Wiesbaden

Unbelievable. I am sitting in a comfortable American hotel room (with, most importantly, a real American bed!) watching college football. In Germany. This is the life! Too bad I had to eat Taco Bell for dinner. The only options were the PX food court.

I went to the PX Starbucks and found a Stuttgart mug. And a mug for Heidelberg. And Bonn, and Wiesbaden and Mainz and Dresden and Koln and...  Interesting there are none for Munich or Frankfurt.

Suddenly it occurs to me why Starbucks is phasing these mugs out. It's because nobody else, especially Europeans, drinks coffee in large mugs like this. Only us coffee-loving Americans do that. Others prefer smaller servings in dainty mugs, as wrong as it is. So as Starbucks gets more international it finds less demand for big mugs and increasing demand for smaller mugs. At least that's my theory.

"Hotel American Base" from the correct side of the fence. It's cold and rainy. The beautiful 7pm chorus of German church bells ringing out from both sides of the city is hard to beat: