OT: What do you do for a living?

[gforbess at attglobal.net (Gordon Forbess)]

On Tue, 19 Oct 2004 10:21:46 -0700, you wrote:

>I'm in the Air Force (a.k.a. Chair Force, Air Farce) as an E-3.  Got a 
>wife and three kids here with me in Germany.  Hate Germany because I 
>don't have the funds to really enjoy Europe so I am stuck on base most 
>of the time where I can pay for things in USD instead of EURO which is 
>kicking the dollar's butt making everything off base 25% more expensive 
>than it should be. 

Whereabouts are you in Germany?  I know the exchange rate sucks these
days.  Too bad because it's really a great place to be stationed.  Are
they still subsidizing fuel?  It used to cost us about 25 cents a
gallon for the first 200 liters each month.  Then we had to pay
whatever the going price was at the pump.. maybe $1/gallon at the
time.

I was lucky in the early 70s when I was a single Army E5 and getting
about 3.8DM per dollar, when most people agreed that the equivalency
rate was about 2-2.2DM/dollar.  First thing you did after pay call was
head to group HQ and exchange it all into Deutsch Marks.  Everyone
that could get approval was living off base and driving new VW bugs
(around $1600). The NCOs were driving BMWs and Porsches.   A bunch of
the CWOs were into some sort of export scheme involving antiques,
clocks, collectibles, furniture and stereo equipment.  No one saved a
dime.. just bought everything they could because it was so cheap.  

Amsterdam which was then, and still is, the fun capital (and drug
tests weren't invented yet) was only about three hours away and a
decent hotel room for 2 or 3 (with breakfast) was $15 night.   I was
there 20 months and put about 40k miles on that car, brought it to
California and sold it in 73 for a bit more than that.  Got the VW
bug, so to speak, and in 75 I HAD to buy a Scirocco.





Gordon

75 Mk1/Drake 1.9
http://pws.prserv.net/gforbess/scirocco/scirocco.htm