Kaiserslautern is a small city located in the southwest of Germany. It is home to Europe's largest swimming pool, as well as roughly 45,000 NATO service members and their families. Kaiserslautern hosted 5 games in the 2006 World Cup. It is also where I lived for a number of years.
This is a difficult post for me to make for a number of reasons. The first is that I didn't take many photos while I stopped by for 3 days. The second is that I do have a lot of photos from living here, but most of those photos are of people and not the place. The photos are important to me because of the people who are in them, not because they're good photos. I never really took tourist photos of Kaiserslautern like I did with all the other cities that I visited on my trip.
To start, I'll post the photos that I took while on my trip. Later I'll include some of the photos that I took through the years.
No one cleaned my apartment while I was gone. This was my computer / dining room. I really missed my computer while I was traveling.
This is the view from one of my windows. The church rang its bells every 15 minutes. That's why my rent was so cheap.
One of the things that I was really looking forward to was getting some of the food that I was used to. Brauhaus am Markt was one of my favorite restaurants and they had breakfast buffets on the weekends. I had to bring my own hot sauce. That's another travel tip for you, always bring your own hot sauce.
What I really craved while I was in Spain was a Doner Box. Doner Box is like a doner kebab, but without the bread. They put French fries in the box, then add doner meat, doner vegetables and sauce, more doner meat, and more French fries. It's the next step doner kebab evolution.
This is the street that I lived on.
So that was most of the photos that I took when I stopped at my apartment. Next are some photos of the city over the years.
When I first moved to Kaiserslautern, World Cup was just about to start up. I had to find an apartment and get settled in my new job. Then World Cup came and it was a 30 day party in my city. I don't think I made it home before midnight for that entire 30 days. I'm not sure how I made it to work everyday.
I call the photo above "How to tell if Australia has a game in your city".
The city was packed for 30 days. It was a surreal environment. I remember walking somewhere during a game that wasn't in our city. It was an early game and there weren't many people in the street. The place was oddly empty. But every time something happened in the game, the whole city would Oooh and Ahhh with the game.
When I was new to the city and didn't know anyone, I would go out to the bars and clubs by myself. I had a few bar acquaintances, but I didn't make any real friends until I found my home away from home. Milliway's.
As a fan of the Hitchhiker's Guide, I had to go in. The first time I went into the bar, I met friends that became lifelong friends that I still talk to frequently.
Barbequing was something that we enjoyed doing in Kaiserslautern.
This was at a different apartment that I lived in. The street was Bierstrasse (Beer Street), it seemed appropriate.
One of my favorite things was Thanksgiving. Since I was away from my family, I missed all of the usual family holidays. My friends would put on a huge Thanksgiving dinner every year. It made the holidays a little less lonely for me. I loved living overseas, but sometimes it can be hard to be away from family.
All of my friends would usually do family stuff with their girlfriends on Christmas, so Thanksgiving was extra special for me. And the Germans in our crew loved the excuse to have a big turkey dinner.
One thing that Germany as a whole is great for is cycling. After I bought a bicycle, I spent quite a bit of time cycling the paths around our city. I did a few longer trips by taking the train to Mannheim and riding along the Rhine river for a couple of days.
I usually brought beer and stopped along the path for a little beer-only picnic.
Kaiserslautern has a football team that doesn't always perform as well as it should. That doesn't stop the fans from coming out and showing their support.
The games were a lot of fun. In general, I supported our team. But after I moved downtown, I always wanted the team to lose. Whenever the team won, people would be out celebrating all night and I could hear it in my apartment. For the sake of my sleep, I started rooting for the team to lose.
Here are a few random shots from Kaiserslautern.
Foam party? Yeah.
That's enough of a trip down memory lane for me. Back to my trip!
At my apartment I washed my clothes and repacked my bag. I got rid of some stuff and stocked up on other stuff. This is everything I would have for the next few months.
After 3 days of rest and catching up with my friends, I jumped onto a train and headed east to Berlin! I'd never been to Berlin before so I was looking forward to seeing what it had to offer.
