2004 – Germany

I was 24. Born May 1980 — right between Reagan and MTV, raised on processed food and Cold War fallout. By the time I landed in Germany, I’d been through Air Force tech school, had a rack at Keesler for nine months, and could fix a radio faster than I could figure out my own life.

I was living with my Korean family in Philadelphia — part sitcom, part survival. They loved me, in their own way. The food was good, and the expectations were heavy. I was stationed at Willow Grove, pulling full-time duty in a part-time war. Technically “on orders,” which is military-speak for “we need you, but not enough to commit.” I worked all day, went to school at night, and spent most of my time wondering who the hell I was supposed to be.

I was skinny, wired like a live cable, full of caffeine and ambition. The kind of ambition that doesn’t really know what it wants — just that it wants more. More than Lansdale. More than camo and chow halls and those sterile little rooms we called “billeting.”

I worked with the 270th Engineering and Installation Squadron — wire-pullers, radio riggers, the kind of people who actually kept the lights on when things fell apart. Blue-collar tech warriors. I didn’t have a grand mission. I had orders. And a plane ticket to Germany for two weeks of annual training — government-sponsored tourism with a side of gas mask drills.

I’d studied German for four years in high school. Never got to take the class trip. Couldn’t afford it. Watching other kids fly across the Atlantic while I bagged groceries or scraped together book money. Now, finally, I was here. Ramstein. Concrete and chain-link, bratwurst stands, beer colder than truth. It wasn’t Berlin. It wasn’t the postcard. It was real.

And maybe that was the point.

I didn’t know what I was doing with my life. I knew how to speak in radio code, clean a weapon, salute an officer, and bullshit my way through an enlisted man’s checklist. But I didn’t know me yet. Not really.

All I knew was: I was 24, in uniform, in Germany — far from Philly, far from the version of myself I used to imagine. And for once, that felt like enough.

The trip started at Willow Grove — a sleepy little air station tucked north of Philly, more rust than glory, more Wawa than war zone. But it was ours. A place where part-time warriors like us punched in, suited up, and tried to make sense of two worlds: the civilian hustle and the uniformed grind.

We had a KC-135 ready to haul us across the Atlantic — an old tanker that smelled like jet fuel, sweat, and too many years of duct-tape solutions. Destination: Ramstein, Germany. Purpose: two weeks of annual training. Reality: a break from whatever mess we were trying to hold together back home.

From my shop, there were four of us going. Luster. Ransom. Myself. And… Whittiack? Something like that. He was the guy nobody really wanted there, but someone high enough up decided he was “mission essential.” There’s always one.

Luster and Ransom — they were my guys. Heroes, in their own way. We drilled together, ran cables together, bitched about the chow together. Ransom was up at Bloomsburg for school, still figuring out the civilian track. Luster, drifting somewhere in Philly, trying to find his lane but solid. The kind of guy who didn’t say much, but when he did, you listened.

We were young. Not invincible, but close enough. We were ready — or at least, Ransom was. He boarded the bird with a goddamn six-foot-long Subway sandwich like it was a tactical weapon. He knew something we didn’t. He had foresight. The rest of us? Starving halfway over the Atlantic, staring at him like wolves circling the last deer on Earth.

He broke off chunks of that sandwich like communion. Grudgingly generous. I think he still had two feet left when we hit cruising altitude. Nobody else brought a damn thing.

Whittiack — or whatever his name was — sat awkwardly, trying to wedge himself into our rhythm. He talked too much, said weird shit, asked questions no one wanted to answer. But he was in the seat, too. Headed to the same place.

At 35,000 feet, we floated above the clouds, strapped into that steel tube, joking, half-sleeping, not quite understanding the gravity of what it meant to fly to Germany in a uniform.

But we were excited. Giddy, even. Somewhere between military precision and barely-contained boyhood. We had orders. We had each other. And for a moment — somewhere over the cold Atlantic — that felt like enough.

We touched down at Ramstein — the biggest patch of American soil in Europe without technically being America. Gray skies, the smell of jet exhaust, that military buzz in the air like something important is just about to happen. It never really does. But that feeling hums like power lines overhead.

They bused us over to Landstuhl — the hospital complex, the kind of place you don’t want to end up unless you’re visiting. It served the wounded, the sick, the dependents, the forgotten. A European lifeline for American uniforms. We weren’t there for the beds. Just the lodging. A barracks building they tossed us into for our two-week war vacation.

I remember staring out the bus window, watching the forest and old-world rooftops pass by, and daydreaming like I always did. What would it have been like to grow up here? To be a military brat with a mom who was a captain, a dad who was a major? Fluently bouncing between English and German, taking school trips to Paris like they were nothing, knowing how to drink by 14 and lie about it convincingly by 15.

But those were just daydreams. I wasn’t a lifer’s kid — I was a Philly transplant wearing someone else’s legacy on my chest. And I wasn’t single, either. Had a girlfriend back home. She knows who she was. I wasn’t here to chase women.

But my friends? Oh, they were hunting.

And we had one ace up the sleeve — me. Four years of high school German tucked in the back of my brain like a half-loaded magazine. Ich spreche ein bisschen. Enough to buy a beer. Maybe enough to help the guys get a phone number or two, if I played translator right. I didn’t make promises. Just smirks and shrugs.

We dumped our gear in the room — cold tile floors, government-issued sheets, and that subtle scent of mildew that never quite leaves. The kind of room that tells you, you’re not staying long… but long enough to forget your zip code.

The walk down to town was long — a winding road, lined with trees that had probably watched more airmen pass than anyone could count. We were broke. The per diem was a laughable eight bucks. The Euro was crushing the dollar like a bully stealing lunch money.

But we didn’t care. We were 24, in uniform, in Germany. We had feet, curiosity, and no real plan. And sometimes, that’s all you need.

So we walked down into Landstuhl — hungry, restless, wide-eyed. The night was waiting. And we were ready to meet it.

We didn’t know where we were going — just that we had landed. Germany. Our first night. And like all young men with uniforms and too much testosterone, we followed the glowing lights and basslines into whatever the town had waiting for us.

The first place we found open? A damn strip club. Of course. Neon signs, promises in bad English, and the smell of smoke and perfume that never quite leaves your clothes. “Boys, this is it,” someone said — probably Ransom. And like fools, we walked in thinking this was going to be like back home. Toss a dollar, get a wink. A harmless dance and maybe a cheap thrill before calling it a night.

But this wasn’t the States. This was Europe. The rules were different. More expensive. Less forgiving.

We sat down and immediately learned the hustle. You didn’t tip a girl. You bought her a drink. Twenty-five bucks a pop. That was the game. Talk, flirt, smile, sip. They didn’t dance. They didn’t need to. They talked you out of your money — professionally, politely, and with laser focus.

These weren’t German girls either. They were Eastern European — Poland, Romania, maybe Ukraine. Young, beautiful, hard as nails. Eyes like glass. They knew we were easy targets. And we were. We came in with $8 a day per diem and big dumb dreams. The whole place was designed to extract every cent we had — and it worked.

Before long, we were broke. Our entire week’s budget bled out on overpriced drinks and soft promises. Ransom disappeared into a back room. The owner stopped me before I could check on him. “No boom boom,” he said. “Not unless you pay.”

The place had turned. The lights were still dim, but the illusion was gone. It wasn’t a bar. It was a machine. The girls were cogs. We were coins. I pulled the guys out with the oldest excuse in the book: “We’re going to the ATM.”

We didn’t go back.

Outside, Ransom laughed like he’d seen the face of God. “One girl tried to get me to pay $300,” he said. “Anything I wanted. All night. Even in the butt.”

For a broke airman who couldn’t get a second date back in Pennsylvania, that sounded like a dream. But for the rest of us, $300 might as well have been $3,000. We weren’t players. We were just dumb, horny kids trying to feel something.

I still felt responsible. I was the guy who spoke German. The “cultural expert.” The one who was supposed to navigate. So I led us down another road and found another place — a red light glowing faintly in the distance. That had to mean something. Right?

It was quieter inside. Softer. An older Asian woman — mid-40s maybe, maybe older — in elegant lingerie, approached us with a kind smile and a cold beer. A white ale. My first. Smooth, light, comforting. Like someone telling you it was going to be okay, even if it wasn’t.

She leaned in, said kind things, poured us more drinks. She wasn’t hustling, at least not as hard. Maybe she saw through the bravado. Maybe she was tired. Maybe we reminded her of sons she never had — or did. I gave her a few Euros for the jukebox. Let her pick the song. She leaned on my arm like we were old friends.

Older me would have handled it differently. Would’ve asked better questions. Would’ve tipped better. Would’ve known it was all a show, but still appreciated the kindness in the performance. But I was 24. In a relationship. Dumb and uncertain. She gave me something I didn’t expect — perspective.

Not sex. Not fantasy. Just a quiet reminder that the world doesn’t spin for your amusement. People are playing for keeps. This was her job. Her hustle. She didn’t care about our stories, our uniforms, our half-lives back home. She cared about survival.

We left, buzzed and broke, but not empty. I walked the boys back, navigating the turns like I’d been there before. I was the compass. The only one sober enough to see straight.

Tomorrow we’d wake up early, hungover, slightly ashamed, and slide into gas masks. Pretending we were soldiers. Pretending we were ready.

We weren’t. But we were learning.

Training. Of course.

They had to justify flying four hungover E-3s across the Atlantic on taxpayer money, so they gave us the usual theater. Chemical warfare. MOPP gear. Gas masks. Rubber gloves. The whole sweaty, suffocating ensemble designed to make you question every decision that led you to this point.

It was hot. It was boring. It was miserable.
And it was all bullshit.

We weren’t going to war. Not yet. We were just cogs in a peacetime machine that needed to look busy for someone up the chain. So there we were — half-alive, dehydrated, reeking of beer and shame from the night before, sweating in our charcoal-lined suits while some senior NCO barked about nerve agents.

We weren’t listening. Not really.

Our heads were still in Landstuhl. In that first bar. In that second bar. In that moment where someone leaned close, laughed at our jokes, and made us feel like kings — even if it was all for Euros. Back here, there were no smiles. No flirtation. Just layers of rubber and protocol.

There were no girls. No jukeboxes. No cold white ale.

Just dudes. Rows of them. Standing in formation, baking in black suits that smelled like old tires and regret. The air tasted like sweat and bureaucracy. We passed the time the way you do in the military — badly. Dumb jokes. Elbow nudges. Silent prayers that someone would call it early.

We wanted off this base.

We wanted cobblestone streets. Outdoor tables. The sound of German pop music playing softly through open bar doors. We wanted to be where things felt alive — not this sterilized military complex where time stood still and everything smelled like diesel and floor wax.

The training dragged on. And we endured it. Not because we cared, but because it was the price of freedom. If we did this — sat through the briefings, wore the gear, answered the checklists — then they’d cut us loose. Let us go to other parts of the base. Maybe even back into town.

We were 24-year-old kids in uniform, chasing shadows of adventure with lint in our pockets. But damn it, we were chasing something.

And that meant sitting through another hour of someone pointing at a diagram of a chemical burn while our minds wandered somewhere back to the red lights and the music and that first, cold beer.

The per diem was a joke. Eight bucks a day in Europe — barely enough for a schnitzel, let alone the night we wanted to have. But the military giveth and the military taketh away. What it didn’t pay in cash, it made up for in fuel. We had a government truck with a DoD gas card and zero oversight. Unlimited gas. Unlimited potential.

That truck was our lifeline.

As long as we refueled on base, we could go as far as time would allow. And so we did.

We drove to Kaiserslautern — K-Town, as the Americans called it. Old Germany wrapped in modern camouflage. Stone roads. Church spires. Dusty windows with neon beer signs barely lit. The kind of place where you could find something if you looked hard enough — or just got lost on purpose.

That first night, we just scoped it out. No wild plans. Just reconnaissance. We’d be back.

We still had work to do.

After our mandatory MOPP torture, they broke us up and assigned us to different corners of the base. I ended up with the comm squadron — the ones who kept the base humming with radios, cables, and quiet stress. Nothing glamorous. But I could speak the language — not just German, but the shorthand of switches and signal paths.

And there, I saw him.

A guy I knew from tech school. We’d shared barracks, beers, stories. Now, he barely looked up. He was stationed there full-time, settled into the grind. He didn’t need me anymore. Didn’t want to need anyone. I tried to catch up, crack a joke. He gave me the polite nod — the kind that says “I remember you, but I’ve moved on.”

It stung. Quietly. In that deep, familiar way rejection always does.
I wondered if I had been a bad friend, or just forgettable.

That was a powerful little truth to chew on while pulling Cat5 and taking orders from a crusty old TSgt who’d stopped caring in ‘98.

The week dragged like a loaded rucksack. Sleep. Work. Pretend. Drive. Rinse. Repeat.

Every day was the same. Every day we waited for Thursday.

The town was still out there. The beer. The music. The promise. The sense that something — anything — could happen. Friday wasn’t just a day. It was freedom. A permission slip to feel alive again, even if just for a few hours before sunrise.

And we were getting close.

We came back to Kaiserslautern with a mission: to dance. To party. To forget about gas masks and per diem and the kind of existential rot that grows in barracks rooms with no Wi-Fi. I started searching for “dance clubs” in German — “tanzen” this, “tanzen” that — and all I found was a goddamn dance school. A place with mirrors and instructors, not drinks and poor decisions. That wasn’t the vibe.

So we pre-gamed the only way broke airmen can: with a pub crawl.

We hit every bar we could find that didn’t have a dress code or a cover charge. One of them stood out. Real colorful place. Clowns on the walls. Rainbows dangling from the ceiling like leftover party decorations no one had the guts to take down.

I had to piss — a few beers deep, riding that perfect buzz where you can still string sentences together but you’re on the edge. I stumbled into the bathroom, zipped down, and stared straight ahead like you do. Then I saw it: the flyer on the wall. Half-naked men. Glitter. Event dates.

Oh shit.

Gay bar.

Now look — I’m not saying it mattered. Not to me. But back then? With a truck full of 20-something airmen raised on testosterone and bad porn, this wasn’t going to land gently. Especially not with Ransom and Luster. Whittiack? Honestly, he might’ve been into it. Good for him if he was. But I didn’t stick around to workshop the conversation.

I zipped up and came back with that NCO tone in my voice: “Alright, time to move on, boys.”
No questions asked. Just clowns, beers, and one slightly confused exit.

We bounced between more bars, running into a crew of Army guys along the way. God bless the Army. Comrades in arms. Same bad haircuts, same cheap deodorant, same thirst for trouble. We drank like long-lost brothers. Poured stories into our beers and forgot who owed who a round.

Eventually, everyone got sloppy.

People forgot where we parked, where we were, what day it was. Except me. I remembered — somehow — that we left the truck by an Aldi. That little miracle of memory might’ve been the only reason we didn’t end up arrested, missing, or face-down in some ditch on the edge of town.

As we made our way back, an older German couple started walking with us — drunk, friendly, just as lost in the night as we were. The woman? She was very friendly. Started groping us, one by one, laughing like it was some kind of twisted game show. She grabbed my ass. I think. Or maybe someone else’s. Hard to tell. But no one stopped her.

We let it happen. Maybe for the attention. Maybe for the story. Maybe just to keep the weirdness rolling.

I loaded the guys into the truck like a clown car full of military dysfunction. Dropped off the Army boys at their base. Swapped phone numbers we’d never call. Said goodbyes that felt way too meaningful for people we’d just met.

Then Friday hit.

We found the club — A6. The one people talked about. The name sounded like a European highway and it kind of was — a direct road to disappointment. I thought it’d be German techno, pulsing bass, fog machines, and glow sticks. But it was just another American outpost. Fluorescent Bud Lights. Military ID checks. That same damn Nelly song playing on repeat.

It catered to the American need to feel cool while being surrounded by people just like them.

There weren’t many locals. Just us. A beer or two in, we realized this wasn’t going to lead anywhere. No love stories. No legendary hookups. Just sweat and bass and that creeping hangover lurking in the corners.

We danced a little. We stood around more. We called it.

Sleep won.

We had a truck. That was our freedom. Our escape pod. No one cared where we went, as long as we fueled up on base and didn’t crash it into a castle.

Back then, navigation wasn’t an app. It wasn’t a voice telling you when to turn. The only map I had was tucked into the back of my dog-eared German-English dictionary — a single-page layout of highways and cities I couldn’t pronounce. No GPS. Just instincts, road signs, and a good guess.

Our phones? Nokia bricks. Good for Snake and not much else. No Google Maps. No real-time traffic. Just the open road and some dumb confidence.

But I loved it. That feeling of not knowing exactly where you were — and not caring. I became the default driver. The guy behind the wheel. The one who paid attention to the way back. The compass. That’s what I gave the team. Not swagger, not jokes, just the guarantee that we’d get home safe.

So we headed north.

Out of Ramstein, up the Autobahn — that mythical road where speed limits are optional and everything looks like a postcard. We passed through the kind of places that felt older than memory. Mountains. Fog. Slate rooftops. Towns that looked like they hadn’t changed in centuries, just quietly enduring between valleys.

We rolled through Bitburg. That name meant nothing to me at the time — just a blur on the side of a road, a brewery we didn’t stop at. But it stayed in my head. The logo. The signage. The way the town looked like it knew something I didn’t. Years later, Bitburger would become one of my favorite beers, and I’d trace it all the way back to that drive.

Trier came next — old Roman city, history crumbling into cobblestone. We parked and walked. Not much money to spend, just broke airmen window-shopping through a thousand years of culture. But sometimes, that’s all you need. The smell of street bread. The sound of a foreign language you almost understand. The feeling that you’re somewhere else — really else.

On the way back, we swung through Spangdahlem. Another Air Force base. Clean. Tidy. Game room. Commissary. Everything you wanted, if you didn’t care how sterile it all felt. It was a good fallback — a place to tuck away in your head for a rainy day. I filed it under “escape routes” and moved on.

By now, though, we were really getting sick of Whittiak.

Every group’s got one — the guy who doesn’t get it, doesn’t vibe, doesn’t know when to shut up. He wasn’t a bad guy. Just… out of sync. Like a wrong frequency playing in the background of a song you liked. You start to tune it out at first. Then it starts to ruin the song.

The road back was quiet. We were tired. But it was the good kind of tired — earned, not wasted.

We had miles behind us. Mountains in the rearview.
And tomorrow, we’d do it all over again.

I tried to get us on the trains. Thought it’d be the “European thing to do.” Rail passes. Gliding past castles with a baguette in hand, like some backpacking daydream.

But German trains weren’t built for broke American airmen with $8 a day. Too expensive. Too confusing. No Google Maps, no apps, just paper timetables and words with way too many syllables. Driving? Still king. At least behind the wheel, I had control. I had a mission.

But something else had to go.

Whittiak.

Our fourth man. The tagalong no one invited. Annoying in ways that didn’t make sense until you spent five straight days with him. He didn’t do anything — just existed wrong. Off-beat. Loud in quiet moments. Quiet when you needed him to speak. The kind of guy who made a three-person trip feel like a group therapy session.

So we hatched a plan.
Ransom. Luster. Me.

“Meet at the truck,” I told Ransom. “We’re rolling out. Just us.”

Luster was already in the passenger seat, engine running like a getaway car. Ransom? Still in the barracks, trying to shake off Whittiak like gum stuck to his shoe.

Then I saw it.

Ransom, full sprint — the kind of run that says “I’m not missing this.”
Right behind him — Whittiak, giving chase like some sad, determined villain in a low-budget buddy film.

Door open.
Ransom dives in.
And just like that — SLAM.

Rearview mirror: one confused, breathless Whittiak left standing in the dust.

And us?

Free.

It felt like parole. The air was lighter. The jokes hit better. The truck was finally ours — back to the core three. No weird commentary. No sighs. No dragging weight. Just laughter and purpose.

With that freedom came obligation. I wanted to give them a good time. I wanted to make the most of the trip. So I did what any broke-ass, guilt-ridden navigator would do — I drove us back to Spangdahlem.

Not glamorous. But it worked.

The base was quiet. Clean. Familiar. It had a game room with those old-school arcade cabinets that made you forget where you were for a second. Games where nothing mattered but timing and reflex. We blew off steam. Laughed like kids again.

I walked the commissary alone for a while — shelves stacked with the comforts of home. Cereal boxes. Doritos. BBQ sauce. Little pockets of America, shipped across the ocean for the homesick and hungry. It was weirdly beautiful. A reminder that someone, somewhere, wanted to make life livable for the uniformed.

And in those quiet aisles, I thought about things.

About how I probably should’ve gone active duty. About how this life — the structure, the purpose, the clarity — felt good. Clean. Predictable in a way civilian life never was. But I had a girlfriend. College plans. Officer dreams. There was no online school back then. No remote anything. You went all in, or not at all.

So I chose “not at all.”
But I still wonder.

The boys? They were happy. I kept them entertained. Navigated. That was my job — unofficially. Spirit guide with a gas card.

And on the drive back to base, the radio crackled with the songs of our trip. The strange, now-sacred soundtrack of Germany 2004.
O-Zone’s Dragostea Din Tei
And Black Eyed Peas: “Let’s Get Retarded.”

Yeah — the German version still said it. No edit. No apology.
America hadn’t found its sensitivity yet. Not entirely.

But that was our trip in a nutshell.
Dumb, reckless, unforgettable.

Just three guys, a truck, and a little breathing room before life got serious again.

All adventures end. They always do.

The McDonald’s in town — our sad little reward for surviving another chow hall mystery meat. The long walk back along the train tracks, beer in our breath and gravel crunching under our boots. That little taste of freedom, of pretending we weren’t just on orders in a foreign place where everything still felt like a movie.

It was winding down.

But before we flew out, we needed to mark the end properly. One last night. One last bar. And wouldn’t you know it — Whittiak had a suggestion.

The Irish pub.

Of course it was his pick. After all the silent eye rolls, all the heavy sighs and tactical avoidance, we still had to forgive the guy. We ditched him. Maybe it was cruel. Maybe it was justified. Either way, we needed a peace treaty. And we needed drinks.

I half-fantasized about driving to Berlin that weekend — really going big, making it count. Or Paris. That sounded cinematic. Three airmen in a truck beneath the Eiffel Tower. But the gas logistics alone made it impossible. We were dreamers with military ID cards and ration cards, not international men of mystery. So, we stayed.

We did what we did best — drowned our thoughts in cheap beer in a dimly lit pub filled with expats and karaoke ghosts.

And then she appeared.

A heavyset Irish-looking woman. Limping. Clearly a few pints in. She waddled up to us — eyes glazed but determined — and said it, clear as day:
“Do you know someone who’d fuck me?”

We blinked.

No flirtation. No warm-up. Just that.

Was she serious? Absolutely. Was I? Absolutely not.

But there she was — human, loud, drunk, and craving something primal. Something transactional. Some crumb of affection in the bottom of a pint glass. And us? We were assholes. We laughed. Made a few crude jokes. Pawned her off to Whittiak like it was some kind of poetic justice.

She wanted sex. We wanted out. Nobody said yes.

I think about her sometimes. The desperation. The rawness of it. It’s easy to mock people when you’re young and stupid and feel untouchable. But maybe she was just another person needing a connection — no matter how messy, how absurd, how fleeting. Who were we to judge?

We finished our drinks and left the pub a little quieter.

The next morning came too early. We boarded the KC-135, the same old bird that brought us out here. Tired. Hungover. Different. We had a layover at Mildenhall, England — another blur of flightlines, vending machines, and waiting. Like a limbo between adventure and home.

No clowns. No jukebox girls. No strip club swindles. Just a long runway and the slow march back to normal life.

We didn’t say much. You never do at the end. The fun’s over, and the silence becomes your way of honoring it.

We came. We saw. We got hustled. We laughed.
We ditched a guy and drank with the Army.
We rode the Autobahn and flirted with trouble.
We were jerks, but we were honest about it.

And somewhere in Germany, there’s still a pub, a road, a cracked beer bottle, and maybe even a woman with a limp — all part of our story.

That was our trip. And we made it ours.

Our final stop before home was Mildenhall Air Force Base. England. Technically. A brief layover on the tail end of our budget saga across Germany. But for me, it meant something.

“I’ve been to Britain.”

It didn’t matter that we never left the wire. That we didn’t see Big Ben or sip warm beer in some pub with peeling wallpaper and pissed-off bartenders. We were there. Boots on British soil. I logged it mentally, like a passport stamp I’d never actually get.

We were all still itching for one more adventure — one more dash off base, just to say we lived it. But there wasn’t time. Just the slow churn of processing through, scanning IDs, waiting for instructions that never came fast enough.

So we made do with what we had.

Our last meal in Europe? McDonald’s.

And I wasn’t mad about it. I wanted to see what it was like — the small, strange ways cultures bend around the golden arches. The menu looked familiar, but not quite. Fries the same. Coke the same. But that sticker shock?

The combo meal ran me 12 bucks.

Back home it was six. Maybe six-fifty. But here? With the USD to pound exchange rate doing its worst, I paid double to taste the exact same thing. A powerful lesson. The price of comfort abroad is always more than you expect — whether it’s in pounds, Euros, or a half-spent per diem.

There were no more six-foot subs. No last-night debauchery. No dramatic airport goodbyes. Just a long flight, sore necks, and the hum of engines that lulled you into memory.

We landed. We were back. Willow Grove or wherever home was that week.

The adventure ended, like they always do — quietly. Without ceremony. Without fireworks. You just step off the plane, blink at the sunlight, and realize the story’s over.

But even now, sometimes, Ransom, Luster, and I still laugh about it.
About the sandwich.
About the bar with the rainbows and clowns.
About ditching Whittiak like a bad dream.
About the drunk German couple and that poor woman in the Irish pub.
About three broke airmen chasing adventure in the shadows of old castles.

It wasn’t glamorous. It wasn’t well-planned. But it was ours.

And sometimes, that’s all you need.

We still have song in our head.