I swear, one of these days this travelogue will be completed. I just remembered something that should have been included in the language section. I was kind of looking forward to hearing the French say my name since I thought they'd make it sound fabulous but it turned out they couldn't say my name- none of them! Numerous times I wrote it down with the accent ague and even threw my "Like Renée with a J" line at them. They had no problem saying Renée but then they'd say my name and it would come out like "Juh-nee." Totally, totally bizarre to me. I also neglected to mention in the language section ...

My post-Afghanistan plans were supposed to include Paris and London but because I was making my travel arrangements at the last minute, I opted to simplify things and just do Paris. So I spent a night at Ramstein Air Base in Germany and booked the high speed train to Paris (only 2.5 hours) for the the next day. I arrived early to get my ticket then waited 45 minutes on the platform for my train to arrive. This is the part where my friends will laugh their asses off and I'll hate them forever for it. After the passengers exited, a train employee stepped off and blocked the door with his arm while ...

Before I get to the European portion of my trip, there are some things I left out of my other recaps for various reasons and I'll include them here. One aspect of military tours I really love is getting to do things I never would have had the opportunity to do otherwise. Probably the coolest experience for me this time around was shooting an M4 semi-automatic weapon. A can was set up about 30 yards away and I plugged away at it, hitting it on each of ...

Our stop at Manas Air Base in Kyrgyzstan was supposed to be a brief one. We arrived after midnight and thought we'd be on a plane back to Germany the next day. No such luck. We weren't greeted by MWR people so we handled the lodging arrangements on our own. There was a problem involving Ira's Visa that I was stuck dealing with and it got me to bed quite late. I finally crashed in my windowless room, figuring someone would wake me when it was time to go. After almost three days with little more than cat naps, I slept until after noon then tried to figure out what the situation was. The situation was Ira managed to book ...