I joined the Army, spent a year deployed to the Middle East, and, about half way through that deployment, I took a vacation to Europe by myself.
Not entirely thinking out the implications of a society more or less devoid of big box retailers (it was my first time on my own in a foreign country, after all), I made the mistake of flying into Germany on a Sunday without a cell phone. I figured that I could simply buy one after I landed, and that I could call someone to pick me up.
This turned out not to be the case. :lol:
I wound up spending the next four hours confusedly jumping on and off local trains and beating the language barrier to death with local taxi drivers, all while trudging around in the rain, carrying around waaaay more luggage than I really should've brought, on maybe one hour's worth of sleep in the last forty-eight.
Thankfully, I did eventually manage to make it near enough to the military base I was trying to reach for a local expat to see me walking along the side of the road and give me a ride to the military lodging on post.
The rest of the trip after that was great. I spent a weekend in Munich at Oktoberfest, I spent a weekend in Paris, and I toured a ton of local castles and towns. I even had the pleasure of drunkenly blundering into a Turkish Brothel in Mannheim and almost getting murdered by a bunch of angry Iraqi guys (I thought it was a nightclub, I swear! :2razz: ).
I also toyed with the idea of hitting up Amsterdam, but ultimately figured that I had probably gotten into enough trouble for one trip already. :lamo
In any case, the whole thing wound up costing about four grand in total, and I think it can be pretty safely said that I got what I paid for.
Honestly, the only real downside to the experience was having to go back to the desert for another six months afterwards. I was grouchy as Hell for weeks. lol
