40 and there was nobody there to take our money. Three teenage girls walked in right after us. Guitarman went up to where the serving line is and asked… turns out they’d been on regular hours (6-8:30am). He made a not-so-gentle “suggestion” that they change their sign. The woman who runs the place (I forget her rank, which would probably be a more respectful way to refer to her) is friendly to us because she likes to play around with Wee Laddie, so Guitarman said he’s going to ask her about it next time we see her. She doesn’t seem the type who’d be pleased to know that her staff isn’t putting up the correct signage. (Not to mention that it seems very non-Army to begin with.) So it was a Burger King morning.

Then we headed up to Grafenwöhr to check out the new, big PX. It’s supposed to be the biggest one in Germany now, they’re saying. We’ve been to the base at Vilseck before (which is about 15 minutes from Graf, as it’s called around here… not sure whether that’s just by the Americans or the Germans, too), but never to Graf. It was packed. I don’t normally like crowds (and it did get to me after a while, but mostly just because I had a hard time getting down the vitamin aisle to get my folic acid). However, we’ve been living in the sticks for so long that it actually was kind of nice to see that many people in regular clothing all together in one place.

The line for Taco Bell took a little more than 30 minutes, but I wasn’t about to eat a sandwich or fried chicken just to get a shorter line. (These are desperate times, people!) Had a lovely chat with the woman behind me in line who’s lived in Vilseck for 25 years!

Overall, though, we were not too impressed with the PX. The maternity section was just two small racks (those ones that point out in 4 different directions, if you can picture them)… and I really need a few more long-sleeved shirts. Guitarman said the CD selection wasn’t that great, and neither of us were too impressed by the toys. Especially now that our Pxtra is pretty much completely a toy store! They had a few shops outside the PX… one was a Polish pottery (would love to get my mom something from there, except that the devalued dollar makes everything crazy expensive!), another was a Christmas & German gifts store (where I got a small gift for Schatzi, our friend the Squash and Wee Laddie’s Christmas ornament for this year… a small European-style Santa ornament. I tried to find something that was more relevant to our year in Germany, but couldn’t really find anything that applied to us personally.).

Wee Laddie, however, thought the toy section was pretty okay…



…and enjoyed his first ride on a chopper, too.



We headed back home, with a stop on base to get the Buzz Lightyear (or Buzz Wipeyear, as he’s known ‘round these parts) toy that Wee Laddie got for putting his toys away all week. We tried to pick it up at Graf, but they didn’t have it. He almost traded it in for some K’nex, and then for a Bob the Builder birthday set… but we talked him out of those. Actually Guitarman talked him out of the latter by finding individually boxed machines from Bob the Builder and talking Wee Laddie into one of those (he picked Scoop) and the Buzz Lightyear toy. So it seems we’ve already moved on from “Cars.” He still likes the characters and the movie, but he’s fixated on everything Bob right now. Could be worse.