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I guess it is time

Well, this blog has been saturated with info from the Brooks and I think there had to be more than just one person on the blog. He should really just change the name to Germanybrooks or something like that. We are not taking trips every weekend. It is actually really busy here. I have duty every fifth night when I have to stay at the hospital and take care of dental emergencies. Most of the stuff is stupid. It is a lot of family members that are not covered for dental work so it is limited what you are going to do. Maybe you do a pulpectomy or extract a tooth but your treatment option are limited because if the tooth is not totally hopeless you hate to just get rid of it. It is nice because you do see a lot of avulsed teeth and other luxation injuries that I would have had little idea of what to do with if I had just been out in practice. There was a guy that came in the middle of the night last saturday that had fallen and collided with a barstool. Well, it won and he ended up with some pretty nasty lacerations and avulsed #9. Well, his alcohol level was .315, that is like 4 times the legal limit and should be toxic to him. He was passed out and showed up with random people who just left him there so that was a lot of fun trying to get a HPI on him. Anyway, we did not put the tooth back but it was a decent case to manage for the experience of it.  I have also managed a few mandibular body fxs and some condylar fxs. Mostly we are just thrown around to do different rotations that is all great experience, there is just a lot of class time in the afternoons a few days a week that gets old. But, I am learning a ton and I am sure I will keep getting a lot of knowledge. The weather is awesome here and the kids are getting a ton better at swimming.  There is a pool in our neighborhood and so we go down there a lot. Hayden swam 75 yards straight the other day. Three laps all on his own with only a short rest between laps. I was amazed since he could not swim at all when we got here. Well, that is it for me, here is a link to our families blog with pictures and stuff.  Hope all is well with all of you guys. Take care. http://web.mac.com/stinch/Stinchfield_Site/Welcome.html

Garmisch Trip

Somebody write something about what's going on with you! Larry, how are boards? Jared, why didn't you go to the VTC yesterday, Paul, put something on here as well as your other blog, Tom, do you wish you had joined the Army so you could be a Captain, instead of just a Lieutenant? Justin, how is the practice going? Are you making money yet?

This last weekend we went to Garmisch, which is the site of an Army resort way down in Southern Germany. There is a chaplain in our neighborhood, and he gave us all a heads-up on a marriage retreat that was going to be put on down there, so of course the whole neighborhood signed up. It was super nice, an all expense paid vacation in the resort down there. It’s a lot like the Shades of Green in Disneyworld, really nice rooms, an indoor pool, etc… Even our meals were paid for, but the best part was… free child care!! We dropped off the kids in the morning on Saturday and had the whole day to ourselves. Now, I don’t want anyone to get the idea that we do this a lot, but it was nice just to be alone for a while (not that that stopped Carissa of thinking about them all day). There were about 3 hours of marriage classes, which were interesting; nothing revelatory or earth shattering, but interesting, and the rest of the time was ours.

There is a lot to do in Garmisch. Besides the activities at the resort itself, you can spend all day going up and down the mountains which pretty much surround the town. There are quite a few cable cars, and a train that takes you practically to the top of the tallest peak in Germany, the Zugspitze at 2962 meters, (that’s about 9000 ft.) There wasn’t enough time to do that trip, so instead we went on a smaller series of three different cable cars with some hiking in between. It took us up to about 2050 m. We actually did quite a bit of walking, if you include getting to the base of the mountain in the first place.

There were a lot of hikers on the mountain, so you don’t have to pay for a great view if you don’t want to. There were even quite a few Para gliders. We saw some of them sitting on the mountain with the chutes all spread out behind them. Then they just started running down the mountain, and takeoff!, they were airborne. Up at the higher elevations, there was a bit of snow. Not a ton, but enough that at the restaurants they were shoveling it into big snow banks. We took a walk downtown, but didn’t really see a lot of interest. Once you’ve seen one Christmas store or Cuckoo clock store, you’ve pretty much seen them all, unless you’re actually serious about buying something. Some of the other things to do nearby are Neuschwanstein Castle (the fairy tale castle) which is actually a couple of hours away, and Dachau, which is again a couple of hours away. The kids were happy to spend as much time as possible at the pool, which kind of makes you wonder why you’re paying to stay at a hotel, but hey, we weren’t paying anyway!

Rothenburg ob der Tauber

Last weekend we went to visit a cool medieval city named Rothenburg ob der Tauber, about 100 miles from Bamberg. It is one of the few remaining walled cities in Germany. There is a city wall that goes around the entire city. People live there, but it seemed like most of the businesses catered to tourists. We saw Asian tour groups, lots of German tour groups, and lots of regular tourists like us. The city wasn’t too crowded, though.

The first thing we saw on entering the city was a really cool medieval shop, with lots of swords, armor, miniatures, etc... The stuff looked really great! Carissa really wanted to get one of the swords; we don’t know where we would put it, though. We did get a really cool mirror for Carissa; the kids are convinced it’s an enchanted mirror. It makes me think of Fablehaven. We walked some of the wall, but it was too long to walk the whole thing.
When we reached the town square, we saw this very neat Baroque building, the old Rathaus, or City Hall. We climbed this tower, starting with this really neat spiral staircase, which then turned into a series of cramped, rickety old wooden staircases. I didn’t count the steps, but there were a LOT! The last hundred or so steps felt like we were climbing around in someone’s attic, and there were a few parts where I started to feel claustrophobic. At the top was a great view. Later I learned that the tower is remarkable in that it has no foundation of its own, it just rests on top of the gable!
Back down in the town square we were just in time to see the historic clock strike the hour. Four or five times a day, when the clock strikes the hour, two little windows upon up on each side of the clock to commemorate a heroic deed by a former mayor of the town in 1631. The legend says that Catholic troops had attacked and occupied Protestant Rothenburg, and were going to plunder and destroy the city. On a whim, the general promised to spare the city if the mayor could empty an enormous tankard, containing just under one gallon of wine, in just one draught. He did, and the city was spared.
Next we went to St. Jacob’s church, which took almost 200 years to build. There’s actually an underpass that goes right under the church, since the road was there before the church was. I think most Cathedrals boast some sort of relic. This one claims to have a drop of Christ’s blood. We were going to go inside, but didn’t think it was worth paying $10 just to have a look.

As we were walking toward a museum Jason was surprised by a living statue! After Jason put some money in his hat, he got down and posed for a picture with him. Eliza and Savannah didn’t want to go near him!

This is one of the few pictures we got inside the museum, since the flash on our camera decided to quit working. The story behind this odd sculpture is that the sculptor misread the directions. He was asked for a “crowned” Moses, but read it as “horned.” We can’t figure out why they decided to leave the horns on…

By this time the kids were getting a bit unruly, so we stuck them in some convenient stockades while we toured the Medieval Crime Museum. No pictures, but suffice it to say that we walked four floors covering 1000 years of European law enforcement and strange punishments, of which the stockades were probably the least strange. In 1945 the city was bombed by the allied forces. Over 40% of the city went up in flames. It was later restored through generous donations from all over the world. All in all, it was a very cool trip, we're definitely going to have to go there again sometime. There is a cool medieval festival sometime during the year.

Alyssa Kennedy Stinchfield

Boy, is this sad :(

Nobody is doing anything? C'mon, even I'm posting. I'm typing this in one of my operatories right now, since I still can't log on to my computer (my CAC card still doesn't work) and we won't have phone service (much less Internet service) for another 4 weeks. Can't do any pictures, either. Too bad, because there is a lot to do and see around here. Our car hasn't arrived yet, but we've taken the bus to a couple of castles and cathedrals. They're okay, but there's not really a lot of excitement in seeing an old church. We haven't gone to see it yet, but one of the cathedrals here claims to have one of the nails used during the crucifixion! I wonder if you traveled to all of the Catholic churches how many of those nails you would find... Driving on the roads here is pretty much like the States. When you're on the autobahn, it looks like you could be on I-90; all of the trees are the same, buildings, etc... There is one difference in the city, there are hardly any stop signs. Instead everybody follows these "right before left" rules and each intersection tells you who has priority to go first. Haven't gotten in any accidents yet, but I have had a couple of close calls. No wonder car insurance costs about twice as much here as in Cleveland. And speaking of the autobahn, driving here pretty much sucks. Everyone gets all excited about how fast you can drive, but it's not true. Inner city speed limits are 31 mph, freeways are 42 mph, and the autobahn has an assumed speed limit of about 80. You can go faster, but if you get in an accident you'll get a ticket for speeding. On base, we drive either 18 mph or 12 mph depending on if we're by housing or not.
We're in a pretty nice house, much bigger than we thought it would be. It's three stories, and a finished basement, two and a half bathrooms, four bedrooms. Our household goods are here, so we're in the process of unpacking those. We live off-base, but it's still government leased housing, so we don't have to pay any utilities or anything. The Euro rate sucks (.71 to a dollar) but we don't have to pay sales tax on anything, and that knocks off 19%, so it works out okay. It's fun to go on a walk to one of the millions of bakeries around here and buy pastries or pretzels. If anyone is thinking about coming out for a visit, around Thanksgiving and Jan/Feb you can get round trip tickets for about $450, not too bad. We'd love to have you out here, and just about every country in Europe is in easy driving distance. Germany itself is only about as big as Montana.
I started seeing patients today, this week I'm just doing exams. We're way behind, because there's only been one dentist here for about 4 months, and before that there were only two. It feels kind of weird to mark down what's wrong without marking what I want done. The other dentist here loves amalgam, that's all he'll place posteriorly. He doesn't use rubber dams, though.